Acoustic characteristics of vowel reduction in the Spanish of Bogota (Colombia)

This article examines phonetic vowel reduction in the Spanish of Bogota(Colombia). The main objective is to compare the influence of speech condition(read vs. unread speech), stress and vowel type (/i, e, a, o, u/) on duration, F1 andF2 frequencies, and the euclidian distance. Results show that unstressed vowels /e,o, u/ are shorter and have a lower first formant in unread speech than stressedvowels produced in read speech. /a/ is variably realized as an open vowel [a], acentral near-open vowel [ɐ] or a schwa [ә]. The stressed vowels /a/ and /o/ areslightly backed, and the stressed /e/ and /u/ are slightly fronted. The high vowel /i/remains somewhat stable in the experimental conditions studied.