Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-zzh7m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T16:58:18.779Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Complementary length in vowel–consonant sequences: Acoustic and perceptual evidence for a sound change in progress in Bavarian German

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2017

Felicitas Kleber
Felicitas Kleber*
Affiliation:
Institute of Phonetics and Speech Processing, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germanykleber@phonetik.uni-muenchen.de
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This study is concerned with the Bavarian German dialect feature of complementary length in vowel plus consonant sequences according to which tense (long) vowels always precede lenis stops (short closure) and lax (short) vowels always precede fortis stops (long closure). The study investigates whether a vowel length contrast is developing before fortis stops due to dialect leveling. We measured vowel and consonant duration in trochaic words differing only in vowel length which were read by 40 older and younger Bavarian and Saxon (control group) German speakers. Older Bavarians distinguished tense and lax vowels by means of vowel to vowel plus consonant ratios that indicate an inverse timing pattern. Saxons and younger Bavarians signal the tense–lax distinction independently of the following stop length. A perception test showed that this sound change in progress also affects perception. We argue for a contact-induced change which is triggered by external as opposed to internal factors.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the International Phonetic Association , Volume 50 , Issue 1 , April 2020 , pp. 1 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © International Phonetic Association 2017

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bannert, Robert. 1976. Mittelbairische Phonologie auf akustischer und perzeptorischer Grundlage. Ph.D. dissertation, Lund University.Google Scholar
Bauer, Laurie. 2008. Lenition revisited. Journal of Linguistics 44, 605–624.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bauer, Laurie & Warren, Paul. 2004. New Zealand English phonology. In Kortmann, Bernd, Schneider, Edgar W., Burridge, Kate, Mesthrie, Rajend & Upton, Clive (eds.), A handbook of varieties of English: A multimedia reference tool, vol. 1, 580–602. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Bergmann, Gunter. 1990. Upper Saxon. In Russ, Charles V. J. (ed.), The dialects of Modern German, 290–312. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bethge, Wolfgang. 1963. Beziehungen der Generation zur Quantität in den deutschen Mundarten. Phonetica 9, 200–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boersma, Paul & Weenink, David. 2008. Praat: Doing phonetics by computer (version 5.0.27). http://www.praat.org/ (accessed 28 June 2008).Google Scholar
Braunschweiler, Norbert. 1997. Integrated cues of voicing and vowel length in German: A production study. Language and Speech 40, 353–376.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bukmaier, Véronique, Harrington, Jonathan & Kleber, Felicitas. 2014. An analysis of post-vocalic /s-ʃ/ neutralization in Augsburg German: Evidence for a gradient sound change. Frontiers in Psychology 5, Article 828.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chen, Matthew. 1970. Vowel length variation as a function of the voicing of the consonant environment. Phonetica 22, 129–159.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davidson, Lisa. 2006. Schwa elision in fast speech: Segmental deletion or gestural overlap? Phonetica 63, 79–112.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Davis, Stuart & Van Summers, W.. 1989. Vowel length and closure duration in word-medial VC sequences. Journal of Phonetics 17, 339–353.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Draxler, Christoph & Jänsch, Klaus. 2004. SpeechRecorder – A universal platform independent multi-channel audio recording software. 4th International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation, Lisbon, 559–562.Google Scholar
