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Die gespannten und ungespannten Vokale in der norddeutschen Hochsprache mit einer spezifischen Untersuchung der Struktur ihrer Formantenfrequenzen

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... These surveys vary with respect to the number of speakers investigated, speaker selection, the quantity and type of material elicited and the vowels surveyed. Jørgensen (1969) uses formant measurements from six male speakers producing word list material. Iivonen (1970) analyses words embedded in carrier phrases as well as in isolation produced by five female and four male subjects. ...
... Another striking difference from previous German studies (Jørgensen 1969;Rausch 1972) 2 is the position of /o:/ in relation to /u:/. As we would have expected /o:/ is more open than /u:/, but it is also acoustically further back for both female and male speakers. ...
... The data base is large (2400 sentences read by 22 speakers) in comparison with earlier studies and comprises exclusively read sentences. In contrast to Rausch (1972) and Jørgensen (1969) the majority of the speakers (except k61 and k62 who are both phoneticians) are phonetically naïve. The measurement of vowels was arrived at in a semi-automatic fashion, the manual work involving the initial labelling of the data base. ...
... In German, as in other Germanic languages, tenseness is correlated with quantity, that is tense vowels are about twice as long as lax vowels (see, for example, Hoole & Mooshammer, 2002;Jørgensen, 1969). The co-variation between vowel quality and quantity is restricted to the stressed position. ...
... In unstressed position, the durational differences between tense and lax vowels are negligible (Hoole & Mooshammer, 2002; because tense vowels shorten in unstressed position whereas lax vowels maintain their duration. Apart from durational differences, most tense vowels are produced in a more peripheral position than lax vowels, as shown in acoustic and articulatory studies (Hoole & Mooshammer, 2002;Jørgensen, 1969;Mooshammer & Geng, 2008), except for the low vowel /a/ that is only distinguished by quantity and not by quality in German (for acoustics and perception, see Heike, 1972, andSendlmeier, 1981, respectively). Lax vowels in CVC sequences are produced with shorter opening and closing movement durations and with smaller movement amplitudes for low vowels and larger amplitudes for high and mid vowels compared to their tense counterparts (see Hoole & Mooshammer, 2002). ...
Article
Phrase-final lengthening affects the segments preceding a prosodic boundary. This prosodic variation is generally assumed to be independent of the phonemic identity. We refer to this as the ‘uniform lengthening hypothesis’ (ULH). However, in German, lax vowels do not undergo lengthening for word stress or shortening for increased speech rate, indicating that temporal properties might interact with phonemic identity. We test the ULH by comparing the effect of the boundary on acoustic and kinematic measures for tense and lax vowels and several coda consonants. We further examine if the boundary effect decreases with distance from the boundary. Ten native speakers of German were recorded by means of electromagnetic articulography (EMA) while reading sentences that contained six minimal pairs varying in vowel tenseness and boundary type. In line with the ULH, the results show that the acoustic durations of lax vowels are lengthened phrase-finally, similarly to tense vowels. We find that acoustic lengthening is stronger the closer the segments are to the boundary. Articulatory parameters of the closing movements toward the post-vocalic consonants are affected by both phrasal position and identity of the preceding vowel. The results are discussed with regard to the interaction between prosodic structure and vowel tenseness.
... One early model is the so-called Silbenschnitt-theory (henceforth syllable cut theory), which goes back to Sievers (1872), who distinguished so-called Schallsilben (as in /biːtəәn/) from so-called Drucksilben (as in /bɪtəәn/) based on this difference in syllable structure: in /biːtəәn/ the energy maximum within one syllable is reached before the intervocalic consonant, in /bɪtəәn/, however, the syllable's energy maximum is reached after the vowel at the stop. Trubetzkoy (1938Trubetzkoy ( , 1939Trubetzkoy ( /1958) differentiates between syllables with close and with loose contact (Fischer- Jørgensen & Jørgensen, 1969), the latter being abruptly and the former smoothly cut. The vowel pairs that have been differentiated by phonological length above can likewise be grouped according to the syllable cut: tense vowels are loosely and lax vowels are 1 According to Giegerich (1985) and Yu (1992) ambisyllabicity depends on lexical stress. ...
