Producing VOT contrasts

Abstract

The development of voice onset time (VOT) as an acoustic index for studying and classifying stop consonants also prompted a large number of studies examining laryngeal activity and interarticulator timing related to VOT. A collaboration between the Research Institute of Logopedics and Phoniatrics at the University of Tokyo and Haskins Laboratories resulted in a long line of studies using electromyographic and other techniques that provided much of the empirical foundations for what we know about laryngeal function in speech, in particular the production of voiced and voiceless consonants. This presentation will review the articulatory control of VOT differences. To make a consonant voiceless, a speaker uses a combination of glottal abduction and vocal fold tensing. The distinction between voiceless stops with long and short VOT is basically due to a difference in the timing between the glottal abduction gesture and the oral closing and opening gestures. Variations in the size of the glottal gesture also occur. More generally, variations in interarticulator timing between glottal and oral movements are used to produce the different stop categories that occur in the languages of the world. [Work supported by NIH.]