Positional Neutralization - Linguistics - University of California ...

(44) Mean vowel durations for English syllables 1 and 2
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
4.5.2. Initial syllables in Turkish
Turkish shows clear strengthening of domain-initial consonants. While a
comprehensive study remains to be done, my preliminary observations over a large
corpus of Turkish words recorded in isolation under laboratory conditions by a single
speaker (created by the Turkish Electronic Living Lexicon project of Sharon Inkelas,
University of California, Berkeley) suggest that at least VOT of voiceless stops,
prevoicing of voiced stops and duration and energy of voiceless fricatives are
significantly enhanced domain-initially. Such strengthening is clearly visible in the
spectrogram in (45).
127.1
English Syllable 1 and 2
126
Syllable identity
315
91.3
96.7
Speaker 1 Speaker 2
Syllable 1 127.1 91.3
Syllable 2 126 96.7
Syllable 1
Syllable 2