VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...

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Sylvia Moosmüller “nejemi” to one syllable [nE$m], articulating all three syllables would have easily compensated for the missing 60 ms. Providing an unstressed sequence with the same articulatory accuracy is, however, in contrast to the principle of backgrounding and foregrounding. Therefore, an exact timing is of secondary relevance. The primary concern in the rhythm of speech is to properly background unstressed sequences in order to contrast them with the stressed positions. How much time is required for the accomplishment of this activity, depends on the content that has to be conveyed. And the syntax and semantics of a language do not necessarily consider that a required amount of unstressed syllables is available in order to fit an exact timing, or, to put it another way, a speaker of a language plans the sequences of words he or she wants to utter and the processes that have to be applied, but the speaker does not search for another word with, e.g., more consonant clusters in order to arrive at an exact timing. Therefore, speaking is different from walking, dancing, playing an instrument, or even poetic rhythm, in that it is to a larger extent a social activity. Speakers want or have to convey in some way or other more and less important units 151 of speech, and they convey these units in a graded way of foregrounding or backgrounding them. In an utterance, not only important and non-important information exists, but also further levels of importance, new information, redundant information, repetitions, etc. Therefore, in an analysis of the rhythm of speech, dichotomous conceptualizations have to be given up. Moreover, it has to be questioned whether speaking is really ruled by timing or whether there is some sort of interaction between what a speaker wants to say, the speech situation 152 he or she is in, and the time he or she computes or has at his or her disposal for the planned utterance. Therefore, the gradings of foregroundings and backgroundings might differ considerably in dependence of diverse external factors. 151 Unit has a broad meaning here and can be new or old information, a phrase, a word, a syllable, or a phoneme. 152 For example, in an oral exam situation, a speaker might exhibit a different rhythmic patterning than in an oral presentation, although the amount of time they have at their disposal might be the same. 226
227 Vowels in Standard Austrian German Therefore, rhythmic patterning is not only achieved by an alternating succession of foregrounding and backgrounding certain phonemes, syllables, or words, but by additionally grading the amount of foregrounding or backgrounding. This principle of figure and ground is well embedded in the semiotic model elaborated by Dressler (1980, 1985, 1996, 2002) and has been exemplified by Madelska & Dressler (1996) on Polish and Czech. The graded foregroundings and backgroundings can be expressed in various ways, whereby the speaker can make use of the whole speech production apparatus. This includes both prosodic and segmental features, which, from a production point of view, cannot be clearly separated (Fant & Kruckenberg 2004: 249). The interplay of parameters is impressively shown in the multi-parameter analysis of Swedish prosody performed by Fant & Kruckenberg (2004). Which parameters are enhanced and which play a secondary role, or whether all parameters are relevant, is language-specific and speaker-specific. (Standard Austrian) German is a language which assigns different levels of stress to units with different importance. It has already been outlined in the previous subchapters that the production of vowels is affected by both pre-lexical and post- lexical stress assignment. However, unlike Russian or Bulgarian, German shows no stress-dependent vowel-quality alternation (Barry & Andreeva 2001). Therefore, with respect to vowels, the alternating succession of graded foregroundings and backgroundings is expressed by modifying the degree of constriction, the length of constriction, the degree of lip protrusion, and the degree of lip aperture, whilst the location of the constriction stays the same. Again, which parameters are preferred depends on vowel-type and on the speaker as well. The interaction of these graded foregroundings and backgroundings and of rhythm is exemplified for the vowel /A/ 153 in the following sentence: 153 The vowel /a/ has been chosen, because, unlike the other vowels, it is not paired and therefore more tokens for comparison can be found in a sentence.
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VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN
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Vowels in Standard Austrian German
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1. Introduction: Setting the Theore
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3 Vowels in Standard Austrian Germa
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11 Vowels in Standard Austrian Germ
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Hz 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0 N
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� Speaker sp127: Student, male, 2
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4. Vowel inventory and features 51
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Spontaneous speech Long vowel + len
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Spontaneous speech Long vowel + len
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Height 0 10 20 30 40 u i o ö ü e
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Vowel category Variability Coeffici
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5.3. Processes vs. Coarticulation 1
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� F3 shows a high variability in
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c(xmin, xmax) 0.000 0.001 0.002 0.0
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VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...

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