NEUTRALISATION OF THE PHONETIC CONTRAST BETWEEN POLISH /ɛ/ AND /ɨ/
NEUTRALISATION OF THE PHONETIC CONTRAST BETWEEN POLISH /ɛ/ AND /ɨ/

Summary/Abstract: The paper reports the results of an experiment aimed at determining whether phonetic vowel reduction may lead to neutralization of the phonetic contrast between // and // in similar environments. A secondary objective of the study is to establish whether this phenomenon may result in homophony. The study is limited to // and // as their distribution within the vowel space suggest that, in connected speech, they may become indistinguishable. The preliminary results indicate that, in read speech, the phonetic contrast between // and // is indeed neutralized as three of the five informants produced vowels, whose acoustic parameters did not differ significantly (p > 0.5).

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