The Formant Dynamics of Long Close Vowels in Three Varieties of Swedish

Abstract

This study compares the acoustic realisation of /iː yː ʉː uː/ in three varieties of Swedish: Central Swedish, Estonian Swedish, and Finland Swedish. Vowel tokens were extracted from isolated words produced by six elderly female speakers from each variety. Trajectories of the first three formants were modelled with discrete cosine transform (DCT) coefficients, enabling the comparison of the formant means as well as the direction and magnitude of the formant movement. Crossdialectal differences were found in all measures and in all vowels. The most noteworthy feature of the Estonian Swedish long close vowel inventory is the lack of /yː/. For Finland Swedish it was shown that /iː/ and /yː/ are more close than in Central Swedish. The realisation of /ʉː/ varies from front in Central Swedish, to central in Estonian Swedish, and back in Finland Swedish. On average, the Central Swedish vowels exhibited a higher degree of formant movement than the vowels in the other two varieties. In the present study, regional variation in Swedish vowels was for the first time investigated using DCT coefficients. The results stress the importance of taking formant dynamics into account even in the analysis of nominal monophthongs.