Exotic Vowels in Swedish - An Articulographic and Acoustic Pilot Study of /iː/

This paper describes an articulographic and acoustic pilot study of the realisation of the vowel /iː/ in two regional varieties of Swedish. The study was carried out within the new research project Exotic vowels in Swedish – an articulographic study of palatal vowels [VOKART], which aims at increasing the empirical knowledge of vowel production in general, and extending our knowledge of the articulatory dynamics of palatal vowels in Swedish in particular. Articulatory and acoustic recordings of two male speakers – one South Swedish with regular [iː] and one East Central (Standard) Swedish with “damped”, so called “Viby-coloured” [ː] – were analysed. Results showed that [ː] was pronounced further back with an overall lower tongue position, but with a higher position of the tongue tip than [iː]. Acoustic analysis showed a lower F2 for [ː] than [iː], indicating a more centralised vowel quality. These very tentative results will be followed up with larger studies within the project.