... Furthermore, lax vowels are more centralized in the vowel space than their tense counterparts, i.e. the formant frequencies are more extreme in the latter case (cf. Meyer, 1911Meyer, , 1913aJørgensen, 1969;Ramers, 1988;Jessen, Marasek, Schneider, & Claßen, 1995). Perception experiments confirmed that both vowel quantity and quality were also the dominant cues in the perception of the tense/lax contrast (Bennet, 1968;Heike, 1970;Ramers, 1988;Strange & Bohn, 1998). ...
... ] which showed two formant frequencies below 1.5kHz, the third formant frequency was not found to behave as might be expected from the literature. That is, within a given speaker group, either the fourth formant frequency of a vocalization had a value equal to or below the third formant frequency of another vocalization of the same vowel category, or there was no third formant frequency found (see Jorgensen 1969, for similar results). ...
... We therefore formulated rules for the selection of the vowels to be included in the statistical analysis: (Jorgensen 1969, Wangler 1981. Table 1 shows these formant regions. ...
Article
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Formant measurements show sex and age differences in the formant patterns of a single vowel category. Comparisons of the formant frequency values of men, women and children indicate low, middle and high values, respectively (Chiba & Kajiyama 1941, Potter & Steinberg 1950, Peterson & Barney 1952). The differences are found for all vowel categories, and they have generally been interpreted as a consequence of different vocal tract size.
... Schwartz et al. (1997 apud KENT;READ, 2015, p. 198-199) /i, ɪ, e, ɛ, ɛː 69 , ɑ, a, y, ʏ, ø, oe, u, ʊ, o, ɔ/ -/ə, ɐ/ -/aɪ̯ , au̯ , ɔɪ̯ /. Concorda-se, em geral, que os seus 14 monotongos podem ser agrupados em sete pares contrastivos, sendo: /i-ɪ/, /e-ɛ/, /ɑ-a/, /y-ʏ/, /u-ʊ/, /o-ɔ/, /ø-oe/, embora foneticistas e fonólogos os classifiquem distintamente (JØRGENSEN, 1969;LINDNER, 1969;SENDLMEIER, 1981;KOHLER, 1990KOHLER, , 1995RAMERS, 1998;BOHN, 1998;MEYER, 2010;NIMZ, 2015 (JØRGENSEN, 1969, p. 221-222). Segundo Jørgensen (1969, p. 221-222): "Meyer (1910) mostrou que o consumo de ar por unidade temporal pelas vogais frouxas é maior do que pelas suas respectivas vogais tensas. ...
Thesis
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This PhD Dissertation focuses on the longitudinal development of German vowels as an additional language by three female Southern Brazilian speakers. This Dissertation is grounded on the theoretical approach of Complex Dynamic Systems Theory (CDST) (DE BOT, 2015; LOWIE; VERSPOOR, 2019; YU; LOWIE, 2019; VERSPOOR; LOWIE; DE BOT, 2021, among others). The methodology covers an acoustic and experimental analyses of the developmental process of the whole German vowel system by the three speakers, throughout twelve data collections in a one-year time span. Furthermore, inferential statistical analyses consisting of Monte Carlo Simulations (VAN DIJK; VERSPOOR; LOWIE, 2011) were also applied. In order to provide a theoretical account of the participants’ vowel productions, a psychoacoustic model of L2 speech production and perception was adopted (FLEGE, 1995; FLEGE; BOHN, 2021). The results from the statistical and linguistic analyses with the three speakers showed a high rate of intraindividual variation in their vowel systems. Thus, we can conclude that all speakers are in a stage of vowel development and phase changes in German. In order to establish different vowel categories, those speakers showed changes mostly in duration (Speaker 1), vowel quality (Speaker 3) or in both constructs (Speaker 2). Regardless of the construct approached by each participant, this means assuming different cue weightings (HOLT; LOTTO, 2006; LEHET, HOLT, 2016) in the target language, not necessarily the ones usually used by native German speakers. This developmental strategy aims to establish distinct functional categories among target vowels in the new language (for instance, F2 use by Speaker 3 as a primary acoustic cue to handle functional distinctions that are established through F3 in the native speech). With regard to the tenets of the Speech Learning Model(-r) (FLEGE, 1995; FLEGE; BOHN, 2021), we consider that dissimilations among vowel categories do not necessarily resemble the acoustic space occupied by the native categories. Furthermore, we reinforce one of our main findings: from a vowel development perspective in light of CDST, it is important to analyse the development of the whole vowel system, as such analyses prove able to show the accommodation and reaccommodation of all vowel categories in the acoustic space. In this regard, further studies on the entire acoustic vowel space sound as a key factor, since the adaptive relations (assimiltion and dissimilation) among all vowel categories in the system will be able to effectively show the strategies used by Brazilian speakers of German as an additional language.
