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Figure 8.33: Spectrogram of Mono vowels spoken in isolation (Speaker K).
8.2.2 Vowel duration
There are two aspects of vowel duration which were introduced previously in the
dissertation. First, in Chapter 5, I noted that in words containing a CV1LV1 sequence (L =
liquid), the first vowel may optionally be shortened or even elided. In this section, I will
provide acoustic evidence for this optional rule and show that speaker rate is one
environment in which the process applies. Second, in Chapter 2, I noted that vowels with
contour tones are phonetically longer than other vowels. In this section, I will provide
some tentative acoustic evidence for this phenomenon.
First, let us examine the instance of a shortened or elided vowel in a CV1LV1
sequence. One circumstance in which this occurs is in the case of rapid speech. I
measured the duration of both vowels in 15 words containing CV1LV1 sequences spoken
at both normal and rapid rates by Speakers A and K. The first vowel was measured from
the burst of a previous stop or the end of aperiodic noise of a previous fricative to the
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