Abstract Previous researchers differ on what the feature specifications of Dagbani vowels are, what the vowel inventory is, which vowels are contrastive and how phonological processes affect the surface realisation of Dagbani vowels. This study provides experimental results on Dagbani vowel features from acoustic and perceptual psycholinguistic inquiries with the goal of better defining the vowel features and inventory. Basic formant frequencies of the vowels in different phonological contexts support the view that (1) vowels of all height specifications (including /a/) have [ATR] variants; (2) /i/ and /ɨ/ neutralise in harmonic contexts; and (3) mid vowels surface as low in non-final positions. Results of a perceptual psycholinguistic investigation of the neutralisation between mid and low vowels also show that in certain contexts, speakers are unable to perceive any distinction between different words with these vowels. The paper discusses the implications of these results on the Dagbani vowel inventory, evaluating the merits of different possible approaches in the process.

中文翻译：

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对达格巴尼元音中和的语音查询

摘要以前的研究人员在Dagbani元音的特征规格，元音清单是什么，哪些元音是对比的以及语音过程如何影响Dagbani元音的表面实现方面有所不同。这项研究从声学和知觉心理语言学查询中提供了关于Dagbani元音特征的实验结果，目的是更好地定义元音特征和清单。不同语音环境中元音的基本共振峰频率支持以下观点：（1）所有高度规格（包括/ a /）的元音都有[ATR]变体；（2）/ i /和/ɨ/在谐波情况下中和；（3）在非最终位置，中元音表面较低。对中低位元音之间的中和进行感知性心理语言学研究的结果还表明，在某些情况下，说话者无法感知这些元音在不同单词之间的区别。本文讨论了这些结果对Dagbani元音清单的影响，评估了此过程中各种可能方法的优点。