Well, while most of us can probably agree that the English vowels followed by voiced consonants are considerably longer than their counterparts followed by voiceless consonants, a question arises here whether we're really talking about a lengthening, or rather the voiceless consonants lead to a vowel shortening.
This might look weird to someone, but Patrick's point can find a support in at least one study I'm aware of.
In Gimson's Pronunciation of English (Revised by Alan Cruttenden, 5th Edition, Arnold International Students' Edition, 1994, pp 92), for example, Wiik's study is cited (Finnish and English vowels. Turku. 1965) giving the following data:
Final or + voiced C + nasal C + voiceless C
Short vowels 17.2 13.3 10.3
Long vowels 31.9 23.3 16.5
Diphthongs 35.7 26.5 17.8
(average relationships in csec in accented monosyllables)
In addition, according to Wiik, /ae/ is somewhat special:
+ voiced fric. + voiced plos. + nasal + voiceless fric. + voiceless plos.
/ae/ 25.5 21.6 19.6 16.5 15.0
Looking at the first table, it becomes apparent that:
a. V# = VD# (D = voiced consonant)
b. V:# = V:D#
wheras
c. VN# <> V#
d. V:N# <> V:#
and
e. VT# <> V#
f. V:T# <> V:#
Hence, quite logically I think, it is the following nasal and the following voiceless consonant that cause SHORTENING, not the other way round.
Best,
P.
----- Original Message ----
From: Piotr Gasiorowski <
gpiotr@...>
To:
cybalist@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sunday, 17 September, 2006 12:46:50 AM
Subject: Re: [tied] Vowel Lengthening from V + Voiced Consonant
On 2006-09-16 23:44, Patrick Ryan wrote:
> Some time ago, we had some discussion on this list of an alleged
> phenomenon whereby English vowels were reputed to be lengthened by a
> following voiced consonant.
>
> This appears to me, at this time, to be incorrect.
>
> I am wondering if those who asserted it might be kind enough to cite
> references — if they can.
I could give you a long list of references. For English, the phenomenon
was first observed by James Elphinston in 1765, thoroughly investigated
by Henry Sweet more than a hundred years ago and measured instrumentally
by E. A. Meyer (1903). It's been studied in hundreds of publications
since (it doesn't matter on which side of the Atlantic or which side of
the equator), and anyone who has done any laboratory phonetics will only
shrug if you call it "alleged". Take any handbook of experimental
phonetics, look at examples of speech spectrograms, and you will see the
phenomenon with your own eyes if your ears fail you. Better still, you
can download a speech-analyser such as Praat
http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/
and experiment with your own speech if you suspect all phoneticians are
quacks.
See e.g.
Chen, M. 1970. "Vowel length variation as a function of the voicing of
the consonant environment". Phonetica 22: 129-159.
Piotr
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