Der Vortrag von Frau Dr. Marianna Nadeu (Pennsylvania State University) findet im Rahmen des Linguistischen Forschungskolloquiums statt, zu dem Sie herzlich eingeladen sind.

Abstract:

In languages with lexical stress it is common to observe stress-induced effects on vowel quality and duration. In some of these languages, the effect is very salient, as we find a reduced vowel inventory in unstressed syllables (phonological vowel reduction). In other languages, effects on vowel quality may only result in slight phonetic variation (phonetic vowel reduction). Experimental evidence for phonetic vowel reduction from English has led to the postulation of two general (partially conflicting) hypotheses of how vowel production is affected by the absence or presence of prosodic prominence (Hyperarticulation Hypothesis, Sonority Expansion Hypothesis). In addition, the differences in vowel quality between vowels in prosodically weak vs. strong positions have sometimes been attributed to decreased duration of vowels in non-prominent positions. This research explores prosodically-induced phonetic variation in vowel production in two Ibero-Romance languages, Iberian Spanish (5 vowels in both stressed and unstressed position) and Central Catalan (7 vowels in stressed position, 3 in unstressed position). More specifically, this study examines how vowel quality is affected by absence of lexical stress, intonational pitch accent, and decreased duration due to faster speech rate in two languages which differ in the number of vowel contrasts they exhibit as well as in the existence of phonological vowel reduction. Results are evaluated in the light of the above-mentioned hypotheses of speech production.