Factor Analysis of Vowel Pronunciation in Swedish Dialects

In this study 91 local Swedish dialects were analysed based on vowel pronunciation. Acoustic measurements of vowel quality were made for 18 vowels of 1,014 speakers by means of principal component analysis of vowel spectra. Two principal components were extracted explaining more than 34 of the total variance in the vowel spectra. Plotting vowels in the PC1-PC2 plane showed a solution with strong resemblance to vowels in a formant plane. Per location averages of all speakers were calculated and factor analysis was run with the 91 locations as data cases and the two acoustic component of the 18 words as variables. Nine factors were extracted corresponding to distinct geographic distribution patterns. The factor scores of the analysis revealed co-occurrence of a number of linguistic features.