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The University of Kansas
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Journal of
Phonetics, 26, 207-222.
Effects
of vowel length and syllable structure on segment duration in Dutch
Allard
Jongman
| Three experiments investigated timing patterns in Dutch
mono- and bisyllabic words contrasting in vowel length. In Experiment 1,
duration of the postvocalic stop consonant in CV(:)C words did not vary
as a function of preceding vowel length. Experiment 2 extended this finding
to intervocalic stops in bisyllabic CV(:)Can words. In Dutch, CV:Can words
contain a long vowel in syllable-final position while CVCan words contain
a short vowel followed by an ambisyllabic consonant. Results from Experiment
2 indicated that the duration of the intervocalic consonant is not affected
by the quantity of the preceding vowel or its differential status as a tautosyllabic
or ambisyllabic consonant. These results suggest no effect of vowel length
on postvocalic consonant duration. However, an additional finding of Experiment
2 was that the duration of second- syllable [an] is inversely affected by
the length of the vowel in the first syllable. Finally, Experiment 3 established
that in CV(:)CCan words, both medial consonants and [an] were longer when
preceded by a short vowel in the first syllable. These findings indicate
that the presence of a short vowel results in a compensation of approximately
25-30 ms, which is distributed across all segments following that vowel.
It is hypothesized that the postvocalic consonant in Experiments 1 and 2
did not participate in this compensation because the consonant is obligatory
following short vowels. Thus, the factor affecting whether or not a postvocalic
consonant exhibits compensatory behavior may be not so much ambisyllabicity
versus tautosyllabicity but rather its obligatory versus optional status.
Implications for models of phonetic and phonological timing are discussed. |
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