Acoustic cues to perception of vowel quality

Perceptual and acoustic spaces obtained using MDS and PCA, respectively, for a set of Spanish vowels uttered in various fricative contexts are compared. Acoustic cues to vowel quality were studied through examination of the weights given by PCA to specific spectral regions. The acoustic space formed by the first two formant frequencies was also evaluated. The results show that MDS has serious difficulties to be useful for the study of Spanish vowels. PCA offers a gross characterization compared to formant frequencies. Neither of them completely explains the perception of vowel quality.