Evaluating normalization accounts against the dense vowel space of Central Swedish

Talkers vary in the phonetic realization of their vowels. One influential hypothesis holds that listeners overcome this inter-talker variability through pre-linguistic auditory mechanisms normalize acoustic or cues form input to speech recognition. Dozens competing normalization accounts exist—including both specific vowel perception and general purpose can be applied any type cue. We add cross-linguistic literature on matter by comparing against a new phonetically annotated database Swedish, language with particularly dense inventory 21 vowels differing quality quantity. evaluate how they differ predicted consequences for perception. The results indicate best performing either center standardize formants talker. study also suggests perform as well vowel-specific accounts, operates temporal spectral domains.