Volume 44, Issue 2

The fact that low vowels tend to have longer intrinsic durations than high vowels is sometimes attributed to mechanical characteristics associated with the greater distance the jaw travels in producing low vowels. To investigate this tendency, 6 adult speakers of English each produced 72 [h]-vowel-consonant stimuli containing high and low vowels under ‘normal’ conditions and with their jaw fixed. If duration differences commonly observed between high and low vowels are a result of only mechanical effects of mandibular movement, it was hypothesized that stabilizing the jaw would eliminate these intrinsic vowel duration differences. Based on acoustic measurements that were made, it was found that the fixed-jaw conditions affected the intrinsic durational differences between high and low vowels to some extent, but the contrast was not entirely removed. In addition to the vowel duration changes, a number of systematic effects upon consonant closure duration were also observed as a result of the normal versus fixed-jaw conditions.

In speech articulation studies, data on the pharynx are scarce. Still, the pharynx is an important part of the vocal tract. The present paper reports on an attempt to use computed tomography for investigating the pharynx. Axial computed tomograms were taken at four levels in the pharynx of a male and a female subject sustaining the vowels [u:, i:, α:, œ:]. From the tomograms the lateral width and the cross-sectional area were measured and their relations to the sagittal distance from the back pharynx wall to the midline of the tongue examined and compared with previously published data. In addition, some previous results derived from plaster casts are presented showing the corresponding distance-to-area relationship in the mouth region of some male and female subjects.

Based on recent experimental studies of word-final devoicing in languages like German and Catalan which show production differences between the neutralized and nonneutralized consonants, it has been claimed that phonological neutralization is ‘incomplete’. It seems, however, that this claim is quite premature given that most studies have considered only the neutralizing phenomenon of word-final devoicing. In this paper, we examine a qualitatively different neutralizing phenomenon – the neutralization of vowel length in open syllables. We compared the duration of Dutch long vowels which are derived by an open-syllable lenghtening rule to those that are underlyingly long (cf. [da:len] < /dal+en/ vs. [ba:len] < /ba:l+en/). Our study shows that there is no difference in the duration between these vowels and that, at least, in this instance, contextual neutralization does lead to identical surface realization of distinct phonological segments.

This experiment investigates the role of voice offset time (the durational aspect of preaspiration), closure duration and voice onset time as phonetic carriers of the voiced-voiceless contrast in Lule Sami word-medial stop consonants. Spectrographic measurements were made on speech samples produced by 7 subjects. The subjects belong to two roughly homogeneous dialect groups. For one of the groups, voice offset time provides a reliable phonetic expression of the voicing feature; for the other group, this relationship is less clear-cut. When observed across subjects, stop closure duration is not consistently related to the voiced-voiceless contrast. Finally, the voice onset time parameter is irrelevant to the contrast.

Four experiments have been conducted to explore durational patterns underlying various aspects of Lule Sami phonology. Experiment 1 (1 subject) demonstrates clear-cut durational correlates of the elaborate quantity system in the language. Experiment 2 (2 subjects) shows that vowel and consonant quantity determines syllable duration in connected speech, and that the number of syllables determines the duration of stress-groups. Thus, perceived speech rhythm is not based on physical isochrony with respect to those units. Experiment 3 (7 subjects) investigates durational correlates of a grammatically functional process known as grade alternation. Grade alternation conditions vowel epenthesis. The epenthetic vowels are found to be syllabic and thus to increase word length (number of syllables in the word). Unexpectedly, syllable duration then turns out to be positively correlated with word length. This, however, seems to be a particular effect of grade alternation since, as shown in experiment 4 (1 subject), Lule Sami recognizes the general tendency for syllable duration to correlate negatively with word length.