title: Testing theories of vowel inherent spectral change.
abstract: Three competing accounts of vowel inherent spectral change in English all agree on the importance of initial formant frequencies; however, they disagree about the nature of the perceptually relevant aspects of formant change. The onset+offset hypothesis claims that the final formant values themselves matter. The onset+slope hypothesis claims that only the rate of change counts. The onset+direction hypothesis claims that only the general direction of change in formant frequencies is important. A synthetic-vowel perception experiment was designed to differentiate among the three. Results provide support for the superiority of the onset+offset hypothesis.
authors.affiliation: Department of Linguistics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
authors.forename: Geoffrey Stewart
authors.initials: GS
authors.lastname: Morrison
authors.forename: Terrance M
authors.initials: TM
authors.lastname: Nearey
mesh_terms: D003198:Computer Simulation; D005931:Glottis / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008954:Models, Biological; D015588:Observer Variation; D010700:Phonetics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013018:Sound Spectrography; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013063:Speech Discrimination Tests; D013067:Speech Perception; D013997:Time Factors