Standard spoken German is not uniform. The standard pronunciation as codified for example in the Duden Dictionary of German Pronunciation is at best realised by trained speakers (e.g. newscasters). This study of speakers from the state of Baden-Wurttemberg shows how deviations from the norm occur in practice. Interviews are analysed with subjects from a total of eleven towns and cities. In addition, the study traces diachronic developments by comparing data gathered from 2001 to 2003 with data from 1961 and 1992.

Though the concept of syllabic segmentation has regained a firm footing in the phonology of Standard German since the early 1990s, all attempts undertaken so far have failed to provide convincing evidence of a phonetic correlate for the syllabic segment. On the basis of empirical investigations on Standard German the present study establishes just such a correlate, identifiable from the characteristics of the energy curves traceable in different kinds of vowel. Analyses of dialectal language data form the basis for a classification of German dialects in terms of the existence of a phonetic correlate for syllabic segments.

This collection of articles deals with phonetic and phonological aspects of the prosodic concepts 'syllable cut' and 'tonal accent'. Syllable cut refers to the way in which a vowel is modified ('cut') by the consonant following it. As such, the concept of syllable cut is a prosodic approach representing a viable alternative to more segmentally defined concepts like vowel quantity or quality. Tonal accents establish lexical/phonological contrasts at word level with the help of contrasting intonation curves. The volume presents new findings on syllable cut and tonal accents from the following research fields: historical phonology and graphemics, dialectology, auto-segmental phonology, acoustical phonetics, language typology.