Abstract
In this special collection entitled Marking 50 Years of Research on Voice Onset Time and the Voicing Contrast in the World’s Languages, we have compiled eleven studies investigating the voicing contrast in 19 languages. The collection provides extensive data obtained from 270 speakers across those languages, examining VOT and other acoustic, aerodynamic and articulatory measures. The languages studied may be divided into four groups: ‘aspirating’ languages with a two-way contrast (English, three varieties of German); ‘true voicing’ languages with a two-way contrast (Russian, Turkish, Brazilian Portuguese, two Iranian languages Pashto and Wakhi); languages with a three-way contrast (Thai, Vietnamese, Khmer, Yerevan Armenia, three Indo-Aryan languages, Dawoodi, Punjabi and Shina, and Burushaki); and Indo-Aryan languages with a more than three-way contrast (Jangli and Urdu with a four-way contrast, and Sindhi and Siraiki with a five-way contrast). We discuss the cross-linguistic data, focusing on how much VOT alone tells us about the voicing contrast in these languages, and what other phonetic dimensions (such as consonant-induced F0 and voice quality) are needed for a complete understanding of laryngeal contrast in these languages. Implications for various issues emerge: universal phonetic feature systems, effects of language contact on linguistic levelling, and the relation between laryngeal contrast and supralaryngeal articulation. The cross-linguistic VOT data also lead us to discuss how the distribution of VOT as measured acoustically may allow us to infer the underlying articulation and how it might be approached in gestural phonologies. The discussion on these multiple issues sparks new questions to be resolved, and provide indications of where the field may be best directed in exploring laryngeal contrast in voicing in the world’s languages.
Highlights
It has been just over a half century since Lisker & Abramson (1964) proposed an acoustic measure of Voice Onset Time (VOT) as a unitary and eminently tractable basis on which to characterize the voicing categories of stops across languages which had often been distinguished by seemingly independent phonetic features of voicing, aspiration and “force of articulation.” Based on observations of voicing patterns in eleven languages, Lisker & Abramson made a key assumption that a fairly complicated acoustic output in association with different voicing categories within and across languages arises as a predictable consequence of varying the area of the glottis
Another eight languages employ a three-way stop contrast: Thai, Vietnamese, Khmer, Yerevan Armenian, Dawoodi, Punjabi, Shina and Burushaki. These languages, despite belonging to different language families, all disperse the three-way contrastive stops along the VOT continuum in a comparable way, corresponding to the three phonetic categories of {voiced}, {voiceless unaspirated} and {voiceless aspirated}. (Note that, following Keating, 1984, curly brackets ‘{ }’ are used here to refer to phonetic features or categories as opposed to phonological features [+/−voice].) The voiced stops are produced with substantial phonation during closure as reflected in long negative VOTs, and the voiceless unaspirated/aspirated stops are produced with a short-lag and a long-lag VOT, respectively
The emerging cross-linguistic similarities in the distribution of VOTs suggest that VOT is an important metric for understanding the language universals underlying laryngeal contrast in voicing in the worlds’ languages, and that such crosslinguistic similarities can be accounted for by the universally available three phonetic features mapped on to similar ranges of VOT in the languages studied in this special collection
Summary
It has been just over a half century since Lisker & Abramson (1964) proposed an acoustic measure of Voice Onset Time (VOT) as a unitary and eminently tractable basis on which to characterize the voicing categories of stops across languages which had often been distinguished by seemingly independent phonetic features of voicing, aspiration and “force of articulation.” Based on observations of voicing patterns in eleven languages, Lisker & Abramson made a key assumption that a fairly complicated acoustic output in association with different voicing categories within and across languages arises as a predictable consequence of varying the area of the glottis. Whalen have provided a retrospective commentary entitled “Voice Onset Time (VOT) at 50: Theoretical and practical issues in measuring voicing distinctions.” It bore largely on procedural aspects of the application of VOT, its limitations, and ways to expand the notion of VOT to a wider range of different phonological contexts. Inspired by this retrospective reflection on VOT, we have commissioned a special collection (issue) of themed papers in order to mark the occasion of 50 plus years of VOT under the title “Marking 50 Years of Research on Voice Onset Time and the Voicing Contrast in the World’s Languages.”. Inspired by this retrospective reflection on VOT, we have commissioned a special collection (issue) of themed papers in order to mark the occasion of 50 plus years of VOT under the title “Marking 50 Years of Research on Voice Onset Time and the Voicing Contrast in the World’s Languages.” This special collection devotes itself to exploring the phonetic properties of voicing contrasts with a view to providing a contemporary lens on various aspects of consonantal voicing contrast within and across the world’s languages from both theoretical and methodological perspectives, and relevant points of debate that have endured alongside or as an alternative to VOT
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