Effects of Gender and Age on Voice Onset Time in Rural Jordanian Arabic

This study reports the effects of gender and age on the production of Voice Onset Time (VOT) of stop consonants in Rural Jordanian Arabic (RJA). Participants of the study were divided into four age groups, namely children, preadolescents, adolescents, and adults, and were equally stratified according to their gender. They were asked to produce a series of Arabic words beginning with one of the six stop consonants: voiceless /tˤ/, /t/, /k/ and voiced /b/, /d/, /ɡ/. The results show that voiceless stops were characterized by a long lag (aspirated, positive VOT), and voiced stops were characterized by a long voicing lead (prevoiced, negative VOT). Across all age bands, the results of the study indicated that females have significantly longer VOT durations than males for both the voiced and voiceless stops. In addition, children had significantly the longest VOT duration as compared to preadolescents, adolescents, and adults across the board. Notably, the VOT duration of both voiced and voiceless stops shortened with increasing age; the younger the age, the longer the VOT is, suggesting that VOT production in RJA is gradually incrementally developing.