8.2.1. Consonants

First published in 1952. This book does not confine itself to German phonetics; it aims rather at showing by what processes and tricks of sound words have been shaped in the course of years; it is therefore a book on phonology as well. It should have a wide appeal to students of German. Moreover, since the treatment of laws and sound processes is comparative, it will be useful to students of other languages, particularly of the Scandinavian group and Dutch.

Featuring the most complete and up-to-date description of the phonology of German presently available, this book applies recent models of phonological theory, putting particular emphasis on the interaction of morphology and phonology. It focuses on the present-day standard language, but includes discussions of other variants and registers.

Speech sound production is one of the most complex human activities: it is also one of the least well understood. This is perhaps not altogether surprising as many of the complex neurological and physiological processes involved in the generation and execution of a speech utterance remain relatively inaccessible to direct investigation, and must be inferred from careful scrutiny of the output of the system -from details of the movements of the speech organs themselves and the acoustic consequences of such movements. Such investigation of the speech output have received considerable impetus during the last decade from major technological advancements in computer science and biological transducing, making it possible now to obtain large quantities of quantative data on many aspects of speech articulation and acoustics relatively easily. Keeping pace with these advancements in laboratory techniques have been developments in theoretical modelling of the speech production process. There are now a wide variety of different models available, reflecting the different disciplines involved -linguistics, speech science and technology, engineering and acoustics. The time seems ripe to attempt a synthesis of these different models and theories and thus provide a common forum for discussion of the complex problem of speech production. Such an activity would seem particularly timely also for those colleagues in speech technology seeking better, more accurate phonetic models as components in their speech synthesis and automatic speech recognition systems.

The author addresses a number of issues in German and general phonology, using a specific problem in German phonology (the ach/ich alternation) as a springboard. These issues include especially the naturalness, or lack thereof, of the prescriptive standard in German, and the importance of colloquial pronunciations, as well as historical and dialect evidence, for phonological analyses of the “standard” language. Other important topics include the phonetic and phonological status of German /r/, the phonetic and phonological representation of palatals, the status of loanwords in phonological description, and, especially as regards the latter, the usefulness of Optimality Theory in capturing phonological facts.The book addresses itself to scholars from the fields of German and Germanic linguistics, as well as those concerned more generally with theoretical phonology (whether Lexical or Optimal). It may even appeal to the orthoëpists and lexicographers of modern German.

The first course book designed to engage students in the pronunciation of modern German by grounding practice in theory An essential introduction to the pronunciation of modern German, this unique classroom text is designed to help mid- to upper-level undergraduate students of German produce more accurate and comprehensible German speech. Written in English in a clear and engaging style and employing a minimum of technical jargon, it is the first German phonetics and phonology text to focus on theory and practice, covering topics ranging from the analysis of one's own speech to historical developments and regional variation. This work includes a wealth of exercises supported by an ancillary website audio program designed to help students perceive and produce sounds and prosodic features more accurately. Addressing topics such as word stress, sentence stress, and intonation as well as the pronunciation of individual sounds, this one-of-a-kind primer provides its users with a solid basis in German phonetics and phonology in order to improve their pronunciation of German.