Cross-linguistic patterns in voicing-conditioned vowel duration

In many languages, vowels are longer before voiced consonants than before voiceless consonants. A substantial body of work addresses voicing-conditioned vowel duration, including other factors with which it interacts and what might cause it. While it has been observed that the effect is smaller in some languages than in others, no typological overview exists. This paper summarizes cross-linguistic patterns of this effect and contributes additional data from languages in which the relationship between voicing and vowel duration has not previously been described. The observed patterns include the following: A gradient distribution of the size of voicing-conditioned vowel duration effects across languages; frequently but not always larger voicing effects with fricatives than with stops; a strong by-language correlation in size between different manners of articulation (i.e., the size of the voicing effect with stops is predictive of the size of the voicing effect with fricatives in the same language); and little correlation between the size of the effect word-medially and word-finally. This compilation of voicing-conditioned vowel duration across languages establishes some of its typical patterns and sheds light on what might cause this effect. This typological information may serve as a foundation for future research on voicing-conditioned vowel duration.