Spectral change in the vowel formant space of Long Island vowels

Abstract

Hillenbrand et al. [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 97, 3099–3111 (1995)] have shown that English vowels are distinguished better by discriminant analysis when a measure of spectral change is used than when a simple formant steady-state measure is used. Many English speakers on Long Island have six front vowels instead of the five treated in most discussions of American English—in addition to low front æ, there is a higher, or ‘‘tensed’’ æ (henceforth AE). With this more crowded vowel space, spectral dynamism should be equally, if not more, important to distinguishing Long Island vowels than other varieties of English such as the Michigan English described by Hillenbrand et al. Vowels were recorded in real words of the form hVd and bVd, spoken in a frame sentence. F1 and F2 values from LPC spectral analysis were analyzed via formant plots and discriminant analysis. Preliminary results for front vowels support the hypothesis: improvement in discrimination using dynamic rather than static spectral measures was largest for ε and AE, the vowels that are closest in the vowel space. Overall use of the vowel space, including comparisons with other dialects and studies will also be presented. [Work supported by NSF.]