VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...

Sylvia Moosmüller
languages analyzed. Solé & Ohala (1991) found a different distribution of temporal
patterns of nasalization, in American English the extent of nasalization on the preceding
vowel was variable according to duration, while in Spanish it remained constant. Cohn
(1993) demonstrated that in Sundanese, nasal airflow patterns have plateau-like shapes
similar to those observed in French, whereas English exhibits rather smooth, rapid
contours.
For Italian, Farnetani (1986, cited in Farnetani 1997) could show that the spread
of nasalization depends also on the quality of the vowel. In the sequence /'ana/ the
opening of the velopharyngeal port happens at the acoustic onset of the initial /a/ and
lasts until the end of the final /a/. In the sequence /'ini/, only a slight anticipation of
velopharyngeal opening could be observed during the initial /i/, whereas the port
remained open throughout the final /i/ (Farnetani 1997: 376).
Similar results have been obtained for anticipatory lip protrusion (see Farnetani
1999 for an overview). Daniloff & Moll (1968) observed lip protrusion over four
consonants preceding the vowel. Lubker (1981) suggested a maximum time of
approximately 600 ms for anticipatory lip protrusion. Vaxelaire et al. (2003) found that
in /atu/ and /aku/ sequences, lip rounding and tongue dorsum constriction, both
associated with the production of the vowel /u/, traverse the intervocalic consonant and
may even affect late configurations of the vowel /a/. In a further extended study, Roy et
al. (2003) could show for V1CV2 sequences spoken by two French subjects, where V1 is
unrounded, V2 is rounded and the intervocalic consonant either an alveolar or a velar
plosive, that anticipatory jaw, labial and lingual gestures associated with the production
of V2 are all initiated before intervocalic consonant contact and that /u/ anticipatory
vocalic gestures have a longer extent in the /a/ context than in the /i/ context. Lubker &
Gay (1982) not only found language-specific differences:
"..., in general, speakers of Swedish exhibit more extensive movement toward protrusion,
produce more accurate target or goal positions, and either begin the movement toward those
positions earlier or in relation to the time available to them than do the speakers of American
English in this experiment." (Lubker & Gay 1982: 444),
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