Effects of lexical class and lemma frequency on German homographs

Abstract

German demonstrative pronouns, relative pronouns, and definite articles are segmentally identical but differ strongly in the frequency with which they appear. We examined the production of five such particles in a reading task. In a comparison of orthographically identical word pairs belonging to different lexical classes we found small but significant differences in word and vowel duration, prominence, and spectral similarity. Three of the particles in particular tended to be longer and more prominent when they occurred as demonstrative or relative articles than when they were assigned their usual role as definite articles.