Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 27, 2025

Foreign Accent and Forensic Speaker Identification in Voice Lineups: The Influence of Acoustic Features Based on Prosody
Published on: September 27, 2024
Contextual prominence in vowel perception: Testing listener sensitivity to sonority expansion and hyperarticulation
1Department of Linguistics, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208, USA jeremy.steffman@northwestern.edu.
Abstract:
High front vowels have been shown to undergo two competing forms of acoustic (and articulatory) modulation due to prosodic prominence-(1) hyperarticulation: more extreme high/front articulations under prominence and (2) sonority expansion: more open articulations, allowing more energy to radiate from the mouth. This study explores how these effects translate into listeners' perception of the contrast between the vowels /i/ and /ɪ/. Results show that listeners uniformly expect a hyperarticulated vowel (acoustically) under prominence, and adjust categorization of an F1/F2 continuum accordingly. Results are discussed in relation to production findings and possible accounts of why listeners favor hyperarticulation in perception.
Related Concept Videos
Perceiving Loudness, Pitch, and Location
Place theory, or place coding, suggests that different pitches are heard because various sound waves activate specific locations along the cochlea's basilar membrane. The brain determines the pitch of a sound by...
Auditory Perception
Perception of Sound Waves
The pitch of a sound depends on the frequency and the pressure amplitude of the source. Two sounds of the same...
Hearing
Chunking and Rehearsal in Sensory Memory
Sound Intensity Level
The human ear can perceive an extensive range of sound intensity, necessitating the use of the logarithmic scale to define a physical quantity—the intensity level. It is a ratio of two intensities and...

