Les formants vocaliques et le barrissement des éléphants

Abstract

The well known fact that the resonance frequency of a tube is inversely proportional to its volume reinforced the wide-spread belief of a large number of phoneticians that vowel formant frequencies were directly linked to the volume of the cavities defined by the articulation of a vowel. The first formant should then be determined by the largest cavity, the second by the next largest, etc. The advances of acoustic phonetics, and especially the use of the spectrograph, did eventually disturb some researchers (which very small cavity would then be responsible for a high-frequency formant ?), While the work of acousticians demonstrated as early as 1940-50 that formant frequencies did actually result from the interaction of articulatory cavities rather than from their dimensions, many years passed before this was considered independently and finally recognized, so that the popular belief on the origin of formant frequencies could finally be dropped.