VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...

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Vowels in Standard Austrian German
standard is located in the large cities, i.e. Vienna, Linz, and Salzburg. These varieties
are accepted as supraregional. The samples of the educated people of the South
Bavarian varieties are recognized and accepted as “supraregional” as long as they lack
South-Bavarian characteristics. Otherwise, they are attributed a high social status, but
without supraregional acceptance. These results hold for people of Middle-Bavarian and
South-Bavarian varieties and for all social classes 24 .
Therefore, Standard Austrian German lacks processes attributed to Standard
German (separating function), e.g. vowel deletion between nasal consonants, it lacks
South-Bavarian characteristics, e.g. suppression of r-vocalization or diphthongization of
stressed, constricted vowels, and it lacks salient dialectal input switch rules 25 . Middle-
Bavarian dialectal processes are allowed in the prosodically weakest positions, e.g. l-
vocalization in function words.
24 For a detailed discussion see Moosmüller (1991).
25 See Dressler & Wodak (1982), Moosmüller (1987, 1991) for the interaction model of
dialect and standard and for examples of input-switch-rules.