Analysis of Hungarian Vowel Formants – Lessons From 60 Years of Research

Markó, Alexandra and Deme, Andrea and Juhász, Kornélia (2026) Analysis of Hungarian Vowel Formants – Lessons From 60 Years of Research. In: Proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on the History of Speech Communication Research. TUD press. (In Press)

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Abstract

The study presents a meta-analysis of acoustic phonetic research of the vowel in-ventory of standard Hungarian from 1965 to the present day. The focus is directed to the studies on the first two formant frequencies (F1 and F2) of all vowel quali-ties. By analyzing eight key literature sources—comprising both foundational text-books and specialized studies—the paper tracks the methodological shift from manual calculations and spectrographic printouts to modern automated digital pro-cessing. The review identifies significant discrepancies among the sources, which are attributed to variations in speech styles used as linguistic material in these stud-ies (reading aloud vs. spontaneous speech), characteristics of speakers involved as participants (professional announcers vs. “civilians”), and method of formant ex-traction (manual vs. automated). Furthermore, the analysis highlights errors in da-tasets, particularly regarding the second formant in female speech. The findings suggest that due to a lack of methodological transparency and consistency, dia-chronic comparison of these datasets remains scientifically problematic. The paper concludes by identifying a significant gap in current Hungarian phonetics: the lack of a comprehensive, comparable acoustic database for the contemporary vowel in-ventory across genders and speech styles.

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