VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...

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Vowels in Standard Austrian German
Figure 5.15 shows the movements of the last five frames of F2 before the vowel offset
of /u/, the spectral peaks associated with F2 of the bilabial plosive and the movements
of the first five frames of F2 of V2, which is either a back vowel /A/ or a front vowel /ç/.
It can be seen that the offset of /u/ shows no traces of palatalization. The spectral peaks
of the bursts show low F2 values (1206 and 1292 Hz) when followed by a back vowel,
the burst spectra of the bilabial plosive differ, however, when followed by a front
vowel. In one case the peak associated with F2 is as low as when followed by a back
vowel (1378 Hz); in the other case the spectral peak is much higher (1809 Hz). It has to
be added that in the case where the spectral peak of the plosive is low, VOT is slightly
longer than in the case with a high value (18 ms vs. 13 ms). These two instances of the
sequence /du'bç/ show that the tongue is put into position either at plosive release or in
the occlusion phase before. Moreover, they also point to the role of VOT: a longer VOT
gives the possibility to configure the vowel after release. From the acoustic inspection,
however, the transconsonantal vowel V1 is not palatalised in any instance.
The last five frames of F2 before vowel offset have been submitted to a one-tailed
t-Test in order to test whether /u/ is palatalised when followed by a transconsonantal
front vowel. In the case of palatalization, the final frames of F2 should show a
substantial rise when the tongue is moved from a velar to a palatal location. Table 5.4
gives the mean values of F2 for the final five frames followed by a transconsonantal
back or front vowel and the results of the t-Test:
F2 /u/ V2 [+back] V2 [+front] t P
sp180 1520.421 1490.076 0.75 0.22
sp129 1233.893 1295.815 1.2 0.12
sp082 1363.959 1379.48 0.52 0.30
sp012 1214.358 1186.268 0.64 0.26
sp126 1180.692 1178.963 0.07 0.47
sp127 1272.421 1298.757 2.42 0.01
Table 5.4: Mean F2 values of the last five frames calculated before vowel offset of /u/
followed by transcontonantal V2, which is either a front or a back vowel, sentence
reading task. t value and p from one-tailed t-Test.