Beyond formants: vowel perception at high fundamental frequencies

Abstract

It is commonly assumed that the vowel identification process is mainly driven by an underlying acoustic representation of formant frequency patterns. This assumption contributes largely to the pervasive idea that listeners’ ability to recognize vowels has to be poor at very high fundamental frequencies (f o ) due to a sparse sampling of the vocal tract transfer function. In this cumulative thesis, it is shown that the phonological function of vowels can be maintained at f o s up to at least 880 Hz and that listeners can identify the point vowels /i a u/ at even higher f o s. Auditory excitation patterns revealed highly differentiable representations for these categories that can be used as landmarks for vowel category perception at high f o s. The results suggest that theories of vowel perception based on overall spectral shape will provide a fuller account of vowel perception than those based solely on formant frequency patterns