Abstract:

Perceptual studies have consistently shown that the dominant acoustic correlates of vowel perception are the frequencies of the first three formants. The present studies used natural syllables to explore the role of vocalic duration in vowel perception. The first study examined the vocalic duration and frequencies of the first three formants of American-English vowels. Out of 48 talkers, 15 were identified for whom the formant frequencies were virtually identical in the CVC words ``had'' and ``head'' at the vowel mid-point. These tokens differed in duration and were highly intelligible. The second study used edited natural tokens from 4 of the 15 talkers to investigate the influence of vowel duration in perception. Pitch pulses from ``had'' were removed to create tokens varying in vowel duration from the natural ``had'' to a shorter duration similar to ``head.'' Pitch pulses from ``head'' were reduplicated to create a second series for each talker. Duration was used by some listeners for some talkers, but was not consistently used to differentiate these vowels in perception. This implicates other acoustic qualities, such as formant movements, as determinants of perception. [Work supported by NIDCD Grant No. R01 DC00219 to SUNY at Buffalo.]