VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...

Sylvia Moosmüller
4.4.3. The velar vowels
Ideally, the /u/ – vowels are discerned by constriction degree and lip protrusion (Wood
1975b). However, for German, Valaczkai (1998) found no differences in the degree of
lip protrusion between /u/ and /ï/, but reports a slightly higher degree of lip opening and
a higher degree of constriction for the unconstricted vowel /ï/. As regards tongue-palate
distance, Pouplier et al. (2004) found a sufficient difference (> 1 mm) only for one
subject out of three. A constriction in the velar region leads to a lowering of F2 and a
rising of F3 (Fant 2004: 43). Lip protrusion would lower all three formants. Therefore,
an articulatory configuration which bases the opposition on the degree of constriction
would lead to a higher F1, a higher F2, and a lower F3 for the unconstricted vowel /ï/,
whereas a configuration which bases the opposition on lip protrusion would lead to a
higher F1, F2, and F3 for the unconstricted vowel /ï/. The two spectra presented in
Figures 4.22 and 4.23 rather point to a difference in lip protrusion, since F2 and F3 are
both higher for /ï/ than for /u/.
Figure 4.22: Average spectrum of the vowel /u/ taken from the logatome “pube”, speaker sp012.
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