INITIAL AND MEDIAL VOICELESS STOPS IN SERBIAN: AN ACOUSTIC ANALYSIS
Keywords:
stop consonants, voiceless, Serbian, VOT, aspiration, initial, medial, reverse patternAbstract
Stops make up a class of consonants that can be found in virtually all languages of the world. Their significant role in phonemic inventories is further supported by the fact that they are acquired at an early stage of language acquisition. This paper looks into the nature of the production of the voiceless stops /p t k/ in word-initial and word-medial positions in the Serbian language. A list of selected Serbian words/pseudowords is recorded and analyzed acoustically in terms of Voice Onset Time (VOT) and some conclusions reached as to the importance of VOT in Serbian, where it is not distinctive. Four different contexts are studied: word-initial accented, word-initial unaccented, word-medial accented and word-medial unaccented. The present data shows that Serbian is a short-lag language, as expected, but that VOT is not a function of stress, which would hardly be hypothesized. Furthermore, word-medial positions almost invariably show longer VOTs compared to the word-initial positions. The gradient scale of rising VOTs starts with the initial accented positions, to initial unaccented contexts, followed by medial accented and medial unaccented phonetic contexts.
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