VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...
VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...
VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...
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137<br />
Vowels in Standard Austrian German<br />
The articulators have to fulfill certain requirements to produce a given sequence, and<br />
this process of production is the subject of articulatory phonetics. Yet, Tabain's<br />
conclusion positions the role of acoustic phonetics:<br />
"Although the chapter may initially seem like a "downer" after so many mainstream<br />
articulatory and even theoretical chapters, it is in fact an excellent reminder that the study of<br />
coarticulation is ultimately meaningless unless it can be related to an acoustic output, and<br />
hence to the perception of the speech signal." (Tabain 2001)<br />
The crucial point in the discussion whether acoustic phonetics can contribute something<br />
to the study of coarticulation is, however, the fact that the results of articulatory phone-<br />
tics and acoustic analyses cannot be directly compared. To give a simple example: in a<br />
sequence V1CV2, where C is a bilabial plosive, the tongue is said to be free to move<br />
from V1 to V2, and at the point of release, the tongue is already in the position for V2.<br />
This is impressively shown by the x-ray motion films produced by Wood (1996): in the<br />
sequence /o#pă/ from the Bulgarian utterance "deteto xodi po pătishtata" ("The child<br />
was walking along the path") the uvular tongue body withdrawal of /o/ and the<br />
pharyngeal tongue body approach for /ă/ happen during the occlusion phase of the<br />
bilabial plosive (Wood 1996: 156, Figure 9). Another example is drawn from English,<br />
in which the tongue keeps the position of the vowel [é] and the lips are close for [m],<br />
while the velum is raised for [p] in the utterance "camping" (Kent 1983: 68). From an<br />
articulatory point of view, the mandible and tongue can work independently from one<br />
another to a large extent and two vowels interrupted by a labial consonant rather<br />
perform a diphthongal lingual movement. For this reason, some researchers restrict their<br />
analyses on vowel to vowel coarticulation on sequences in which the consonant(s) are<br />
bilabial (e.g. Manuel 1990, Magen 1997, Cho 2004) 97 .<br />
"The first and second consonants (C1, C2) were always /b/, whose articulation is known to<br />
interfere minimally with the vocalic lingual articulation." (Cho 2004: 146)<br />
However, diphthongal tongue movement during a bilabial closure is not undisputed. So-<br />
called troughs (deactivation of the tongue musculature during the bilabial closure) in<br />
97 Acoustic analyses have been performed by Manuel (1990) and Magen (1997). The study<br />
performed by Cho (2004) is an articulatory one.