Fig. 6.

Experiment 2a. a Temporal representation of the F₁ and F₂ transitions of eight of the ten tokens used in the [aV₂a] experiment where only two tokens completed the transition to the vowel [y]. The other six had their transitions progressively cut back, i.e. their formant frequencies returned toward those of [a] after reaching various V₂ endpoint vowels on the trajectory. The temporal representations of F₃ is also shown (dotted line) for the case in which the [y] target is reached. b F₁-F₂ plane representation of the [aya] transition for the eight tokens shown above. Note that, in contrast to the [iai] trajectory (fig. 2c), the [aya] trajectory is curved. c Results (average and standard deviation) of experiment 2a: Percent /aya/ (filled diamonds), /aia/ (squares), /ala/ (triangles) responses as a function of the duration of [y] or the transition cutback point (i.e. the point of return to [a]) where 0 ms refers to the condition in which the vowel [y] is reached but the transition immediately returns toward [a]. Note that 100% /y/ responses were obtained only for the 30-ms ‘positive cutback’ condition, i.e. for the condition in which there was a 30-ms steady-state [y] before the transition actually took a turn back to [a]. Also, note that the intersubject variability is much larger than the one observed in the subtests of experiment 1.