Dispersion and variability of vowels of different vowel inventory sizes

The study investigates dispersion and variability of the vowels of three Chinese dialects, Yongding, Cantonese, and Wenling with three-, seven-, and eleven-vowel system, respectively. Formant data on the male and female vowels of the three dialects are presented. The main findings are as follows. In all three dialects, (i) a larger vowel inventory correlates a more expanded acoustical vowel space, which supports the vowel dispersion theory's prediction that the larger the vowel inventory is the more expanded acoustical vowel space will be (Lindblom, 1986), although the difference in vowel space is not linearly related to the difference in vowel inventory size; (ii) variability in vowel formants is not inversely related to vowel inventory size, which disagrees with the vowel dispersion theory's prediction; (iii) there is greater between-category dispersion in the F1F2 plane in the female vowels than the male ones, which is similar to what is reported in Fant (1966, 1975); and (iv) contrary to the quantal theory's prediction (Stevens, 1972, 1989), the point vowels do not show less within-category variability than the non-point vowels of the three Chinese dialects. © 2012 Acoustical Society of America.