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Preparation: Use the sound file snd4wsman08.wav for your practice.
1. Open the file with the Waveform cofiguration. Create a Spectrogram pane. Change the properties of Spectrogram:
2. Select and listen to the first syllable. Does the consonant sound voiced or voiceless? Is it aspirated?
3. Zoom in the onset of first syllable. You will see the waveform and spectrogram like this:
3. Select the waveform from the burst of the consonant to the onset of voicing (yellowed area). Check the duration of your selected portion. Duration is indicated as "length ***" at the bottom of window. In this example, it shows 00.014. Unit is second, so the VOT value for the first syllable is 14 milliseconds.
4. Now select and listen to the fourth syllable.
5. The waveform and spectrogram look different from the first example. Locate the burst and the voice onset points. What is the VOT value for this one?
6. Voicing starts before the consonant release. Length is 00.096 (= 96 millisec.). The VOT value is -96 millisec (Notice the negative sign!). The red line above indicates the onset of the vowel. Since this is a prevoiced case, the vowel onset time should not be included in VOT measurement.
Tip: You can view a magnified waveform. Right-click on the waveform pane. Select "Analysis...", and "Waveform Blow-up...". You will see a new window like this:
Prepared by Kyoko Nagao
Last updated on Mar 18, 2004