VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...

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Vowels in Standard Austrian German
It can be read from Figure 4.19 that, with the exception of speaker sp082, all speakers
differentiate /e/ – /ç/ at least with one formant in spontaneous speech in the stressed
position. These results hold also for the logatome reading task. Therefore, in Standard
Austrian German, these two vowels are clearly kept apart. It is interesting, however, that
for unstressed positions in the sentence reading task, all speakers discriminate the two
vowels by all three formants, and for unstressed positions in spontaneous speech, five
speakers discriminate the two vowels by means of all three formants, and one speaker
(sp082) by means of F2 and F3. This means that, contrary to expectations and contrary
to the results presented so far, the discriminatory power is stronger in unstressed
positions. Although no explanation can be presented for this behaviour, it clearly shows,
at least, that /e/ is by no means the cognate of /ç/.
For the mid-palatal vowel /ë/, moderate lip protrusion with compensatory larynx
lowering leads to an approximation of F2 and F3. Contrary to /y/, the two peaks could,
however, be dissolved in most cases (see Figure 4.20).
Figure 4.20: Average spectrum of the vowel /ë/ taken from the logatome “pöbe”, speaker sp012.
Following the articulatory description given in Valaczkai (1998), the unconstricted /ê/
is – as compared to its constricted cognate – produced with a higher degree of lip
opening (although some overlap is reported), an approximately equal degree of lip
protrusion, and a wider constriction degree 79 , leading to a higher coupling of the front
79 In Pouplier et al. (2004), no tongue-palate distances for the constricted vowel /ë/ are
given.