Voice Onset Time Analysis Research Articles

A perception-based analysis of voice onset time (VOT) dissimilation in Korean

A perception-based analysis of voice onset time (VOT) dissimilation in Korean

An Acoustic Analysis of Voice Onset Time in the Production of Voiceless Plosives in English and Iraqi Tikrity Arabic

This paper is a study of voice onset time (VOT) in Iraqi Tikrity Arabic and English. The stops /t, k/ were used in initial position and were embedded in words which were presented to ten native speakers of Iraqi Tikrity Arabic and four English native speakers. Recordings were made and analyzed using computer software that generated a spectrogram for each word (prrat). The results prove that stops in Iraqi Tikrity Arabic and in English occur at the same place along the VOT. The study also found that place of articulation has a significant effect on VOT values and asserts the strong relationship between VOT values and place of articulation. Moreover vowel context has its significant effect on VOT values and asserts the strong relationship between VOT values and vowel context. Additionally, it is found that gender impact on VOT values varied from one language group to another, gender has no significant effect in the production of voiceless plosives in Iraqi Tikrity Arabic. Whereas English male speakers produce longer voice onset time than Female speakers.

An Acoustic Analysis of Voice Onset Time in the Production of Voiceless Plosives in English and Iraqi Kurdish

This paper is a study of voice onset time)VOT( in Iraqi Kurdish and English. The stops /t, k/ were used in initial position and were embedded in words which were presented to ten native speakers of Iraqi Kurdish and four English native speakers. Recordings were made and analyzed using a computer software that generated a spectrogram for each word (prrat). The results prove that stops in Iraqi Kurdish and in English occur at the same place along the VOT. The study also found that Place of articulation has a significant effect on VOT values and asserts the strong relationship between VOT values and place of articulation. Moreover vowel context has its significant effect on VOT values and asserts the strong relationship between VOT values and vowel context. Additionally, it is found that gender impact on VOT values varied from one language group to another, gender has no significant effect in the production of voiceless plosives in Iraqi Kurdish. Whereas English male speakers produce longer voice onset time than Female speakers.

An Acoustic Analysis of Voice Onset Time in the Production of Voiceless Plosives in English and Iraqi Turkmen

This paper is a study of voice onset time, VOT, in Iraqi Turkmen and English. The stops /t, k/ were used in initial position and were embedded in words which were presented to ten native speakers of Iraqi Turkmen and four English native speakers. Recordings were made and analyzed using computer software that generated a spectrogram for each word (prrat). Results prove that stops in Iraqi Turkmen and in English occur at the same place along the VOT. The study also found that Place of articulation has a significant effect on VOT values and asserts the strong relationship between VOT values and place of articulation. Moreover vowel context has its significant effect on VOT values and asserts the strong relationship between VOT values and vowel context. Additionally, it is found that gender impact on VOT values varied from one language group to another, gender has no significant effect in the production of voiceless plosives in Iraqi Turkmen. Whereas English male speakers produce longer voice onset time than Female speakers.

Voice Onset Time in a language without voicing contrast: An acoustic analysis of Blackfoot oral stops

This paper presents an acoustic analysis of Voice Onset Time (VOT) in oral stop consonants in Blackfoot, an Algonquian language without contrastive voicing. We focus on VOT as one of the key temporal acoustic correlates of voicing and investigate VOT variation in relation to (i) place of articulation (labial vs. alveolar vs. velar); (ii) length (long vs. short), quality (/a/ vs. /o/), and accent pattern (accented vs. unaccented) of the following vowel; (iii) word position (initial vs. medial); (iv) gender; and (v) age. We analyzed 2096 stop consonant tokens produced by 13 participants, who completed two different tasks: an English-to-Blackfoot translation task and a picture naming task. The key findings are as follows: (i) Blackfoot stop consonants fall into the short-lag range that overlaps with the English voiced category, with mean VOT values ranging from 11.6–32.7 ms; (ii) VOT values become progressively longer as the place of articulation moves to more posterior positions; (iii) VOT values are longer before high vowels than before low vowels; (iv) VOT values are longer before long vowels than before short vowels; (v) no statistically significant effect was found for the linguistic factors word position and accent pattern; (vi) no statistically significant effect was found for the socio-indexical factors age and gender; and (vii) no statistically significant effect was found for the experimental factor task type. The implications of our findings for the Blackfoot writing system and ongoing work on language documentation and revitalization are briefly discussed.

