VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...

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Vowels in Standard Austrian German
A similar pattern can be observed in where C1 is a velar plosive: the less
protruded vowels /O, ï/ have a F2 value of approximately 1050 Hz at vowel onset, with
hardly any movement from release until vowel onset. In the case where a protruded
vowel follows a velar plosive, it can be the case that F2 exposes either a sufficiently low
value at release that it can be inferred that the tongue body is already in a back position
for the velar closure (see Figure 5.22), or a drop in F2 can be observed at vowel onset.
Figure 5.22: Spectrogram of the sequence /g5otE/ from "Gote" (goth), speaker sp180, sentence
reading task. Left cursor positioned during the first release of the velar 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.
Figure 5.22 shows the sequence [g5o:tE] "Gote" (goth); it can be seen that with a spectral
peak at 730 Hz within the first burst, F2 is already sufficiently low. Consequently, no
movement of F2 can be observed either during release or during the first two thirds of
the vowel. Only when the tongue body is fronted to form an alveolar closure for /t/,