Über die artikulatorische Ähnlichkeit deutscher Vokale (On the articulatory similarity of German vowels)

Abstract

Abstract In this article we describe an investigation into the proprioceptive articulatory similarity often German vowels. When processed with a multidimensional scaling technique, the similarity scores of 46 subjects led to the construction of a proprioceptive space, the dimensions of which are discussed in this article. The application of a hierarchical Cluster Analysis resulted in three main clusters, which we labelled front, middle and back. The vowels of the same cluster show a higher similarity than vowels taken from different clusters. The dimensions of the proprioceptive space and the classes resulting from the cluster analysis are correlated with some physical features of the vowels in question.