title: The phonological function of vowels is maintained at fundamental frequencies up to 880 Hz.
abstract: In a between-subject perception task, listeners either identified full words or vowels isolated from these words at F0s between 220 and 880 Hz. They received two written words as response options (minimal pair with the stimulus vowel in contrastive position). Listeners' sensitivity (A') was extremely high in both conditions at all F0s, showing that the phonological function of vowels can also be maintained at high F0s. This indicates that vowel sounds may carry strong acoustic cues departing from common formant frequencies at high F0s and that listeners do not rely on consonantal context phenomena for their identification performance.
authors.affiliation: Phonetics Laboratory, Department of Comparative Linguistics, University of Zurich, Plattenstr. 54, CH-8032 Zurich, Switzerland daniel.friedrichs@uzh.ch.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Friedrichs
authors.affiliation: Institute of the Performing Arts and Film, Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK), Toni-Areal, Pfingstweidstrasse 96, CH-8031 Zurich, Switzerland dieter.maurer@zhdk.ch.
authors.forename: Dieter
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Maurer
authors.affiliation: Phonetics Laboratory, Department of Comparative Linguistics, University of Zurich, Plattenstr. 54, CH-8032 Zurich, Switzerland volker.dellwo@uzh.ch.
authors.forename: Volker
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Dellwo
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010700:Phonetics; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*