VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...

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Vowels in Standard Austrian German
Although the overall results only show little differences between the two speaking tasks,
the way this overall pattern is achieved can differ considerably. For example, in the
sentence reading task, statistically significant differences between stressed and
unstressed /i/ show up for F1, F2, and F3, whereas, in spontaneous speech, only two
speakers (sp126 and sp180) differentiate stressed and unstressed /i/ for F1. The missing
F1 differentiation is compensated by a higher difference in both F2 and F3 in
spontaneous speech, so that, in the end, both speaking tasks arrive at the same overall
discriminatory power. The compensatory effect is missing in the vowels /e/ and /u/,
which have the highest discriminatory power in the sentence reading task, i.e, they show
the greatest changes in vowel quality.
Stressed and unstressed vowels are primarily discriminated by F2. The least
discriminatory power is exerted by F3. This result is statistically significant (p < 0.01).
Broken down for vowel category, the following picture emerges (see Figure 6.10):
Difference stressed - unstressed (in %)
35,000
30,000
25,000
20,000
15,000
10,000
5,000
0,000
/i/ c /i/ uc /e/ c /e/ uc /u/ c /u/ uc /o/ c /o/ uc /a/
F1 7,229 5,265 8,558 10,412 11,193 7,324 9,189 10,058 21,264
F2 11,192 6,211 15,346 10,718 27,561 24,602 28,686 16,073 5,825
F3 10,455 4,654 9,867 3,352 2,759 4,144 4,520
Figure 6.10: Mean values of the statistically significant differences (in %) between stressed and
unstressed vowels, broken for F1, F2, and F3, pooled over all speakers and
speaking tasks. Legend: c = [+constricted], uc = [–constricted].