Abstract
Five speakers of Feʔfeʔ (a Bamileke language spoken in Cameroon) read a word list containing the eight Feʔfeʔ long vowels [i, e, a, ɑ, ɔ, u, ʉ, ə] all of which contrast in open syllables. They were asked to listen to 53 synthetic vowel stimuli (in which F1 was varied between 250 and 750 Hz and F2 between 650 to 2350 Hz) according to their own vowel system. After each stimulus presentation they had to indicate which word of the word list “sounded like the sound they just heard.” By doing so Feʔfeʔ speakers were dividing up the vowel space according to their own vowel system. These are a number of cases in which speakers perceptual judgments did not match their productions (in particular with vowels with F2 around 1500 Hz). This suggests an explanation for the relative scarcity of central vowels in the world's languages which is different from an explanation based on maximum perceptual distance. [Work supported by NSF.]
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