Speaking rate and language-specific voice onset time effects on burst amplitude: Cross-linguistic observations and implications for sound change
Chandan Narayan
July 2022
 

The relationship between speaking rate and burst amplitude was investigated in plosives with differing oro-laryngeal timing: long-lag voice-onset time (North American English) and short-lag voice-onset time (Indian Tamil). Burst amplitude (reflecting both intraoral pressure and flow geometry of the oral channel) was hypothesized to decrease in pre-vocalic plosives syllables with increasing speaking rate, which imposes temporal constraints on both intraoral pressure buildup behind the oral occlusion as well as respiratory air flow. Results showed that decreased vowel duration (which is associated with increased speaking rate) led to decreased burst amplitude in both short- and long-lag plosives. Aggregate models of bilabial and velar plosives (found both languages) suggested lower burst amplitudes in short-lag stops. Place-of-articulation effects in both languages were consistent with models of stop consonant acoustics, and place interactions with vowel duration were most apparent with long-lag English stops. Results are discussed in terms of speaking rate and language-internal forces contributing to burst amplitude variation and their implications for speech perception and potential to affect lenition phenomena.
Format: [ pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/006110
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in: Language and Speech
keywords: speaking rate, burst amplitude, vot, tamil, phonology
previous versions: v2 [April 2022]
v1 [July 2021]
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