The present study examines the relationships between isolated, steady-state, Japanese and Greek vowels /a/, /i/, and /u/, obtained in a production study, and those obtained in a perception experiment using the speakers of the two languages.
Recent studies (e.g., Bradlow 1993) suggest that listeners prefer, given various phonetic realisations of a vowel category, more extreme vowels (those in the periphery of the acoustic vowel space) to vowels representing the production means of the category.
Preliminary results suggest that listeners' preference for extreme vowels may not be present in all three corners of the vowel space (the /a/, /i/, and /u/ areas) in a uniform fashion. In the /i/ corner, listeners preferred vowels with extreme values both along F1 and F2 dimesnsions. In the /u/ corner, listeners exhibited strong preference for vowels with extreme F1, but not F2. In the /a/ corner, no preference for extremity was observed. The implications of the above findings for the acquisition of second-language phonetics will be discussed.
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