Voice onset time differences between adult males and females: Isolated syllables

The purpose of the study was to compare the voice onset times (VOTs) produced by men and women in isolated syllable utterances. Forty male and 40 female speakers of English repeated a series of CV syllables five times each. The syllables were comprised of the plosives /p/, /t/, /k/, /b/, /d/, and /g/ in combination with the vowels /ɑ/, /i/, and /u/. VOTs were measured from the middle three syllables from each series using a combination of sound spectrogram and oscillogram displays on a computer. No significant differences occurred between the VOTs of the men and women. Significant VOT differences occurred across the vowels, with the plosives before /ɑ/ having shorter VOTs than those before /i/ or /u/. In addition, the VOTs varied by place of production with longer VOTs for alveolar and velar plosives than for bilabial ones. The findings indicated that the speaker's sex was not a factor associated with VOT variability.