Comparison of lip rounding in German and English Vowels

Abstract

This paper describes an experiment which was designed and conducted to test three hypotheses: first, that German back vowels are more rounded than their English counterparts, second, that the degree or type of lip rounding of a given vowel or set of vowels varies with different consonantal contexts, and third, that German back vowels are more rounded than front rounded vowels. The results of the Analysis of Variance suggests strongly that the first claim is true. No contextual variation was detected. The results also give some indication that the third claim is true.