![]() However, especially the comparison between English and Korean was not fair because most of the test words in English were mono-syllabic whereas all the words were bi-syllabic in Korean. The results showed that English had the lowest ratio: 0.61 in English, 0.87 in French, 0.82 in Russian, 0.78 in Korean, 0.90 in German, 0.86 in Spanish and 0.82 in Norwegian. For instance, Chen (1970) calculated the average ratios of vowel duration before voiceless vs. First, it has been known that out of many languages, English reveals the greatest variation of vowel duration as a function of the following consonant, i.e., the vowel before a voiceless consonant is much shorter than that before its voiced counterpart ( Chen, 1970 Zimmerman & Sapon, 1958). Though the preconsonantal vowel (syllable) shortening is found in many languages, the degree or pattern of the durational variation differs between languages. Now, it is worthwhile to examine whether the preceding vowel duration varies as a function of the feature aspiration of the following stop in Chinese. However, unlike Korean stops with three-way distinctions by aspiration and tenseness ( Kim, 1965), they are distinguished only by the feature aspiration ( Lin, 2007). They are all phonologically voiceless as Korean stops are. Interestingly, Chinese stops are not distinguished by voicing or tenseness. The shortening has been observed in languages whose stops are distinguished by the feature ±voice or ±tense. On the other hand, it is surprising that few studies of Chinese have been reported with regard to the preconsonantal vowel (syllable) shortening, though Chinese is a language that is currently used by more than 1.4 billion people even in mainland China only. That is, a vowel or syllable in many languages is shorter before phonologically voiceless or tense obstruents within a syllable and/or across the syllable boundary while it is longer before their voiced or lax cognates. One of the phonetic and phonological phenomena observed in many languages is the preconsonantal vowel (syllable) shortening (e.g., English: House & Fairbanks, 1953 Peterson & Lehiste, 1960 French: Chen, 1970 Mack, 1982 Spanish: Delattre, 1962 Zimmerman & Sapon, 1958 Norwegian: Fintoft, 1961 Dutch: Slis & Cohen, 1969 Van den Berg, 1988 Japanese: Port, et al., 1987 Sato, 1993 Tamil: Balasubramanian, 1981 Hindi: Maddieson & Gandour, 1975 Russian: Chen, 1970 German: Kohler, 1979 Swedish: Carlson & Granström, 1986 Elert, 1964 Arabic: Alghamdi, 1990 Korean: Chen, 1970 Kim, 1965 Kim, 1987 Oh, 2002 Oh & Johnson, 1997 Yun, 2004, 2009, 2010). It is concluded that while VOT is the most important factor for deciding the timing structure of Chinese words with intervocalic stops, closure duration is crucial for Korean and many other languages. The results revealed that (1) the effect of the feature aspiration of the following stop on the preceding vowel (V1) was neither significant nor consistent though V1 tends to be a little longer before an unaspirated stop (2) the following unaspirated stop closure (C) was similar to or longer than its aspirated cognate (3) the durational sum of V1 and C was longer when the stop is unaspirated, and V1 and C had no compensatory relationship (4) Voice Onset Time (VOT) was significantly longer when the stop is aspirated than unaspirated (5) the vowel (V2) following VOT was significantly longer when the stop is unaspirated, so the differentials in VOT were partially compensated (6) despite the partial compensation, the sum of VOT and V2 was longer when the stop is aspirated (7) words with an intervocalic aspirated stop were longer than those with its unaspirated cognate. To this end, we compared 15 pairs of Chinese bi-syllabic words with intervocalic unaspirated/aspirated stops. The flap effect suggests that closure duration can sometimes be a decisive cue to place of articulation capable of overriding even naturally produced spectral information.This study aimed to examine whether preconsonantal vowel shortening, which occurs in many languages, exists in Chinese. These results, interpreted in terms of constraints on speech production, were taken to imply that closure duration as a voicing cue must be defined relative to speaking tempo. The locus of the perceptual boundary between /b/ and flap at about 30 ms was not significantly influenced by the tempo of the carrier, while the locus of the /b/–/p/ boundary at 75 ms moved nearly 10 ms toward shorter values in the fast carrier sentence. Embedded after fast and slow carrier sentences, the variants were identified as ratted, rabid, or rapid. In this experiment the closure duration of the medial stop in rabid was varied over a range of 10 to 120 ms with no glottal pulsing during the closure. The closure interval of post-stress medial stops varies in duration due to phonological voicing and place of articulation, as well as speaking tempo. ![]()
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