Gender-specific articulatory–acoustic relations in vowel sequences

Abstract

Differences in male and female vocal tract dimensions are hypothesized to have a number of dynamic consequences—differences in target attainment, articulatory speed, and acoustic vowel space dimension. Evidence for some of these predictions is sought by investigating articulatory and acoustic patterns in interword vowel sequences in the University of Wisconsin X-ray Microbeam Speech Production Database ( UW-XRMBDB). Means of formant and lingual pellet tracks throughout such vocalic stretches exhibit similarities in acoustic and articulatory form for male and female groups, but show significant gender-specific differences in both articulatory and acoustic space traversed, with females making greater acoustic excursions for shorter articulatory distances.