In a speech signal, Voice Onset Time (VOT) is the period between
the release of a plosive and the onset of vocal cord vibrations in the
production of the following sound. Voice Offset Time (VOFT), on
the other hand, is the period between the end of a voiced sound and
the release of the following plosive. Traditionally, VOT has been
studied across multiple disciplines and has been related to many
factors that influence human speech production, including physical,
physiological and psychological characteristics of the speaker. The
mechanism of extraction of VOT has however been largely manual,
and studies have been carried out over small ensembles of individuals
under very controlled conditions, usually in clinical settings.
Studies of VOFT follow similar trends, but are more limited in scope
due to the inherent difficulty in the extraction of VOFT from speech
signals. In this paper we use a structured-prediction based mechanism
for the automatic computation of VOT and VOFT. We show
that for specific combinations of plosives and vowels, these are relatable
to the physical age of the speaker. The paper also highlights
the ambiguities in the prediction of age from VOT and VOFT, and
consequently in the use of these measures in forensic analysis of
voice.