An acoustic study of Spanish voiceless stops

ISBN-13: 9783639173130 / Angielski / Miękka / 2009 / 132 str.

Pilar Munday

Opis

Why does spontaneous speech in any language sound so different from read speech? This book looks at some acoustic properties of sounds where this difference is reflected. For this project, Spanish voiceless stops were studied in three different speaking modes: conversation, sentence reading and text reading, in two native speakers from Spain. The four acoustic cues observed were the duration of the closure portion of the stop; the duration of its Voice Onset Time (VOT); the presence or absence of any voicing during the closure portion and during the VOT portion; and the amplitude level of the burst. The results show that voiceless stops in any type of speech show similar coarticulatory influences. But conversation mode, as opposed to the other two speaking styles, has differences that are reflected principally in two acoustic correlates, the burst portion of the stop (including VOT duration and amplitude) and the presence of some type of voicing within the closure.

O autorze

Dr. Pilar Munday is an Associate Professor of Spanish at Sacred
Heart University, in Fairfield, CT. She studied English philology
at the University of Granada and then went on to complete a Ph.D.
in Linguistics at New York University. Besides acoustic
phonetics, her research involves the pedagogy of Spanish as a
second language.