VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...

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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
83 Vowels in Standard Austrian German As concerns the back vowels, the constriction locations spotted in Wood (1982), i.e. the soft palate for the “u-vowels”, the upper pharynx for the “o-vowels”, and the lower pharynx for the “a-vowels”, have been confirmed by Fant (2001). For Standard Austrian German, the parameter “constriction location” allocates the individual constricted/unconstricted pairs a specific location 72 . The following constriction locations are assumed: • pre-palatal for the /i, ç, y, Y/ – vowels • mid-palatal for the /e, E, ë, ê/ – vowels • soft-palatal for the /u, ï/ – vowels • upper pharyngeal for the /o, O/ – vowels and • lower pharyngeal for the /A, a/ – vowels In the light of this analysis, it is of no relevance whether constriction degree is bigger or smaller for /e/ with respect to /ç/ or /i/ 73 . Constriction degree is not a gradual movement from narrow to wide, but exposes distinctive adjustments. Pouplier et al. (2004) found tongue-palate distance differences > 1 mm for two subjects (out of three) for the pair /i/ – /e/, and for only one subject for the pair /ç/ – /e/. Therefore, in German, /e/ is not to be discerned by tongue height from the /i/ – vowels, but by constriction location. The same holds for the /o/ – vowels vs. the /u/ – vowels. According to the results presented in Pouplier et al. (2004), tongue-palate distance is not bigger for /o/ than for the /u/ – vowels. The assumption that /e/ and /o/ are “mid” vowels is, therefore, not justified for Standard Austrian German. For acoustic reasons, tongue-palate distance is bigger for the front rounded vowels than for their unrounded cognates (Wood 1986, Pouplier et al. 2004, also Chapter 4.4). This leads to four different tongue-palate distances in the two front regions respectively. The vowel /ê/, however, can be modelled both as a back and as a front vowel (Boë et al. 1992). For this vowel, “the vocal tract most resembles a cylindrical tube” (Boë et al. 1992: 35) and “the area functions reveal two approximately equal and symmetric 72 This analysis holds only for languages which discern a pre-palatal and a mid-palatal location. 73 See also Hu (2003) for a discussion on tongue height.
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VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN
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Vowels in Standard Austrian German
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1. Introduction: Setting the Theore
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3 Vowels in Standard Austrian Germa
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11 Vowels in Standard Austrian Germ
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� Speaker sp127: Student, male, 2
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5.3. Processes vs. Coarticulation 1
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� F3 shows a high variability in
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c(xmin, xmax) 0.000 0.001 0.002 0.0
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6.2. Undershoot vs. Processes 179 V
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Therefore, it can be observed that
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Variability coefficient 40,000 35,0
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6.6.3.4. The vowel /E/ 215 Vowels i
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6.6.3.6. The vowel /u/ 217 Vowels i
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z-score 5,00 4,00 3,00 2,00 1,00 0,
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Appendix 269 Vowels in Standard Aus
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