Voice onset time (VOT) of L3 Spanish /ptk/ by multilingual heritage speakers of Ukrainian and Polish

This study provides an acoustic analysis of voice onset time (VOT) of voiceless stops /ptk/ in Spanish, produced by heritage speakers (HSs) of Ukrainian and of Polish who are English-dominant and beginner or intermediate learners of Spanish as a third language (L3). Given that both Ukrainian and Polish, like Spanish and unlike English, are characterized by short-lag VOT, data were collected from six Ukrainian HSs and 11 Polish HSs in their heritage language (HL), in English, and in Spanish to compare potential effects of the HL on L3 VOT production. VOT was analyzed in three task types. The goals were: 1) to determine whether VOT values produced in Spanish by Ukrainian and Polish HSs are more reflective of VOTs in the HL or in English, and 2) to determine the effect of task type on VOT. Data show that Ukrainian and Polish HSs’ VOTs in Spanish are shorter than those of L2 Spanish learners whose L1 is English, indicating a HL rather than dominant language influence on L3 VOT. Results suggest that the most crucial factors in L3 phonological acquisition are: 1) structural similarity between HL and L3, and 2) L3 proficiency (not language dominance). VOT was also affected by task type: like L1 Spanish speakers, VOT of Ukrainian HSs increases as task formality increases. This paper fills research gaps in HL and L3 phonetics/phonology as to the effects of a HL on the acquisition of subsequent sound systems in adulthood.

The acoustic realization of language-specific phonological categories despite dynamic cross-linguistic influence in bilingual and trilingual speech.

The present study examines the acoustic realization of the English, Japanese, and Spanish /k/ in the productions of two groups of English-Japanese bilinguals [first language (L1) English-second language (L2) Japanese and L1 Japanese-L2 English] and one trilingual group [L1 Spanish-L2 English-third language (L3) Japanese]. With the analysis of voice onset time (VOT) as a proxy for the degree of cross-linguistic influence in each language, this experiment compares the production patterns of L2 and L3 learners of Japanese and explores the effects of language mode and cognate status on the speech patterns in each of the languages of these bilingual and trilingual individuals. By manipulating the degree of activation of the target and non-target language(s) with the use of cognates and non-cognates in monolingual, bilingual, and trilingual experimental sessions, this study investigates static as well as transient phonetic influence. Even though these bilingual and trilingual speakers produce language-specific VOT patterns for each language, the acoustic analyses also reveal evidence of phonetic convergence as a result of language mode and cognate status. These results show that trilingual speakers are able to maintain language-specific phonological categories in their L1, L2, and L3, overcoming long-term (static) traces of one language influencing the other, despite evidence of short-term (dynamic) cross-linguistic influence.

Short-Term Sources of Cross-Linguistic Phonetic Influence: Examining the Role of Linguistic Environment

While previous research has shown that bilinguals are able to effectively maintain two sets of phonetic norms, these two phonetic systems experience varying degrees of cross-linguistic influence, driven by both long-term (e.g., proficiency, immersion) and short-term (e.g., bilingual language contexts, code-switching, sociolinguistic) factors. This study examines the potential for linguistic environment, or the language norms of the broader community in which an interaction takes place, to serve as a source of short-term cross-linguistic phonetic influence. To investigate the role of linguistic environment, late bilinguals (L1 English—L2 Spanish) produced Spanish utterances in two sessions that differed in their linguistic environments: an English-dominant linguistic environment (Indiana, USA) and a Spanish-dominant linguistic environment (Madrid, Spain). Productions were analyzed at the fine-grained acoustic level, through an acoustic analysis of voice onset time, as well as more holistically through native speaker global accent ratings. Results showed that linguistic environment did not significantly impact either measure of phonetic production, regardless of a speaker’s second language proficiency. These results, in conjunction with previous results on long- and short-term sources of phonetic influence, suggest a possible primacy of the immediate context of an interaction, rather than broader community norms, in determining language mode and cross-linguistic influence.

Using automated acoustic analysis to explore the link between planning and articulation in second language speech production

ABSTRACT Speakers learning a second language show systematic differences from native speakers in the retrieval, planning, and articulation of speech. A key challenge in examining the interrelationship between these differences at various stages of production is the need for manual annotation of fine-grained properties of speech. We introduce a new method for automatically analysing voice onset time (VOT), a key phonetic feature indexing differences in sound systems cross-linguistically. In contrast to previous approaches, our method allows reliable measurement of prevoicing, a dimension of VOT variation used by many languages. Analysis of VOTs, word durations, and reaction times from German-speaking learners of Spanish (Baus et al., 2013) suggest that while there are links between the factors impacting planning and articulation, these two processes also exhibit some degree of independence. We discuss the implications of these findings for theories of speech production and future research in bilingual language processing.

