Preliminary results on speaker-dependent variation in the TIMIT database.

A set of phonetic studies based on analysis of the TIMIT speech database is presented. Using a database methodological approach, these studies detail new results in speaker-dependent variation due to sex and dialect region of the talker including effects on stop release frequency, speaking rate, vowel reduction, flapping, and the use of glottal stop. TIMIT was found to be fertile ground for gathering acoustic-phonetic knowledge having relevance to the phonetic classification and recognition goals for which TIMIT was designed, as well as to the linguist attempting to describe regularity and variability in the pronunciation of read English speech.