Of interest in the current study was how voice inset time (VOT) was influenced
by changes in speaking rate across Spanish and English. Three groups of subjects
(English monolinguals, Spanish monolinguals and early Spanish-English bilinguals)
produced sentences containing voiced and voiceless bilabial stops at different speak-
ing rates. As in previous research, English monolinguals showed rate-dependent
effects on their VOT productions: VOT increased as speaking rate decreased. Spanish
monolinguals showed a large effect of speaking rate on the duration of prevoicing of
the voiced stops. However, they showed only a small effect of rate on the VOT of their
voiceless stops. The bilinguals produced VOT values in each language that were
nearly identical to their monolingual counterparts. The results from this study indi-
cate that short-lag stops experience minimal variation as a function of speaking rate
regardless of the other contrasting phonetic categories within a particular language.
In addition, early bilinguals showed evidence of separate representations for voiced
and voiceless stops for English and Spanish.
Make this part of your paper trail
Save this paper to a shelf, write a review, and keep your own notes.