Institut für Schallforschung, Österreichische Akademie der WissenschaftenWohllebengasse 12-14, A-1040 Wien, Austria

Tel: +43 1/4277-29503 Fax: +43 1/4277-9295 E-mail: sylvia.moosmueller@oeaw.ac.at

Acoustics Research Institute Austrian Academy of Sciences

Secondary Stress: A Speaker-Specific Characteristic?

Sylvia Moosmüllerhttp://www.kfs.oeaw.ac.atsylvia.moosmueller@oeaw.ac.at

Vowels in Standard Austrian German

Introducation: Theoretical Framework•Socio-pragmatic foundation of phonology and phonetics •The phonological system•Standard Austrian German

Methods and DataInterpretation of Formant FrequenciesVowel Inventory and FeaturesCoarticulationVowel VariabilitySpeaker-specific traits

Data

Six speakers of Standard Austrian GermanTwo speaking tasks (reading, spontaneous)

~ 11.000 vowels were analysedF1, F2, F3, F0, duration

Method

Sampling frequency: 22 050 Hz, 16 BitLPC26 coefficients, pre-emphasis 0.9546 ms gliding Hanning windowOverlap: 95%

20 to 150 measurement points per vowel, depending on the duration

Method

Spectrogram of the item „Kies“ (gravel). Speaker sp012, reading sentences. Bottom panel: fundamental frequency, Next panel from bottom: waveform window, Third panel from bottom: spectrogram window, Left upper panel: waveform zoom window, rigth upper panel: amplitude spectrum window.

Vowels in Standard Austrian German

Vowel system consists of 13 vowels on 5 constriction locations:

•Pre-palatal: /i, ç, y, Y/•Palatal: /e, E, ë, ê/•Velar: /u, ï/•Upper-pharyngeal: /o, O/•Lower-pharyngeal: /A/

These vowels are additionally distinguished by constriction degree (or lip aperture) and lip protrusion.

Acoustic Correlates of Primary Stress in German

Duration (Goldbeck & Sendlmeier 1988, Jessen et al. 1995, Mengel 1997, Dogil & Williams 1999)

Spectral tilt (Claßen et al. 1998)

Vowel quality (Jessen et al. 1995)

Difference between primary stressed and unstressed vowels

0,000

5,000

10,000

15,000

20,000

25,000

30,000

35,000Di

ffere

nce

stre

ssed

- un

stre

ssed

(in

%)

F1 7,229 5,265 8,558 10,412 11,193 7,324 9,189 10,058 21,264

F2 11,192 6,211 15,346 10,718 27,561 24,602 28,686 16,073 5,825

F3 10,455 4,654 9,867 3,352 2,759 4,144 4,520

/i/ c /i/ uc /e/ c /e/ uc /u/ c /u/ uc /o/ c /o/ uc /a/

Mean values of the statistically significant differences (in %) between stressed and unstressed vowels, broken for F1, F2, and F3, pooled over all speakers and speaking tasks. Legend: c = [+constricted], uc = [-constricted]

Secondary Stress

No acoustic correlates found sofar for secondary stress (Mengel 2000, Kleber & Klipphahn 2006)

Secondary Stress is a perceptual phenomenon (Mengel 2000, Schreuder 2006)

Secondary Stress

Secondary stress in compounds e.g.:

Fi'nanzmi]nister (finance minister)'Bundes]kanzler (chancellor)Be'suchs]recht (visiting rights)Be'suchs]tage (visiting days)'Jugend]amt (youth welfare office)

In the spontaneous speech of the data at issue, approximately 25% of all nouns were compounds.

The vowel /A/

Schematized change in vowel quality:

F1 primary stress > F1 secondary stress > F1 unstressedF2 primary stress < F2 secondary stress < F2 unstressedF3 primary stress < F3 secondary stress < F3 unstressed

The vowel /A/

F1

F2

F3

sp180 sp129 sp082 sp012 sp126 sp127Statistically significant changes of F1, F2, and F3 (p < 0.05) of the vowel /A/ dependent on stress, sentence reading task. Within each column denoting the speakers, the left-most crossbar denotes the relative formant frequency position of primary stressed vowels, the middle crossbar the one of secondary stressed vowels, and the rightmost crossbar the one of unstressed vowels.

