Abstract
When codas and vowels are cross-spliced, vowels originally produced with voiced codas are perceived as longer than vowels of the same duration produced with voiceless codas. The spliced coda has the opposite effect: Vowels presented with voiced codas are perceived as shorter. To explain what characteristics make vowels produced with voiced codas sound longer than vowels produced with voiceless codas, four experiments tested how acoustic correlates of voicing affect English speakers’ perception of vowel duration. Vowels were manipulated in a ten-step duration continuum, and listeners categorized each vowel as ‘long’ or ‘short.’ Study 1 tested effects of vowel height categories (/æ, ε, ɪ/) and within-category F1. Study 2 tested effects of intensity contour. Study 3 tested effects of spectral tilt. Perceived vowel duration increased with vowel height and rising intensity. Perceived vowel duration decreased with falling intensity and with higher spectral tilt. There was no effect of within-category F1. Study 4 confirmed that the effect of the original coda environment is not specific to English stimuli. The effects of spectral tilt and intensity contour on perceived duration provide a possible perceptual pathway for the development of voicing-conditioned vowel duration; coda voicing influences these characteristics and they in turn influence perceived vowel duration.
Highlights
Vowels are longer before voiced codas than before voiceless codas in many languages, though there is variation by language in the size of the effect (e.g., Chen, 1970; Keating, 1979), how duration differences interact with stress or intrinsic duration differences across vowel qualities (e.g., Peterson & Lehiste, 1960; Port, Al-Ani, & Maeda, 1980), and how vowel duration behaves in contexts where voicing contrasts are neutralized (e.g., Sharf, 1964; Warner, Jongman, Sereno, & Kemps, 2004)
All experiments use native English-speaking listeners, so the results demonstrate factors in English speaker’s perception of vowel duration; while some of the non-linguistic parallels suggest that similar patterns will be observed for speakers of other languages, it remains for future work to examine whether the perceptual effects are the same or not across languages
Experiment 1 tests the influences of F1 and vowel quality on perceived vowel duration, as well as the influence of the original coda produced with the vowel
Summary
Vowels are longer before voiced codas than before voiceless codas in many languages, though there is variation by language in the size of the effect (e.g., Chen, 1970; Keating, 1979), how duration differences interact with stress (e.g., de Jong, 2004; de Jong & Zawaydeh, 2002) or intrinsic duration differences across vowel qualities (e.g., Peterson & Lehiste, 1960; Port, Al-Ani, & Maeda, 1980), and how vowel duration behaves in contexts where voicing contrasts are neutralized (e.g., Sharf, 1964; Warner, Jongman, Sereno, & Kemps, 2004). If the perceived duration of the vowel in each environment is interpreted as the intended duration for that vowel, voicing-conditioned
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Schedule a callMore From: Laboratory Phonology: Journal of the Association for Laboratory Phonology
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