... [ˈbʊse] Busse 'pl. of bus' (see e.g. Venemann, 2000, Mooshammer, 1998, Jørgensen, 1969 for a review). These vowel pairs can be differentiated on the basis of static measurements of the vowel at their targets with tense vowels being longer and more peripheral than the lax counterparts (Lehiste & Peterson, 1961), but also on their dynamic structure: There is some empirical evidence for a tighter coupling between CV and VC phases for lax vowels than for the tense ones (Hoole & Mooshammer, 2002) that can be related with the idea of a different syllable structure for both elements with a loose contact for tense vowels and a close contact for the lax vowels (Jespersen 1913, Vennemann 1991. ...
Chapter
This study investigates the production of the tense-lax vowel contrast in younger vs. older speakers of Standard Austrian German (SAG) as spoken in Vienna, and the influence of production differences in the perception of the same contrast in a sound change in progress. Previous studies showed a partial neutralization of the tensity contrast in SAG, in which the vertical lax vowel space is expanded leading to the approximation of the lax vowels in the direction of the tense counterparts (Cunha et al. in press, 2013, Harrington et al. 2012, Brandstätter & Moosmüller 2013, Moosmüller 2007, 2008). First acoustic results on SAG attested an age effect, in which formant quality and vowel quantity differences were less pronounced for younger than for older Viennese speakers (Brandstätter et al. in press). Based on these results this study tests whether the approximation of the tense-lax contrast occurs in production and perception to a different extent when participants from two different ages groups of one and the same community are involved, as would be expected in a sound change in progress (e.g. Harrington et al. 2008). In order to test articulatory differences we analysed physiological EMA data with synchronized audio from five young and five old speakers and an additional acoustic corpus of 22 SAG participants (11young and 11old). The vowel trajectories were analysed between the closures of C 1 and C 2 and the trajectory magnitude between the onset and the maximum of the gestural trajectory of the tongue back sensor. For the further quantification of the data, we compressed the multi-channel tongue data using principal component analysis at the temporal midpoint of the vowel to a two-dimensional space whose axes could be related to phonetic height and backness. For the acoustic corpus we analysed vowel and VC duration of 32 participants. 22 of these participants took part in a perception experiment with two 9-step continua from tense /i/ to lax /ɪ/ in order to test quality and durational cues separately. The results showed smaller differences for the young speakers, attesting some evidence of a sound change in progress.
... Für das gesprochene Hochdeutsche in Norddeutschland wird der Zusammenfall von /ɛː/ und /eː/ beobachtet, sodass /ɛː/ als halb geschlossener Vokal realisiert wird (vgl. Jørgensen 1969, Bohn/Flege 1992, Kohler 1995zusammenfassend Stiel 2018). Bei formellerer Sprechweise wird jedoch auch bei norddeutschen Sprecher-/innen trotz rezenten Wandels die Opposition zwischen /eː/ und /ɛː/ aufrechterhalten (Pätzold/Simpson 1997, Steinlen 2005: 79, Frank 2018. ...
