Abstract

The following article is an afterthought about a methodological problem of the experimental phonetics: the selection and representativeness of the samples used in the acoustic and perceptive investigation. The distinction here among data of the corpus, informants and subjects of the investigation is done. Acoustic phonetics deals with corpora of data obtained from informers, while in perceptive phonetics the judgments of the subjects about certain reactive patterns are analyzed. According to the specific bibliography and regarding to the works reviewed, it is therefore concluded that there is not agreement among authors on this matter and a preference towards small samples is observed, thus a relativization of this concept is proposed plus an adjustment to the homogenization of patterns.