VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...

Sylvia Moosmüller
starts at plosive release. Whether it is accomplished at vowel onset or not depends on
the amount of time that lies between plosive release and vowel onset. These findings are
in accordance with results on perception tests which show that in CV sequences, where
V is a rounded vowel, lip protrusion has to start at plosive release in order to guarantee
the correct perception of the plosive (Maeda 1999). Vaxelaire et al. (2003) found out
that, although lip protrusion traverses the preceding plosive in French, the audible part
of lip protrusion is located after plosive release, in the VOT span.
In Standard Austrian German, therefore, lip protrusion is fixed with respect to
start and duration and does not exhibit the high variability shown for other languages.
Mean F2 values and F2 values at vowel offsets of transconsonantal /i/ in /i#CV2/, where
V2 is a back vowel, are lower (for some speakers even statistically significantly) than in
/i#CV2/ sequences, where V2 is a front vowel (similar results have been obtained by
Manuel 1990 and Magen 1997). However, these lower values are triggered by the
spectral shape of the intervocalic consonant rather than by lip protrusion, since the
spectral shape of the burst of the plosive differs in dependence on the following vowel:
the burst spectrum of /Ci/ sequences causes a higher spectral peak associated with F2
than /Cu/ or /Co/ sequences (Fant 1970, see also 5.2.). The following spectrograms will
illustrate this interpretation. Figure 5.2 shows the spectrogram of the sequence /i#ti/
from the utterance "die Tiger" (the tigers), Figure 5.3 the spectrogram of the sequence
/i#to/ from the utterance "die tote" (the dead: ADJ), for a female speaker.
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