Article
Im Saterland wird neben der Regionalsprache Niederdeutsch eine der am stärksten bedrohten Minderheitensprachen Europas, das Saterfriesische (Seeltersk), gesprochen. Spätestens seit Ende des zweiten Weltkrieges stehen beide Sprachen nicht mehr nur miteinander, sondern auch mit dem nördlichen Standarddeutsch in engem Kontakt. Die meisten älteren Muttersprachler/innen des Saterfriesischen sind trilingual mit Niederdeutsch und Hochdeutsch als zweiter und dritter Sprache. Es wird eine akustische Untersuchung vorgestellt, die sich auf Interferenzerscheinungen bei der Produktion gemeinsamer Monophthonge im Vokalismus trilingualer Saterfriesen konzentriert und versucht, diese auf inner- und außersprachliche Faktoren zurückzuführen. Zu den innersprachlichen Faktoren zählen die Größe des Vokalinventars und die damit verbundenen funktionalen Restriktionen zur Aufrechterhaltung distinkter Vokalkategorien. Zu den außersprachlichen Faktoren zählen unter anderem die Domäne des Sprachgebrauchs sowie die Größe und Autonomie der Sprachgemeinschaft. Als Vergleichsgruppe wurden zudem gleichaltrige monolinguale Sprecher des nördlichen Standarddeutschen herangezogen. Die Vokale wurden in einen neutralen /hVt/-Kontext eingebettet und in Form einer Leseaufgabe erhoben. Gemessen wurden die Vokaldauer sowie F1 und F2 unter Berücksichtigung der Formantdynamik. Der Vergleich der Vokalproduktionen in den drei Sprachen zeigt, dass die hochdeutschen Vokalrealisierungen von den niederdeutschen und saterfriesischen Realisierungen in Bezug auf Vokaldauer und Vokalqualität abweichen, während sich kaum Differenzen zwischen der Regional- und Minderheitensprache finden. Der Vergleich mit monolingualen Sprechern des Standarddeutschen außerhalb des Saterlandes lässt zudem erkennen, dass die im Hochdeutschen der Saterfriesen abweichenden Realisierungen eine Orientierung in Richtung zur weiteren Sprachgemeinschaft des Standarddeutschen in Nordwestdeutschland aufweisen. Die Ergebnisse legen somit nahe, dass Unterschiede in der Realisierung geteilter Vokalkategorien in den drei Sprachen eher auf außersprachliche Faktoren zurückgehen.
... In more informal speech, / / tends to be merged with /e / ɛː ː (cf. BOHN & FLEGE, 1992, JØRGENSEN, 1969, KOHLER, 1995, 172-173, PÄTZOLD & SIMPSON 1997, STEINLEN, 2005 urban vernacular of Hanover hardly shows any regional characteristics and may be considered one of the local varieties of Northern High German which come close to the codified standard. In addition, Hanover High German is commonly considered most typical of Northern High German as used in the North German media. ...
Article
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Für eine Vielzahl von Sprachen wurde gezeigt, dass eine dynamische f0-Kontur zu einer Verlängerung der wahrgenommenen Vokaldauer beiträgt und Hörer von diesem Parameter bei der Disambiguierung uneindeutiger Fälle Gebrauch machen. In der vorliegenden Studie wird der perzeptuelle Effekt am Beispiel trilingualer Saterfriesen untersucht, da die Ergebnisse früherer Produktionsstudien nahelegen, dass f0-Dynamik zusätzlich kontrastverstärkend für die Unterscheidung phonemischer Vokaloppositionen im Saterfriesischen wirken kann. Die Analyse der trilingualen Saterfriesen erfolgt kontrastiv zu monolingualen Sprechern des nördlichen Standarddeutschen, um eine mögliche sprachspezifische Ausprägung des perzeptuellen Effekts zu berücksichtigen. Es werden resynthetisierte natürliche Stimuli verwendet. Dabei handelt es sich um monosyllabische Kunstwörter der Form /hVt/ mit je drei Dauerstufen und zwei Konturverläufen (flache f0-Kontur vs. dynamische f0-Kontur) pro untersuchter Vokalkategorie. Für beide Sprechergruppen lässt sich ein Einfluss der f0-Kontur auf die wahrgenommene Vokaldauer beobachten. Stimuli wurden als länger wahrgenommen, wenn diese mit einer dynamischen anstelle einer flachen f0-Kontur realisiert wurden. Bei den trilingualen Sprechern ist dieser Effekt jedoch auf die halblangen und langen Stimuli geschränkt. Damit zeigt sich, dass eine dynamische f0-Kontur generell zu einer Verlängerung der wahrgenommenen Vokaldauer beiträgt, unabhängig vom sprachlichen Hintergrund der Sprecher. Durch die Beschränkung des Effekts auf die halblangen und langen Stimuli bei den trilingualen Sprechern deuten die Ergebnisse zugleich auf eine sprachspezifische Implementierung des perzeptuellen Effekts hin, welcher kontrastverstärkend zur Differenzierung von Kurz-und Langvokaloppositionen beitragen kann.
