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The concept of voice onset time can be traced back as far as the 19th century, when Adjarian (1899: 119) [1] studied the Armenian stops, and characterized them by "the relation that exists between two moments: the one when the consonant bursts when the air is released out of the mouth, or explosion, and the one when the larynx starts vibrating".
In linguistics, a tenuis consonant (/ ˈ t ɛ n. j uː ɪ s / ⓘ or / ˈ t ɛ n uː ɪ s /) [2] is an obstruent that is voiceless, unaspirated and unglottalized.. In other words, it has the "plain" phonation of [p, t, ts, tʃ, k] with a voice onset time close to zero (a zero-VOT consonant), as Spanish p, t, ch, k or English p, t, k after s (spy, sty, sky).
What is varying along this continuum is voice-onset-time: the "b" in [ba] has shorter VOT than the "p" in [pa] (i.e. the vocal folds start vibrating around the time of the release of the occlusion for [b], but tens of miliseconds later for [p]; but note that different varieties of English may implement VOT in different ways to signal contrast).
Speakers vary their speed of speaking according to contextual and physical factors. A typical speaking rate for English is 4 syllables per second, [5] but in different emotional or social contexts the rate may vary, one study reporting a range between 3.3 and 5.9 syl/sec, [6] Another study found significant differences in speaking rate between story-telling and taking part in an interview.
For example, if English-learning infants are exposed to a prevoiced /d/ to voiceless unaspirated /t/ continuum (similar to the /d/ - /t/ distinction in Spanish) with the majority of the tokens occurring near the endpoints of the continuum, i.e., showing extreme prevoicing versus long voice onset times (bimodal distribution) they are better at ...
The Spanish voiceless stops /p t k/ have voice onset times (VOTs) of about 5, 10, and 30 milliseconds, and English aspirated /p t k/ have VOTs of about 60, 70, and 80 ms. Voice onset time in Korean has been measured at 20, 25, and 50 ms for /p t k/ and 90, 95, and 125 for /pʰ tʰ kʰ/ .
A good example for the SSP in English is the one-syllable word trust: The first consonant in the syllable onset is t, which is a stop, the lowest on the sonority scale; next is r, a liquid which is more sonorous, then we have the vowel u / ʌ / – the sonority peak; next, in the syllable coda, is s, a sibilant, and last is another stop, t.
The first consonant in a complex onset must be an obstruent (e.g. stop; combinations such as *ntat or *rkoop, with a sonorant, are not allowed) The second consonant in a complex onset must not be a voiced obstruent (e.g. *zdop does not occur) If the first consonant in a complex onset is not /s/, the second must be a liquid or a glide