Wubuy

We present two studies of native and non-native (English) perception of the acoustically and articulatorily similar four-way coronal stop contrast /t ʈ ȶ/ (apico-alveolar, apico-retroflex, lamino-dental, lamino-alveopalatal) of Wubuy, an indigenous language of Australia. […] In the case of the Wubuy alveolar versus retroflex contrast for instance, we argue that the phonetic overlap is so great that native listeners can behave as if this were an instance of a good and a 'less good' instance of a single category (CG).

2015 December 4, “Discrimination of Multiple Coronal Stop Contrasts in Wubuy (Australia): A Natural Referent Consonant Account”, in PLOS ONE, →DOI