Relation of Syllable Boundaries to Vowel Durations

It is a well-known phenomenon of English that vowels are longer before voiced consonants than unvoiced consonants. It was hypothesized that, if a syllable boundary could be placed between a vowel and its following consonant, the effect of the consonant on the vowel's duration would be greatly reduced. Ten subjects were asked to read 60 words in isolation. Each word contained two syllables with stress on the first syllable, and the first vowel was always /i/. In each case, the vowel was followed by one of the six English stop consonants. The words were divided into three groups: (1) those where there was general agreement among subjects that the syllable boundary followed the vowel, (2) those where there was general agreement that the syllable boundary did not follow the vowel, and (3) those for which there was no agreement on the location of the syllable boundary. Vowel durations were measured and plotted, and the results supported the original hypothesis.