HOW STEADY ARE VOWEL STEADY-STATES

The duration of vowel steady-states (VSS) was examined acoustically in the speech production of 40 normal young adults. VSS was assessed acc ording to formant frequency changes in sustained /i/ productions and c onsonant + /i/ + /d/(/Cid/) productions. The duration of the VSS was m easured for the first and second formants (F1 and F2) by incorporating a fixed rate-of-change criterion. Results indicated no significant di fferences in VSS duration according to gender or vowel context. VSS du ration based on F1 was significantly longer than F2 VSS duration. The duration of VSS was also found to be correlated to the overall vowel d uration in /Cid/ contexts. Discussion focuses on the analysis and appl ication of VSS in acoustic studies of normal and disordered speech pro duction.