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Abstract:
A number of explanations have been offered for non-uniform
differences in male and female acoustic vowel spaces. These range
from disproportionate differences in oral:pharyngal cavity length
to behavioural differences. This paper considers the dynamic
consequences that differences in male and female vocal tract
dimensions may have. Given that the average male vocal tract is
longer than its female counterpart it might be reasonable to
assume that male vocalic strictures are larger than analogous
female categories, and that, ceteris paribus, males will have
further to travel in articulatory terms to get from a close to an
open vowel. Several hypothetical consequences are considered:
undershoot, greater acoustic vowel space size, articulatory
speed. Evidence for some of these predictions is sought by
investigating articulatory and acoustic patterns in interword
vowel sequences in the University of Wisconsin X-ray Microbeam
Speech Production Database. Means of formant and normalized
lingual pellet tracks throughout such vocalic stretches exhibit
similarities in acoustic and articulatory form for male and
female groups, but show significant gender-specific differences
in both articulatory and acoustic space traversed, with females
making greater acoustic excursions for shorter articulatory
distances.
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