... In more informal speech, /E+/ tends to be merged with /e+/ (cf. Bohn and Flege, 1992;Jørgensen, 1969;Kohler, 1995, p. 172;P€ atzold and Simpson, 1997;Steinlen, 2005, p. 79). Additionally, SF is reported to have a complete set of short tense close vowels /i y u/, which are in opposition with long tense close /i+ y+ u+/ and short lax close /I Y U/ (Sj€ olin, 1969, p. 67;Kramer, 1982;Fort, 2015, p. XV). ...
Article
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The present study compares the acoustic realization of Saterland Frisian, Low German, and High German vowels by trilingual speakers in the Saterland. The Saterland is a rural municipality in northwestern Germany. It offers the unique opportunity to study trilingualism with languages that differ both by their vowel inventories and by external factors, such as their social status and the autonomy of their speech communities. The objective of the study was to examine whether the trilingual speakers differ in their acoustic realizations of vowel categories shared by the three languages and whether those differences can be interpreted as effects of either the differences in the vowel systems or of external factors. Monophthongs produced in a /hVt/ frame revealed that High German vowels show the most divergent realizations in terms of vowel duration and formant frequencies, whereas Saterland Frisian and Low German vowels show small differences. These findings suggest that vowels of different languages are likely to share the same phonological space when the speech communities largely overlap, as is the case with Saterland Frisian and Low German, but may resist convergence if at least one language is shared with a larger, monolingual speech community, as is the case with High German.
... In spoken NSG, the vowel phoneme /ɛː/, which is believed to be mostly due to spelling pronunciation, tends to be merged with /eː/ and thus realized as a close-mid vowel (cf. Bohn & Flege, 1992;Fuhrhop & Peters, 2013 p. 50;Jørgensen, 1969;Kohler, 1995, p. 172f;Pätzold & Simpson, 1997). In careful speech, however, the opposition between /eː/ and /ɛː/ may be upheld even by NSG speakers (cf. ...
Article
Aims and Objectives Studies on vowel productions of speakers from bilingual communities report not only interactions between the first and second language, but also monolingual-like realizations. The present study expands a prior acoustic investigation of Saterland trilinguals by studying the substrate effect of Saterland Frisian and Low German on the trilinguals’ standard language Northern Standard German. The research aim is to test whether the Northern Standard German vowel productions of the Saterland trilinguals approach the productions of monolingual speakers in terms of durational and spectral features. Design We elicited three repetitions per speaker of the complete inventory of stressed Northern Standard German monophthongs in /hVt/ context to compare the realizations of Northern Standard German vowels in trilingual speakers from Saterland and in monolingual speakers from Hanover, whose variety of Northern Standard German is representative of the larger speech community. Data and analysis In an acoustic analysis, we compared the durational and spectral features using linear mixed effects models. The findings are interpreted with reference to the cross-linguistic vowel productions of the trilingual speakers. Findings For the larger part, the Northern Standard German vowel productions of the trilinguals approach the productions of the monolingual speakers in terms of both durational and spectral features. In addition, the vowel productions of the trilingual speakers suggest a bidirectional interaction between the vowel systems of the trilinguals’ three languages. Originality This investigation is the first to study phonetic interference in vowel production in a situation of long-term language contact involving regional trilingualism and an endangered minority language. Implications Our findings show an orientation towards the larger speech community in the realization of vowel categories in the trilinguals’ standard language. Our study also suggests that the complete inventory needs to be studied to understand the functional constraints by which the multilingual vowel space is organized. It further suggests that a comparison of multilingual with monolingual speakers is necessary to draw conclusions on the mutual subphonemic influence of the individual vowel systems.
