PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE VOWELS
the vowel fah . . . ther,” or, better, one may pronounce
only the vowel part of the last word, as “a record of the vowel
... ah ... y
Photographing, Analyzing, and Plotting Vowel
Curves
The general procedure in the investigation of a vowel is
as follows : the speaker begins to pronounce the appropriate
word and prolongs the vowel in as natural a manner as
Fig. 160. Photograph of the vowel a in father, for analysis.
possible ; by means of the phonodeik a photographic record
is taken of the central portion of the vowel, while the zero
line and time signals are recorded simultaneously with the
voice curve. The vowel curve is then analyzed into its
harmonic components, corrections are applied, percentage
intensities for the several partials are computed, and the
results are diagramed, as explained in Lecture V.
A photograph of the vowel father intoned by a baritone
voice, at the pitch of F2 = 182, is shown in Fig. 160. The
analysis of this curve is given in Fig. 129, page 169, while
analysis of other photographs of the same vowel are shown
in Figs. 161, 162, and 163.
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