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Variation in Standard Dutch vowels: The impact of formant measurement methods on identifying the speaker's regional origin

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 June 2014

Sander Van der Harst ,
Hans Van de Velde  and
Roeland Van Hout
Sander Van der Harst
Affiliation:
Utrecht University
Hans Van de Velde
Affiliation:
Utrecht University
Roeland Van Hout
Affiliation:
Radboud University Nijmegen
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Abstract

It is common practice in sociophonetics to measure vowel formants at one (monophthongs) or two (diphthongs) time points. This paper compares this traditional target approach with two dynamic approaches for investigating regional patterns of variation: the multiple time point approach, which measures formants at successive time points, and the regression approach, which estimates formant dynamics over time by fitting polynomial regression equations to formant contours. The speech material consisted of monosyllabic words containing all full vowels of Dutch, except for /y/. These words were read out by 160 speakers of Standard Dutch, who were distributed over four regions in the Netherlands and four regions in Flanders, Belgium. The results show that dynamic approaches outperform the target approach in uncovering regional vowel differences, which suggests that sociophonetic vowel studies that apply the target approach run the risk of overlooking important sociolinguistic patterns.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , July 2014 , pp. 247 - 272
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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