Vowel identification in mixed-speaker silent-center syllables

Abstract

Strange [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 85, 2135–2153 (1989b)] has demonstrated that there is sufficient information in the onsets and offsets of syllables, spoken in sentence context, to provide accurate identification of the vowel in the syllable. Verbrugge and Rakerd [Language Speech 29, 39–57 (1986)] and Andruski and Nearey [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 91, 390–490 (1992)] have shown that such information is present in citation-form syllables even when the syllables begin with one speaker and end with another. These studies of ‘‘hybrid syllables,’’ however, reported relatively high error rates. In a perceptual experiment using /dVd/ syllables spoken in sentence context by a male and a female speaker, relatively low error rates were obtained for both ‘‘silent-center’’ syllables and ‘‘hybrid silent-center’’ syllables. It was concluded that the information specified over syllable onsets and offsets together for identification of vowels is speaker independent and that it was sufficient in most cases to specify the vowel. The acoustic patterns, represented as functions of log(F2/F1) over time, revealed potentially useful dynamic acoustic characteristics of coarticulated vowels.