Acoustic study of Russian vowel allophones

Abstract

The five Russian vowels vary in auditory quality depending on their consonant contexts; one traditional reference gives several major and minor impressionistic allophones for each stressed vowel. The consonants are reported to be relatively unaffected by their vowel contexts, and to block vowel‐to‐vowel interactions. This paper presents a study of Russian vowels in CV, VC, and CVC syllables for three speakers. Preliminary results for vowels /i/ and /a/ across a wide variety of contexts suggest that the allophonic variation is of three kinds. First, there is target variation: Each of these vowels has one target in some contexts, and a second target in other contexts. Second, some additional vowel variation is due to undershoot of those targets after extensive F2 and F3 transitions. Finally, however, in many contexts the formants do reach their targets, despite the extensive transitions. In these cases, the perceived vowel quality variations seem to arise from differences in the transitions alone. [Work supported by NSF.]