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Spectrogram of the phrase / ti ː ˈʁ ɵː m ɪʃ n ̩ ˈ t ɛ mpl n / die römischen Tempeln ‘the Roman temples, showing full
Source publication
Upper Saxon ( Obersächsisch /ɵː po ˁˈ s ɛ ks ʃ/) refers to a group of dialects spoken by over two million people in the Free State of Saxony in eastern Germany. It is considered one of the eastern branches of Central German (Wiesinger 1983, Lewis 2009), with major phonological, morphological, and lexical differences from Standard German and other r...
Context in source publication
Context 1
... Standard German, Upper Saxon lacks a voicing contrast. Underlyingly, obstruents are voiceless and sonorants are voiced (Becker 1942: 104, 127–128; Bergmann 1965: 43, 1987: 18, 1990: 309–310; Zimmermann 1992: 102–107; Rues et al. 2007: 94; Kleber 2011). Unaspirated stops / p t k / can be partially or fully voiced [ b d ɡ ] between sonorants, as in Figure 1 and Figure 3 below; word-finally, they can vary widely from fully voiced stops to voiceless aspirated stops [ p h t h k h ] , as in Figure 2, but are most commonly realized as voiceless unaspirated stops (Bergmann 1965: 43; Albrecht 1983: 11), as in Figure 3. The sole aspiration distinction / k h k / is restricted to initial position (Bergmann 1965: 43), e.g. / ˈ k hʌ s ə / Kasse ‘cash register’ vs. / ˈ k ʌ s ə / Gasse ‘lane’ above. Neighboring varieties of Central and Upper German are also described as having a similar lack of a contrast in either voicing or aspiration (i.e. fortis vs. lenis) outside of velars, e.g. Thuringian (Spangenberg 1990: 270), East Franconian (Rowley 1990: 400), and Swabian (Hiller 1995: ...
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This paper attempts to account for the velar affrication in Najdi Arabic (NA) and its absence in Hijazi Arabic (HA). While NA consistently alters /k/ into [ts], and /ɡ/ into [dz], HA retains the velars and as such is more faithful to standard Arabic. The analysis follows from an Optimality-Theoretic (OT) framework (Prince and Smolensky, 1993) expli...
Citations
... The reduction of consonantal /r/ in coda position to a pharyngealized vowel is described as a distinct and salient feature of east central German varieties [6,14,23] but also in south western varieties such as Swabian [12]. As Khan [14] shows for Upper Saxon, /r/ surfaces in this position as pharyngealization of the preceeding vowel and also on adjacent consonantal material. ...
... The reduction of consonantal /r/ in coda position to a pharyngealized vowel is described as a distinct and salient feature of east central German varieties [6,14,23] but also in south western varieties such as Swabian [12]. As Khan [14] shows for Upper Saxon, /r/ surfaces in this position as pharyngealization of the preceeding vowel and also on adjacent consonantal material. Due to the temporal overlap this results in more monophthongal pharyngeal qualities in combination with short vowels (e.g. ...
This study investigates the acoustic and articulatory influence of postvocalic /r/ on the realization of vowels in an east central german variety. A selection of /r/ and /r/-less word pairs containing the short vowels /Y E a O U/ of seven male speakers were recorded using Ultrasound Tongue Imanging (UTI). Systematic differences were found both in lingual configurations as well as spectral measures (F1-F3) consistent with pharyngeal constriction. Especially the articulatory analysis of a greater portion of the word indicates consequences of /r/ having greater temporal extent showing /r/ to be a feature of the entire syllable rather than of a single segment.
... East Thuringian belongs to the East central German dialect group Thuringia-Upper Saxon and is spoken in the east of Thuringia and southwestern Saxony-Anhalt and is mostly a transition zone to Upper Saxon (Spangenberg 2013(Spangenberg [1989). Characteristic features of the vowel system of this dialect area, which will be examined here more closely, have been described mostly by auditory studies to be centralization of the whole vowel system, retraction of the open vowel /a/ and the pharyngealized vocalic variants of /r/ (Hünecke et al. 2012;Khan and Weise 2013;but Otto et al. 2014 for an articulatory and acoustic study on pharyngealization). Recordings were made in a living room with a Zoom H4 on a tripod placed in front of the speaker. ...
