Temporal and Formant Trajectory Analysis of English Tense-Lax Vowels Produced by Native Chinese Speakers

The current study investigated the acoustic properties of English tense-lax vowels produced by native Chinese speakers. A series of acoustic parameters such as vowel duration, formant frequencies, and the dynamic formant trajectories were measured and analyzed. The results showed that Chinese speakers could produce English tense-lax vowels with significant duration differences. However, no significant spectral differences were found between the two types of vowels. Further analysis illustrated strong L1 influence for the Chinese speakers on duration, formant frequencies, and formant trajectories. These results indicated that the Chinese speakers largely ignored the important spectral quality differences between English tense and lax vowels. They relied on the duration feature in distinguishing the English tense-lax contrasts.