Does vowel space size depend on language vowel inventories? Evidence from two Arabic dialects and French

International audienceThe aim of this paper is to study the effect of the number of vowels a language has on the size of its vocalic space, in the production of speech from two Arabic dialects, Moroccan and Jordanian Arabic, and from French. 5 speakers per language (or dialect) recorded a list of vowels in 3 conditions: vowels were embedded in 1) Words, 2) Syllables, and 3) produced in Isolation. For each condition, there were 3 consonantal contexts: /bdk/. Our results corroborate the hypothesis that vowel inventory size affects the size of the acoustic vowel spaces: the larger the vowel inventory, the bigger the acoustic vowel space