A Durational Study of Vowels Followed by Voiced or Voiceless Consonants

후행하는 유.무성자음에 의한 모음의 지속시간 고찰

The purpose of this study was to investigate the acoustic durations of Korean vowels followed by either voiced or voiceless consonants. Six healthy adult speakers (2 females and 4 males) recorded nonsense syllables in which voiced (/b, d, g/) or voiceless (/p', t', k', $p^{h},t^{h},k^{h}$) consonants follow three different vowels (/i, a, u/) embedded in a carrier phrase. Results showed that vowels preceding voiced consonants (e.g., haba) were significantly longer in duration than those preceding voiceless consonants (e.g., hiP' a or $hip^{h}a$). Also vowels were longer in duration when occurring before velar-stops than before bilabial-stop and dental-stops. Finally, the duration of the low vowel (/a/) was substantially longer than that of the high vowels (/i, u/). These findings may be applicable to speech synthesis or therapy.