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Beat Siebenhaar: Instrumentalphonetische Analysen zur Ausgestaltung des Sprechlagenspektrums in Leipzig

Following the breakdown of traditional dialects in parts of central Saxony, findings showing the current configuration of the variation spectrum are still unavailable. This paper will complement previous studies by presenting a further, specific analysis, albeit this time by means of an instrumental-phonetic analysis. The formants and the monophthong length of twelve female informants from Leipzig will be investigated in three different recording situations: an interview, a text to be read aloud, and intended dialect. In comparison to other regions, the intended standard language has a tendency to become centralized, which is especially the case for long vowels. In comparison to the pronunciation used while reading aloud, further centralizations can be found in intended dialect and spontaneous speech. As far as spontaneous speech is concerned, back vowels are shifted to the front, whereas front vowels are shifted to the back, with the exception of [iː]. In both situations, the articulatory space is clearly reduced; however, the individual variation is very large. In the spontaneous speech of all the speakers, it is noticeable that the articulatory space of the short vowels is uniformly small, independent of the sound length so that a limit in the reduction seems to be reached. The lack of variation between speech levels in Dresden (Kehrein 2012) can be validated here for Leipzig. However, it is unclear whether the observed differences are regional, or whether these can be traced back to the survey methods used: phonetic transcriptions done by ear and dialectality measurements vs. instrumental-phonetic measurements. In principle, the approach with instrumental-phonetic measurements proves to be an effective method to test and differentiate results from variation linguistics and dialectology.