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Vowel Harmony and Coarticulation in Three Dialects of Yoruba: Phonetics Determining Phonology

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Vowel Harmony and Coarticulation in Three Dialects of Yoruba: Phonetics Determining Phonology VOWEL HARMONY AND COARTICULATION IN THREE DIALECTS OF YORUBA: PHONETICS DETERMINING PHONOLOGY A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Marek A. Przezdziecki January 2005 © 2005 Marek A. Przezdziecki VOWEL HARMONY AND COARTICULATION IN THREE DIALECTS OF YORUBA: PHONETICS DETERMINING PHONOLOGY Marek A. Przezdziecki, Ph. D. Cornell University 2005 This dissertation examines the phonology and acoustic phonetics of vowels in three dialects of Yoruba—Standard Yorùbá, Mò¢bà, and Àkùré¢ Yorùbá—to investigate the role of coarticulation in the phonologization of vowel harmony (Ohala 1994). The phonological vowel patterns of the three dialects are presented. Àkùré¢ Yorùbá exhibits Advanced Tongue Root (ATR) vowel harmony in mid and high vowels, while harmony in Mò¢bà and Standard Yorùbá does not extend to high vowels. In order to investigate this relationship, recordings of VCV nonsense words from speakers of each dialect were analyzed. Following Hess (1992), the first formant (F1) was determined to be the acoustic measurement best correlated to the ±ATR vowel sets. Other measurements—F2, F1 bandwidth, fundamental frequency, vowel duration, and spectral measures—were not found to correlate with ATR. Using F1 as a measure, vowel to vowel coarticulation in high vowels in Mò¢bà and Standard Yorùbá was found to resemble high vowel harmony in Àkùré¢ in the target vowels, the context, and the phonetic effect. This was particularly true for /i/; however the coarticulatory effects on /u/ were weaker and not statistically significant. As expected, the effect of vowel to vowel coarticulation in Mò¢bà and Standard Yorùbá was smaller and less robust than for vowel harmony in Àkùré¢. A decision tree model is proposed that is able to generate the high vowel harmony pattern from the Àkùré¢ acoustic data. More interestingly, the model succeeds at extracting—to a large degree—the high vowel harmony pattern from Mòbࢠand Standard Yorùbá, the dialects without high vowel harmony. The model does not require any reference to features or natural classes, suggesting that it is not necessary to posit features as a prerequisite to learning a phonological pattern, nor as an explanation for universal patterns. The study argues that the acoustic patterns found in vowel to vowel coarticulation are sufficient to result in vowel harmony. The findings are consistent with the view that proto-Yorùbá did not have harmony in its high vowels (Fresco 1970, Oyelaran 1973, and Capo 1985), and that high vowel harmony developed in Àkùré¢ and related dialects. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Marek Przezdziecki was born in London, England on March 11, 1962. His family moved to Rochester, New York in 1967. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics from the State University of New York at Albany in 1983. In 1991, he received a Master of Science in Education from the University of Rochester. He worked as a text to speech scientist at Eloquent Technology and Speechworks International from 1999 to 2003. iii For Vivian, Sam, and Ned iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am grateful to all members of my committee, past and present. Vicki Carstens encouraged an interest in Yorùbá and first suggested the obvious, that I go to Nigeria. Frederick Parkinson’s classroom was open to new ideas and fostered fruitful discussions. Amanda Miller-Ockhuisen arrived at Cornell later on, and contributed greatly to the experimental side. Akinbiyi Akinlabi has provided me with invaluable support on Yorùbá phonology. Draga Zec has always been eager to debate and to make sure I support my claims. I am especially indebted to my chair, Abby Cohn, who devoted so much time and energy into helping me turn an epiphany into a dissertation. This project relied on the generosity of many Yorùbá teachers and consultants, people who gave their time with little reason simply because I was interested in their language. Akinloye Ojo, Rolake Akinola, Mayowa Adefolaju, and Kayode Kekere made trying to learn Yorùbá fun. I enjoyed meeting and working with many Yorùbá consultants in Toronto, Rochester, and the Washington, D.C. area, in particular Mrs. Esther Opadiran, Mr. Isaac Ige, and Prince Elvis. I regret that I was not able to visit and record people from all of their hometowns, like Ilesa, Ekiti, and Ondo. Oladiipo Ajiboye was kind to help me with Mò¢bà questions via email. My trip to Nigeria was made so much nicer by the generosity of Remi S¢onaiya and her family who provided a home away from home and invaluable assistance in my travels. I was fortunate to make the acquaintance of Chief James Dele Popoola at Cornell