An articulatory experiment on voice onset time in German stop consonants

The study investigates voice onset time (VOT) in German stop consonants and its relationship to place of articulation in a variety of phonetic environments. The outstanding findings are the consistently lowest values for the alveolars and the particular susceptibility of the VOT of bilabials to environmental variables like position in the utterance and stress. Highest values for velar stops are only achieved in initial position and medially before stress. Airflow measurements suggest a direct relationship between VOT and rate of articulation and airflow.