The vowel /i/

Schematized change in vowel quality:

F1 primary stress < F1 secondary stress < F1 unstressedF2 primary stress > F2 secondary stress > F2 unstressedF3 primary stress > F3 secondary stress > F3 unstressed

The vowel /i/

F1

F2

F3

sp180 sp129 sp082 sp012 sp126 sp127Statistically significant changes of F1, F2, and F3 (p < 0.05) of the vowel /A/ dependent on stress, sentence reading task. Within each column denoting the speakers, the left-most crossbar denotes the relative formant frequency position of primary stressed vowels, the middle crossbar the one of secondary stressed vowels, and the rightmost crossbar the one of unstressed vowels.

The vowel /ç/

Schematized change in vowel quality:

F1 primary stress < F1 secondary stress < F1 unstressedF2 primary stress > F2 secondary stress > F2 unstressedF3 primary stress > F3 secondary stress > F3 unstressed

The vowel /ç/

F1

F2

F3

sp180 sp129 sp082 sp012 sp126 sp127Statistically significant changes of F1, F2, and F3 (p < 0.05) of the vowel /A/ dependent on stress, sentence reading task. Within each column denoting the speakers, the left-most crossbar denotes the relative formant frequency position of primary stressed vowels, the middle crossbar the one of secondary stressed vowels, and the rightmost crossbar the one of unstressed vowels.

The vowel /E/

Schematized change in vowel quality:

F1 primary stress > F1 secondary stress > F1 unstressedF2 primary stress > F2 secondary stress > F2 unstressedF3 primary stress > F3 secondary stress > F3 unstressed

The vowel /E/

F1

F2

F3

sp180 sp129 sp082 sp012 sp126 sp127Statistically significant changes of F1, F2, and F3 (p < 0.05) of the vowel /A/ dependent on stress, sentence reading task. Within each column denoting the speakers, the left-most crossbar denotes the relative formant frequency position of primary stressed vowels, the middle crossbar the one of secondary stressed vowels, and the rightmost crossbar the one of unstressed vowels.

Conclusion

High variability among the speakers (see also Kleber & Klipphahn 2006)Difference between primary stressed position and unstressed position codifiedSecondary stress can be expressed in different ways:

in the same way as the primary stressed vowelin the same way as unstressed vowelnot at all

Depends on speaker and speaking task.

References

Claßen, Kathrin, Grzegorz Dogil, Michael Jessen, Krzysztof Marasek & Wolfgang Wokurek. 1998. „Stimmqualität und Wortbetonung im Deutschen.“ Linguistische Berichte 174, 202-245. Dogil Grzegorz & Briony Williams. 1999. "The phonetic manifestation of word stress." In: Harry van der Hulst (ed.), Word Prosodic Systems in the Languages of Europe. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 273-334. Goldbeck, Thomas. P. & Walter F. Sendlmeier. 1988. "Wechselbeziehung zwischen Satzmodalität und Akzentuierung in satzfinaler Position bei der Realisierung von Intonationskonturen." In: Hans Altmann (ed.), Intonationsforschungen. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 305-321.Jessen, Michael, Krzystof Marasek, Katrin Schneider & Kathrin Claßen. 1995. „Acoustic Correlates of Word Stress and the tense/lax Opposition in the Vowel System of German.“ Proceedings of the ICPhS ’95. Stockholm. Vol 4, 428-431.Kleber, Felicitas & Nadine Klipphahn. 2006. "An acoustic investigation of secondary stress in German." Arbeitsberichte des Instituts für Phonetik und digitale Sprachverarbeitung der Universität Kiel, AIPUK 37, 1-18. Mengel, Andreas. 1997. "Das akustische Korrelat des deutschen Wortakzents." Vortrag gehalten anläßlich der Konferenz für Elektronische Sprachsignalverarbeitung (ESSV 1997) in Cottbus. Mengel, Andreas. 2000. Deutscher Wortakzent. Symbole, Signale. Norderstedt: Books on Demand GmbH. Schreuder, Maartje. 2006. Prosodic Processes in Language and Music. PhD Dissertation, Groningen Dissertations in Linguistics (GRODIL) 60, University of Groningen

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