Hungarian and German short and long vowels in a comfortable speech rate and in fast speech
Abstract
In fast speech, segments are generally produced shorter, but not all segments may be compressed to the same extent. Both Hungarian and German exhibit phonologically distinctive vowel length contrasts, which are expressed using various combinations of durational and spectral cues. In fast speech, we expect temporal reduction accompanied by some degree of spectral reduction due to target undershoot. Consequently, an increased speech rate is presumed to endanger the vowel length contrast in both the temporal and the spectral domains of speech. The present study tested this hypothesis and explored whether contrast reduction manifests differently in the two typologically unrelated languages mentioned. We analyzed vowel durations, as well as duration ratio and spectral distance in the F1×F2 plane, of short-long vowel pairs produced by 15 Hungarian and 14 German speaking females. The results showed that, in general, both durational and spectral cues of the quantity contrast were preserved in fast speech, maintaining the quantity contrast in both languages. This suggests that neither durational nor spectral cues of the contrast may be considered redundant.
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