VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...

Sylvia Moosmüller
From Figure 5.14 it can be seen that
� /i/ of "gib" is substantially shorter than /i/ of "gieß",
� F3 of "gib" is substantially lower than F3 of "gieß", overlapping with F2
of "gieß", and
� F2 of "gib" is also lower than F2 of "gieß".
In the case of "gieß", shift in cavity affiliation has taken place, in "gib", F2 is affiliated
with the front cavity, F3 with the back cavity. Therefore, although "gib" and "gieß" have
the same prosodic condition (sentence initially, primary stress), "gib" is substantially
shorter and has a wider constriction degree and/or shorter constriction length than
"gieß". This difference in quality does not depend on vowel duration, since, over all
instances of /i/, except for p127, no correlation could be found between vowel duration
(= number of periods) and either F3 or F2.
However, irrespective of cavity affiliation, in the stressed position the steep and
rapid transition movement described for a transition of an unpalatalised plosive towards
a palatal vowel could not be observed in the data, i.e. in any case the tongue was in the
palatal position at vowel onset, indicating that the tongue had been positioned at an
earlier point in time, either in the occlusion phase or after release. Tables 5.2 and 5.3
give the mean values of F2 and F3 of the first five frames from vowel onset in CV
sequences, where C is either a bilabial, an alveolar or a velar plosive:
Median F2 /bi, pi/ /di, ti/ /gi, ki/
sp180 2192 2566 2519
sp129 2189 2322 2368
sp082 2225 2324 2318
sp012 1998 2012 2066
sp126 2104 2078 2120
sp127 1947 2058 2097
Table 5.2: Median F2 values of the first five frames calculated from vowel onset in bilabial,
alveolar and velar context, stressed position, sentence reading task.
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