Recognition of vowels in fricative context

The role of fricative context on vowel recognition in a series of FV syllables being part of natural Spanish words is investigated. Perceptual tests were carried out to assess the recognition of vowels in fricative context, in two conditions: 1) Isolated vowel; 2) Fricative noise + vowel. Analysis of results show that adding the fricative noise improves the recognition of the vowel, while the acoustic analysis reveal that the distribution of the vowels is affected by fricative context. A possible explanation for this improvement, i.e. the coarticulatory influence of the vowel on the fricative, was investigated. The results indicate that coarticulation cannot explain that improvement, since only 7.7% of the cases which improve when the fricative is added, show a clear influence of the vowel on the fricative.