VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...

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Vowels in Standard Austrian German
continuously in the case of the fricative, instead of being stopped during the occlusion
phase, this process can be analyzed as assimilation to the surrounding vowels which
also allow the air to flow continuously. However, there is no evidence that a fricative in
the intervocalic position should be easier to produce than a plosive, or that assimilation
itself eases articulation. Therefore, what happens by means of this process is a
diminution of the figure-ground contrast (Dressler 1984, 1996), by signalling the
interactional situation (casual) or the prosodic position (weak) 8 . The application of
processes obeys semiotic (Dressler 1984, 1985, 1996) and socio-pragmatic (Dressler &
Moosmüller 1991) principles other than an alleged low cost principle from the side of
the speaker. Speech behaviour and variability, i.e. process application, are defined by
the interactional situation, which again is defined by the social norms set up by the
members of the speech community (see 1.3). The extent of the figure-ground contrast
lies in the definition of a given interactional situation and only marginally in the sphere
of influence of the speaker, who is allowed some individual latitude in process
application. A speaker will at first assess a given speech situation and then adequately
apply or suppress – as good as he or she can 9 – processes.
Output variability lies within the domain of postlexical process application or
suppression. On the postlexical level, the phonology of a language provides its users
with a set of phonological processes which have to be applied or suppressed, according
to the demands of a given situation. In the same way as prelexical processes, which
form the phoneme inventory of a given language, postlexical processes are universal in
character, in the sense that they are “a latent invariable of human language” (Dressler
1979: 259), but language specific in application. Postlexical processes are phonetically
motivated, in the sense that they either enlarge or diminish the figure-ground contrast in
8 Adequately, Dressler (1984) substituted the terms „fortition“ and „lenition“ by foregrounding
processes and backgrounding processes, respectively.
9 This restriction refers to the speaker’s ability to deal with different speech situations. A
speaker’s unwillingness to behave according to the norms of a given situation has to be
considered and included as well (e.g. covert prestige).