Duration and rate effects on American English vowel identification by native Danish listeners

Abstract

Native listeners alter their identification of American English vowel contrasts according to speaking rate, apparently making judgments about the relative duration of vowels. Berman et al. [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 105, 1402 (1999)] created a series of spectral continua (varying F1 and F2) from ‘‘beat’’ to ‘‘bit,’’ ‘‘pat’’ to ‘‘pet,’’ and ‘‘cot’’ to ‘‘cut,’’ also varying syllable duration according to natural speech endpoints. These syllables were inserted into natural speech sentence contexts of two rates (normal and fast). Berman et al. found that longer syllable duration led to more long vowel (‘‘beat,’’ ‘‘pat,’’ ‘‘cot’’) responses; faster rate contexts also led to more long vowel responses. In the present research we tested native speakers of Danish on their use of duration and rate context in identifying these English vowels. Danish listeners were significantly affected by the duration of syllables in their vowel identification. However, despite vowel duration being phonemic in Danish, native Danish listeners were not significantly affected by rate context in their identification of these English vowels. This might be explained by perceived sufficiency of spectral information in these English vowel contrasts for Danish listeners, or by the lack of rate dependent vowel processing in their native language. [Work supported by Danish-American Fulbright Commission.]