Dissociations between Vowel Durations and Formant Frequency Characteristics

Abstract

Disagreement exists on the degree to which rate of speech and segmental duration affect the formant frequency characteristics of vowels. Post hoe analysis of the vowel characteristics of words uttered by women in conversational speech with both adult and child addressees indicates that there is no simple relationship between the length of vowels and the degree to which their formant frequency characteristics resemble those seen in citation forms of speech. In the ease of women addressing children, it was possible for content and function words to share formant frequency characteristics that maximally differentiated their embedded vowels, despite the relatively shorter duration of function word vowels. Implications for the elicitation of "clear speech" are discussed.