VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...

195
Vowels in Standard Austrian German
condition, the context was maximally restricted. Under the second condition (Condition
2: a reading task), vowels were only controlled for phonetic context and two stress
levels (stressed vs. unstressed), but not for sentence position. For each speaker, the
variability coefficient was calculated for F1, F2, and F3 for each vowel of each
condition at vowel midpoint, where the vowel is supposed to expose a stationary part,
and for the whole vowel. One-tailed t-tests were performed in order to test whether
variability differed according to conditions.
In Table 6.6 the results for the vowels in stressed position, calculated at vowel
midpoint, are presented.
Var. coeff. C1 C2 C1 C2 C1 C2
stressed /i/ /i/ /e/ /e/ /A/ /A/
F1 11.77 9.84 4.90 6.74 14.74 10.37
F2 2.14 2.43 2.29 3.79 5.03 5.50
F3 4.53 7.80 3.09 6.15 2.89 4.97
Table 6.6: Variability coefficients calculated at vowel midpoint under two different conditions
(C). C1: vowel drawn from one and the same sentence repeated ten times, c2:
vowel controlled for phonetic context. Statistically significant differences (p ≤
0.05) are printed in bold.
It can be read from Table 6.6 that, whenever statistically significant differences appear,
the variability coefficient is higher in the Condition 2 as compared to the Condition 1. It
is most conspicuous that for all three vowels, F3 exposes statistically significant
differences, i.e. on such a fine graded level, F3 becomes more important and balanced.
The vowel /e/ exposes differences for F2 as well. To give an example, three successive
frames of all /e/ vowels calculated at vowel midpoint for six speakers are presented in
Figure 6.6 (for Condition 2) and Figure 6.7 (for Condition 1).