Vowel Formant Analysis

Vowel formant analysis is the acoustic measurement workflow for characterizing vowel quality. Vowels are resonances of the vocal tract, and their identity is carried by the formants — the spectral peaks created by those resonances. The first formant F1 is inversely related to vowel height (low F1 for high vowels, high F1 for low vowels), and the second formant F2 tracks frontness/backness (high F2 for front vowels, low F2 for back vowels). By measuring F1 and F2, plotting vowels in the F1×F2 acoustic space, and normalizing across speakers with procedures such as Lobanov, Bark, and Nearey, analysts obtain a reproducible map of a vowel system that can be compared within and across speakers, dialects, and time.