VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...

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Vowels in Standard Austrian German
Does the trough manifest itself acoustically? Recasens at al. (1997), in analyzing
five Catalan speakers, compared EPG data with F2. In /ipi/ sequences, the Qp 98 effects
for the bilabial /p/ were very small and short, i.e. hardly any tongue displacement could
be observed. F2 and F3, however, exposed a long and large change. These changes in
formant frequencies could, since a trough was missing, be attributed to lip closure for
/p/ (1997: 550). Vazquez-Alvarez (2005) correlated ultrasound data with F2 in /ipi/
sequences. Although statistically significant tongue body displacements could be
proved, correlations with F2 were poor, especially in the C-V2 sequence. The reason
might be that tongue lowering takes place during the closure period; it starts when the
closure is complete and at the onset of V2 the tongue is in its target position. For this
reason, neither the offset of V1 nor the onset of V2 is affected by a possible tongue
lowering.
Therefore, the downward movement of formant frequencies at vowel offset of V1
preceding a bilabial plosive can be attributed to the closure of the lips (see Figure 5.5).
98 “Qp stands for the percentage of contact activation over the palatal zone, i.e., number of
activated palatal electrodes/total number of palatal electrodes.” (Recasens et al. 1997:
547)