VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...

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Vowels in Standard Austrian German
spectrogram window, left upper panel: waveform zoom window, right upper panel:
amplitude spectrum window.
In both cases, the /i:/ shows a downward drift of the formant frequencies, which can not
be neglected. It should be noted that the /i/s differ in quality; F2 of "Liebe" (love)
exceeds 3000 Hz and is located near F4, whereas in "lieber" (like something better), the
maximum value of F3 is 2880 Hz. F2 exposes no differences. This difference in vowel
quality is attributable to differences in stress (see 6.6.2). This downward drift of formant
frequencies is not present in a velar context. Both in the sequence /çgE/ from "winzige"
(tiny: PL; Figure 5.7) and in the sequence /i:gÇ/ from "Tiger" (tiger; Figure 5.8) F2 and
F3 drive towards convergence as the velar constriction or occlusion is reached at the
offset of the vowel.
Figure 5.7: Spectrogram of the sequence /çgE/ from "winzige" (tiny: PL), speaker sp082,
sentence reading task. Left cursor positioned at vowel offset, right cursor at vowel
onset. Respective formant frequency values can be read from the panel below.
Bottom panel: waveform window, next panel from bottom: spectrogram window,
left upper panel: waveform zoom window, right upper panel: amplitude spectrum
window.