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A couple of points should be noted with regard to these results. First, in general
terms, the vowels are evenly distributed throughout the vowel space, in line with
Crothers’ (1978) observation that “[T]he vowel phonemes of a language tend to disperse
evenly in the available phonetic space” (p. 125). However, there is one gap in the region
where we would expect the vowel [-. In other words, the lack of [- is not
just phonological, but it is indeed a phonetic phenomenon in Mono. The average
American English values of F1 and F2 for male speakers are 550 Hz and 1770 Hz,
respectively (Ladefoged 1982: 176). At this point in the chart in Figure 8.29, there is a
noticeable gap in the data. This figure is repeated in Figure 8.32 with the position of [-]
indicated. This occurs halfway between the regions where A and = are attested.
Figure 8.32: Plot of F1 vs. F2 (Speaker K) with location of
American English vowels -, 3, and ) indicated.
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