A Cross-Linguistic Study of Voice Onset Time in Stop Consonant Productions

Abstract

This study examines voice onset time (VOT) for phonetically voiceless word-initial stops in Mandarin Chinese and in English, as spoken by 11 Mandarin speakers and 4 British English speakers. The purpose of this paper is to compare Mandarin and English VOT patterns and to categorize their stop realizations along the VOT continuum. As expected, the findings reveal that voiceless aspirated stops in Mandarin and in English occur at different places along the VOT continuum and the differences reach significance. The results also suggest that the three universal VOT categories (i.e. long lead, short lag, and long lag) are not fine enough to distinguish the voiceless stops of these two languages.