VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...

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Vowels in Standard Austrian German
Tables 6.9 to 6.11 demonstrate that statistically significant correlations turn up only
sporadically. Moreover, in unstressed positions, the observed correlations often indicate
a direction contrary to theoretical assumptions (e.g. the shorter the duration for /u/, the
lower F1). Quite often, the observed correlation is not very strong either. Some trends
for a correlation of duration and F2 and F3 can be observed with the male speakers
(sp012, sp126, sp127) for the vowel /i/, the strongest holding for speaker sp127. From
these results it can be concluded that duration plays no relevant role in the qualitative
change of vowels. These results are in accordance with other studies (Gay 1978,
Fourakis 1991, van Son & Pols 1990, 1992, but see Nowak 2006 for contradictory
results on Polish) that could not prove a correlation of duration and change in vowel
quality.
6.6.2. Stress 132
As has been observed by many studies so far (see e.g. Gay 1978, Nord 1986,
Dogil & Williams 1999, Erickson 2002, Wouters & Macon 2002, van Son & Pols 2002,
Padgett & Tabain 2005, to name just a few), prosodic strength is a highly relevant factor
in determining the quality of a vowel in Standard Austrian German. Already, by
dividing the analysed vowels into only two prosodic strengths (stressed and
unstressed) 133 , statistically significant differences occur between vowels in stressed and
unstressed positions, both in the sentence reading task and in spontaneous speech. For
the majority of the data, stressed and unstressed vowels are at least discriminated by one
of the three lowest formants 134 .
132 It has to be emphasized that in the chapters on stress (6.6.2, 6.6.3, 6.6.4) and on rhythm
(6.6.5), only the contribution of the spectral information of the vowels (F1, F2, F3) to
stress and rhythm has been investigated, since the contribution of prosodic parameters
(F0, duration, intensity) is not the main objective of this research.
133 For this coarse devision, stress was assigned by reference to lexical stress for content
words and function words were labeled as unstressed throughout.
134 Speaker sp126 exposed no differences between stressed and unstressed /u/ and /o/, and
speaker sp180 showed no differences between stressed and unstressed /ï/.