VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...

Sylvia Moosmüller
phoneme combinations is language-specific. Therefore, what is difficult in one language
need not be difficult in another one. For example, Tashlhiyt Berber exposes sequences
of up to eight voiceless obstruents, as in “tftktstt” (you sprained it – fem, Ridouane
2002), a sequence which is not allowed in Germanic languages. Consequently, it is not
justified to speak of processes as answers to phonetic difficulties, unless one defines a
phonetic difficulty as language-specific. Language-specific phonetic difficulties do not
exist; any child can learn any language as his or her mother tongue. Therefore, it is
better to speak of language-specific preferences, which, once acquired, pose no
difficulties on the speaker of the respective language. On the postlexical level,
“difficulties” might occur when, superficially, combinations of sounds turn up which
are excluded by prelexical processes in the given language, e.g. voiced obstruent +
voiceless pause, leading to an assimilation of the voiced obstruent to the pause in
German (better known as final devoicing), or voiceless plosive + voiced fricative, a
sequence which is caused by the reduction of “that is all” 13 to “that’s all” in English,
leading to the devoicing of /z/. Again, any language might respond differently to a
sequence which is excluded on the prelexical level. A speaker of Albanian might rather
voice the plosive than devoice the fricative in the sequence “that’s all”. The majority of
postlexical processes are responses to the requirements of the interactional situation
(e.g. the consecutive steps of nasal assimilation and consonant deletion in Standard
Austrian German: /hA:bEn/ 14 � [hA:bm1] � [hAbm1] � [hAm1] � [hAm] � [Çm] depend
on the degree of formality of the speech situation and the prosodic strength). Therefore,
one should be very cautious in alleging ease of articulation or better pronounceability in
a process, where, in most cases, postlexical processes serve figure-ground principles
determined by the interactional situation. The speaker 15 , as long as he or she is
13 Example from Donegan & Stampe 1979.
14 The sequence bilabial plosive and alveolar nasal consonant is excluded in Standard
Austrian German, therefore, the intermediate step *[hA:bn1], resulting from vowel
deletion, is no observable surface realization.
15 This holds, of course, only for speakers with no speech or hearing disorders and for
children who have completed the acquisition of their language.
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