VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...

Sylvia Moosmüller
critique). Ramus et al. (1999) assume that stressed-timed languages allow more
complex syllables than syllable-timed languages and classify languages according to the
percentage of duration taken up by vocalic intervals (%V) and the standard deviation of
the duration of consonantal intervals within a sentence (ΔC). The approach of Low &
Grabe (1995) and Grabe & Low (2002) “took a direct route from impressionistic
observations of rhythmic differences between languages to the acoustic signal” (Grabe
& Low 2002: 519). The rhythmic differences should be reflected in the duration of
vowels and the duration of intervals between vowels. Additionally, Low et al. (2000)
analysed the degree of reduction of vowels (F1, F2), which they found to be higher in
British English than in Singapore English. Galves et al. (2002), on the other hand,
assume that rhythmic class discrimination is based on a rough measure of sonority.
Rouas et al. (2005) relied on pseudo-syllabic patterns by automatically segmenting the
speech chain in vowel and non-vowel segments. The results of these approaches more
or less corroborated the traditional distinction of languages as stress-timed, syllable-
timed, and morae-timed. The analyses discussed above are mainly based on diverse
durational relations, without questioning whether duration is really the basic unit that
typologically keeps languages apart 150 . However, what is even more important is the
fact that rhythm is conceived as an alternating dichotomic pattern of “a” and “b”, where
“a” and “b” can, in principle, stand for anything: an alternating succession of vowels
and consonants or consonant clusters, of sonority and non-sonority, of stressed and one
or more unstressed syllables, etc.
Figure 6.21 gives an example where speech is not feasible in a mere dichotomous
a – b pattern, but might even be asynchronous to rhythms performed by the body.
During the recording of Albanian spontaneous speech, the interviewer started to
rhythmically beating with his finger on the table.
150 Rouas et al. point out that “rhythm cannot be reduced to a raw temporal sequence of
consonants and vowels” (2005: 453).
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