Dialect variation and formant frequency: The American English vowels revisited

Vowel production data collected from 15 southern Californian English-speaking monolinguals is compared with data reported by Hillenbrand et al. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 97, 3099–3111 (1995) and Peterson and Barney J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 24, 175–184 (1952). Recordings were made of nine women and six men producing multiple repetitions of i, ɪ, e, ɛ, æ, u, ʊ, o, ɑ, ʌ, ɹˌ in three consonant contexts. The frequencies of the first three formants were measured by simultaneous comparison of wideband spectrograms, narrow-band FFT spectral slices, and LPC spectra taken at vowel center, or steady state where available. The Southern Californian data are seen to differ greatly from that described by Peterson and Barney (1952) and Hillenbrand et al. (1995).