This study examines Voice Onset Times of coronal stops in utterance-initial position in two languages. Crucially, the effects of lexical stress (stressed, unstressed syllable) on VOT are analyzed. The study investigates aspirated stops (English /t/), short-lag voiceless stops (English /d/, Spanish /t/) and prevoiced stops (Spanish /d/). Three groups of speakers provide data: English monolinguals, Spanish monolinguals, and proficient Spanish-English bilinguals. The study finds that lexical stress lengthens aspiration (English /t/) and prevoicing (Spanish /d/) but it does not alter significantly short-lag stops (Spanish /t/, English /d/). Monolinguals and bilinguals differ slightly in their phonetic behavior. Implications for gestural coordination as well as for feature theory are discussed.
Cite as: Simonet, M., Casillas, J., Díaz, Y. (2014) The effects of stress/accent on VOT depend on language (English, Spanish), consonant (/d/, /t/) and linguistic experience (monolinguals, bilinguals). Proc. Speech Prosody 2014, 202-206, doi: 10.21437/SpeechProsody.2014-28
@inproceedings{simonet14_speechprosody,
author={Miquel Simonet and Joseph Casillas and Yamile Díaz},
title={{The effects of stress/accent on VOT depend on language (English, Spanish), consonant (/d/, /t/) and linguistic experience (monolinguals, bilinguals)}},
year=2014,
booktitle={Proc. Speech Prosody 2014},
pages={202--206},
doi={10.21437/SpeechProsody.2014-28}
}