title: The representation of stop consonants in three-dimensional acoustic space.
abstract: An acoustic study of English initial voiced stops showed that the three place categories are well distinguished on the basis of three properties: second-formant onset frequency (F2 onset), second-formant frequency of the vowel nucleus (F2), and third-formant onset frequency (F3 onset). Ten male and 10 female subjects produced multiple tokens of /bVt/, /dVt/, and /gVt/ with ten different medial vowels. Three-dimensional scatterplots were generated using the above acoustic properties as coordinates. Three nonoverlapping clusters corresponding to the three place categories were evident across all subjects. Discriminant analyses based on F2 onset, F2 vowel, and F3 onset as predictor variables showed a mean correct categorization rate of 84.5% when tested within gender groups. The graphic and statistical results are interpreted as indicating that phonetic categories may be defined and represented in purely acoustic terms if variably valued multiple acoustic properties are relationally examined.
authors.affiliation: University of Texas, Austin.
authors.forename: H M
authors.initials: HM
authors.lastname: Sussman
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010700:Phonetics; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D014831:Voice