Simultaneous effects on vowel duration in American English: a covariance structure modeling approach

The powerful techniques of covariance structure modeling (CSM) long have been used to study complex behavioral phenomenon in the social and behavioral sciences. This study employed these same techniques to examine simultaneous effects on vowel duration in American English. Additionally, this study investigated whether a single population model of vowel duration fits observed data better than a dual population model where separate parameters are generated for syllables that carry large information loads and for syllables that specify linguistic relationships. For the single population model, intrinsic duration, phrase final position, lexical stress, post-vocalic consonant voicing, and position in word all were significant predictors of vowel duration. However, the dual population model, in which separate model parameters were generated for (1) monosyllabic content words and lexically stressed syllables and (2) monosyllabic function words and lexically unstressed syllables, fit the data better than the single population model. Intrinsic duration and phrase final position affected duration similarly for both the populations. On the other hand, the effects of post-vocalic consonant voicing and position in word, while significant predictors of vowel duration in content words and stressed syllables, were not significant predictors of vowel duration in function words or unstressed syllables. These results are not unexpected, based on previous research, and suggest that covariance structure analysis can be used as a complementary technique in linguistic and phonetic research.