The Production of English Voiceless and Voiced Fricatives: An Electroglottographic Study

Abstract

The present study investigates the voicing contrast in English fricatives. Special attention is paid to Korean speakers’ production of English voiceless and voiced fricatives in both word-initial and word-final positions, which is compared to a native English speaker’s production. While a good deal of previous research has focused on acoustic characteristics, such as the duration of frication noise, this study uses electroglottographic data and examines fundamental frequency (f0), open quotient (OQ), and speed quotient (SQ). Overall results show that the two groups of speakers were similar in the f0 and OQ values: both values were higher when the target fricative was voiceless than when it was voiced. However, while SQ values were also higher for voiceless fricatives than for voiced fricatives for the native English speaker, the opposite pattern was observed for Korean speakers.