Speaking Rate and Segments: A Look at the Relation between Speech Production and Speech Perception for the Voicing Contrast

Abstract

When listeners process segmentally relevant properties of the speech signal they do so in a rate-dependent manner. This is seen as a shift in the perceptual category boundary; as rate declines and overall syllable duration increases, the category boundary moves toward a longer value of the acoustic property in question. Focusing on the /b/-/p/ distinction specified by voice onset time (VOT), we investigated whether the acoustic modifications that occur with an alteration in speaking rate accord with this pattern of perceptual boundary shift. Two main findings emerged. First, as speaking rate became slower and overall syllable duration became longer, the VOT value of the consonant, especially that of the voiceless /p/, also became longer. Second, and most important, the VOT value that optimally separated the /b/ and /p/ VOT distributions also changed with rate, increasing with increasing syllable duration. However, the magnitude of the boundary shift obtained for these production data was greater than that typically found in perceptual experiments. This suggests the existence of constraints on the extent to which the perceptual system can accommodate for alterations due to rate of speech.

The private life of stops: VOT in a real-time corpus of spontaneous Glaswegian

“…However, the effect both has a larger effect size and is more significant for voiceless than for voiced stops, reflecting the pattern seen in empirical plots of VOT as a function of speaking rate deviation (Figure 3). These differences between the voiceless and voiced stop speaking rate effects are in line with previous work on global speaking rate effects in lab speech (e.g., Miller et al 1986;Kessinger and Blumstein 1997). Phrase-medial stops have lower VOT than phrase-initial stops, as anticipated.…”

“…For voiceless stops bilabials had shorter VOT than both alveolars and velars, which were not significantly different from each other, as has been found for other speakers of British English (Docherty 1992). VOT has been observed to increase as overall global speech rate decreases for voiceless stops, but to show no significant effect of speaking rate for voiced stops (e.g., Miller et al 1986;Kessinger and Blumstein 1997). We found a similar pattern, with significantly shorter VOT for faster local speaking rate for voiceless stops and marginally shorter VOT for voiced stops.…”

“…VOT also varies with speech rate, though differently depending on the voicing of the stop. Specifically, VOT of voiceless stops is negatively correlated with speech rate, whereas for voiced stops there is no correlation or only a small trend (e.g., Summerfield 1975;Miller et al 1986;Kessinger and Blumstein 1997). A similar asymmetry in the effect of phrasal accent on VOT was found by Cole et al (2007), with a larger effect for voiceless than for voiced stops.…”

The Influence of Neighborhood Density on Phonetic Categorization in Aphasia

“…The basis for this type of research is the proposai that phonetic categories contain a central prototype that eharacterizes a phonetic feature, with less typical exemplars surrounding il. Such a frame'NOrk has been suggested for VOT categories which provide acoustic eues for the identification of initial stop consonants (Miller, Green, & Reeves, 1986). For instance, Andruski, Blumstein, and Burton (1994) conducted an auditory semantie priming experiment to examine 'Nhether subphonetic manipulations in VOT YIOuld affect lexical aeeess.…”

Temporal organization of English clear and conversational speech

“…Similar to clear speech, nonuniform increases in segment durations have been found with changes in speaking rate ͑Miller et al, 1986͑Miller et al, , 1988. A number of studies that examined the effect of speaking rate on temporal features of speech, such as VOT, short/long vowel duration, and single/geminate stop duration, argue for relational invariance in the production of these contrasts across speaking rates.…”