Production and perception of Vietnamese vowels

Abstract

It is well known that vowels can be produced in isolation, acoustically stable in such a way that they are represented as points in the F1-F2 plane. But, in a preceding study [1], following the predictions of the DRM model of speech production, the area function space and the corresponding acoustic space were already shown to be dynamically structured. Privileged formant trajectories were as follows: [ai], [ay], [au] and [Latin small letter alpha sign Latin small letter M sign] for the [a, ε, e, i] [a, œ, ø, y], [Latin small letter alpha sign, Latin small open o sign, o, u] and [Latin small letter alpha sign, Latin small letter turned v sign, γ, Latin small letter M sign] vowel sets respectively. The present study examines further evidence in support of the DRM model, based on data pertaining to the production and perception of Vietnamese vowels. Results will be discussed in terms of vowel representation as sub-products of vowel-to-vowel trajectories. Two specific Vietnamese vowels 'ǎ' & 'â' will be studied.