• Corpus ID: 44436946

Historical Development of Phonetic Vowel Systems - The Last 400 Years

@inproceedings{Pfitzinger2011HistoricalDO,
  title={Historical Development of Phonetic Vowel Systems - The Last 400 Years},
  author={Hartmut R. Pfitzinger and Oliver Niebuhr},
  booktitle={International Congress of Phonetic Sciences},
  year={2011}
}

• H. Pfitzinger, O. Niebuhr
• Published in
  International Congress of…
  2011
• Linguistics, Physics

This paper reviews the historical development of phonetic vowel systems from 1617 to 2005. In times where the vowel system of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is the de facto standard in phonetic sciences it is important to learn more about predecessors and alternative considerations of how vowel systems could be organized. This concerns matters of transcriptions, ideas on parameters of vowel production as well as the acoustics of vowel sounds and the relation between acoustics and perceived vowel quality. The concepts of such renowned historical personalities as Robinson, Wallis, Reyher, Hellwag, von Kempelen, Forchhammer, and Jones will be reviewed and critically discussed.