With transient IR hole-burning spectroscopy we observe large variations in the homogeneous linewidth 1 of the nu(s)(O-D) stretch vibration of differently hydrogen-bonded surface hydroxyls in zeolite catalysts. The linewidth is very sensitive to the frequency of the nu(sigma)(OD ... X) hydrogen-bond vibration. By varying this frequency we obtain conclusive information on the coupling between the nu(s)(O-D) and the nu(sigma)(OD ... X) modes.