VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...

Sylvia Moosmüller
constricted cognate. Consequently, the spectral peaks of F2 and F3 are clearly kept apart
in unconstricted /Y/ (see Figure 4.15).
Figure 4.15: Average spectrum of the vowel /Y/ taken from the logatome “pübbe”, speaker
sp012.
Tongue-palate distance neutralization between the [±constricted] pre-palatal pair /y/ –
/Y/ occurred only for one subject in Pouplier et al. (2004). However, the small
differences in lip configuration, and most probably in complementary larynx lowering,
might easily lead to a neutralization as soon as constriction is widened in less formal
speech situations or speaking tasks. Unfortunately, in spontaneous speech, all speakers
produced either no or too few items for making a statistical comparison reasonable with
the exception of speaker sp180 in spontaneous speech in the stressed position.
Therefore, in Tables 4.15 – 4.17, under the heading “Ss” and “Sus”, only the mean
values are noted (except for sp180, Ss), marked with an asterisk, indicating that no t-test
has been performed.
F1 L L Rs Rs Rus Rus. Ss Ss Sus Sus
Sp012 265 290 305 352 315 372 – – – –
Sp180 246 297 304 353 355 328 322 286 318* 358*
Sp082 – – 378 416 388 451 438* 378* 418* –
Sp129 – – 337 407 386 396 383* 406* 374* –
Sp126 – – 291 317 312 317 – 316* 337* 317*
Sp127 – – 252 336 312 339 345* 334* 350* 344*
Table 4.15: Mean F1 values of /y/ and /Y/ over all speaking tasks. Within each task, the value
to the left represents the vowel /y/, the value to the right the vowel /Y/. Statistically
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