Extract

Abstract

This paper makes three contributions to the discussion of vowel transformation in acoustic phonetics. First, it compares a selection of transformation routines, using three performance tests: Linear Discriminant Analysis of vowel categories, inter-speaker vowel space area homogenization, and inter-speaker vowel space overlap. Second, the complementary functions of psychoacoustic transformation and vowel-extrinsic normalization proper are discussed and demonstrated. And, third, multi-dimensional scaling is proposed as a tool that can be useful in the assessment of multi-dimensional (or multi-parametric) results common in the testing of different methodologies, but also in other experimental work.

Keywords

Acoustic phonetics, vowel analysis, psychoacoustics, vowel normalization, multi-dimensional scaling

*   Corresponding author: ole.schuetzler@uni-bamberg.de, Tel: +49 863 2166, Fax: +49 863 2167

a   Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg, Lehrstuhl für Englische Sprachwissenschaft einschließlich Sprachgeschichte, An der Universität 9, 96045 Bamberg, Germany ← 35 | 36 →

1.0   Introduction

One of the main problems in acoustic vowel analysis is that there is no one-to-one relationship of formant patterns and phonemic vowel categories. In other words, similar formant patterns produced by different speakers may be perceived as different vowels. On the other hand, different formant patterns may be perceived as the same vowels (Hindle, 1978, p. 162). Thus, gross formant center frequencies are meaningful only within the acoustic vowel space generated by a particular speaker. The main reason given for this phenomenon is the different vocal tract lengths particularly of men, women, and children (Fant, 1966,...