The phonetics and phonology of Dutch mid vowels before /l

This paper addresses the claim that Dutch /l/ triggers laxing of preceding tense mid vowels (/e ø o/), and that this leads to a phonetic length contrast between tense and lax vowels, e.g., tense speel [spɪːɫ] ‘play’ vs. lax spil [spɪɫ] ‘pivot’. The production experiment reported in this paper shows that this claim is incorrect. We find instead that /l/ triggers retraction of both tense and lax mid vowels, which leads neither to complete neutralization of quality nor to complete neutralization of length.