Formant movements of Dutch vowels in a text, read at normal and fast rate.

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Speaking rate in general, and vowel duration more specifically, is thought to affect the dynamic structure of vowel formant tracks. To test this, a single, professional speaker read a long text at two different speaking rates, fast and normal. The present project investigated the extent to which the first and second formant tracks of eight Dutch vowels varied under the two different speaking rate conditions. A total of 549 pairs of vowel realizations from various contexts were selected for analysis. The formant track shape was assessed on a point-by-point basis, using 16 samples at the same relative positions in the vowels. Differences in speech rate only resulted in a uniform change in F1 frequency. Within each speaking rate, there was only evidence of a weak leveling off of the F1 tracks of the open vowels /a a/ with shorter durations. When considering sentence stress or vowel realizations from a more uniform, alveolar-vowel-alveolar context, these same conclusions were reached. These results indicate a much more active adaptation to speaking rate than implied by the target undershoot model.