Individual talker differences in voice-onset-time: contextual influences

Area of Science:

• Phonetics
• Speech Science
• Linguistics

Background:

• Talkers exhibit individual differences in speech properties like voice-onset-time (VOT).
• VOT is influenced by contextual factors such as speaking rate and place of articulation.
• It remains unclear if these contextual influences on VOT are talker-specific.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether the effects of speaking rate and place of articulation on VOT are talker-specific.
• To analyze how individual talker variations interact with contextual influences on VOT.

Main Methods:

• Elicited numerous speech tokens (alveloar /t/, labial /p/, velar /k/) from multiple talkers across varying speaking rates.
• Measured voice-onset-time (VOT) and vowel duration (as a rate indicator) for each token.
• Employed hierarchical linear modeling to analyze the data.

Main Results:

• Voice-onset-time (VOT) increased as speaking rate decreased for all talkers, but the magnitude of this effect varied significantly across individuals, indicating a talker-specific rate effect.
• This talker-specific effect of speaking rate on VOT remained consistent across different places of articulation (labial vs. velar).
• VOT was consistently shorter for labial stops compared to velar stops across all talkers, with no significant talker-specific variation in this place-of-articulation effect.

Conclusions:

• The influence of speaking rate on voice-onset-time (VOT) is a talker-specific characteristic.
• The effect of place of articulation on VOT is not talker-specific.
• These findings have implications for understanding how listeners adapt to individual differences in speech production during perception.