Abstract
Polish is considered to be a language with no phonological vowel reduction in unstressed syllables. If vowel reduction does not have a phonological function, unstressed vowels are expected to be relatively stable in their quality and duration compared to stressed vowels. However, previous reports have suggested that Polish unstressed vowels may indeed undergo some processes of spectral and durational reduction. In this study, 23 speakers of Polish produced all 6 Polish vowels in /dV’dVdV/ frames using reiterant speech. The results showed that all vowels in unstressed syllables exhibited some changes in formant frequencies relative to vowels in stressed syllables. The greatest magnitude of reduction was observed for central /a/, and back /ɔ/ and /u/. Unstressed vowels were also shorter than stressed vowels with a ratio of 1.45. These results show that, although Polish unstressed vowels are not phonologically reduced, they are not immune to natural reduction processes caused by unstressed positions.
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