Sound duration
The sound duration or sound length in phonetics is the time a speaker needs to pronounce a certain speech sound; the talk time is measured in hundredths or thousandths of a second. It is an absolute determination of time, in contrast to quantity , which relates to the relative length of speech sounds and segments and their linguistic function.
Observations on sound duration
Observations on sound duration concern several aspects:
The duration of the sound depends partly on external and partly on internal language conditions. The following conditions may be used as external language conditions:
- the person who speaks and
- the speaking situation, which may require a certain way of speaking (chosen vocabulary , complexity of the sentence structure, accuracy of pronunciation, speaking speed ...).
As an internal language condition, it must be taken into account that sounds under the word accent are spoken differently than in an unstressed position and also differently in different sound environments; there are also differences between the different syllables in the word. The difference between short and long vowels, on the other hand, is - at least in German - not purely phonetic, but phonological ( vowel quantity ).
Laws of sound duration
Dependence of the sound length on the word length
Observations on this aspect date back to the 19th century. So put already Eduard Sievers notes that vowels in short words are pronounced longer than the same vowels in long words. This observation is based on a linguistic law that was formulated in a more general form, supported by measurements on Spanish, by Menzerath & de Oleza: "The sound becomes shorter as the number of syllables of the word increases (basic law of the Spanish sound quantity)." specific version of a general law of language known as Menzerath's law in quantitative linguistics .
An example of the dependence of the sound duration on the word length (number of syllables per word) observed in Hungarian:
| Word length (syllables per word) | Sound duration (sec / 100) using the example of the vowel ā: observed |
Sound duration (sec / 100) using the example of the vowel ā: calculated |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 27.2 | 27.64 |
| 2 | 24.2 | 23.18 |
| 3 | 20.9 | 20.91 |
| 4th | 19.0 | 19.43 |
| 5 | 18.2 | 18.36 |
The test result is very good with a coefficient of determination of D = 0.97; in the best case it can reach the value D = 1.00. The trend that the duration of the sounds of the word decreases with increasing word length becomes very clear with these and several other data not cited here.
Variation of the sound duration of the vowels
A second aspect: If one examines the duration of all occurring vowels in a spoken text, it can be determined that they are subject to a distribution law that was specially developed for such cases by Geršić & Altmann (1988) and successfully checked using the example of the Batschka- German dialect has been. Studies of vowel duration in Icelandic and Hungarian support Geršić & Altmann's suggestion.
Ramers investigated the duration of German vowels in word lists, with the vowels being inserted into the environment [b_tən], spoken by four academic staff. The results were presented separately for short and long vowels, on the one hand, but also combined in total tables. The model by Geršić & Altmann (1988) was adapted in a simplified form to these data ; it worked in all 12 cases.
As an example, here is the distribution of the duration of German long vowels for speaker M:
| x | vocal | (msec): observed | (msec): calculated |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | [aː] | 214.5 | 215.77 |
| 2 | [ɛː] | 194.7 | 187.78 |
| 3 | [O] | 165.0 | 171.51 |
| 4th | [uː] | 153.6 | 159.79 |
| 5 | [O] | 153.4 | 150.49 |
| 6th | [eː] | 152.8 | 142.71 |
| 7th | [yː] | 132.0 | 135.97 |
| 8th | [iː] | 128.0 | 130.00 |
msec : milliseconds; x stands for the long vowels sorted by rank. The test result is very good with a coefficient of determination of D = 0.96.
The investigation of only one vowel, the sound [iː] in the article “die” [diː], which was always only considered in its position at the beginning of a sentence, could be processed with the same result. The data concerns the pronunciation of speaker B in 6 example sentences. The model by Geršić & Altmann (1988) was adapted in its simplest form to these data .
| x | (msec): observed | (msec): calculated |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 88.5 | 85.70 |
| 2 | 56.3 | 63.71 |
| 3 | 53.3 | 53.56 |
| 4th | 50.7 | 47.36 |
| 5 | 47.4 | 43.04 |
| 6th | 37.3 | 39.81 |
x stands for example sentences 1 - 6. The test result is very good with a coefficient of determination of D = 0.93.
The distribution of the phone duration of a class of phones appears to follow the same distribution model as the different durations of a single phone. Also noticeable is the very different duration of the long vowel [iː] as a stressed and an unstressed sound.
The length of the sound is influenced by many factors: the speaker, the position in the word, the position under the word accent or in an unstressed position, the length of the word in which the sound is contained and possibly other influencing factors.
See also
literature
- Karl-Heinz Best : Laws of Sound Duration. In: Glottotheory 1 (2008), doi : 10.1515 / glot-2008-0001 , pp. 1-9.
- Karl-Heinz Best: On the regularity of the vowel quantity in German . In: Naukovyj Visnyk Černivec'koho Universytetu: Hermans'ka filolohija . Vypusk 532, 2011, pp. 3-13 ( PDF ).
- Slavko Geršić, Gabriel Altmann : A model for the variability of the vowel duration. In: Klaus-Peter Schulz (Ed.): Glottometrika 9. Brockmeyer, Bochum 1988, ISBN 3-88339-648-6 , pp. 49-58.
- Paul Menzerath, Joseph M. de Oleza: Spanish sound duration. An experimental study. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / Leipzig 1928.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Menzerath, de Oleza: Spanish sound duration. Berlin / Leipzig 1928, p. 70.
- ↑ Eduard Sievers: Fundamentals of phonetic physiology as an introduction to the study of phonetics in the Indo-European languages. Breitkopf & Härtel, Leipzig 1876. The decisive quote can be found on p. 122.
- ^ Menzerath, de Oleza: Spanish sound duration. Berlin / Leipzig 1928, p. 70. The quotation does not reflect the different emphasis of the original.
- ^ Gabriel Altmann , Michael Schwibbe : The Menzerath law in information processing systems. Olms, Hildesheim, Zurich, New York 1989. ISBN 3-487-09144-5 ; Irene M. Cramer: The Menzerath law . In: Reinhard Köhler, Gabriel Altmann, Rajmund G. Piotrowski (eds.): Quantitative Linguistics - Quantitative Linguistics. An international manual. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015578-8 , pp. 659-688.
- ^ Ernst A. Meyer, Zoltán Gombocz: On the phonetics of the Hungarian language. Berlings Buchdruckerei, Uppsala 1909, page 20; Karl-Heinz Best: Laws of Sound Duration. In: Glottotheory 1, 2008, page 6. In this case Menzerath's law was tested in its simplest form .
- ↑ Reinhard Köhler, Gabriel Altmann, Rajmund G. Piotrowski (eds.): Quantitative Linguistics - Quantitative Linguistics. An international manual . Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015578-8 , including pages 667-669, 793-794.
- ^ Karl-Heinz Best : Laws of sound duration. In: Glottotheory 1 (2008), pages 3–5.
- ↑ Karl-Heinz Ramers: Vowel quantity and quality in German. Niemeyer, Tübingen 1988, ISBN 3-484-30213-5 .
- ↑ Both aspects in: Karl-Heinz Best: On the regularity of the vowel quantity in German . In: Naukovyj Visnyk Černivec'koho Universytetu: Hermans'ka filolohija . Vypusk 532, 2011, pages 3-13.