VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...

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Vowels in Standard Austrian German
3. Interpretation of formant measurements
In the same way as vocal tract shapes differ individually, articulatory configurations
expose individual differences as well. Many studies on articulation report speaker-
specific articulatory settings for either the same phoneme or sequence of phonemes (see
e.g. Kuehn & Moll 1976, Perkell 1997, Perkell et al. 2002, Tabain et al. 2004, Pouplier
et al. 2004, McGowan 2004, Brunner et al. 2005, Perkell et. al 2006). However, due to
the non-linear relation between articulatory configurations and the acoustic
consequences of these configurations, these differences need not affect the acoustic
output. A study of Fant’s nomograms reveal that different articulatory configurations
might render the same formant frequency values. A study of Steven’s quantal theory
exposes that, on the horizontal dimension from front to back, the extent to which
formant frequency values change depends on where the constriction is located.
Therefore, it is necessary to discuss what the acoustic data are able to tell us.
3.1. The traditional F1/F2 representation
To date, vowels are frequently represented in a two-dimensional F1/F2 chart (for
German see e.g. Jørgensen 1969, Kohler 1998, for Austrian German Iivonen 1987b) and
interpreted with respect to the first two formants. Figure 3.1 gives such a representation
for speaker sp012 of Standard Austrian German: