VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...

Sylvia Moosmüller
6.6.3.2. The vowel /i/
For the vowel /i/, it can be expected that F1 increases with a decrease of stress 141 ,
whereas F2 and F3 decrease (i.e. the degree of lip aperture and the degree of
constriction are increased, and the length of constriction is shortened with decreasing
stress). The change in the formant pattern can be schematized as follows:
F1 primary stress < F1 secondary stress < F1 unstressed
F2 primary stress > F2 secondary stress > F2 unstressed
F3 primary stress > F3 secondary stress > F3 unstressed
Figure 6.14 summarizes the results of the t-tests:
F3
F2
F1
sp180 sp129 sp082 sp012 sp126 sp127
Figure 6.14: Statistically significant changes of F1, F2, and F3 (p < 0.05) for the vowel /i/ in
dependence on stress, sentence reading task. Within each column denoting the
speakers, the leftmost crossbar denotes the relative formant frequency position of
primary stressed vowels, the middle crossbar the one of secondary stressed vowels
and the rightmost crossbar the one of unstressed vowels.
141 Several investigations found a lowered jaw position, a greater lip aperture and a more
fronted tongue position in stressed vs. unstressed /i/ in English (Harrington et al. 2000,
Erickson 2002, Cho 2002). The lowered jaw position and greater lip aperture, which
would result in a rise of F1 for stressed /i/, can not be confirmed for Austrian Standard
German. See Figure 6.14.
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