Acoustic articulatory evidence for quantal vowel categories: The feature [low]

The goal of this study is to determine whether acoustic coupling between the first subglottal resonance F1sub (about 600 Hz) and the F1 frequency for vowels creates a region near 600 Hz in which the F1 prominence shows an irregularity. Such a finding would provide evidence for a defining quantal articulatory‐acoustic relation for the distinctive feature [low]. The time course of F1 in relation to F1sub was examined for certain diphthongs and several monophthongs produced by a number of speakers of English using Chi’s data [X. Chi and M. Sonderegger, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 115, 2540–2550 (2004)]. For the diphthongs, a discontinuity in F1 or a dip in amplitude of the F1 prominence was observed as it passed through F1sub, while for the monophthongs, F1 was usually above F1sub for [+low] vowels and below F1sub for [‐low] vowels. A preliminary further study of data from the literature on F1 for vowels from various languages showed that the boundary between F1 values of [+low] vowels and those of [‐low] vowels agrees with the average value of F1sub obtained from the laboratory study with English. [Supported by NIH Grant No. DC00075.]