Invariance and variability in the production of the height feature in French vowels

Lucie Ménard (1) , Jean-Luc Schwartz (2) , Jérôme Aubin (1)

1 Departement de linguistique et de didactique des langues
2 GIPSA-PMD - GIPSA - Parole, Multimodalité, Développement

This paper investigates the organization of the vowel space in French speakers. Speakers aged from 4 years to adulthood were recorded in order to generate significant between-speaker variability. Each speaker produced repetitions of the ten French oral vowels /i y u e ø o e œ O a/. Acoustic analyses show that, despite considerable between-speaker variability in the relative positions of the vowels within the vowel space, speakers tend to produce vowels along a given height degree with a stable F1 value, depending on the speaker, but independently of place of articulation and roundedness. Simulations with the Variable Linear Articulatory Model (VLAM) show that a stable F1 value is basically related to stable tongue heights. The results are discussed in the framework of the Perception-for-Action Control theory (PACT), in which speech units are considered as gestures shaped by perceptual processes.

Domaines: Informatique; Linguistique; Psychologie

Lucie Ménard, Jean-Luc Schwartz, Jérôme Aubin. Invariance and variability in the production of the height feature in French vowels. Speech Communication, 2008, 50 (1), pp.14-28. ⟨10.1016/j.specom.2007.06.004⟩. ⟨hal-00195259⟩