VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...

Sylvia Moosmüller
F2, the correlate of lip protrusion and constriction degree, produces statistically
significant differences in the unstressed position in the sentence reading task for at least
three speakers. In the same way, F1 is only distinctive for three speakers in unstressed
positions.
Since for most speakers, no statistical results are available for spontaneous
speech, whether the /y/ – /Y/ pair is tending towards neutralization or not cannot ultima-
tely be evaluated. A tentative assumption is that F3 might take over the distinctive role
of F2 in less formal or weak positions (see e.g. the results of sp127 in “Rus” and of
sp180 in “Ss”). Such a change across speaking tasks, situations and prosodic positions
also implies a change in the articulatory settings, and consequently in the articulatory
features. In other words, the feature [±constricted] would be replaced by a feature
larynx height. This change results from the very subtle interplay of degree of lip
protrusion with accompanying degree of larynx lowering, degree of lip aperture, and
degree of constriction. Since, however, tongue-palate distance is still relevant in the
unstressed position of the sentence reading task for at least three speakers, the feature
[±constricted] is maintained.
4.4.2. The mid-palatal vowels
If the tongue forms a constriction in the mid-palatal region, F2 is a natural frequency of
the front cavity, and, therefore, relatively high, and F3 is a natural frequency of the back
cavity and, consequently, substantially lower than for /i/ (see Figure 4.16).
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