Compression effects in English

Abstract

This paper reports the results of an English experiment on vowel-shortening in different contexts. The data concern compression effects, whereby, in syllables with a greater number of segments, each one of the segments is shorter than in syllables with fewer segments. The experiment demonstrates that the amount of vowel compression found in English monosyllabic words depends in part on which consonants occur adjacent to the vowel in that word, how many consonants occur, and in which position they occur. Consonant clusters drive more vowel shortening than singletons when they involve liquids, but not when they involve only obstruents. Clusters involving nasals drive shortening relative to singletons only in onset position. We suggest that the results cannot be reduced to general principles of gestural overlap and coordination between consonants and vowels, but instead require a theory with overt representation of auditory duration.

Looking into Segments

“…In a discussion of compression effects (in which vowel duration is affected by the number of surrounding consonants in the syllable), Katz (2012) calls for future research to develop "a theory with overt representation of auditory duration" to "determine directly which types of compression are accounted for by overlap and which by gestural shortening." We echo this call.…”

The <i>loi de position</i> and the acoustics of French mid vowels

“…These findings are consistent with previous research on the role of height (Lehiste 1970;Escudero & Boersma 2009), word-position (Delattre 1969;O'Shaugnessy 1984), and coda-consonant manner (Katz 2012) on vowel duration. Katz (2012) showed a similar asymmetry between liquids and obstruents in English: English vowels followed by a liquid-voiced obstruent cluster (e.g., [dɪlb]) are shorter than those followed by a singleton liquid (e.g., [dɪl]) but this cluster-driven compression does not obtain for similar pairs containing obstruents (e.g.,…”

On the Tail of the Scottish Vowel Length Rule in Glasgow

“…The cases coded as VE-long vs. SVLR-long differed with respect to following voiced stops (nasal and oral) but not voiced fricatives: the latter were included as long in both long contexts; the former was considered VE-long but SVLR-short. (2) number of syllables within the word, to account for polysyllabic shortening (Lehiste 1977;Port 1981;Nakatani, O'Connor, andAston 1981, Turk andShattuck-Hufnagel 2000), with target words containing up to five syllables (antagonising, opportunity); (3) number of segments within the syllable, to account for intra-syllabic compression (Katz 2012, Munhall et al 1992, with target syllables containing minimally one (eating, Arabs) and maximally six segments (streets only).…”