VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Sylvia Moosmüller lowering or lip protrusion), which are language, variety, or even speaker specific, and, consequently, planned. Much of the debate within phonetic theory resides on the question of “what is controlled and what is a product of execution” (Lindblom 2004: B- 86), i.e. what is not controlled. That such a question is posed at all has, in my opinion, its roots in the fact, that, all of a sudden, phoneticians were confronted with a huge amount of variability (e.g. vowels overlapping in formant frequencies) which they were unable to explain. Stevens & House (1963) and Lindblom (1963) explained the observed variability in their data within the framework of articulatory or acoustic undershoot. The notion of undershoot, on the other hand, implies the notion of a target that is undershot. The notion of the target, since it is usually conceived of as the intention of the speaker, is often intermingled with the notion of the phoneme. This inevitably causes an intermixture of levels. 6.1. Target, invariance, and target undershoot Stevens & House (1963) showed that consonant environment affects the realization of vowels. They interpreted their findings in terms of a production undershoot model. In the same vein, Lindblom (1963), in his work on vowel reduction, conceptualizes reduction in terms of undershoot. Additionally, he gives a concise definition of the target of a vowel: “A target was found to be independent of consonantal context and duration and can thus be looked upon as an invariant attribute of the vowel. Although a phoneme can be realized in a more or less reduced fashion, the talker’s “intention” that underlies the pronunciation of the vowel is always the same, independent of contextual circumstances. A vowel target appears to represent some physiological invariance.” (Lindblom 1963: 1778). According to this definition, the target is identical with the phoneme. Moreover, the phoneme is defined as a talker’s intention, the talker’s intention is invariant and it is assumed that the target corresponds more or less to a pronunciation under ideal conditions. In conditions deviating from this ideal state, the articulators fail to reach the intended target: 174
175 Vowels in Standard Austrian German “Articulators respond to control signals not in a stepwise fashion but smoothly and fairly slowly, owing to intrinsic physiological constraints. Since the speed of articulatory movement is thus limited, the extent to which articulators reach their target positions depends on the relative timing of the excitation signal.” (Lindblom 1963: 1778) This failure to reach the intended target position came to be known as “undershoot” (Stevens & House 1963, Lindblom 1963). To model the speech variability within the framework of articulatory/acoustic undershoot and corresponding perceptual overshoot (Lindblom & Studdert-Kennedy 1967, Nearey 1989, see van Son 1993 for an overview) is convincing, satisfactorily explains variability, and is, today, a well-established concept in phonetics. Yet, the question “whether and to what extent the human speech perception could be able to recover intentions in motor tasks that are not achieved” (Perrier 2005: 128) is still unsolved. Moreover, given the fact that the actual output does, in most cases, not correspond to the intended target, especially in weak prosodic positions, speech production can be considered a consecutive succession of failures. Speaking, within this framework, would be an utterly frustrating activity. Apart from that, languages display very clear sequential constraints, in the way that unpronounceable sequences are not allowed. Therefore, among the languages described so far, no sequence of phonemes such as, e.g., */fpdk/, can be found. It has to be questioned why a language should allow a sequence for which the articulators constantly and systematically fail to reach the intended target. duration: One crucial aspect in Lindblom’s argumentation for the undershoot concept is “As a vowel becomes shorter, there is less and less time for the articulators to complete their “on-“ and “off-glide” movements within the CVC syllable. Provided that the neural events corresponding to the phonemes actually stay invariant, the speech organs fail, as a result of the physiological limitations, to reach the positions that they assume when the vowel is pronounced under ideal steady-state conditions.” (Lindblom 1963: 1779) Subsequent studies showed that vowel quality does not change as a function of vowel duration (Gay 1978, Nord 1975, 1986, Engstrand 1988, van Son & Pols 1990, 1992, van
Page 1 and 2:
VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN
Page 3 and 4:
Vowels in Standard Austrian German
Page 5 and 6:
Page 7 and 8:
Page 9 and 10:
1. Introduction: Setting the Theore
Page 11 and 12:
3 Vowels in Standard Austrian Germa
Page 13 and 14:
Page 15 and 16:
Page 17 and 18:
Page 19 and 20:
11 Vowels in Standard Austrian Germ
Page 21 and 22:
Page 23 and 24:
Hz 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0 N
Page 25 and 26:
Page 27 and 28:
� Speaker sp127: Student, male, 2
Page 29 and 30:
Page 31 and 32:
Page 33 and 34:
Page 35 and 36:
Page 37 and 38:
Page 39 and 40:
Page 41 and 42:
Page 43 and 44:
Page 45 and 46:
Page 47 and 48:
Page 49 and 50:
Page 51 and 52:
Page 53 and 54:
Page 55 and 56:
Page 57 and 58:
Page 59 and 60:
4. Vowel inventory and features 51
Page 61 and 62:
Page 63 and 64:
Page 65 and 66:
Page 67 and 68:
Page 69 and 70:
Spontaneous speech Long vowel + len
Page 71 and 72:
Page 73 and 74:
Spontaneous speech Long vowel + len
Page 75 and 76:
Page 77 and 78:
Height 0 10 20 30 40 u i o ö ü e
Page 79 and 80:
Page 81 and 82:
Page 83 and 84:
Vowel category Variability Coeffici
Page 85 and 86:
Page 87 and 88:
Page 89 and 90:
Page 91 and 92:
Page 93 and 94:
Page 95 and 96:
Page 97 and 98:
Page 99 and 100:
Page 101 and 102:
Page 103 and 104:
Page 105 and 106:
Page 107 and 108:
Page 109 and 110:
101 Vowels in Standard Austrian Ger
Page 111 and 112:
Page 113 and 114:
Page 115 and 116:
Page 117 and 118:
Page 119 and 120:
Page 121 and 122:
Page 123 and 124:
Page 125 and 126:
Page 127 and 128:
Page 129 and 130:
Page 131 and 132: 123 Vowels in Standard Austrian Ger
Page 155 and 156: 5.3. Processes vs. Coarticulation 1
Page 161 and 162: � F3 shows a high variability in
Page 175 and 176: c(xmin, xmax) 0.000 0.001 0.002 0.0
Page 181: 173 Vowels in Standard Austrian Ger
Page 187 and 188: 6.2. Undershoot vs. Processes 179 V
Page 191 and 192: Hz 3500 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 50
Page 201 and 202: Therefore, it can be observed that
Page 207 and 208: c(xmin, xmax) 0.00 0.02 0.04 0.06 0
Page 215 and 216: Variability coefficient 40,000 35,0
Page 223 and 224: 6.6.3.4. The vowel /E/ 215 Vowels i
Page 225 and 226: 6.6.3.6. The vowel /u/ 217 Vowels i
Page 233 and 234:
Page 235 and 236:
Page 237 and 238:
Page 239 and 240:
z-score 5,00 4,00 3,00 2,00 1,00 0,
Page 241 and 242:
Page 243 and 244:
Page 245 and 246:
Page 247 and 248:
Page 249 and 250:
Page 251 and 252:
Page 253 and 254:
Page 255 and 256:
Page 257 and 258:
Page 259 and 260:
Page 261 and 262:
Page 263 and 264:
Page 265 and 266:
Page 267 and 268:
Page 269 and 270:
Page 271 and 272:
Page 273 and 274:
Page 275 and 276:
Page 277 and 278:
Appendix 269 Vowels in Standard Aus
Page 279:
show all

VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?