VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...

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Vowels in Standard Austrian German
phoneme, formed by either phonological or phonetic processes, to the next. The
processes are language specific and, in some cases, serve to smooth away coarticulation
– as could be seen in the case of palatalization. The sequence of a plosive and a
following palatal vowel would cause a very steep and rapid transition, this transition is
smoothed away by enlarging the contact area of the plosive preceding a palatal vowel.
Whilst in Austrian German, this process only affects the neighbouring segment, in
another language this process might be carried over into the transconsonantal vowel as
well. In Russian, on the other hand, unpalatalised consonants are not palatalised when
preceding a palatal vowel, it is – on the contrary – the palatal vowel that changes its
quality in unpalatalised context (see Moosmüller 2007a for a discussion). Whether a
given process is applied or not and the specific timing of this process in the case of
application is responsible, among other things, for what is commonly termed as the
"accent" of a given language or variety.