Voiceless Greek vowels

Previous studies on the acoustic properties of Greek vowels have indicated that they may have voiceless realisations in certain phonological contexts. Researchers have suggested that such devoicing is restricted to the high vowels /i/ and /u/ [7], [10]. Analysis of production data from 12 native Greek speakers suggests that devoicing is not restricted to the high vowels but that other vowels can also be produced voiceless in the appropriate phonological environment. The data indicates that voiceless vowels can be found utterance-finally after voiceless consonants, under two conditions: (1) the vowel must be unstressed and (2) the intonation contour associated with the word in which the vowel occurs must be falling (utterance-final voiceless vowels do not co-occur with final rising contours).