VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...

4. Vowel inventory and features
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Vowels in Standard Austrian German
Descriptions of the vowel inventory (without diphthongs) of Standard German set the
number of vowels at between 17 (Wiese 1996), 16 (Jørgensen 1969, Wurzel 1970,
UPSID, see Simpson 1998, 1999, Kohler 1999), 15 (Moulton 1962, Sendlmeier 1985,
Iivonen 1987a, b), 14 (Heike 1961 54 , Rausch 1972) and 8 vowels (Becker 1998). The
reason for this inconsistency in range lies in the different views of the status of the
schwa and long /E:/. Jørgensen (1969), Kohler (1999) and UPSID assume a mid-central
schwa. Wiese (1996) additionally assumes a phonemic status for /Ç/, the vowel resulting
from r-vocalization. The descriptions with more than 15 vowels all include the long
/E:/ 55 in their analysis. Moulton (1962) rejects the long /E:/, but includes a mid-central
schwa. Iivonen (1987a) includes the long /E:/, but assumes no mid-central schwa. In his
analysis of Standard German, /E:/ nearly merges with /E/. In Northern German, however,
/E:/ merges with /e/ (Heike 1961, Jørgensen 1969, Kloeke 1982). All analyses of
Standard German assume two a-vowels, a long and a short one. Becker (1998) assumes
only 8 vowels; these can, however, appear as long or as short vowels, according to their
position in the syllabic structure. The open vowels, according to his analysis, differ with
respect to duration, the closed and mid vowels with respect to centralization;
consequently, the short /e/ and /ä/ 56 merge.
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Heike (1961) regards the division of sounds into “vowels” and “consonants” as
inadequate, and prefers to distinguish “Kernphoneme” (nucleus phonemes) and
“Satellitenphoneme” (satellite phonemes).
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see Becker (1998) for a thorough overview of the analytical status and historical
development of long /E:/.
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Becker (1998) assumes a different quality for short and long /E/ and therefore adopts the
symbol /ä(:)/ for the long vowel (1998: 23). Nevertheless, this qualitatively different
vowel merges with the short /e/ (1998: 163).