VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...

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Vowels in Standard Austrian German
Item Sp012 – Sp043 Sp012 – Sp126 Sp043 – Sp126
/i/ die (the: DEF) + + +
/e/ geriebene (grated: PPP) + + +
/i/ geriebene (grated: PPP) + + –
/e/ Leber (liver) – + +
/a/ Papier (paper) + + +
/a/ Katzen (cats) + + +
Table 7.11: Results of the statistical analysis (F2 and F3) for vowels in identical phonetic
context, sentence repeating task. “+”: p < 0.05 for either F2 or F3 or both, “–“: p >
0.05.
It becomes evident that the discriminatory power of F2 and F3 increase by adding the
position within the sentence. Additionally, F2 and F3 discriminate unstressed vowels in
every case, whereas, with the exception of the vowel /A/, F2 and F3 do not discriminate
stressed vowels in two cases (sp012 and sp043 for the vowel /e/, and sp043 and sp126
for the vowel /i/).
It can be concluded, therefore, that primarily the backgrounded parts of speech
give some leeway for the introduction of speaker-specific traits. The more stressed a
vowel is, the more speakers head towards a corporate (acoustic) output. Moreover, the
results point to a thorough planning of the speech events, down to the lowest level of the
phonetic output, because only by an exact planning of what one wants to say, can such
high consistency with respect to context and position be achieved.