Formant onset duration: A secondary cue for identifying the place of articulation in stop consonants

Abstract

Formant onset duration (FOD) is suggested as a possible alternative to voice onset time (VOT), to characterize the place of articulation in stop consonants. The FOD is defined as the duration from the start of the burst (denoting consonantal release) to the start of the formant structure (denoting vowel onset). In many languages, VOT is the most salient cue distinguishing between voiced and voiceless stop phonemes. Although VOT has been shown to increase in duration from bilabials to alveolars to velars [Lisker and Abramson, Word 20; Zue, Tech. Rep. 523, MIT], attempts to use VOT as a cue to place of articulation [Kewley‐Port, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 73, 322–335 (1983)] were not successful. In a recent study of stop consonants using the partially smoothed Wigner distribution [Garudadri et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Suppl. 1 82, S55 (1987)], FOD and F2 of the following vowel were used along with the spectral shape during the burst, to resolve context dependencies due to coarticulation effects. The FOD increases from bilabials to alveolars to velars and appears to be related to the inertia of the articulators. Unlike VOT, FOD is always positive and corresponds to the vocal tract rather than the source of excitation. Evidence from English, Telugu, and French stop consonants supporting these ideas is presented. [Work supported in part by NSERC, Canada.]