Аннотация:The study examines phonological and phonetic properties of vowel [ATR]in Akebu (Kwa). The sum of descriptive evidence, including vowelharmony, vowel distribution in non-harmonising contexts, vowelreduction, and typological and etymological considerations indicates arare vowel inventory with the [ATR] contrast in front/back vowels but aheight contrast in the three redundantly [-ATR] central vowels /ᵻ, ə, a/.This analysis was checked against four common acoustic metrics of[ATR]: F1 and F2 frequencies, spectral slope, and F1 bandwidth size(B1). As expected, the results on the last three metrics were variableacross speakers and vowel types and, therefore, inconclusive. Theresults on F1 were consistent but did not distinguish between [ATR] andvowel height. Two results still suggested the [-ATR] value of centralvowels: the latter occupied the same belt of F1 frequencies and thesame position of the observed over predicted B1 values as front/back [-ATR] vowels.