Searching for an Auditory Description of Vowel Categories
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Randy L. Diehl
Abstract
This paper examines three auditory hypotheses concerning the location of category boundaries among vowel sounds. The first hypothesis claims that category boundaries tend to occur in a region corresponding to a 3-Bark separation between adjacent spectral peaks. According to the second hypothesis, vowel category boundaries are determined by the combined effects of the Bark distances between adjacent spectral peaks but that the weight of each of these effects is inversely related to the individual sizes of the Bark distances. In a series of perceptual experiments, each of these hypotheses was found to account for some category boundaries in American English but not others. The third hypothesis, which has received preliminary support from studies in our laboratory and elsewhere, claims that listeners partition the vowel space of individual talkers along lines corresponding to relatively simple linear functions of formant values when scaled in auditorily motivated units of frequency such as Bark.
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References
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© 2000 S. Karger AG, Basel
Articles in the same Issue
- Special Section
- Title Page
- Foreword
- Acoustic Patterning of Speech Its Linguistic and Physiological Bases
- Investigating Unscripted Speech: Implications for Phonetics and Phonology
- Emotive Transforms
- The Source-Filter Frame of Prominence
- The C/D Model and Prosodic Control of Articulatory Behavior
- Diverse Acoustic Cues at Consonantal Landmarks
- Perceptual Processing
- Modeling and Perception of ‘Gesture Reduction’
- General Auditory Processes Contribute to Perceptual Accommodation of Coarticulation
- Adaptive Dispersion in Vowel Perception
- Language Acquisition as Complex Category Formation
- Biology of Communication and Motor Processes
- Singing Birds, Playing Cats, and Babbling Babies: Why Do They Do It?
- The Phonetic Potential of Nonhuman Vocal Tracts: Comparative Cineradiographic Observations of Vocalizing Animals
- Dynamic Simulation of Human Movement Using Large-Scale Models of the Body
- En Route to Adult Spoken Language / Language Development
- An Embodiment Perspective on the Acquisition of Speech Perception
- Speech to Infants as Hyperspeech: Knowledge-Driven Processes in Early Word Recognition
- The Construction of a First Phonology
- Auditory Constraints on Sound Structures
- Searching for an Auditory Description of Vowel Categories
- Commentary
- Imitation and the Emergence of Segments
- Deriving Speech from Nonspeech: A View from Ontogeny
- Paper
- Developmental Origins of Adult Phonology: The Interplay between Phonetic Emergents and the Evolutionary Adaptations of Sound Patterns
- Further Section
- Publications Björn Lindblom
- Index autorum Vol. 57, 2000
- Contents Vol. 57, 2000
Articles in the same Issue
- Special Section
- Title Page
- Foreword
- Acoustic Patterning of Speech Its Linguistic and Physiological Bases
- Investigating Unscripted Speech: Implications for Phonetics and Phonology
- Emotive Transforms
- The Source-Filter Frame of Prominence
- The C/D Model and Prosodic Control of Articulatory Behavior
- Diverse Acoustic Cues at Consonantal Landmarks
- Perceptual Processing
- Modeling and Perception of ‘Gesture Reduction’
- General Auditory Processes Contribute to Perceptual Accommodation of Coarticulation
- Adaptive Dispersion in Vowel Perception
- Language Acquisition as Complex Category Formation
- Biology of Communication and Motor Processes
- Singing Birds, Playing Cats, and Babbling Babies: Why Do They Do It?
- The Phonetic Potential of Nonhuman Vocal Tracts: Comparative Cineradiographic Observations of Vocalizing Animals
- Dynamic Simulation of Human Movement Using Large-Scale Models of the Body
- En Route to Adult Spoken Language / Language Development
- An Embodiment Perspective on the Acquisition of Speech Perception
- Speech to Infants as Hyperspeech: Knowledge-Driven Processes in Early Word Recognition
- The Construction of a First Phonology
- Auditory Constraints on Sound Structures
- Searching for an Auditory Description of Vowel Categories
- Commentary
- Imitation and the Emergence of Segments
- Deriving Speech from Nonspeech: A View from Ontogeny
- Paper
- Developmental Origins of Adult Phonology: The Interplay between Phonetic Emergents and the Evolutionary Adaptations of Sound Patterns
- Further Section
- Publications Björn Lindblom
- Index autorum Vol. 57, 2000
- Contents Vol. 57, 2000
