Temporal variability in speech segments of Spanish: context and speaker related differences

This article reports on segmental duration measurements of eight selected consonants (voiceless obstruents, nasals and liquids) and three vowels in 192 disyllabic (CVCe) nonsense words with stress on the first syllable, spoken in isolation by 12 Spanish speakers. Durations as measured based on acoustic discontinuities are discussed along with speaker variability. The intrinsic and context-dependent duration of consonants /f, h, x, s, m, n, l, r/ and vowels /a, i, u/, as well as the inter-speaker variability of these phonemes were analysed. Results show sizable differences in the duration of consonants (voiceless fricatives are longer than voiced fricatives) and vowels (/a/ has a longer duration than /i/ and /u/). With regard to contextual effects, there is a remarkable decrease and increase in vowel durations preceding voiceless fricatives and sonorants, respectively. These effects are present in all speakers. Our results on durational effects indicate that (a) the initial consonants /x, s/ and /r/ show larger differences among speakers; (b) effects for the vowel /a/ are greater than for the vowels /i/ and /u/; and (c) voiceless fricative consonants in medial position show greater intraspeaker idiosyncrasy than voiced consonants. The effects of anticipatory consonant-to-vowel coarticulation are discussed, as well as differences in segmental duration among speakers. 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.