Orosensory Similarity of Vowels

Abstract

Abstract Triadically collected judgments on the orosensory similarity of Dutch vowels were studied in terms of three phonological and phonetic descriptions of the Dutch vowel system, differing mainly in their respective treatments of vowel heights. A feature matrix using four vowel heights rather than three had the greatest resemblance with a three-dimensional representation of the vowels on the basis of orosensory judgments. A hierarchical representation of the data indicates that the feature front/back outweighs the features high/low and long/short as far as their relative impact is concerned. Roundedness appeared to play no dominant role in the judgment process.