... In spoken NSG the vowel phoneme /ɛː/, which is believed to be mostly due to spelling pronunciation, tends to be merged with /eː/ and thus realized as a close-mid vowel (cf. [12], [13, p.50], [14], [15, p. 172f.]). In careful speech, however, the opposition between /eː/ and /ɛː/ in hVt context may be upheld even by North German speakers (cf. ...
Conference Paper
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Studies on vowel productions of speakers from bilingual communities report L1-L2 interactions but also monolingual-like realizations ([1], [2], [3]). Where the languages differed in communicative range and size of the speech community, monolingual-like productions of early bilinguals were found in the languages with the wider communicative range and larger speech community. We compare the acoustic realizations of Northern Standard German (NSG) vowels in monolingual speakers from Hanover, representing the larger speech community of Northern Germany, and in trilingual speakers from the Saterland, speaking the local variant of High German, Low German, and Saterland Frisian. To examine whether the NSG vowels of the Saterland speakers approached the vowels of the monolingual speakers in terms of spectral and durational features, we elicited all stressed NSG monophthongs in /hVt/ context. Our data show an orientation towards the larger speech community of Northern Germany in the productions of the trilinguals. Vowel productions which neither differed across the trilinguals' three languages nor from the mono-linguals suggest contact-induced phonetic convergence towards NSG. The observed bidirectional interaction of the trilinguals' three vowel systems further supports the claim that all vowel categories are organized in a common phonological vowel space.
... Older studies concerning formant patterns of German vowels were published by Jørgensen (1969), Iivonen (1970Iivonen ( , 1986, Rausch (1972), Wängler (1981), and Ramers (1988). For further indications of formant statistics for Standard German, see the online digital version of the materials. ...
Book
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eBook, open access, download link: https://www.peterlang.com/document/1067698 – For the second volume 'Indices', see: https://www.peterlang.com/document/1462230 – Abstract: It seems as if the fundamentals of how we produce vowels and how they are acoustically represented have been clarified: we phonate and articulate. Using our vocal chords, we produce a vocal sound or noise which is then shaped into a specific vowel sound by the resonances of the pharyngeal, oral, and nasal cavities, that is, the vocal tract. Accordingly, the acoustic description of vowels relates to vowel-specific patterns of relative energy maxima in the sound spectra, known as patterns of formants. The intellectual and empirical reasoning presented in this treatise, however, gives rise to scepticism with respect to this understanding of the sound of the vowel. The reflections and materials presented provide reason to argue that, up to now, a comprehensible theory of the acoustics of the voice and of voiced speech sounds is lacking, and consequently, no satisfying understanding of vowels as an achievement and particular formal accomplishment of the voice exists. Thus, the question of the acoustics of the vowel—and with it the question of the acoustics of the voice itself—proves to be an unresolved fundamental problem.
... Delattre (1965) does not provide the reader with background into his speakers. Jørgensen (1969) studied the speech of six German men, four of whom were from northern Germany and two of whom were from central Germany. Kohler's (1995) data come from one male speaker studied by Rausch (1972). ...
