VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...

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Vowels in Standard Austrian German
Figure 2.6: Spectrogram of the item “Kies” (gravel) with F3 corrected. Speaker sp012, sentence
reading task. Bottom panel: fundamental frequency. Next panel from bottom:
waveform window. Third panel from bottom: spectrogram window. Left upper
panel: waveform zoom window. Right upper panel: amplitude spectrum window.
It is well known that measurement problems arise when two formants start to approach
each other. Especially some [+ constricted] vowels might be affected by convergence:
F1 and F2 for /u and o/, F2 and F3 of /y and e/. In this study, the respective formant
frequency was estimated where possible and, if no estimation was possible, the vowel
was discarded from analysis. In Figure 2.7, the left cursor is placed at the vowel
midpoint of the vowel /o/ of the item “Sohn” (son). The waveform zoom window and
the amplitude spectrum window refer to the left cursor position. It can be seen from the
amplitude spectrum window that F1 and F2 converge; therefore, this vowel was not
included in the analysis.