本研究旨在呈現國語和日語連續話語中，塞音聲帶振動起始時間的完整聲學調查。除了觀察國語送氣與不送氣塞音和日語有聲與無聲塞音在單獨音節的表現外，也觀察他們在字首∕中（日語）跟詞首∕中（國語）的表現。發現國語的送氣塞音屬長延遲類無疑、不送氣塞音屬短延遲類。而日語的無聲塞音在首位則介於短延遲和長延遲間，在中位則極短趨近於有聲塞音的正聲帶振動起始時間。至於有聲塞音的前發聲則是隨機的。這樣的結果顯示，就聲帶振動起始時間而言，日語和國語的塞音聲學上是相當不同的；也暗示著，說國語者正確聽辨日語塞音可能有困難。

The purpose of this study is to present a thorough acoustic investigation of VOT for stops in connected speech in Taiwan Mandarin (TM) and Japanese. Aspirated and unaspirated stops in TM and voiced and voiceless stops in Japanese not only in isolated syllables but also in word-initial/-medial (Japanese) or phrase-initial/-medial (TM) positions were involved. The study found that TM aspirated stops definitely belong to the long-lag category, and unaspirated stops belong to the short-lag category. Conversely, VOT for Japanese voiceless stops in the initial position falls somewhere between short-lag and long-lag; while, VOT in the medial position becomes extremely short, almost as short as voiced stops with positive VOT. Moreover, the occurrence of prevoicing for voiced stops is random. These results show that Japanese stops are acoustically quite different from TM stops in terms of VOT, which further implies that Japanese stops might be difficult for TM speakers to distinguish correctly.