VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...
VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...
VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...
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Sylvia Moosmüller<br />
and speaker sp127 mark secondary stress by a higher F1 as compared to both primary<br />
stress and unstressed positions, which once more contradicts theoretical assumptions.<br />
6.6.3.7. Summary of the results on secondary stress<br />
The most salient result is probably the high variability among the speakers 142 . Any<br />
speaker has his or her own way to indicate secondary stress by changing the spectral<br />
shape of the vowel or by not indicating it at all. Although all speakers seem to agree that<br />
primary stress has to be distinguished from unstressed positions, and in what way this<br />
should occur, the way to deal with secondary stress does not seem to be codified.<br />
However, in spontaneous speech, speakers often reduce the discriminative strength<br />
between primary stress and secondary stress on the one hand, and secondary stress and<br />
unstressed level on the other hand, down to one formant. It can be concluded, therefore,<br />
that a third level exists. Whether and how it is activated, depends on the speaker and on<br />
the speaking task. A secondary stress may either be realized in the same way as the<br />
primary stress, or in the same way as the unstressed position, or as discrete secondary<br />
stress.<br />
6.6.4. Sentence Stress<br />
The analysis of lexical stress already gives a good insight into the way stress affects the<br />
acoustic output of vowels 143 . However, the different relative levels of sentence stress<br />
cannot be captured with a sole differentiation of primary, secondary, and unstressed<br />
levels (Wagner 2002). Via postlexical stress assignment, the degree of lexical stress can<br />
change, providing the respective syllable with either higher or lower prominence.<br />
Moreover, in a string of unstressed syllables, not all syllables may be equally<br />
142 High variablilty among speakers has also been observed by Kleber & Klipphahn (2006).<br />
143 The focus is on vowels. This does not of course mean that consonants are not affected by<br />
stress. Jessen et al. (1995) showed that the closure phase of plosives is longer in a stressed<br />
syllable. The same results were obtained by Cho & McQueen (2005) for Dutch, Heldner<br />
& Strangert (2001) for Swedish, Greenberg et al. (2003) for English.<br />
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