Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 April 2026
Previous experimental investigations of English vowel-length have been confined principally to the Received Standard dialect of British English. Though over thirty years old, Meyer's pioneering work on the lexical duration of vowels in the speech of a Londoner and an Oxfordshire man continues to be the only extensive collection of data on English vowel-duration. A start has been made, however, in the experimental measurement of American sound-length in two recent studies of quite different nature. In the first the durations of sounds in a Middle Westerner's reading of a short piece of narrative prose were obtained from oscillographic recordings, and gross averages were computed for vowel and consonant durations. The second measured lexical durations in 131 monosyllables with a final dental stop from the writer's own pronunciation, and set up several conclusions concerning American ‘quantity’ based on the relative values of the durations.
1 E. A. Meyer, Englische Lautdauer, Uppsala-Leipzig, 1903; Alfred Ehrentreich, Zur Quantität der Tonvokale im Modern-Englischen, Berlin, 1920 (Palaestra 133). References to scattered measurements in the writings of Viëtor, Scripture, Jones, and others may be found in the first chapter of Ehrentreich's dissertation.
2 C. E. Parmenter and S. N. Treviño, The Length of the Sounds of a Middle Westerner, American Speech 10.129–33 (1935).
3 R-M. S. Heffner, Notes on the Length of Vowels, American Speech 12.128–34 (1937).
4 The kymographic recordings upon which the following measurements are based were made in the laboratory of the Phonetic Institute of Hamburg University with the kind permission of its director, Professor G. Panconcelli-Calzia. The recordings were made with the usual mouth-funnel and larynx-recorder registering on a Zimmermann kymograph.
5 Englische Lautdauer 38–9.
6 From a comparison of the single vowel averages of all five speakers it is clear that the rapid, fortis speaker R has longer high and mid vowels than the slow, lenis speaker D and approximately equal-length low vowels; roughly the same length high and mid vowels as the more drawling lenis speaker H, but emphatically shorter low vowels; and shorter vowels all around than the semifortis M, though M's low vowels are relatively more than twice as much longer than R's as are his high and mid. In short, the lenes speakers have relatively longer low vowels than the fortis speaker and shorter high vowels. With the energy-types represented by these four speakers, then, as the energy of articulation increases, the greater the consequent lengthening of the high vowels.
7 On the bracketed [æ] and [
] percentages of R, cp. section 1.
8 Here again (cp. note 6) it appears likely from the gradation of the averages for the five speakers that the degree of lengthening under the influence of lengthening consonants varies directly with the speed and energy of articulation of the individual speakers. The only deviation from this rule in the above averages is the high percentage of H for short vowels where, however, the variations from speaker to speaker are otherwise quite minimal.
9 Computed from the table on p. 130.
10 Englische Lautdauer 43–4. In computing the lengthening, Meyer divides the absolute difference between the durations before tenues and mediae into the arithmetic middle of the durations before both. The following figures are accordingly not to be compared with those above.
11 Englische Lautdauer 37.
12 Stefán Einarsson, Beiträge zur Phonetik der isländischen Sprache 106–9, Oslo, 1927.
13 Gregor Pallier, Untersuchung zur Quantität der Vokale und Konsonanten, vorgenommen an einer westdeutschen Mundart 92–4 Marburg, 1934. Cp. also 48–59.
14 The average for [au] rests upon the measurement of a single word.
15 Pp. 101 f.
16 See, e.g., Daniel Jones, An Outline of English Phonetics4 216, Cambridge, 1934. I have omitted the vowels [α], as in class, and [
:].
17 Pp. 38 ff.
18 High German Vowel-Duration, Harvard Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature 20.195–200 (1938).
19 Were the GA long vowel averages to be based only on [i u e o] to eliminate the low vowels which have no correspondent short vowels, the ratios would be even smaller. As noticed above, the distinction of tense and lax before mediae is somewhat sharper than before tenues, but, if computed together with the latter, would raise the relative durations only minimally.
In all the cases below except two (French [ε] and[ε:], High German [a] and [a:]) the quantitative is accompanied by a clear qualitative differentiation.
20 Computed from the table op. cit. 130.
21 For the short vowel average, see op. cit. 44. The long vowel average is computed from the averages on pp. 38–9. It must be noted that Meyer measured the aspiration of initial tenues as part of the length of the following vowel.