African American English (AAE) is a
unique dialect of American English that differs systematically from the variety
spoken by the White population. Acoustic-phonetic explorations of segmental structure of AAE including vowel and consonant productions are still rare and
the current state and developmental direction of AAE in the United States
relative to dialects of White American English (WAE) are largely undetermined.
Particularly little is known about timing patterns in AAE such as segmental
durations, speech rate and rhythm.
The purpose of this study was to
better understand temporal variation in AAE by analyzing vowel duration. The experiment was conducted in a historically well-established
southern speech community of African Americans in Pitt County in North
Carolina. Sixteen male speakers, eight AAE and eight WAE, read a randomized set
of words containing 11 vowels followed by either a voiced stop /d/ or a
voiceless stop /t/ for a total 896 tokens.