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 />
lowering or lip protrusion), which are language, variety, or even speaker specific, and,<br />
consequently, planned. Much of the debate within phonetic theory resides on the<br />
question of “what is controlled and what is a product of execution” (Lindblom 2004: B-<br />
86), i.e. what is not controlled. That such a question is posed at all has, in my opinion,<br />
its roots in the fact, that, all of a sudden, phoneticians were confronted with a huge<br />
amount of variability (e.g. vowels overlapping in formant frequencies) which they were<br />
unable to explain. Stevens & House (1963) and Lindblom (1963) explained the<br />
observed variability in their data within the framework of articulatory or acoustic<br />
undershoot. The notion of undershoot, on the other hand, implies the notion of a target<br />
that is undershot. The notion of the target, since it is usually conceived of as the<br />
intention of the speaker, is often intermingled with the notion of the phoneme. This<br />
inevitably causes an intermixture of levels.<br />
6.1. Target, invariance, and target undershoot<br />
Stevens & House (1963) showed that consonant environment affects the realization of<br />
vowels. They interpreted their findings in terms of a production undershoot model. In<br />
the same vein, Lindblom (1963), in his work on vowel reduction, conceptualizes<br />
reduction in terms of undershoot. Additionally, he gives a concise definition of the<br />
target of a vowel:<br />
“A target was found to be independent of consonantal context and duration and can thus be<br />
looked upon as an invariant attribute of the vowel. Although a phoneme can be realized in a<br />
more or less reduced fashion, the talker’s “intention” that underlies the pronunciation of the<br />
vowel is always the same, independent of contextual circumstances. A vowel target appears<br />
to represent some physiological invariance.” (Lindblom 1963: 1778).<br />
According to this definition, the target is identical with the phoneme. Moreover, the<br />
phoneme is defined as a talker’s intention, the talker’s intention is invariant and it is<br />
assumed that the target corresponds more or less to a pronunciation under ideal<br />
conditions. In conditions deviating from this ideal state, the articulators fail to reach the<br />
intended target:<br />
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