The Effect of Speaking Rate on the Voice Onset Time (VOT) of Bahdini Kurdish Stops

Abstract

This research examines the effect of speaking rate on the voice onset time (VOT) of stop consonants in Bahdini Kurdish. 30 native speakers are chosen to take part in this study. VOT values are measured for all 10 Kurdish stop consonants produced by participants in carrier words in initial prevocalic onset position. The duration of the carrier word is also measured by using the Web MAUS service (Munich Automatic Segmentation), which is used for word duration measurements. Word duration measurements are compared to the VOT measurements to check whether they are both correlated or not based on laryngeal state and place of stop articulation (POA). Results reveal that there is an effect of speaking rate on VOT based on the three-way laryngeal contrast between the categories of voiced, voiceless aspirated and voiceless unaspirated stops in Bahdini Kurdish. VOT increases as word durations increase, which is inversely related to speaking rate. This means that VOT increases as speaking rate decreases. There is a systematic correlation between VOT and word duration based on different laryngeal states of voiced, voiceless aspirated and voiceless unaspirated stop categories. However, Place of Articulation (POA) does not show such an effect.