VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...
VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...
VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...
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57<br />
Vowels in Standard Austrian German<br />
stressed and unstressed conditions for the non-low vowels; vowel duration, however, is<br />
statistically significant only in stressed vowel conditions, but not in unstressed<br />
conditions. As concerns vowel duration, the low vowels behave in the same way as the<br />
non-low vowels (distinctive in stressed positions, not distinctive in unstressed<br />
positions), but show no difference in vowel quality. Jessen et al. (1995) conclude that<br />
the low vowels contrast in quantity, whereas the others contrast in quality. Their<br />
findings are in agreement with earlier studies (Ramers 1988, Iivonen 1984, Kohler<br />
1995 2 ). A later study based on the Kiel Corpus also corroborate these results (Kohler<br />
1998). The perceptual experiments conducted by Sendlmeier (1981) proved the<br />
relevance of temporal information for the vowel pairs /a, a:/, /ç, e:/, /Y, ë:/ and /ï, o:/. In<br />
order to discriminate these pairs, temporal information was used by listeners in<br />
Sendlmeier’s study, whereas for the discrimination of the remaining pairs, spectral<br />
information was applied. Nevertheless, on the basis of these experiments, Sendlmeier<br />
(1981, 1985) concludes that a primary quantitative opposition can without doubt be<br />
assumed for the pair /a, a:/, whereas for the vowel pairs /ç, e:/ and /ï, o:/,<br />
“scheint es ebenfalls gerechtfertigt, eine phonologisch relevante Quantitätsopposition zu etablieren.<br />
Die die Differenzierung unterstützende Funktion eines vorhandenen Qualitätsunterschiedes<br />
spielt für diese Vokalpaare jedoch eine wichtigere Rolle als bei den beiden A-<br />
Lauten.” (Sendlmeier 1985: 194)<br />
For the remaining pairs, spectral information was used for discrimination. Sendlmeier’s<br />
results corroborate the hypothesis of Bennett (1968) on German and English, that the<br />
importance of duration is inversely proportional to the distance in quality a certain<br />
vowel pair exhibits: i.e. the smaller the distance in quality, the higher the importance of<br />
duration. An additional test on a pair of back, unrounded vowels [V] and [Ó:], which<br />
occur neither in German nor in English, revealed that German subjects used primarily<br />
spectral information for discrimination. Sawusch (1996), in his study on the perception<br />
of the vowels [E] vs. [é:] in “head” and “had”, could show that duration becomes an<br />
identifying cue when other sources of information were made ambiguous. The results of<br />
Strange & Bohn (1998) on the perception of North German vowels can be interpreted in