... Since the retraction and often pharyngealization of the vocalic correlates of /r/ is a salient feature for East Central German varieties (e.g. Khan and Weise 2013), formant values for [ɐ] in 'Maiers' were also measured. Vowel space sizes were measured by calculating the polygon area (in kHz²) spanned by F1 and F2 of the three vowels /a/, /ɪ/ and /uː/. ...
... lower graph: mean vowel spaces spanned by the three vowels /ɪ a uː/ (Zeitz: grey solid line, Kiel: black dashed line). of the open vowel and the vocalic correlate of /ər/. Both centralization and the retraction of the open vowels are dialectal features of East Central German varieties(Hünecke et al. 2012;Khan and Weise 2013). ...
The present study examines the potential relationship between vowel space dimensions and the perceptual distance of speak-ers with a regional accent and speakers of a more standard variety of German. Vowel space properties from one sentence of six reference speakers from the Kiel Corpus and six speak-ers from Zeitz were analyzed (F1, F2, Euclidean Distances, vowel space size). Speaker groups differ in acoustic parame-ters such as the Euclidean Distance from /ɪ/ to /uː/, the retrac-tion of the open vowel /a/, and [ɐ] as the vocalic realization of /ər/. Subjects rated strength of dialectality of paired stimuli from the 12 speakers. Multidimensional scaling was used to model the perceptual space of listeners. These dialectal fea-tures are found to correlate primarily with the first two per-ceptual dimensions of listeners judging speakers from Zeitz and the reference speakers.
... /ʃpɔrt/ [ʃpɔːt] Sport (sport) ). In east central German varieties, such as Saxon (Khan and Weise 2013;Spangenberg 2013Spangenberg [1989), but also in a south western variety such as Swabian (Hiller 1995), correlates of coda /r/ are characterized by pharyngealization of the preceding vowel, but also of adjacent consonantal material. Pharyngealization is produced either by contracting the constrictor muscles of the pharynx or by retracting the tongue root to produce a narrowing of the pharyngeal passage which results in the impression of a darker quality of the segment (Laver 1994). ...
This study investigates acoustic and articulatory correlates of coda /r/ in East Thuringian using Ultrasound imaging tech-nique (UTI). A selection of /r/ and /r/-less word pairs contain-ing the vowels /ɛ a ɔ ʊ/ (e.g. 'Metz-März', /mɛts-mɛrts/) of seven male speakers were recorded. Systematic differences in lingual configurations and spectral patterns between /r/ and /r/-less vowels consistent with pharyngeal constriction were found. Acoustic analysis of the word pair 'Pelle-Perle' (/pɛlə/-/pɛrlə/) illustrates the temporal extent of this pharyngealiza-tion extending over at least two syllables.
Throughout most of the eighteenth-century, grammarians believed that ch in German words like Macht ‘power’ and Licht ‘light’ had only one place of articulation. In the final quarter of that century three studies discovered that ch in such words represented two places of articulation corresponding to what modern-day linguists call ‘velar’ and ‘palatal’ ( Mäzke 1776 ; Hemmer 1776 ; Fränklin 1778 ). The present article concentrates on the years following those three works. While the most widespread claim was that ch represented only one place of articulation, a number of scholars continued in the tradition of Mäzke, Hemmer, and Fränklin by recognizing that ch had more than one place of articulation. The purpose of this article is to document those innovative studies and to assess their understanding of the phonetics and phonology of German ch .
Language documentation faces a persistent and pervasive problem: How much material is enough to represent a language fully? How much text would we need to sample the full phoneme inventory of a language? In the phonetic/phonemic domain, what proportion of the phoneme inventory can we expect to sample in a text of a given length? Answering these questions in a quantifiable way is tricky, but asking them is necessary. The cumulative collection of Illustrative Texts published in the Illustration series in this journal over more than four decades (mostly renditions of the ‘North Wind and the Sun’) gives us an ideal dataset for pursuing these questions. Here we investigate a tractable subset of the above questions, namely: What proportion of a language’s phoneme inventory do these texts enable us to recover, in the minimal sense of having at least one allophone of each phoneme? We find that, even with this low bar, only three languages (Modern Greek, Shipibo and the Treger dialect of Breton) attest all phonemes in these texts. Unsurprisingly, these languages sit at the low end of phoneme inventory sizes (respectively 23, 24 and 36 phonemes). We then estimate the rate at which phonemes are sampled in the Illustrative Texts and extrapolate to see how much text it might take to display a language’s full inventory. Finally, we discuss the implications of these findings for linguistics in its quest to represent the world’s phonetic diversity, and for JIPA in its design requirements for Illustrations and in particular whether supplementary panphonic texts should be included.
