Native and Non-Native English Speakers Production of Voiceless Stops: Effects of Lexical Stress and Prosodic Domain on VOT

Abstract

This study investigates English and Korean speakers productions of English voiceless stops to examine whether lexical stress and prosodic domain affect length of voice onset time (VOT). From voiceless stops in four phonological environments, i.e., word-initial/stressed, word-initial/unstressed, word-medial/stressed and word-medial/unstressed, the length of VOT was measured to examine if English and Korean speakers speech differed in patterns of VOT realization. It was observed that Korean speaker s VOT production was different from that of English speakers with respect to both lexical stress and prosodic domain. First, the difference between VOT values for the stops in stressed and unstressed syllables was greater for Korean speakers. This indicates that L2 learners show sensitivity to phonetic cues that are not attested in their mother tongue and may even be affected by them to a greater degree than native speakers. In addition, while English speakers produced longer VOTs in word-initial positions, Korean speakers produced longer VOTs in word-medial positions. The findings show that the same phonological feature may influence native speakers and L2 learners differently.