Kera tone and voicing interaction

This paper sets out to investigate the relative role of Voice Onset Time (VOT) and fundamental frequency in a language with lexical tone. By comparing English and the Chadic language Kera, this study explores the interaction between the production and perception of voicing and the role played by voicing in the phonological structure of the language. The major finding is that the role of VOT and F0 in the perception of voicing differs dramatically between English and Kera subjects with English subjects relying mainly on VOT and Kera subjects mainly on F0. The phonological implications of these results for Kera are that tone is contrastive while voicing is not, which is the reverse of English. I will propose that Kera has no [voice] feature, and that the variation in VOT plays a role as a supporting cue to tone, although the exact amount of VOT usage in Kera production and perception differs depending on the amount of contact with French. The dominance of tone suggests that despite claims that Kera exhibits long-distance voice spreading, what spreads is in fact tone rather than voice.