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The perceptual consequences of phonological contrast have long been of interest to phonologists and phoneticians. In Trubetzkoy’s well-known Grundzüge der Phonologie (1939: 78), for example, he speculates that an opposition between speech sounds that is always contrastive in a given language will be perceived more clearly than an opposition that is neutralizable in some context. Furthermore, even within the category of neutralizable oppositions, he predicts that perception will fluctuate depending on factors such as context. There are three important assumptions that underlie Trubetzkoy’s speculations. First, that one’s native language experience influences the ability to perceive speech sounds. Second, that the phonological relation holding between sounds in a language has an impact on a listener’s perception of those sounds. And third, that it is not simply the presence versus the absence of phonological …