Barra de explosión, VOT y frecuencia de las oclusivas sordas del castellano

Abstract

This paper starts out from the hypothesis that there are certain intrinsical acoustic properties in Spanish voiceless stops -namely, the duration of the burst, VOT and the frequency at the maximum amplitude peak of the burst-, which allow the characterization and discrimination of place of articulation. A total of six native speakers of Spanish -three male and three female- produced various series of bysillabic sequences. A total of 720 items were obtained. The acoustic analysis of the speech materials revealed the following: the duration of the burst does not seem to be relevant for the discrimination of the three stops; the VOT values for the three stops overlap and the average frequency value at the maximum amplítude peak of the burst is clearly distinctive. Taken together, VOT and frequency of the burst discriminate place of articulation of Spanish stops with almost a 100% accuracy.