Fowler, Carol. 1992. Vowel duration and closure duration in voiced and unvoiced stops: There are no contrast effects here. Journal of Phonetics 20, 143–165.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harrington, Jonathan. 2010. The phonetic analysis of speech corpora. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Harrington, Jonathan, Kleber, Felicitas & Reubold, Ulrich. 2012. The production and perception of coarticulation in two types of sound change in progress. In Fuchs, Susanne, Weirich, Melanie, Pape, Daniel & Perrier, Pascal (eds.), Speech planning and dynamics, 39–62. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Harrington, Jonathan, Kleber, Felicitas & Reubold, Ulrich. 2013. The effect of prosodic weakening on the production and perception of trans-consonantal vowel coarticulation in German. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 134, 551–561.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hawkins, Sarah & Midgley, Jonathan. 2005. Formant frequencies of RP monophthongs in four age groups of speakers. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 35, 183–199.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hinderling, Robert. 1980. Lenis und Fortis im Bairischen. Versuch einer morphophonemischen Interpretation. Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik 47, 25–51.Google Scholar
Hinskens, Frans. 1998. Dialect levelling: A two-dimensional process. Folia Linguistica 32, 35–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jessen, Michael. 1993. Stress conditions on vowel quality and quantity in German. Working Papers of the Cornell Phonetics Laboratory 8, 1–27.Google Scholar
Jessen, Michael. 1998. Phonetics and phonology of tense and lax obstruents in German. Amsterdam & Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Kerswill, Paul. 2003. Dialect levelling and geographical diffusion in British English. In Britain, David & Cheshire, Jenny (eds.), Social dialectology: In honour of Peter Trudgill, 223–243. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kleber, Felicitas. 2011. Incomplete neutralization and maintenance of phonological contrasts in varieties of Standard German. Ph.D. dissertation, LMU München.Google Scholar
Kleber, Felicitas. 2014. Altersabhängige Unterschiede in der Produktion und Perzeption des Stimmhaftigkeitskontrastes in Varietäten des Deutschen. In Krefeld, Thomas & Pustka, Elissa (eds.), Perzeptive Linguistik: Phonetik, Semantik, Varietäten, 19–32. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.Google Scholar
Kleber, Felicitas, Harrington, Jonathan & Reubold, Ulrich. 2012. The relationship between the perception and production of coarticulation during a sound change in progress. Language and Speech 55, 383–405.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kleber, Felicitas, John, Tina & Harrington, Jonathan. 2010. The implications for speech perception of incomplete neutralization of final devoicing in German. Journal of Phonetics 38, 185–196.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kluender, Keith R., Diehl, Randy L. & Wright, Beverly A.. 1988. Vowel-length differences before voiced and voiced consonants. Journal of Phonetics 16, 153–169.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kohler, Klaus J. 1977. The production of plosives. Arbeitsberichte des Instituts für Phonetik der Universität Kiel 8, 30–110.Google Scholar
Kohler, Klaus J. 1979. Dimensions in the perception of fortis and lenis plosives. Phonetica 36, 332–343.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kohler, Klaus J. 1984. Explanation in phonology: The feature fortis/lenis. Phonetica 41, 150–174.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kubozono, Haruo. 2002. Temporal neutralization in Japanese. In Gussenhoven, Carlos & Warner, Natasha (eds.), Laboratory Phonology 7, 171–202. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 1994. Principles of linguistic change, vol. 1: Internal factors. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Ladefoged, Peter & Maddieson, Ian. 1996. The sounds of the world's languages. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Lameli, Alfred. 2004. Hierarchies of dialectal features in a diachronic view: Implicational scaling of real time data. In Gunnarsson, Britt-Louise (ed.), Language variation in Europe: Papers from the 2nd International Conference on Language Variation in Europe, Uppsala University (ICLaVE 2), 253–266.Google Scholar
Lindblom, Björn. 1990. Explaining phonetic variation: A sketch of the H&H theory. In Hardcastle, William J. & Marchal, Alain (eds.), Speech production and speech modelling, 403–439. Dordrecht: Kluwer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lindblom, Björn, Guion, Susan, Hura, Susan, Moon, Seung-Jae & Willerman, Raquel. 1995. Is sound change adaptive? Rivista di linguistica 7, 5–36.Google Scholar
