VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...

Sylvia Moosmüller
The same picture emerges for stressed positions in spontaneous speech (see Table 4.38):
Spont. i – ç y – Y e – E ë – ê u – ï o – O
Sp012 108–104 x –122* 90–95 97–87* 106–99* 91–92
Sp180 190–202 185–196 162–139 149*–x 198–181 166–162
Sp082 170–203 234–290* 189–178 197*–x 209–177* 186–178
Sp129 186–178 188–201* 154–153 157–192* 182–181 154–155
Sp126 121–118 x –114* 109–117 x –114* 120–116 110–115
Sp127 123–120 110–131 114–111 113*– x 123–128 119–114
Table 4.37: Mean F0 values of all vowels in stressed positions in spontaneous speech. Vowels
are grouped in pairs. Within each pair, the value to the left represents the
[+constricted] vowel and the value to the right the [–constricted] vowel.
Statistically significant differences within each pair (p < 0.05) are marked in bold.
Where the t-value is negative, the pair is additionally in italics. The asterisk
indicates that no t-tests could been performed.
Tables 4.36 and 4.37 show that statistically significant differences occur only
sporadically, if at all. In unstressed positions, the discriminative power of F0 with
respect to constriction degree is not any better. Therefore, in Standard Austrian German,
F0 does not depend on tongue height.
However, another grouping can be filtered out from these results, and this
grouping has to do rather with constriction location rather than with constriction degree.
In the front region, the pre-palatal vowels are kept apart from the mid-palatal vowels. In
the back region, the pharyngeal vowels are kept apart from the velar vowels. The
pharyngeal vowels might be further differentiated, insofar as the /A/ – vowels might
show up lower F0 values than the /o/ – vowels.
A statistically significant difference between the upper and the lower pharyngeal
vowels (in the sense that the lower pharyngeal vowels expose a lower F0 than the upper
pharyngeal vowels) is found in the task of reading logatomes by both speakers, in
stressed positions in the task of reading sentences by speakers sp012, sp180, sp127, and
in unstressed positions in the task of reading sentences by all speakers. In spontaneous
speech, this distinction is displayed in both stressed and unstressed positions by all
speakers.
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