Vowel characterisation by centroids
Terese Anderson, Antonis Botinis, Grandon Goertz, Athina Kontostavlaki · ExLing Conferences · 2022
The present report introduces a new methodological approach for the description and categorization of vowels in different languages. In this report, we concentrate on American English and Greek. Our methodology is based on determining vowel centres and measuring their locations for the corner vowels. Vowel centres were determined through comparative computation of the linear average values and centroid values for the first two formants, followed by plotting these results. The findings indicate the following: (1) centroid measurements provide a precise depiction of vowel characteristics, (2) centroid measurements appear constant and are not subject to variability, and (3) the overall shape of the vowel space maintains a constant form regardless of the formant frequency values of the respective languages.