Kinematic analysis of vowel production in German

The tense and lax vowels of German were compared, based on an analysis of the duration, amplitude and velocity characteristics of lip and tongue movement. This study examined firstly whether they show different patterns of compression over changes in speech rate, and secondly whether velocity profiles would reveal evidence of different underlying control mechanisms. CVC movements were segmented into CV, nucleus and VC portions. Speech rate affected duration of CV and VC movements similarly for tense and lax vowels. However, the effect on nucleus duration was vastly greater for the tense vowels. Analysis of the velocity profiles of CV and VC movements in terms of the ratio of peak to average velocity showed no differences between tense and lax vowels, once differences in duration were taken into account. The conclusion is that tense and lax vowels share similar control mechanisms for the elementary CV and VC movements, but differ radically in the way these elements are concatenated.