Abstract
Earlier we reported a dialect difference in the use of temporal information for vowel perception: Native speakers of Swiss French used temporal as well as spectral information when identifying /o/ versus /ɔ/, whereas native speakers of standard (Parisian) French used only spectral information [J. L. Miller and F. Grosjean, Language Speech 40, 277–288 (1997)]. We interpreted this dialect difference in terms of the more prominent role that vowel duration plays overall in the phonological system of Swiss French compared to standard French. To investigate further the basis of the dialect effect, we have been measuring the duration of /o/ and /ɔ/ in monosyllabic words for native speakers of the two dialects. Our findings to date indicate a robust dialect effect in production: The duration difference between /o/ and /ɔ/ is substantially larger and more consistent in Swiss French than in standard French. Thus the perceptual dialect effect for /o/ and /ɔ/ we reported earlier reflects both a specific difference in the temporal characteristics of this vowel pair and an overall difference in the role of vowel duration in the phonological systems of the two dialects. [Work supported by NIH/NIDCD, Swiss NSF.]
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