VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...
VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...
VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...
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67<br />
Vowels in Standard Austrian German<br />
the duration of the periods undergo changes in the first place. Therefore, it is not<br />
surprising that absolutely no correlation can be observed between vowel duration and<br />
F0, whereas a high correlation can be found between vowel duration and the number of<br />
periods. This result holds for logatome reading task, the sentence reading task, and<br />
spontaneous speech. Table 4.4 gives the correlation coefficient r for all speakers:<br />
r Logatomes Reading Spontaneous Logatomes Reading Spontaneous<br />
NoP/ms NoP/ms NoP/ms ms/F0 ms/F0 ms/F0<br />
Sp012 0.96 0.87 0.94 0.16 0.02 0.07<br />
Sp180 0.94 0.84 0.89 0.30 0.23 0.11<br />
Sp082 - 0.89 0.83 - 0.22 0.11<br />
Sp129 - 0.91 0.92 - 0.17 0.22<br />
Sp126 - 0.92 0.96 - 0.15 0.12<br />
Sp127 - 0.85 0.96 - 0.25 0.17<br />
Table 4.5: Correlation coefficient r for NoP/ms and F0/ms for three speaking tasks, stressed<br />
vowels, all speakers. Statistically significant results (p < 0.05) are in bold.<br />
The number of periods (henceforth NoP) does not contain any information about F0 and<br />
can therefore be taken as a pure durational measure 62 . Given the high correlation<br />
between duration (in ms) and the number of periods, it can be concluded that the longer<br />
a segment, the more periods it contains. Since fundamental frequency is hardly affected<br />
by a truncation of periods, the number of periods renders more exact results than<br />
traditional duration measurements.<br />
The results on NoP display a high dependency on the speaking task. In the<br />
logatome reading task, speaker sp180 discerns long and short vowels, i.e. vowels<br />
termed as “tense” have a higher amount of NoPs than the vowels labeled “lax” (27 vs.<br />
14, n = 313, t = 22.58, p = 0.00). The vowel /a/ is differentiated for NoP as well (27 vs.<br />
14, n = 47, t = 10.74, p = 0.00). Duration, therefore, coincides with tenseness. Figure 4.6<br />
shows the results of a cluster analysis for speaker sp180, which groups long/tense<br />
vowels and short/lax vowels into two clusters:<br />
62 In the chapters 3.2.2 and 3.2.3, NoPs could not be calculated, because no periodic signal<br />
is available in the closure phase of unvoiced plosives.