Comparison of the formant spaces of retroflexed and nonretroflexed vowels

An experiment was designed to compare the formant 1 (F1) and formant 2 (F2) frequency movements of vowels next to /r/ with the same vowels next to other consonants. The data for this experiment were based on formant trajectories computed by the linear prediction coefficient (LPC) technique on a digital computer. The results indicate that with the exception of /i/ the effect of initial /r/ on the following syllable nuclei could be considered minimal. The effect of final /r/ on the syllable nuclei preceding it is appreciable. Algorithms are postulated to define a retroflexed vowel space for vowels preceding /r/ in terms of the nonretroflexed vowel space.