VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...

Sylvia Moosmüller
Figure 5.21: Spectrogram of the sequence ['b5o:dn1] from "Boden" (floor), speaker sp180,
sentence reading task. Left cursor positioned during the burst of the bilabial
plosive, right cursor at vowel onset of /o/. 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.
It can be seen from Figure 5.21 that F2 still drops at vowel onset, indicating that lip
protrusion is not yet accomplished at vowel onset, whereas the tongue body is most
probably already in its position, as can be inferred from a comparison with F2 values for
less protruded back vowels. In the case of /pOst/ "Post" (post office), taken from the
same speaker, F2 has a value of 1062 Hz at vowel onset, this makes a difference of 135
Hz, which can be attributed mostly to lip protrusion. In Figure 5.21 F2, from vowel
onset onwards falls another 150 Hz until the final position of F2 is reached. However, it
can as well be the case that the spectral peak associated with F2 already has a
sufficiently low value, so that it can be inferred that both tongue body backening and lip
protrusion take place during the occlusion.
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