Linguistische Treffen in Wrocław (Dec 2021)
Vokale im Kiezdeutschen: Eine phonetische Analyse der Vokalquantität und -qualität
Abstract
Kiezdeutsch is a variety of German which emerged in in multi-ethnic and multilingual urban neighbourhoods (Wiese 2009: 782). This German multiethnolect shows specific morphosyntactic alternations in comparison to Standard German, for example the usage of bare noun phrases for definite local expressions (Wiese/Pohle 2016) or pragmatically supported light verb constructions (Wiese 2006, 2009). Furthermore, there are a multitude of studies examining the variability on the grammatical level and the ethnographic circumstances of its development (vgl. Kallmeyer/Keim 2003a, 2003b; Dirim/Auer 2004; Keim 2004, 2008; Keim/Knöbl 2007, Paul et al. 2010; Freywald et al. 2011; Hinrichs 2013). However, there is still a lack of systematic investigation into the phonetics of Kiezdeutsch, with the exception of studies by Jannedy/Weirich (2013, 2014a, 2014b, 2014c, 2017, 2019, 2020) who investigated the acoustics of [ç] and [ɔʏ] in the Berlin-German multi-ethnolect. In the present study, we continue this line of research and look at vowel quality and quantity in Kiezdeutsch in comparison to a Standard German variety. Specially, we set out to test hypotheses which were based on auditory analyses alone(i. e., Auer, 2003; Tekin & Colliander, 2010). These hypotheses include that long vowels in Kiezdeutsch are produced shorter as well as more centralized than vowels in Standard German. We tested these hypotheses by means of acoustically and statistically analysed interview data from a group of male speakers for the vowels [iː], [eː] and [aː]. With regards to vowel quality, we did not find any significant differences between the Kiezdeutsch and the Standard German vowels, even though the vowels [e:] and [a:] were produced slightly further back in Kiezdeutsch. Regarding vowel quantity, we did find significant differences between the groups, in that all Kiezdeutsch vowels were on average produced shorter than the vowels produced by Standard German speakers. It therefore seems that quantity plays a more prominent role than quality when it comes to differences between Kiezdeutsch and Standard German vowels.
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