VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...
VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...
VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...
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Sylvia Moosmüller<br />
6. Vowel and Vowel Variability<br />
The discovery of low-level variability as put forward by Menzerath & de Lacerda<br />
(1933) and Menzerath (1935) caused some consternation among the then phoneticians,<br />
“since it had often been assumed that the same sound would be articulated in the same<br />
way irrespective of its context” (Löfqvist 1997: 407). Since then,<br />
“the overarching challenge was to explain the strong context-dependence and variability of<br />
acoustic phonetic patterns. Major handbooks (Hardcastle & Laver 1997) and review chapters<br />
(Farnetani 1997, Farnetani & Recasens 1999, Kent, Adams & Turner 1996, Löfqvist 1997)<br />
converge in identifying coarticulation as a major contributor to the mismatch between the<br />
dynamic and the linguistic perspectives of speech.” (Lindblom 2004: B-86)<br />
The mismatch, however, lies much deeper than in the observation of variability in<br />
speech 113 . It lies in the conception of what is part of a grammar and what is not, and it<br />
lies in the unfortunate coincidence of the emergence of phonological theories which<br />
ascribed phonetic observations to performance and thus considered them irrelevant for<br />
linguistic investigation 114 . This incompatibility of phonology within generative<br />
frameworks and phonetics led to the strict rejection of phonology in the Eighties<br />
(Löfqvist 1986, Fant 1986):<br />
“The supposedly happy marriage between phonology and phonetics has its inherent<br />
shortcomings and some of us like Peter Ladefoged might argue for a respectful divorce. […]<br />
To me, phonetics is the stable partner of the marriage, while phonology is promiscuous in its<br />
experimenting with widely different frameworks and choice of features for describing one<br />
and the same inherent phenomenon.” (Fant 1986: 481)<br />
Up to the present, the situation has not much changed. Mainstream phonological<br />
theories like, e.g., Optimality Theory, which incorporate phonetic knowledge and give<br />
elegant descriptions, are, however, of little help when addressing the main questions in<br />
phonetic theory (see Hurch 1998). While non-mainstream theories are seldom absorbed<br />
113<br />
It strikes as somehow strange to blame an observation for the incompatability between<br />
theories or theorists.<br />
114<br />
To name just a few, see Dressler 1984, 1985, 1996, Hurch & Rhodes 1996, Donegan<br />
2002 for a profound critique on phonological theories within generative frameworks.<br />
172