Pitch affects voice onset time: A cross-linguistic study
Chandan R. Narayan, Mary Bowden · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2013
Recent research into the acoustics of infant-directed speech (IDS) in English and Korean suggests that voice-onset time (normalized for varying speech rate) in word-initial aspirated stops are shorter than in adult-directed speech. The present study reports results from experiments conducted to explore the source of this VOT variation in IDS. Female English speakers (n = 10) and female Korean speakers (n = 10) recorded sentences with words varying in laryngeal condition (English: voiced/voiceless; Korean: plain, tense, aspirated) at three different pitches (low, normal, and falsetto). Results suggest that as speakers’ pitch increases, the duration of VOT in aspirated stops decreases. Voiced stops (in English) and plain and tense stops) in Korean showed no difference in VOT across varying pitch conditions. Regression models suggest that VOT becomes less predictive of laryngeal state as speaker pitch increases. Results are discussed in terms of the physiological explanation of the pitch-VOT effect as well as the implications for the development of sound systems in infants.