Abstract:
Recently [Hoole et al., Proc. ICSLP 94, 1, 53--56 (1994)] a comparison was made with EMMA of the kinematic properties of German tense and lax vowels over changes in speech rate. They appeared not to differ in the internal organization of the elementary CV and VC movements, but the lax vowels showed tighter serial coupling of CV to VC movement. These results were expected given the strong phonological tradition (on a phonetically elusive substrate) of accounting for the differences between these vowels at the level of word prosody (especially in the link between vowel and following consonant). Nevertheless, important questions remain open: First, analysis of the velocity profiles of the CV and VC movements had been based on a parameter (ratio of peak to average velocity) that may not capture all relevant differences. Second, it was unclear whether tense--lax differences are equally clear-cut for all vowel subcategories (e.g, high, low, rounded, unrounded) and also for different consonantal contexts. The more refined and extensive analyses now carried out will be used to assess the well-foundedness of the earlier preliminary conclusions and to place the German results within the wider perspective of improved understanding of vowel-system typologies. [Work supported by German Research Council.]