VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...

Sylvia Moosmüller
Wood (1975b, 1979) found constriction degree contrastive for the tense/lax
opposition in English and Egyptian Arabic. The degree of constriction is narrower for
tense vowels in all pairs except [o, O]. In this pair, the constriction is wider for [o] than
for [O], “although both ranges virtually overlap” (1975b: 112 ff). In their investigation
of German vowels, Pouplier et al. (2004) found no inverse relationship of tongue-palate
distances of the vowel pair [o] – [O], i.e. the tongue-palate distance for [O] was greater
than for [o]. In the investigation of Pouplier et al. (2004), tongue-palate distance was
neutralised for [i] – [ç] in all subjects and for [u] – [ï] in two subjects. For German,
Hoole & Mooshammer (2002) confirmed Wood’s results on the front vowels: /e/ ex-
poses a higher tongue position than /ç/. The results presented in Pouplier et al. (2004)
show intersubject variability: two subjects expose no differences, one subject has a
higher tongue-palate distance for /e/. For the front unrounded vowels Wood (1982)
concludes
“that the tongue is higher and more bunched relative to the mandible for the tense vowels [i,
e] and lower, flatter and bulging further into the pharynx for the lax vowels [ç, E]. This
difference is performed with the mandible raised (for close [i, ç]) and lowered (for open [e,
E])”. (Wood 1982: 140f).
The results on the front unrounded vowels presented by Wood (1982) and corroborated
by Fischer-Jørgensen (1990) and Valaczkai (1998) 68 clearly set apart two features which
are often used synonymously, namely the degree of constriction 69 (tongue height) and
the degree of jaw opening, i.e. tongue height is not accompanied by a concomitant
adjustment of jaw position 70 . It follows that the “e-vowels” and “i-vowels” are grouped
by jaw opening – the opening of the e-vowels is larger than 8 – 9 mm, whereas the
68
Although in Valaczkai (1998), the degree of lip opening is greater for the respective “lax”
vowel.
69
For the front vowels, constriction degree is equivalent to tongue-palate distance.
70
Sievers (1901:100), who introduced the features “tense” and “lax”, also clearly
distinguishes this pair from the pair “open” and “close”: “Man hüte sich auch davor, die
Begriffe ‘gespannt’ (oder ‘eng’) und ‘ungespannt’ (oder ‘weit’) mit denen zu
verwechseln, welche die althergebrachten Ausdrücke ‘geschlossen’ und ‘offen’
bezeichnen sollen. Diese letzteren wollen nur aussagen, dass ein Vocal geringere oder
grössere Mundweite habe als ein anderer, aber ohne alle Rücksicht auf die
Verschiedenheit der Articulationsweise, welche die Differenzen der Mundweite im
einzelnen Fall hervorruft,…”
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