The phonetics and phonology of Dutch mid vowels before /l/

A first glance at the role of length in production and perception of diphthongs before Dutch coda l

“…Section 2 reports on a pilot production experiment set up to examine the effects of coda / on preceding vowels and diphthongs. The results ofthat experiment are partially in line with Botma, Sebregts & Smakman (2010, 2012, but differ in shoving that qualitative neutralization without quantitative neutralization does occur. The experiment also shows that the effect of coda / in the case of diphthongs is more than a lowering effect on F2, as it involves a leveling effect on Fl as well.…”

“…Van der Torre (2003) argues that tense mid vowels are realized as long lax vowels before coda /. Botma, Sebregts & Smakman (2008 claim that 'laxing' is a misnomer for this process given that tense and lax vowels are both affected. That is, syllable-final / has a lowering effect on the F2 of both tense and lax vowels (retraction) and may neutralize the qualitative opposition between them.^ Neutralization is a variable and gradual process.…”

“…This finding runs counter to the transcription of tense mid vowels before coda / as long lax vowels provided by van der Torre (2003) and is taken as evidence for the fact that length plays no phonological role, but is a matter of phonetic implementation. Botma, Sebregts & Smakman (2010, 2012 further assume (with van Oostendorp 1995 andGussenhoven 2009) an underlying tense-lax distinction for Dutch vowels and argue that length is an enhancement ofthe feature [tense]. According to Botma, Sebregts & Smakman, this enhancement receives a straightforward explanation.…”

A propos of the Dutch vowel system 21 years on, 22 years on

“…a lowered F 1 . In a recent experiment in which the formant values (F 1 , F 2 ) of tense and lax mid-vowel pairs were measured, /e, o/ were seen to have a lower F 1 than their lax congeners /ɪ, ɔ/, but the F 1 of lax /ʏ/ was higher than that of tense /ø/ (Botma et al 2012). Cross-linguistic evidence also suggests that tenseness does not correlate with tongue-root advancement in any straightforward way.…”

“…The relation between tongue-root advancement and tenseness is also tenuous in German, where /ɪ/ has a greater degree of tongueroot advancement than /i/ (Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996) It has also been proposed that the tense/lax contrast can be defined in terms of relative peripherality, with the lax vowels being more centralized than their tense congeners (e.g. Lindau 1979;Harris & Lindsey 1995;Botma et al 2012). Such an account has been criticized on the grounds that it would make tenseness the only feature whose exponence is defined in relative terms (e.g.…”