F0 Influences on VAT: Cantonese and English Speakers

Abstract

Separate studies examined the influence of vocal fundamental frequency on VAT. In one, 59 native Cantonese speak­ers (31 females and 28 males) each read 12 disyllabic words comprising homophone pairs of the six Cantonese lexi­cal tones. Overall, females had significantly smaller VATs than males. Mean VAT values were also lower for level tones (tones 1, 3, and 6) than for the contour tones (tones 2, 4, and 5). In a parallel study of speakers of American English (in which F0 plays no lexical role) 5 male and 9 female subjects sustained /a/ at comfortable pitch, and at target F0s of -3 ST and +6 ST re: each subject’s self-selected comfortable pitch and VAT was computed for each production. VAT was significantly smaller for the +6 ST condition compared to the other F0s; there was no significant difference between mean VAT of the comfortable and -3 ST productions. A comparison of the results for the two studies has implications for implementation of the VAT measure and perhaps for more general aspects of understanding voice onset.