Vowel perception in the absence of formants
Huseyin Yilmaz · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1975
Various vowels of a person were recorded and inverse filters for these vowels were constructed. An inverse filter destroys the formant structure of the corresponding vowel by reducing the output to a flat spectrum. Sets of experiments were performed with the help of a listening jury for (1) vowels in isolation through a given inverse filter—vowels for which the inverse filters were designed became unrecognizable; (2) vowels at normal rate through a given inverse filter—all vowels were recognizable; and (3) vowels at normal rate through randomly changed inverse filters-design vowels again became unrecognizable. The second set of experiments shows that (a) the formant plot concept is not adequate for vowel perception and (b) large vowel adaptations take place at normal speech rates. Details of the experiments are presented, and a new concept in which these experiments are easily explainable is indicated.