Vowel perception in consonantal context

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Abstract
Consonant-vowel-consonant syllables manifest formant frequencies in the center of the vowel region that differ from those of the vowels spoken in isolation [K.N. Stevens and A.S. House, J. Speech Hear. Res. 6, 111–128 (1963)]. It has been reported that subjects adjust their categorization of the [U]-[I] vowel continuum in consonantal contexts in a way that compensates for the undershoot of vowel target frequencies [B.E.F. Lindblom and M. Studdert-Kennedy, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 42, 830–843 (1967)]. Do subjects hear the context-embedded vowel as having formant frequencies that are not in fact reached or do they merely adjust their categorization criteria? Listeners were asked to adjust the first two formant frequencies of a synthesized steady vowel to match the color of the vowel heard in the syllabic context. The results do not in general support the undershoot hypothesis. Some significant shifts from the nuclear-vowel formant frequency values to the perceived formant-frequency values are noted in the opposite direction. The result suggest that instead of indicating extrapolated target values, the matched formant values correspond to some appropriate time-average of the time-varying formant frequencies. [Work supported by ARPA, D. of Defense, and NIH.]

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