Microprosodic variability in plosives in German and Austrian German

Fundamental frequency (F0) contours may show slight, microprosodic variations in the vicinity of plosive segments, which may have distinctive patterns relative to the place of articulation and voicing. Similarly, plosive bursts have distinctive characteristics associated with these articulatory features. The current study investigates the degree to which such microprosodic variations arise in two varieties of German, and how the two varieties differ. We find that microprosodic effects indeed arise in F0 as well as burst intensity and Center of Gravity, but that the extent of the variability is different in the two varieties under investigation, with northern German tending towards more variability in the microprosody of plosives than Austrian German. Coarticulatory effects on the burst with the following segment also arise, but also have different features in the two varieties. This evidence is consistent with the possibility that the fortis-lenis contrast is not equally stable in Austrian German and northern German.