IMPACT OF DURATION AND VOWEL INVENTORY SIZE ON
FORMANT VALUES OF ORAL VOWELS: AN AUTOMATED
FORMANT ANALYSIS FROM EIGHT LANGUAGES.
Résumé
Eight languages (Arabic, English, French, German,
Italian, Mandarin Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish)
with 6 differently sized vowel inventories were
analysed in terms of vowel formants. A tendency
to phonetic reduction for vowels of short acoustic
durations clearly emerges for all languages. The
data did not provide evidence for an effect of
inventory size on the global acoustic space and
only the acoustic stability of quantal vowel /i/ is
greater than that of other vowels in many cases.
Keywords: vowel formants, adaptive dispersion,
reduction, quantal theory.
Italian, Mandarin Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish)
with 6 differently sized vowel inventories were
analysed in terms of vowel formants. A tendency
to phonetic reduction for vowels of short acoustic
durations clearly emerges for all languages. The
data did not provide evidence for an effect of
inventory size on the global acoustic space and
only the acoustic stability of quantal vowel /i/ is
greater than that of other vowels in many cases.
Keywords: vowel formants, adaptive dispersion,
reduction, quantal theory.