The Judgment of Vowel Quality

Abstract

Dialectology suffers from a lack of rigorously controlled techniques for recording vowel qualities. Instrumental investigation is often impracticable for the dialectologist An aural-imitative technique is here described, based on the cardinal vowel system. The degree of consistency achieved using this technique in a dialectological study is shown to compare favourably with that found in studies of the efficacy of the cardinal vowel system per se. No other dialectological study is known to have made such statistical observations on the reliability of its own statements about vowel quality. The value of two-dimensional vowel charts is also discussed. © 1969, Sage Publications. All rights reserved.