“Problematic phonemes” and German /ɛ
An acoustic analysis
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 22159155 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Kristin Predeck (0000-0003-0628-6102, University of California, Davis), Aleese Block (University of California, Davis), Carlee Arnett (University of California, Davis) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 6 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 280 |
| Publication date | 2021-03-20 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2473-8689 • E-ISSN: 2473-8689 |
| Publisher | Linguistic Society of America (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.3765/plsa.v6i1.4970 |
| OpenAlex | W3137662376 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 7 |
The decision to include or exclude phonemes in the description of a language is not always straightforward; presentations of the phoneme inventory of Modern Standard German (MSG) often include a discussion of why /ɛ:/ is problematic as a phoneme. This study describes the acoustic realization of /ɛ:/ in comparison to /e:/ in spoken German, specifically South Westphalian. 39 native German speakers produced /ɛ:/ and /e:/ in hVt non-word frames and vowel productions were measured for: (1) first and second formants from the steady state of the vowel, (2) duration, and (3) fundamental frequency (f0). Measurements were analyzed with a logistic regression model using the glm package in R. The model showed that while the main effects of F2, duration, and pitch were not significant, F1 was; speakers reliably produced /ɛ:/ lower in the vowel space than /e:/, but not fronter. This preliminary investigation into the acoustic realizations of /ɛ:/ and /e:/ through the lens of the debate on whether these two sounds truly are phonetically and phonemically contrastive is a first step toward truly understanding these two sounds within the larger phonemic inventory of MSG. We hope that this study will reopen a discussion on this topic and help answer the question of whether /ɛ:/ really is a problematic phoneme
Acoustics · Formant · German · Linguistics · Speech recognition · Statistics · Voice-onset time · Vowel · Computer Science · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Mathematics · Phonetics and Phonology Research · Psychology · Speech Recognition and Synthesis
| Highly cited | No |
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