VARIATIONS IN VOWEL INTENSITY MEASUREMENTS

Measurements were made of the intensities of vowels produced in isolation and in CVC syllables by three adult speakers. It was found that the predicted direct relation-ship with vowel opening did not apply to vowel intensity measures obtained. Similar results were found for both level recorder and voltmeter measurements. The lack of predicted relationship did not appear to be due to any effect of consonant environment. Increasing vocal effort did tend to increase the intensity of open vowels more than that of close vowels. It is suggested that reversals in the predicted relationship between vowel intensity and vowel opening may be due to variations in vocal effort and in voice quality. One of the basic problems of acoustic phonetics is to relate the variations in intensity of the speech signal to such problems as the identification of cues for stress and syllabification. Before deductions can be made about the distinctive variations in intensity, it is necessary to describe the nature of the relationship between variations in intensity of vowels and such non-distinctive factors as the context in which they appear