Acoustic variability in the vowels of female and male speakers.

Abstract

working-class (WC) and middle-class (MC) middle-aged women. Some F m, F2 patterns are compatible with auditory predictions of a hierarchy of vocalic susceptibility to contrasting voice quality settings. [Work supported by SSHRCC.] 10:05 4SP5. Acoustic variability in the vowels of female and male speakers.When vowel formant values for female and male speakers are normalized and plotted in an F1-F2 space, it is striking that the quadrilateral spaces for the females are uniformly larger than those for the males. Data will be presented from seven languages and dialects, including three dialects of English, which indicate that, all other things being equal, female speakers appear to produce vowels in a manner that is more phonetically explicit than males do. It is particularly in the F1 dimension that the females' quadrilaterals extend beyond the males'; it may be inferred that female speakers articulate vowels with a more open mouth than males do. Can one expect that speakers with a higher k'0 automatically have a larger vowel space? Are females making more of an effort to keep vowels distinct, and potentially contribute to greater intelligibility? Or do females over-articulate, avoiding reduced or centralized forms, as a result of social expectations to be conservative "guardians" of the language? Acoustic and sociophonetic answers to such questions will be offered. In addition, data will be presented from three dialects of English which show that female speakers are not uniform in their behavior: some females merge vowels more often than males do, while other female populations appear to differentiate the same vowels more systematically. The perceived social prestige of an accent is offered as one explanation for these disparate directions of change. 10:30 4SP6. Durational effects of prosodic structure in spontaneous spoken French. Henrietta J. Cedergren, Louise Levac, and H61•ne Perreault (Dept. de Linguistique, Univ. du Qu6bec/t Montr6al, C.P. 8888,

Sex-specific fundamental and formant frequency patterns in a cross-sectional study

“…This raises the role of sociophonetic factors as possible key influences in determining the phonetic quality of vowel formant frequencies (e.g. Byrd, 1992Byrd, , 1994Henton, 1995;Lee et al, 1999). It is suggested that the phonetic quality of the vowel uw, may be an example of sociophonetic and/or accent variation in the 18 yearold females.…”

“…physiological, sociocultural, stylistic conventions) may be responsible for these and other sex-specific patterns (e.g. Byrd, 1992Byrd, , 1994Hasek et al, 1980;Henton, 1995;Lee et al, 1999;Mattingly, 1966;Traunmüller, 1984Traunmüller, , 1988.…”

“…Deterding, 1997;Henton, 1995;Traunmüller, 1988), and this seems to hold true across a number of different languages including General American English, Italian, Japanese, British English (Middle Northern), German, Swedish, Standard Dutch and French (e.g. see Henton (1995) and Rosner and Pickering (1994) for details and summaries of these data). The more peripheral nature of vowel spaces exhibited by women has been attributed to sociophonetic factors which determine the different speech styles adopted by men and women (Henton, 1995).…”

“…The patterns that emerge from this re-examination are discussed with reference to the sex-linked developmental trends in the data, and whether they shed any light on any factors that may be responsible for influencing the emergence of speaker sex differences in the phonetic quality of vowels (e.g. Henton, 1995;Rosner and Pickering, 1994;Traunmüller, 1988).…”

“…see Henton (1995) and Rosner and Pickering (1994) for details and summaries of these data). The more peripheral nature of vowel spaces exhibited by women has been attributed to sociophonetic factors which determine the different speech styles adopted by men and women (Henton, 1995). However, an alternative view is that the emergence of sex differences in the acoustic-phonetic characteristics of vowels can be explained by physiological factors and anatomical constraints, which are due to maturational differences between males and females (Traunmüller, 1984(Traunmüller, , 1988.…”