Evidence of auditory control during vowel production in continuous speech

A histogram of the minimum value of F/sub 2/-F/sub 1/ for /a/ from TIMIT (limited to alveolar consonantal context), shows a maximum at 3-3.5 Bark and clear asymmetry. This is interpreted as evidence of auditory perceptual control of /a/ during continuous speech. Trajectories of individual vowel tokens of /a/ in other contexts in F/sub 1//F/sub 2/ space also show striking changes at this line, which coincides with the Chistovich critical distance between formants.