Maddieson, Ian. 1985. Phonetic cues to syllabification. In Fromkin, Victoria (ed.), Phonetic linguistics: Essays in honor of Peter Ladefoged, 203–221. Orlando, FL: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Milroy, Lesley. 2002. Introduction: Mobility, contact and language change – Working with contemporary speech communities. Journal of Sociolinguistics 6, 3–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitleb, Fares. 1984. Voicing effect on vowel duration is not an absolute universal. Journal of Phonetics 12, 23–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mooshammer, Christine & Geng, Christian. 2008. Acoustic and articulatory manifestations of vowel reduction in German. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 38, 117–136.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moosmüller, Sylvia & Scheutz, Hannes. In press. Lenis/Fortis – komplementäre Länge – Isochronie: Der (un)gelöste mittelbairische Kopplungsknoten. In Kazzazi, Kerstin, Luttermann, Karin, Wahl, Sabine & Fritz, Thomas Albert (eds.), Worte über Wörter. Eine Festschrift zu Ehren von Elke Ronneberger-Sibold. Tübingen: Stauffenburg Verlag.Google Scholar
Myers, Scott & Hansen, Benjamin B.. 2005. The origin of vowel length neutralisation in vocoid sequences: Evidence from Finnish speakers. Phonology 22, 317–344.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ohala, John J. 1993. The phonetics of sound change. In Jones, Charles (ed.), Historical linguistics: Problems and perspectives, 237–278. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Pouplier, Marianne & Hardcastle, William. 2005. A re-evaluation of the nature of speech errors in normal and disordered speakers. Phonetica 62, 227–243.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ramers, Karl Heinz. 1988. Vokalquantität und -qualität im Deutschen. Tübingen: Niemeyer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Restle, David. 2003. Silbenschnitt, Quantität, Kopplung: zur Geschichte, Charakterisierung und Typologie der Anschlussprosodie. München: Fink.Google Scholar
Restle, David & Mooshammer, Christine. 1999. The influence of the tense–lax contrast in vowels on the production of post-vocalic consonants in Standard German. Proceedings of the 14th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS XIV), Berkeley, University of California, vol. 1, 531–534.Google Scholar
Schaeffler, Felix. 2005. Phonological quantity in Swedish dialects: Typological aspects, phonetic variation and diachronic change. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Umea.Google Scholar
Scheutz, Hannes. 1984. Quantität und Lenis/Fortis im Mittelbairischen. In Wiesinger, Peter (ed.), Beiträge zur bairischen und ostfränkischen Dialektologie. Ergebnisse der Zweiten Bairisch-Österreichischen Dialektologentagung, Wien, 13–33. Göppingen: Kümmerle Verlag.Google Scholar
Schiel, Florian. 2004. MAUS goes iterative. Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation, Lisbon, 1015–1018.Google Scholar
Scobbie, James M., Gibbon, Fiona, Hardcastle, William J. & Fletcher, Paul. 2000. Covert contrast as a stage in the acquisition of phonetics and phonology. In Broe, Michael B. & Pierrehumbert, Janet B. (eds.), Papers in Laboratory Phonology V: Language acquisition and the lexicon, 194–207. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Seiler, Guido. 2005. On the development of the Bavarian quantity system. Interdisciplinary Journal of Germanic Linguistic and Semiotic Analysis 10, 103–129.Google Scholar
Strange, Winifred & Bohn, Ocke-Schwen. 1998. Dynamic specification of coarticulated German vowels: Perceptual and acoustical studies. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 104, 488–504.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Torreira, Francisco & Ernestus, Mirjam. 2011. Vowel elision in casual French: The case of vowel /e/ in the word c'était. Journal of Phonetics 39, 50–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trudgill, Peter. 1986. Dialects in contact. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Wagener, Peter. 2002. German dialects in real time change. Journal of Germanic Linguistics 14, 271–285.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weiss, Rudolf. 1976. The perception of vowel length and quality in German: An experimental-phonetic investigation. Hamburg: Buske.Google Scholar
Wiesinger, Peter. 1990. The central and southern Bavarian dialects in Bavaria and Austria. In Russ, Charles V. J. (ed.), The dialects of Modern German, 438–519. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Wrede, Ferdinand. 1919. Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der deutschen Mundartforschung. Zeitschrift für deutsche Mundarten 14, 3–18.Google Scholar