Description

In this talk Paul Warren outlines some of the history of how diphthongal vowels have been analysed and compared in (socio-)phonetic research. Traditionally, single points or short sections of vowels have been taken as representative of the entire vowel, leading to analysis of acoustic data based on these points or sections. Since diphthongal vowels by their very nature involve movement in the vowel space, this approach potentially ignores key additional information carried by the vowel trajectory. In this light, Warren concludes by considering some recent studies that have taken a dynamic rather than static approach to the analysis of diphthongal vowels.