VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...

Sylvia Moosmüller
Therefore, an assumption that Standard Austrian German would level out the
differences in vowel length by adjusting the length of the following plosive is not
justifiable. Consequently, for Standard Austrian German, a temporal analysis based on a
durational compensation of vowel + consonant can be discarded.
4.2.4. Vowel duration in Standard Austrian German
It has been argued in 4.2.1 that vowels in Standard German contrast in quality, with
duration being an accompanying feature reflecting the historical development. I.e. the
[+tense] vowels are long and the [–tense] vowels are short. Antoniadis & Strube (1984),
in their analysis of logatomes read by North German speakers, found out that long
vowels were at least twice as long as their short counterparts. Iivonen (1987b) arrived at
similar results for Standard Austrian German. He compared vowel duration in read
monosyllabics between speakers of Austrian Standard (mostly from Vienna) and
speakers of East Central German (from Halle) and found out that the duration of all
vowels was 32% higher for the Austrian speakers than for the German speakers.
However, the durational ratio between ascribed long/tense vs. short/lax vowels was
about the same between the two regions, namely 2.2 (Iivonen 1987b: 326). This ratio
suggests a high correlation between the feature [±tense] and duration, with the [+tense]
vowels being at least twice as long as the [–tense] vowels. It has to be noted that the
results are based on reading a list of monosyllabic words.
Duration, however, is composed of a certain number of periods and consequently
contains information about fundamental frequency. From a psychoacoustic point of
view, at least 8 periods are necessary for the perception of pitch 61 . In order to guarantee
pitch perception in short vowels, the number of periods should be adapted to these
perceptual needs. Such adjustment can, but need not, be accompanied by a rise in F0,
since – from a long to a short vowel – only the number of periods and not necessarily
61 I thank Werner Deutsch for pointing out this highly relevant connexion.
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