VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...

Sylvia Moosmüller
which does not refer to constriction location in the case of the /a/ – vowels, is not apt to
distinguish the /a/ – vowels in German, because the velar fricative is not palatalised
after the traditionally called front /a/ in words like “Bach” (brook) or “lachen” (to laugh)
(see also 4.4.5).
4.3.2 The features [± front] and [± high]
Wood (1979, 1982) isolated four contrastive constriction locations for vowels: “along
the hard palate, along the soft palate, in the upper pharynx and in the lower pharynx”
(1982: 43), but does not relate them to the tense/lax opposition. The front region can be
further divided into a pre-palatal and a mid-palatal region. Whether the front region is
further divided is language specific. Fant (1965) states that the Russian and
Scandinavian [i]-vowels are pre-palatal, whereas the English [i] is articulated more
towards the mid-palatal region (1965: 137). Wood (1979) found that his
“English and Arabic subjects had strikingly different constriction locations for palatal
vowels… The English subject centred his constrictions midway along the hard palate about
35 mm behind the central incisors. The Arabic subject’s constrictions were more anterior,
about 27 mm behind the central incisors.” (Wood 1979: 34)
Similar results are presented in Fant (2001). Modelling Swedish vowels, he spotted a
front region located less than 4 cm from the teeth. The constrictions of the vowels [y:,
Ł:, i:] are located at 27, 28 and 31 mm from the teeth respectively. The constrictions of
[e:, ê:, ë:] are located at 35, 37 and 42 mm from the teeth respectively (Fant 2001: 47).
I.e. there is a pre-palatal location for [y:, Ł:, i:], a mid-palatal location for [e:, ê:, ë:]. In
Mooshammer (1998), who analyzed German vowels, horizontal tongue position played
an important contrastive role as well. Horizontal tongue position, also termed “front
raising” (Harshman et al. 1977), was also proved to discriminate vowels in Ningbo
Chinese (Hu 2003) and Ndumbea, an Austronesian language (Gordon & Maddieson
1999).
82