Intelligibility of high-pitched vowel sounds in the singing and speaking of a female Cantonese opera singer

The question whether or not vowel quality can be maintained at F0 of the sounds exceeding statistical F1 of „normal“ speech is still a matter of debate. The present study investigates the perception of long Cantonese vowels /i, y, œ, a, ɔ, u/, spoken and sung in (C)V and (C)V:S context by a well-known female Cantonese Opera singer in the range of F0 of c. 560–860Hz. 172 high-pitched syllables or isolated vowel sounds were selected and extracted from a live recording. Corresponding vowel perception was tested in a listening test performed by 26 students of linguistics. All six vowels proved to be identifiable > 80% up to F0 of c. 700Hz, and sounds of /i, a, ɔ, u/ proved to be identifiable > 80% up to a range of F0 of c. 820–860Hz. Confusion matrices are provided in the present paper and spectral illustrations of all sounds are presented at http://is2014.phones-and-phonemes.org.