ISCA Archive ISAPh 2024
ISCA Archive ISAPh 2024

Durational Aspects of fast speech in German

Reinhold Greisbach, Kornélia Juhász, Zsuzsa Szánthó, Szabina Zsoldos, Andrea Deme

It is debatable whether the phonetic manifestation of the central phonological contrast in the German vowel system is a quantitative (vowel length) or qualitative contrast. An acceleration of articulation has an effect on the duration of the vowels and thus on the quantitative contrast. Acceleration can also lead to greater centralization and thus influence the qualitative contrast. The investigation of fast speech is intended to provide information on which parameter is more resistant and can therefore considered to be the distinctive feature. In the experiment, the corner vowels of 19 native German speakers were examined in normal and fast speech using minimal pairs and analyzed with regard to their duration and quality parameters (formants). A new algorithm for normalizing the formant frequencies is presented. The results go both ways. The qualitative contrast is more robust to speeding up speech. However, the quantitative contrast seems to be more important as it extends from the vowels to all sounds of the analyzed minimal pairs. The two strategies are not correlated, which indicates that the speakers use different individual strategies to increase their speaking rate.