An Acoustic Analysis of Voice Onset Time in the Production of Voiceless Plosives in English and Iraqi Tikrity Arabic

Abstract

This paper is a study of voice onset time (VOT) in Iraqi Tikrity Arabic and English. The stops /t, k/ were used in initial position and were embedded in words which were presented to ten native speakers of Iraqi Tikrity Arabic and four English native speakers. Recordings were made and analyzed using computer software that generated a spectrogram for each word (prrat). The results prove that stops in Iraqi Tikrity Arabic and in English occur at the same place along the VOT. The study also found that place of articulation has a significant effect on VOT values and asserts the strong relationship between VOT values and place of articulation. Moreover vowel context has its significant effect on VOT values and asserts the strong relationship between VOT values and vowel context. Additionally, it is found that gender impact on VOT values varied from one language group to another, gender has no significant effect in the production of voiceless plosives in Iraqi Tikrity Arabic. Whereas English male speakers produce longer voice onset time than Female speakers.