University, who provided me with Standard Yorùbá and Mò¢bà data and helped make my visit to Ò¢tùn very memorable. Once in Ò¢tùn, Dejo and Kayode helped me in every possible way. I was directed to S¢ebi and Samson in Àkùré¢ who were great contacts. In Ìbàdàn, Professor Francis Egbokare was kind enough to help me find speakers and show me around campus. I would also like to thank the people who agreed to be recorded for this study. v My linguistic development has been greatly influenced by many linguists. I have benefited from discussions with Lee Bickmore, Nick Clements, Mark Hale, Morris Halle, Larry Hyman, Scott Myers, Jay Padgett, Charles Reiss, Daniel Silverman, and many others. At Cornell, I would like to thank my linguist friends and colleagues over the years, David Parkinson, Aneta Pavlenko, Antony Dubach Green, Tobey Doeleman, Lisa Lavoie, Bill Ham, Teresa Galloway, Bruce Cain, Eungyeong Kang, Justin Spence, Catalin Kaser, Arthur Bell, Anastasia Riehl, and many others. For all things administrative, Sheila Haddad and Angie Tinti have made life much easier for me. I would also like to thank Eric Evans for extensive help in the Phonetics Laboratory. This work was partly supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and a Cornell University Sage Fellowship. Travel to Nigeria was partly funded by a travel grant from the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies International Research at Cornell. I would like to acknowledge the support that friends and family have given me in so many ways over these years. My parents and my in-laws have gently encouraged me and asked “When are you going to be finished?” much less than they could have. I would especially like to thank my wife, Vivian Lorenzo, and my children, Sam and Ned, for allowing me the time to work, time and time again, and giving me a reason not to. Vivian, I owe you 723 loads of laundry, 2311 meals, 27 summer camp applications, plus a whole lot more that cannot be measured or counted. In spite of all of the help I have received, some errors surely remain, for which I have only myself to blame, and arguably my parents. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Biographical sketch ....................................................................................................... iii Dedication......................................................................................................................iv Acknowledgments .......................................................................................................... v Table of contents .......................................................................................................... vii List of figures ................................................................................................................ xi List of tables .............................................................................................................. xviii List of abbreviations.................................................................................................... xix Chapter 1. Phonetics to phonology................................................................................. 1 1.1 Universal phonological patterning..................................................................... 3 1.2 SPE explanations for phonological universals ................................................... 7 1.3 Phonetics and phonology.................................................................................. 20 1.4 Resolving the problem of redundancy between phonology and phonetics.................................................................................. 24 1.5 Other ways to solve the phonology/phonetics problem ................................... 29 1.6 UG is an argument of last resort....................................................................... 30 1.7 Summary........................................................................................................... 32 1.8 Overview of dissertation................................................................................... 32 Chapter 2. Yorùbá phonology ...................................................................................... 34 2.1 Introduction ...................................................................................................... 34 2.2 Language background...................................................................................... 34 2.3 Advanced tongue root....................................................................................... 37 2.4 Yorùbá phonemic inventory............................................................................. 45 2.4.1 Vowel inventory..................................................................................... 45 2.4.2 Nasal vowels and syllabic nasals ..........................................................
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