Language Research

Abstract Vowels of a language can be characterized within an acoustically defined space according to native listeners’ perceptual intuition. This study investigated Persian listeners’ perception of a synthetic vowel space in which F1, F2, and F3 varied in a systematic manner. Our experimental design was based on the “Simple Target Model”. In an identification task thirty subjects heard each stimulus once in random order, and responded by choosing orthographic signs of Persian vowels. The identification of vowels depends on F1 and F2 (p<0.00001), but not on F3.  Our results highlight the importance of F1 and F2 in distinguishing Persian vowels, in agreement with those obtained in previous production experiments.