HOME HELP FEEDBACK SUBSCRIPTIONS ARCHIVE SEARCH TABLE OF CONTENTS		QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced] Author: Keyword(s): Year:  Vol:  Page:

This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal My Folders Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Neel, A. T. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Neel, A. T. Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Vowel Space Characteristics and Vowel Identification Accuracy

Contact author: Amy T. Neel, Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131. E-mail: atneel{at}unm.edu.

Purpose: To examine the relation between vowel production characteristics and intelligibility.

Method: Acoustic characteristics of 10 vowels produced by 45 men and 48 women from the J. M. Hillenbrand, L. A. Getty, M. J. Clark, and K. Wheeler (1995) study were examined and compared with identification accuracy. Global (mean f0, F1, and F2; duration; and amount of formant movement) and fine-grained measures (vowel space area; mean distance among vowels; f0, F1, and F2 ranges; duration ratio between long and short vowels; and formant movement ratio between dynamic and static vowels) were used to predict identification scores. Acoustic measures of the most frequently confused pairs (/æ/–// and //–//) were compared.

Results: Global and fine-grained measures accounted for less than 1/4 of variance in identification scores: Vowel space area alone accounted for 9%–12% of variance. Differences in vowel identification were largely due to poor identification of /æ/, //, //, or //. Well-identified vowels were distinctive in formant frequencies, duration, and amount of formant movement over time.

Conclusions: Distinctiveness among neighboring vowels is more important in determining vowel intelligibility than vowel space area. Acoustic comparison of confused vowels may be more useful in studying intelligibility of normal and disordered speech than in measuring vowel space area.

KEY WORDS: vowels, speech intelligibility, speech perception

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Facebook    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?