VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...

Sylvia Moosmüller
windows for Russian vowels. Russian vowel allophony already highly challenged, if not
defeated by Öhmann’s (1966) vowel-to-vowel coarticualtory model. Yet,
conceptualizing as residual “arbitrariness” that which cannot be explained in the same
way as for Germanic languages, should be avoided in linguistic theories.
Russian vowel allophony, however, is highly systematic:
“We agree that the variability of Russian vowels is tremendous but at the same time is of
systematic character that must and can be captured by systematic and scrupulous study of all
the aspects of vowel functioning in speech under strict control of relevant variables.”
(Kouznetsov 2001: 439)
It has been shown in the previous chapter that the vowel /i/, which is usually attributed a
high coarticulatory resistance (Recasens 1999, Fowler & Brancazio 2000), palatalizes
the previous plosive in Standard Austrian German. Therefore, the vowel /i/ is not
affected by the preceding plosive.
In Russian, with its palatalised and non-palatalised consonants, the situation is
inverse. The palatalised – non-palatalised opposition has to be preserved, irrespective of
the vocalic environment. If, in the same way as in Standard Austrian German, /i/ would
palatalize the non-palatalised consonant, a phonemic contrast would be lost. Therefore,
it is the consonant that changes the vowel. In a palatalised context, the quality of /i/ is of
course preserved. But,
“/i/ following a nonpalatalized consonant is repelled from the high-front position in the
vowel quadrilateral and acquires a [I]-like (or even [ì]-like) onglide. It is usually said that
Russian /i/ has the allophone [I] following a nonpalatalized consonant, […] F2 of /i/ tends to
follow a rather sigmoid course following a nonpalatalized consonant, having only a slight
slope at the release of the consonant, then rising fairly steeply, then, finally, leveling off
again toward its target.” (Howie 2001: 18)
The difference between Standard Austrian German and Russian 121 lies in the language
specific phonologies with resulting different processes. A process which changes the
quality of the vowel /i/ preceded by a non-palatal consonant (Russian) is as “natural” as
a process changing the quality of the consonant preceding the vowel /i/ (Standard
Austrian German). The phonology of a language decides which processes have to be
121 Kouznetsov (2001) analyzes speakers from Moscow, Howie (2001) does not further
specify the variety he analyses and models.
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