Acoustic and Auditory Characteristics of the Latvian Monophthong System 

This paper is intended to show the attempt of defining the acoustic and auditory targets of the Latvian monophthong system. To define the acoustic targets vowels produced in isolation are analyzed since such a production is the closest to the mental prototype. Different methods of interspeaker normalization are utilized in order to make productions by informants of different gender comparable. The auditory targets are registered in perception experiments using synthesized two-formant stimuli. The deviation of experimental results for the front vowels from the formant values predicted by formulas is explainable by the lack of rounded front vowels in Latvian. Certain acoustic characteristics of the Latvian monophthongs are employed for the phonological classification, and the use of particular IPA symbols is suggested comparing the acoustic data of Latvian monophthongs with those of Cardinal vowels.