Voice onset time and speakers’ age: Data from Hungarian

Abstract

The aim of this paper was to investigate the VOT of voiceless plosives (/p, t, k/) in the speech of Hungarian-speaking elderly. Read speech of 25 old (70 to 90 years) and 25 young (21 to 32 years) was analyzed. In each recording, the VOT of phonologically short [p, t, k] was measured. Our data show that VOT values of all three types of voiceless plosives would exhibit significant differences both in old and in young Hungarians’ speech. Bilabial and alveolar plosives had significantly longer VOT in old subjects’ speech than in that of young subjects, while old subjects produced significantly shorter VOTs in pronouncing [k] than their younger peers. We argue that these results are attributable to (1) significantly slower rate of articulation (yielding longer speech sounds in general), and (2) the articulatory and aerodynamic background of the production of plosives.

• Elderly
• voice onset time
• voiceless plosives

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dr. Mária Gósy, Dr. Ferenc Bunta and András Beke for their help in preparing this paper. I would also like to thank the two anonymous referees for their helpful comments and for their valuable work with my manuscript.