In the Northern Horpa (NH) language of Sichuan, vowels are divided between plain and pharyngealized sets, with the latter pronounced with auxiliary articulatory gestures involving more constriction in the vocal tract. The current study examines how the NH vocalic contrast is manifested in line with the process of pharyngealization both acoustically and articulatorily, based on freshly gathered data from two varieties of the language (i.e., Rtsangkhog and Yunasche). Along with formant analyses, ultrasound imaging was employed to capture the tongue postures and positions during vowel production. The results show that in contrast with plain vowels, pharyngealized vowels generally feature lower F2 values and higher F1 and F3 values. Mixed results for F2 and F3 suggest that the quality contrasts are vowel-dependent. Ultrasound images, on the other hand, reveal that the vocalic distinction is affected by different types of tongue movements, including retraction, backing, and double bunching, depending on the inherent tongue positions for each vowel. The two NH varieties investigated are found to display differential formant changes and different types of tongue displacements. The formant profiles along with ultrasound images support the view that the production of the NH phonologically marked vowels is characteristic of pharyngealization.
The first description of voice quality production in forty years, this book provides a new framework for its study: The Laryngeal Articulator Model. Informed by instrumental examinations of the laryngeal articulatory mechanism, it revises our understanding of articulatory postures to explain the actions, vibrations and resonances generated in the epilarynx and pharynx. It focuses on the long-term auditory-articulatory component of accent in the languages of the world, explaining how voice quality relates to segmental and syllabic sounds. Phonetic illustrations of phonation types and of laryngeal and oral vocal tract articulatory postures are provided. Extensive video and audio material is available on a companion website. The book presents computational simulations, the laryngeal and voice quality foundations of infant speech acquisition, speech/voice disorders and surgeries that entail compensatory laryngeal articulator adjustment, and an exploration of the role of voice quality in sound change and of the larynx in the evolution of speech. © John H. Esling, Scott R. Moisik, Allison Benner and Lise Crevier-Buchman 2019.
Opportunities for International Phonetic Alphabet application to the sounds of Lithuanian dialectsThe paper discusses the issues of transcription of Lithuanian dialects. It compares the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) with the characters of the currently popular font Palemonas.From the 20th to the 21st century, almost for a whole century, there has been a tradition in Lithuania to mark texts of Lithuanian dialects using the so-called Copenhagen transcription that was adapted by Georg Gerullis. The established Lithuanian transcription system largely differs from those applied in other languages, even from the closest neighbours Latvians. Therefore, researchers are often confronted with the problems of comparing the research results of several languages. In the 21st century the issues of different transcriptions became more relevant after quantitative measurements of language variance became popular. They are usually made by computer programs which require identical data.The discussion paper analyses the opportunities for IPA application to the sounds of Lithuanian dialects, discusses the marking correspondences of vowels, consonants, some phonetic features and prosodic units in the font Palemonas and IPA, and provides examples of words from various Lithuanian subdialects transcribed by applying both systems.
Following the breakdown of traditional dialects in parts of central Saxony, findings showing the current configuration of the variation spectrum are still unavailable. This paper will complement previous studies by presenting a further, specific analysis, albeit this time by means of an instrumental-phonetic analysis. The formants and the monophthong length of twelve female informants from Leipzig will be investigated in three different recording situations: an interview, a text to be read aloud, and intended dialect. In comparison to other regions, the intended standard language has a tendency to become centralized, which is especially the case for long vowels. In comparison to the pronunciation used while reading aloud, further centralizations can be found in intended dialect and spontaneous speech. As far as spontaneous speech is concerned, back vowels are shifted to the front, whereas front vowels are shifted to the back, with the exception of [i:]. In both situations, the articulatory space is clearly reduced; however, the individual variation is very large. In the spontaneous speech of all the speakers, it is noticeable that the articulatory space of the short vowels is uniformly small, independent of the sound length so that a limit in the reduction seems to be reached. The lack of variation between speech levels in Dresden (ICEHREuv 2012) can be validated here for Leipzig. However, it is unclear whether the observed differences are regional, or whether these can be traced back to the survey methods used: phonetic transcriptions done by ear and dialectality measurements vs. instrumental-phonetic measurements. In principle, the approach with instrumental-phonetic measurements proves to be an effective method to test and differentiate results from variation linguistics and dialectology.
