VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...

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Vowels in Standard Austrian German
and to what extent the various stresses are shaped differently from the most stressed and
the least stressed ones. These degrees of freedom are exploited by the speakers and
might be additionally responsible for the fact that speakers are perceived differently 156 .
Therefore, if speaker-specific differences are to be found, low-level analyses have to be
performed. An overall comparison of e.g. certain vowels blurs most of the differences,
as will be shown in the next chapter.
156 Widera & Portele (1999) and Widera (2002) report that listeners distinguish three to five
reduction levels depending on the vowel. However, listeners are able to compensate for
speaker-specific differences (Widera 2002: 191).