Acoustic and articulatory aspects of sex and gender in German

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Adrian Paul Simpson
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: from 2011 to 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 198356774

Studies of several languages over the last fifty years have repeatedly found a number of acoustic and temporal differences between male and female voices that cannot be exclusively explained using anatomical factors such as vocal tract or vocal fold length. Non-uniform differences between male and female acoustic vowel spaces as well as systematic differences in male and female segment durations are two such areas.In the first grant period (2 years) acoustic and articulatory analyses together with listening experiments investigated sex-specific relationships between segment quality and duration. In the continuation period the investigation will be expanded. First, a comparative analysis of the German data which has already been collected with articulatory and acoustic data from American English (University of Wisconsin X-ray microbeam database) will be carried out. Second, beside vowel patterns (diphthong and vowel sequences) sex-specific differences between sibilants from both languages will also be examined. Furthermore, in addition to possible sex-related factors interindividual physiological differences will also be considered.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants