Phonetics and Speech Sciences (말소리와 음성과학)

Korean Society of Speech Sciences (한국음성학회)
권호 표지
DOI QR코드

DOI QR Code

Further Issues on the Duration Differences in Vowels due to the Voicing of the Following Stops in English

영어의 유무성 폐쇄음 앞 모음 길이 차이에 대한 몇 가지 문제들

  • Received : 2012.07.25
  • Accepted : 2012.09.10
  • Published : 2012.09.30
Download PDF
⟨ Previous Next ⟩

Abstract

It is a well-known phenomenon that vowel duration in English is generally longer before a voiced stop than a voiceless one. Past research has postulated that the closure duration of the voiceless stop is generally longer than that of the voiced stop and that the duration of a preceding vowel is determined complementarily by the closure duration of the stop. To shed further light on the phenomenon, this study examined fourteen native speakers of American English who read the monosyllabic words [bVC] (V = [i, ɪ, eɪ, ɛ, æ, ʌ, ɑ], C = [t, d]). First, we found that mean vowel duration was 38 ms longer before the voiced stop than the voiceless (mean duration ratio = 1.24). Second, mean closure duration of the voiced stop was only shorter by 5 ms compared to the voiceless stop (mean duration ratio = 0.97). Therefore, for our subjects, vowel duration was not determined complementarily by the closure duration of the following stop. Third, vowels with longer inherent durations (viz., tense, diphthong, and low vowels) tended to show larger duration ratios in the voiced and voiceless contexts than the vowels with shorter durations (viz., lax vowels). This indicates that the lengthening of inherently shorter vowels before a voiced stop is limited in order to avoid overlapping with longer vowels in the duration range. Fourth, there was no significant gender difference in vowel duration ratios in the contexts of voiced and voiceless stops. Finally, considerable individual differences were found in the vowel and consonant duration ratios.

Keywords

References

  1. Allen, J. S., Miller, J. L. & DeSteno, D. (2003). Individual talker differences in voice-onset-time. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 113, 544-552. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.1528172
  2. Byrd, D. (1994). Relation of sex and dialect to reduction. Speech Communication 15, 39-54. https://doi.org/10.1016/0167-6393(94)90039-6
  3. Chen, M. (1970). Vowel length variation as a function of the voicing of consonant environment. Phonetica 22, 196-210.
  4. Chomsky, N. & Halle, M. (1968). The Sound Pattern of English. New York: Harper & Row.
  5. Davenport, M. & Hannahs, S. J. (2010). Introducing Phonetics and Phonology (3rd edition). Hodder Education.
  6. Denes, P. (1955). Effect of duration on the perception of voicing. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 27, 761-764. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.1908020
  7. Flege, J. E. (1979). Phonetic Interference in Second Language Acquisition. Doctoral dissertation, Indiana University.
  8. Fox, R. A. & Terbeek, D. (1977). Dental flaps, vowel duration and rule ordering in American English. Journal of Phonetics 5, 27-34.
  9. Fromkin, V. A. (1977). Some questions regarding universal phonetics and phonetic representations. In A. Juilland (ed.) Linguistic Studies Offered to Joseph Greenberg on the Occasion of his Sixtieth Birthday (pp. 365-380). Saratoga, CA: Anma Libri.
  10. Haan, J. & van Heuven, V. J. (1999). Male vs. female pitch range in Dutch questions. In Proceedings of the 14th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (pp. 1581-1584).
  11. Henton, C. G. (1995). Cross-language variation in the vowels of female and male speakers. In Proceedings of the 13th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (pp. 420-423).
  12. Hillenbrand, J., Getty, L. A., Clark, M. J. & Wheeler, K. (1995). Acoustic characteristics of American English vowels. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 97, 3099-3111. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.411872
  13. House, A. S. & Fairbanks, G. (1953). The influence of consonant environment upon the secondary acoustical characteristics of vowels. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 25, 105-113. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.1906982
  14. Johnson, K. & Martin, J. (2001). Acoustic vowel reduction in Creek: Effects of distinctive length and position in the word. Phonetica 58, 81-201. https://doi.org/10.1159/000028489
  15. Keating, P. A. (1979). A Phonetic Study of a Voicing Contrast in Polish. Doctoral dissertation, Brown University.
  16. Keating, P. A. (1985). Universal phonetics and the organization of grammars. Phonetic Linguistics: Essays in honor of Peter Ladefoged (pp. 115-132). New York: Academic Press.
  17. Kim, J.-E. (2011). A study on the correlation between English word-final stop and vowel duration produced by speakers of Korean. Phonetics and Speech Sciences 3, 15-22. (김지은 (2011). 한국인 영어 학습자의 어말 폐쇄음과 선행 모음 길이의 상관관계 연구. 말소리와 음성과학 3권, 11-25.)
  18. Lehiste, I. (1970). Suprasegmentals. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  19. Lisker, L. (1957). Closure duration and the intervocalic voiced-voiceless distinction in English. Language 33, 42-49. https://doi.org/10.2307/410949
  20. Mack, M. (1982). Voicing-dependent vowel duration in English and French: Monolingual and bilingual production. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 71, 173-178. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.387344
  21. Newman, R. S., Clouse, S. A. & Burnham, J. L. (2001). The perceptual consequences of within-talker variability in fricative production. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 109, 1181-1196. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.1348009
  22. Oh, E. (2006). Differences in vowel duration due to the underlying voicing of the following coda stop in Russian and English: Native and non-native values. Speech Sciences 13, 19-33.
  23. Park, H.-J., Shin, H.-J. & Yang, B. (2002). A durational study of vowels followed by voiced or voiceless consonants. Speech Sciences 9, 175-185. (박희정, 신혜정, 양병곤 (2002). 후행하는 유무성 자음에 의한 모음의 지속 시간 고찰. 음성과학 9권, 175-185.)
  24. Peterson, G. E. & Lehiste, I. (1960). Duration of syllable nuclei in English. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 32, 693-703. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.1908183
  25. Port, R. (1977). The Influence of Speaking Tempo on the Duration of Stressed Vowel and Medial Stop in English Trochee Words. Doctoral dissertation, University of Connecticut.
  26. Port, R., Mitleb, F. & O'Dell, M. (1981). Neutralization of obstruent voicing in German is incomplete. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 70, Suppl. 1, S13(A).
  27. Westbury, J., & Keating, P. (1980). Central representation of vowel duration. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 67, Suppl. 1, S37(A).
  28. Whiteside, S. P. (1996). Temporal-based acoustic phonetic patterns in read speech: Some evidence for speaker sex differences. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 26, 23-40. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0025100300005302
  29. Zimmerman, S. A., & Sapon, S. M. (1958). Note on vowel duration seen cross-linguistically. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 30, 152-153. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.1909521

Cited by

  1. A Study on the Influence of English Vowel Pronunciation Training on Word Initial Stop Pronunciation of Korean English Learners vol.5, pp.3, 2013, https://doi.org/10.13064/KSSS.2013.5.3.031