Microprosodic aspects of vowel dynamics-an acoustic study of French, English and Czech

The article gives an account of microdynamic behavior of vowels in three languages. The microdynamic profile, defined as a set of 10 normalized values measured at 10 equidistant points for each sound, shows systematic relations with the articulatory properties of the sound and its immediate context, but also with its duration and macrointensity. No systematic correlation with fundamental frequency was found. Apart from its theoretical value, research on microintensity can find a successful outlet in speech synthesis.