VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...
VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...
VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...
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125<br />
Vowels in Standard Austrian German<br />
they also found speaker-specific differences among subjects as concerns time-locked vs.<br />
look ahead strategies 88 . Perkell & Matthies (1992), based on previous research,<br />
proposed a hybrid model, which was a compromise of the former two. This hybrid<br />
model is based on the observation that the lip-protrusion gesture comprises two<br />
components, a low-velocity initial phase and a more rapid and prominent second<br />
phase 89 . As concerns the end of component 2, which is temporally related to the<br />
acoustic onset of /u/, they found considerable variation among their subjects (speakers<br />
of American English) in the shape and timing of /u/ protrusion trajectories.<br />
"Subject 1 an 4 appear to always end protrusion near the /u/ onset, whereas this constraint<br />
seems to be slightly less rigid for subject 3 and weakest for subject 2, whose normal<br />
speaking rate was faster than the other three." (Perkell & Matthies 1992: 2923)<br />
This observation of two components in the lip protrusion gesture touches a further<br />
aspect, namely, differentiating coarticulation from processes. A phonological aspect of<br />
interpreting differences in lip protrusion has been put forward by Boyce (1990) on her<br />
analysis of the "trough" – effect in Turkish and English. Several studies on English,<br />
Swedish, Spanish and French (McAllister 1978, Gay 1978, Engstrand 1981, Perkell<br />
1986, all cited in Boyce 1990) report that, for sequences of two rounded vowels with<br />
intermediate consonants, EMG recordings show a diminution of rounding during the<br />
consonant. In her analysis, Boyce (1990) found clear differences between the languages<br />
Turkish and English: Turkish speakers showed a consistent plateaulike pattern of<br />
movement, whereas the English speakers exhibited the trough pattern. Boyce concludes:<br />
"The complexity of this interpretation lies in the conclusion that different languages may<br />
employ different articulatory strategies. In some sense, this is to be expected, since the<br />
combination of phonology, lexicon, and syntax in different languages may impose entirely<br />
different challenges to articulatory efficiency. In fact, the hypothesis behind this comparison<br />
of Turkish and English was the notion that, in contrast to English, Turkish provides ideal<br />
conditions for articulatory look-ahead. [...] The finding that current models of coarticulation<br />
are insufficient to account for language diversity indicates how difficult it may be to<br />
penetrate to the universal level of speech production." (Boyce 1990: 2593f).<br />
88<br />
See Farnetani (1997) and Farnetani & Recasens (1999) for an overview of coarticulation<br />
models.<br />
89<br />
Similar results have been obtained by Benguerel et al. (1977) and Al-Bamerni & Bladon<br />
(1982) for nasalization.