Article
A methodological shortcoming in previous second language (L2) acquisition studies has been that researchers have assumed an overly homogenous first language (L1) ignoring dialect differences. In the current study English and German vowel production data were collected from 72 English-speaking learners of German from three distinct North American English dialect1 regions –the Inland North, North Central, and Western Canada. Following Flege (e.g.,1995), who proposed that L2 segments with L1 counterparts would be more difficult to perceive and produce than new L2 segments, we show that subjects did not transfer their L1 /u/ to German but rather produced the German counterpart in a manner expected in neither German nor English. Instead, this was reflected in terms of formant (F1, F2 or F3) values that varied according to the L1 dialect of the learner. In particular, learners from the North Central dialect region whose English /u/ was produced with the lowest F2 values – though not significantly different from the Inland North learners’ /u/ – produced the German /u:/ with the highest F2 values of all three dialect regions. Speakers from all dialect regions were also able to manipulate their acoustic space to allow for the addition of the new German segment /y:/; however, they differed in how they ultimately established the German /u:/–/y:/ contrast. Learners from the two American dialect regions contrasted these vowels according to F2 values, while learners from Western Canada made the contrast utilizing F3. Based on these results, we conclude that L2 vowel formant values differ by dialect region even when the learners’ L1 dialects differ only subtly. Lastly, results provide further evidence that this influence is not simply the result of direct L1 transfer.
... Ramers' (1988) duration measurements yielded a ratio between short and long vowels from 1.65 to 2.58 (see also Bohn and Flege, 1990). With respect to spectral quality, there is no difference between long and short /a/, while the short front-mid vowel / / may be somewhat more centralized compared to its long counterpart (Jørgensen, 1969) for Standard Northern German. Others, however, have shown that this length pair only differs in duration but not in formant frequencies (Bohn and Flege, 1990). ...
Article
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How well can non-native length contrasts for vowels and for consonants be perceived and is one type more difficult than the other? Three listener groups (native Italian and German as well as advanced German learners of Italian) performed a speeded same–different task involving vocalic and consonantal length contrasts as well as segmental contrasts as controls. Phonologically, Italian, but not German, has a consonantal length contrast, while German, but not Italian, has a vocalic length contrast. Analysis of responses yielded a clear asymmetry: A non-native vowel length contrast was perceived just as well as the native consonantal length contrast. A non-native consonantal length contrast, however, was perceived poorly compared to the native vocalic length contrast: Italians showed higher sensitivity for consonantal length than German learners of Italian, who in turn were better than German non-learners. Reaction time analyses indicated that, despite displaying higher accuracy, the decision was just as difficult for learners as for non-learners, suggesting different types of difficulty for listeners with and without experience with a consonantal length contrast.
... She compared the four procedures in two ways. She first applied them to recordings of vowel data from six Germanic languages: English (Peterson & Barney, 1952), Norwegian (Gamnes, 1965), Swedish (Fant, Hennigson & Stålhammer, 1969), German (Jørgensen, 1969), Danish (Fischer-Jørgensen, 1972, and Dutch (Pols, Plomp & Tromp, 1973). Disner evaluated the percentages of 'scatter reduction' per procedure for each language. ...
