Progressive utterance-final lengthening in syllables with final fricatives

Area of Science:

• Phonetics and Phonology
• Speech Perception
• Linguistics

Background:

• Previous research identified progressive lengthening in utterance-final syllables, particularly with final stops.
• The phenomenon of final lengthening in speech production and perception is a key area in phonetics.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether utterance-final lengthening in Hebrew extends to final fricatives.
• To examine the impact of sentence-final position on the acoustic properties of Hebrew fricatives and preceding vowels.
• To determine if sentence position affects the perception of consonant voicing.

Main Methods:

• Seven native Hebrew speakers participated in the study.
• Participants read matched sentence pairs with bisyllabic words in non-final and sentence-final positions.
• Acoustic analysis focused on the duration of segments within the final syllable and preceding vowels.

Main Results:

• Utterance-final fricatives exhibited significantly greater lengthening compared to preceding stressed vowels (nearly four times).
• Final lengthening affected all segments of the final syllable and even the initial unstressed syllable of the final word.
• Consonant-vowel (C/V) ratios in final position obscured voicing distinctions (e.g., voiceless fricative in non-final vs. voiced in final).

Conclusions:

• The pattern of final lengthening in Hebrew is general and applies to both stops and fricatives.
• Sentence position is a crucial factor in the perception of consonant voicing, influencing acoustic cues.
• Speech production mechanisms adapt to sentence-final positions, impacting phonetic realization and perception.