VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...

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Vowels in Standard Austrian German
as the output in the first case is inconsistent. The reason for this inconsistency lies in the
fact that the speaker deliberately tries to change the plan: the output target is to depart
from a neutral vocal tract configuration only as much as is absolutely necessary a) that
the utterance is understood and b) that the listener(s) do not notice. This is an extremely
difficult task and requires high attention. Therefore, a quick way to find out whether
articulatory avoidance has been performed is to compare the beginning (high attention)
and the end (low attention) of the recording. In the case where the speaker articulates
with higher precision and more phonological and phonetic consistency at end of the
session 124 , i.e. when he or she is already tired and inattentive, articulatory avoidance can
be assumed. Since attention is higher at the beginning of a recording session, under
normal conditions less backgrounding processes are applied at the beginning (Vanecek
& Dressler 1977, Moosmüller 1997d) as compared to the end of a recording session.
It has already been stated that in articulatory avoidance, the intended output target
is the neutral vocal tract configuration. This is also performed by some speakers. The
result is no change in the articulatory configuration as the speaker moves from phoneme
to phoneme, and, consequently, there is also no change in formant frequencies over
time. Changes in time can only be observed for the fundamental frequency. What is left
is a sort of singsong which is thought to denote the sentence.
Not to articulate at all is of course a very salient method when it is one’s aim to
avoid articulation. It is rather unwise to expose no articulation at all, because this is of
course immediately revealed by the listener. Therefore, a wiser strategy is to show some
articulation, as in the performance of a speaker of Portuguese based Crioulo, as spoken
in Guinea Bissau. The speaker is asked to repeat a list of sentences, and the list is read
to him four times. So, a certain timespan has passed till he hears sentence 1 again.
Figures 6.4 shows the spectrogram of the four utterances of the word “ntene” (I have)
from the sequence “ntene centu i cincu” (I have hundred and five) from the four
124 This holds only if the speaker does not know the end of the session. If he or she does,
attention increases again at the end (Vanecek & Dressler 1977).