On the Acoustic and Perceptual Characterization of Reference Vowels in a Cross-language Perspective.

IPA symbols are used for both phonological and phonetic transcription. Due to the difficulty of a clear specification in the articulatory or the acoustic space, the same IPA symbol is often used to transcribe phonetically different vowels across different languages. On the basis of the acoustic theory of speech production, this plenary lecture (and article) aims to propose a set of focal vowels as references. These vowels are focal, i.e....