Lexikalischer Schwund der 〈ä〉-[æ]-Korrespondenz im Standarddeutschen

The German pronunciation of〈ä〉as [æ] shows great variation, being this one of the main theoretical challenges in the German vocalism. This situation points to a case of sound change in progress. According to Dressler’s (1972) theory of lexical fading, fluctuation occurs when a phoneme is disappearing. The recessive phoneme fades away slowly and gradually, not only from the lexicon, but also from individuals. Accordingly, [æ] is disappearing from the lexicon. I will illustrate here the fading path of the [æ] pronunciation. To do this, I developed a reading aloud test, which contains lexemes with lexically (Käse ‘cheese’), phonologically (Bären ‘Bears’ vs. Beeren ‘berries’) and morphologically (Bällchen ‘little ball’ or Väter ‘fathers’) motivated 〈ä〉 graphemes. The out-loud reading of 33 subjects, all with a DaF background, was recorded and all their 〈ä〉-productions analyzed auditorily. My main finding was that the [æ]-pronunciation is more resistant to fading when it fulfills either a semantic function, as in the case of minimal pairs, or a morphological function, for instance, when it serves as a signal of a morphological category, as in Bällchen, or is itself the main signal, as in Väter.