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A psychoacoustical explanation for the number of major IPA vowels

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 February 2009

Antti Iivonen
Antti Iivonen
Affiliation:
Department of Phonetics, University of Helsinki, Vironkatu IB, P.O. Box 35, FlN-00014University of Helsinki, Finland.
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Extract

Christoph Friedrich Hellwag was probably the first scholar who tried to show the auditory relationships and the relative distances of the vowels (Hellwag [1791] 1991). He described the vowels in a space in which the vowels formed a triangle (He didn't actually use the word ‘triangle,’ but spoke instead about a ‘scale,’ ‘ladder,’ ‘stairs,’ or ‘symmetric scheme’ (Monin 1991: 22)). The cardinal vowel system, created by Daniel Jones, has been a valuable frame work for vowel quality description, but it is partly articulatory, partly auditory.

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Journal of the International Phonetic Association , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , December 1994 , pp. 73 - 90
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Copyright © Journal of the International Phonetic Association 1994

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