In contexts containing /ptk/ between /s/'s, or in terminal position after a single /s/, spectrograms of real speech show transitions in the lower cut-off frequency of the sibilance. For the first /s/, they proceed upward for /t/, straight for /k/, and downward for /p/. When another /s/ follows, its transition is a mirror-image of the first. Synthetic speech and tape-cutting experiments show that the /p/ and /t/ transitions constitute powerful place cues for the stop, but that a burst is required for intelligible /k/'s.
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