LABIODENTAL AND ALVEOLAR VOICED FRICATIVES: PRONUNCIATION TENDENCIES IN THE NATIONAL VARIETIES OF GERMAN

The present paper deals with the synchronic variation of labiodental and alveolar fricative phonemes in national varieties German Germany, Austria Switzerland. Our research task was to describe full range modifications these fricatives under investigation determine two conditional factors: 1) which are due positional combinatorial conditions sound realization; 2) can be taken typical German. data collected based on acoustic analysis reproductive speech (a reading short stories by Leonhard Thoma) 12 teachers from Northern Vienna area cantons Aargau Lucerne. results showed that frequent loss tone lax [v̥] mostly depends its realization observed mainly positions absolute beginning phonetic word after voiceless consonants all investigation. /z/ is also dependent position context. Instead, Austrians Swiss allophone [z̥] prevails regardless Therefore, occurrence this