Article
In sociolinguistics, language variation in vowel sounds is typically studied using phonetic transcription. Phonetic transcription is carried out by expert listeners, who are capable of perceptually separating (socio-) linguistic variation from anatomical/physiological speaker-related characteristics. However, phonetic transcription is a very laborious task and its reliability is questionable. In phonetics, vowel normalization procedures were designed to separate linguistic variation from anatomical/physiological variation in acoustic measurements. In this thesis, it is evaluated whether vowel normalization procedures are suitable for use in sociolinguistics, for studying language variation in vowels. It is described how 12 procedures for vowel normalization were compared. This comparison consists of two parts. First, the procedures were evaluated in the acoustic domain by applying them to acoustic (formant and fundamental frequency) measurements of a database of vowels pronounced by 160 Dutch teachers from the Netherlands and Flanders. The procedures were evaluated on how well they preserved (socio-) linguistic variation and minimized anatomical/physiological variation. Second, the normalization procedures were compared in a perceptual-acoustic comparison; a comparison with perceptual judgments made by expert listeners. The normalization procedures were applied to the acoustic measurements of vowel tokens from 20 of the 160 Dutch teachers. These tokens were also judged by expert listeners on their perceived (socio-) linguistic characteristics, i.e., tongue height, tongue position, and lip rounding in a listening experiment. Next, the transformed acoustic measurements were compared to the perceptual judgments using linear regression analysis, to evaluate how well the output of the normalization procedures modeled the perceived (socio-) linguistic characteristics of the vowel tokens. These two comparisons of the 12 normalization procedures show that procedures that incorparate information (e.g., the mean or standard deviation of the formant measurements) about other vowels produced by a speaker are most succesful in the acoustic evaluation as well as in the perceptual-acoustic comparison
... Standard German comprises a set of eight tense monophthongs, i.e., [i…,e…,E…,A…,o…,u…,y…,P…] and seven lax ones, i.e., [I,E,a,ɔ,U,Y,{], as well as [´] and [å], which only occur in unstressed syllables. The tense monophthongs are generally longer and more peripheral in the vowel space than their lax counterparts, although [A…] and [a] only differ in terms of duration (JPrgensen, 1969; Antoniadis and Strube, 1984; Flege, 1990, 1992). In spectral terms, German distinguishes the five front unrounded vowels [i…,e…,I,E…,E], the four back rounded vowels [u…,U,o…,ɔ], the four front rounded vowels [y…,Y,P…,{], the two central vowels [´,å], and the two open vowels [A…,a]. ...
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... For additional acoustic studies of German and English vowels, see, for instance,Jørgensen 1969, Maurer et al. 1992, Strange et al. 2004, and Hawkins & Midgley 2005. Note, however, that these studies feature only male speakers, and are therefore not directly comparable to the formant values obtained here. ...
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... For the languages investigated in the current study, data showing that short vowels are located more centrally in the acoustic vowel space compared to long vowels is available for all languages. Most prominent is the spectral difference between long and short vowels in German, where all long/short pairs with the exception of the low vowels [a] and [a:] are reported to exhibit spectral differences.! This has been found in numerous studies since the first investigation of spectral differences between long and short vowels by Jargensen in 1969. Acoustic measurements on Thai long and short vowels have also shown that short vowels are more centralized than long vowels (Abramson, 1962;Abramson & Ren, 1990;Roengpitya, 2001). ...
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In acoustic theory, formant pattern differences within one vowel identify are related to differences in the speaker groups or in the types of vocalization. Yet, studies of vowel synthesis indicate that formant patterns can also vary strongly in relation either to pitch or to formant number alterations. Within this study, natural vocalizations of nine German vowels were investigated with regard to different formant patterns representing the same vowel identity, apart from differences in speaker groups and vocalization types. The results show i) FO-dependence of the lower formants < 1.5-2 kHz; ii) occurrence of natural one-formant back and two-formant front vowels; iii) a non-systematic relationship between FO and the formants, and a non-systematic relationship between formant patterns of different formant numbers. The implications for psychophysics, physiology and perception of speech are discussed.
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The formant frequencies of a particular vowel vary according to the speaker group and to coarticulation. Therefore, overlapping formant patterns of different vowels are commonly related to sex and age differences and to coarticulation, and are considered to concern mainly the F1-F2 pattern of adjacent vowels. However, several studies have reported indications of a correlation between the lower formant frequencies and F0, as well as of the appearance of different formant numbers relevant to vowel identity. As a consequence, the overlap between formant patterns of different vowels might be more substantial than has traditionally been assumed. Within the present study, therefore, the extent to which a given formant pattern can represent different vowels was investigated for natural Swiss German vowels produced monotonously and in isolation by men, women and children at F0 of 85-870 Hz. Similar formant patterns were found for vocalizations of different vowels with both small and large phonetic distances, and within the entire frequency ranges of the formants relevant for phoneme identity. For vowel sounds displaying ambiguous formant patterns, the main spectral characteristics related to differences in their perceptual identity were found to concern F0 and relative formant amplitudes. Results are given in exemplary vowel series, and consequences for the psychophysics of the vowel are discussed.
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