Ausspracheregeln des Deutschen : das Duden-Aussprachewörterbuch und das Deutsche Aussprachewörterbuch : Ein systematisch-kritischer Vergleich

Abstract

This study compares and contrasts the two most important pronunciation dictionaries of the German language that deal with the present-day pronunciation, namely the Duden Aussprachewörterbuch and the Deutsches Aussprachewörterbuch. Presently there exists no codified standard pronunciation for the German language that has been regulated officially, as is in the case of the German orthographic codification. For this reason, the pronunciation of the German language has often been deemed of secondary importance, especially in its standardisation, but also for instance, in the fields of the didactics of German as a foreign language. This study deals with the subject matter in two ways. In the first part, the study analyses the norms and codifications of the standard German pronunciation historically. By looking at the diachronic aspect of the theme, the first part describes the background for the present-day codifications as well as its developments. In the second part, an analysis of the aforementioned pronunciation dictionaries is made. The basis for the norm that they present is firstly compared, in order to determine whether the pronunciation dictionaries are consistent in their claims. Moreover, the phonetic and phonological aspects of their studies are compared with other linguistic literature. A selection ot the pronunciation rules that these dictionaries present is compared systematically. This analysis identifies the differences in the methodology and codifications of two works. Finally, general conclusions about the results of this comparison are drawn.