Voice onset time production in Ecuadorian Spanish, Quichua, and Media Lengua

In Ecuador there exists a dynamic language contact continuum between Urban Spanish and Rural Quichua. This study explores the effects of competing phonologies with an analysis of voice onset time (VOT) production in and across three varieties of Ecuadorian highland Spanish, Quichua, and Media Lengua. Media Lengua is a mixed language that contains Quichua systemic elements and a lexicon of Spanish origin. Because of this lexical-grammatical split, Media Lengua is considered the most central point along the language continuum. Native Quichua phonology has a single series of voiceless stops (/p/, /t/, and /k/), while Spanish shows a clear voicing contrast between stops in the same series. This study makes use of nearly 8,000 measurements from 69 participants to (i) document VOT production in the aforementioned language varieties and (ii) analyse the effects of borrowings on VOT. Results based on mixed effects models and multidimensional scaling suggest that the voicing contrast has entered both Media Lengua and Quichua through Spanish lexical borrowings. However, the VOT values of voiced stops in Media Lengua align with those of Rural and L2 Spanish while Quichua shows significantly longer prevoicing values, suggesting some degree of overshoot.

Cortical sensitivity to spoken acoustic variability in persons with aphasia: an MEG study

Cortical sensitivity to spoken acoustic variability in persons with aphasia: an MEG study

Analysis of voice onset time in Georgian

The Georgian stop system has a three-way opposition: voiced, voiceless aspirated, and voiceless ejective. This paper reports on results from an analysis of voice onset time (VOT) in word-initial stop consonants preceding /a/. Two native speakers of Georgian (one male, one female) were recorded reading two randomized token lists: one containing nonsense syllables (e.g., ‘‘ba’’) and one containing actual Georgian words (e.g., ‘‘balaxi’’ ‘‘grass’’). Tokens were repeated twice. VOT values were measured using spectrograms and waveforms. Results show that VOT clearly distinguishes two categories in Georgian: voiced and voiceless. Initial voiced stops had short positive VOTs, while the initial voiceless stops had relatively long positive VOT values. Within the voiceless category, however, mean VOT values for ejectives and aspirates overlapped. Articulatory and acoustic characteristics of ejectives and aspirates are discussed in relation to other possible cues for distinguishing between the two types of stops. In addition to stop categories, the results show a trend toward another distinction: place of articulation. Labials had the lowest VOT values, followed by coronals, and then velars. The results from these analyses are compared to studies of voice onset time in other languages.

Korean spiral stop production: a VOT analysis

An investigation was made of the role of voice onset time (VOT) in distinguishing among Korean apical stop consonants. Measurements were made of VOT values for word-initial apical stops in the speech of four native Korean speakers. Words in citation form, in test sentences, in conversations among Korean adults, and in mothers' speech to children were used. Our results are not in accord with other experimenters who found complete separation of the aspirated from the strong and weak categories of Korean stops. VOT values for word-initial apical stops in the speech of all four speakers showed considerable overlap of the weak and aspirated categories. The strong and weak categories were also found to overlap, but the overlap in the weak and aspirated categories was greater. Our data suggest that although VOT is sufficient to distinguish the strong from the aspirated stops, it cannot effectively distinguish either of these from the weak stops. Our findings support Kim (1965), who proposes a feature of “tensity,” independent of VOT, to distinguish weak stops from the strong and aspirated stops of Korean.

Early apical stop production: A voice onset time analysis

Voice onset time (VOT) has been shown to differentiate effectively the phonemic categories of stop consonants along the voicing dimension. This study involved the measurement of VOT from spectrograms of apical stops produced by young children acquiring American English. Stops were measured from three children recorded regularly between 1 and 2 years of age and from additional children ranging in age from 6 months to 4½ years. Frequency distributions of apical stops along the VOT continuum are compared longitudinally across subjects and with distributions of adult productions of word-initial /d/ and /t/. Drawing on a physiological discussion of the control of timing between stop release and onset of vocal fold oscillation, a pattern of apical stop development is proposed. The earliest examples of stops, around 6 months of age, have uniform distributions along the VOT continuum. Later the distributions of apical stops collapse into an interval corresponding to that of American English /d/. With further development some apical stops are added in the range of adult /t/. The distributions for both /d/ and /t/ words are similar between the ages of 2 and 4½ years, but they do not yet correspond to those of adults.