Toward Defining Acoustic Phonetic Equivalence for Vowels

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Abstract
Determining whether or not two arbitrary vowel tokens are phonetically equivalent is the crucial step in classifying vowels phonetically. Acoustic phonetic equivalence for vowel sounds is discussed in the light of data on formant frequency variability. Random variation between repetitions of the same item by the same speaker or between imitations of the same item by different speakers determines a range of practical limits on the sizes of acoustic phonetic equivalence classes. Vowel imitation is suggested as an approach to defining vowel equivalence across speakers. Effects of prosody and context can be handled cither by estimating vowel targets or by permitting an intended or perceived vowel type to have a number of condition-dependent variants. The consequences of these options are discussed in terms of their practicality and consistency with basic phonetic concepts.

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