Acoustics of
the Vowel
Preliminaries
the Vowel
Preliminaries
Materials Part III - Lack of Correspondence between Patterns of Relative Spectral Energy Maxima or Formant Patterns and Age- and Gender-Related
Speaker Groups or Vocal-Tract Sizes
M10.A: Addition: Vowel Imitations by Birds
Content of illustration
The following series show examples of vowel sounds of common hill mynah birds (Gracula religiosa) imitating vocal expressions
and words of humans. The examples are selected on the basis of extensive recordings of 21 birds, most of them living in Indonesia.
(However, they imitated words of different languages.) The spectra presented relate to vowel nuclei extracted from the expressions
or words. Both the entire imitated expressions or words as well as the extracted sound fragments are perceptually recognisable.
In each of the series, the sound spectra are given in the order of the birds and of F0. (Note that in several cases, different sound spectra for the same vowel are shown for a bird, in order to document variations in F0 and the sound spectra.)—Acoustic analysis corresponds to the analysis as described in the Note on the Method section. LPC filter curves relate to a parameter setting of the LPC analysis according to the PRAAT standard for women. However, as mentioned in the text, the LPC analysis is not methodically substantiated.—Figures and related content of illustration:
- Figure 11 shows examples of sounds of imitated / i / in word context produced by five birds, with F0 ranging from c. 110–380
Hz; perceptual vowel quality is / i /, including intermediate qualities / i–j /, / i–y/ and / i–e /
- Figure 12 shows examples of sounds of imitated /e / in word context produced by five birds, with F0 ranging from c. 160–330
Hz; perceptual vowel quality is /e /, including intermediate qualities /e–i / and /e–ø /
- Figure 13 shows examples of sounds of imitated /a / in word context produced by twelve birds, with F0 ranging from c. 110–490 Hz; perceptual vowel quality is /a–ɑ /, including intermediate quality /ɑ– ɔ /
- Figure 14 shows examples of sounds of imitated /o / in word context produced by eleven birds, with F0 ranging from c. 80–410
Hz; perceptual vowel quality is /o /, including intermediate qualitiy /o–ɔ /
- Figure 15 shows examples of sounds of imitated /u / in word context produced by seven birds, with F0 ranging from c. 110–660
Hz; perceptual vowel quality is /u /, including intermediate quality /u–o /
Note that many of the sound spectra of these birds are similar to the vowel spectra of humans presented in the previous sections. However, for some examples of imitations of front vowels,
Link to the spectra of the Figures
Figure 11: Sounds of /i/ in word context imitated by mynah birds.
Figure 12: Sounds of /e/ in word context imitated by mynah birds.
Figure 13: Sounds of /a–ɑ/ in word context imitated by mynah birds.
Figure 14: Sounds of /o/ in word context imitated by mynah birds.
Figure 15: Sounds of /u/ in word context imitated by mynah birds.