Hät, här, höt and hör - An Articulatory and Acoustic Study of the Swedish Vowels /ɛ:/ and /ø:/

Abstract: This thesis is concerned with the examination of the Swedish vowels /ɛ:/ and /ø:/ for qualitative differences between their pre-r allophones and the allophones occurring in other contexts. For this purpose, electromagnetic articulography and speech recordings were carried out on Swedish speakers from the two dialectal areas Malmö and Stockholm. Articulatory and acoustic analyses of the collected data show that the pre- r allophone of /ɛ:/ has a significantly more open vowel quality compared to its pre-t allophone in the dialects spoken around Malmö and Stockholm. Tongue position data suggest the same for the pre-r allophone of /ø:/, although this could not be supported by the results of the formant analysis. The data further suggest that there is a significantly larger difference in openness in the East Swedish dialects than in the Southern ones.