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15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-15)Barcelona, Spain |
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15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-15)Barcelona, Spain |
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The effects of formant movements related to the number of distinctive
features on vowel discrimination of Finnish and Spanish-speaking subjects
were studied by measuring response speed and accuracy. Two Finnish
vowel continua, which had different formant pattern changes, were compared;
the /æ - ø/ continuum had parallel formant frequency movements (F1
and F2 frequencies lowered) while in the /æ - e/ continuum formants
changed to the opposite directions. For Spanish subjects both continua
had a similar phonemic structure (i.e., /e/ and /ø/) are both allophones
of /e/ in Spanish.
It was found that a parallel movement in F1 and
F2 was perceived faster and more accurately than their movements in
the opposite direction. This finding was independent of the subjects'
language experience. However, the Spanish-speaking subjects had overall
slower RTs than the Finnish speaking subjects.
Bibliographic reference. Savela, Janne / Kleimola, Tuulia / Makela, Leena / Tuomainen, Jyrki / Aaltonen, Olli (2003): "The effects of distinctive features on the perception of vowel categories", In ICPhS-15, 1001-1004.