14th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-14)

San Francisco, CA, USA
August 1-7, 1999


Production and Perception of Syllabic [n] In German

Bernd Pompino-Marschall, Peter M. Janker

ZAS - Research Centre for General Linguistics, Berlin, Germany

Production and perception of syllabic [nˌ] was studied using different inflectional forms of the German indefinite article, i.e. ein (nom. sing. masc.) with simple [n] vs bisyllabic einen (acc. sing. masc.) that is realized in a reduced manner with a so called syllabic [nˌ]. Inspection of a larger corpus of spoken Standard German revealed that the most frequent pronunciation of einen is the allegro form with a lengthened [n:], normally without any indication of an extra syllable. Production was analyzed in a combined electropalatographical (EPG)/electromagnetic-articulographical (EMA) study. The articulatory analysis revealed quite complex gestural reductions for bisyllabic einen. Identification experiments with manipulated material showed that the distinction between ein and einen is dependent on the duration of the nasal alone, independent of local articulatory tempo but not of global speech rate.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Pompino-Marschall, Bernd / Janker, Peter M. (1999): "Production and perception of syllabic [n] in German", In ICPhS-14, 1079-1082.