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Variation and change in the languages of Indonesia
Edited by Maya Ravindranath Abtahian and Abigail C. Cohn
[Asia-Pacific Language Variation 7:2] 2021
► pp. 168–184

Voice onset time and vowel quality in Madurese

The role of gender and dialect

| Universitas Trunojoyo Madura

Madurese exhibits a three-way laryngeal contrast in its plosive inventory, distinguishing voiced, voiceless unaspirated, and voiceless aspirated plosives. Previous studies have investigated some acoustic characteristics of the contrast but have not examined possible dialectal variation in this contrast. The present study aims to discuss the contrast by examining Voice Onset Time (VOT) and vowel quality (F1). Twenty participants (10 Western Madurese speakers and 10 Eastern Madurese speakers) were recruited and instructed to read 150 Madurese words containing plosives. The results showed that an interaction of dialect and gender were significantly correlated with VOT: male Western Madurese speakers produced shorter VOT for voiced and voiceless aspirated plosives than their Eastern counterparts. There was also variation in F1 between gender across dialects: male Western Madurese speakers produced [ə] with a lower F1 than their Eastern counterparts. It was suggested that the variation was possibly due to language contact with Javanese.

Keywords: dialect, gender, VOT, vowel quality, language contact, acoustic measures, Madurese
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Methods
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Voice onset time (VOT)
    • 3.2First formant frequency (F1)
  • 4.General discussion
  • 5.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 6 October 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/aplv.20008.mis
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