VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...

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Vowels in Standard Austrian German
Primary stressed vowels are distinguished from unstressed vowels by all speakers.
However, the assignment of secondary stress turned out to be speaker-specific.
Secondary stress might either be realised in the same way as the primary stress, or in the
same way as the unstressed position, or as a discrete secondary stress. In the same way,
sentence stress is modeled differently by the speakers, in this way assigning, even on
the segmental level, a specific rhythm to utterances.
From these results, it can be concluded that the final shape of primary stressed
positions and unstressed positions is regulated, and provides the speaker with a frame
within which he or she can move for the modelling or not-modelling of further levels of
stresses. The specific frame is defined by the interactional situation. Therefore, many
speaker-specific differences can be found in those positions which allow the speaker
some degrees of freedom in modelling his or her speech behaviour.