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. Objective: The purpose of this study was to better understand temporal
variation in AAE by analyzing vowel duration.