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The Acoustics of Uvulars in Tlingit

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The Acoustics of Uvulars in Tlingit THE ACOUSTICS OF UVULARS IN TLINGIT by RYAN E DENZER-KING A thesis submitted to the Graduate School-New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Master of Arts Graduate Program in Linguistics Written under the direction of Shigeto Kawahara And approved by Shigeto Kawahara (chair) Akin Akinlabi Bruce Tesar New Brunswick, New Jersey January 2013 ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS The Acoustics of Uvulars in Tlingit By RYAN DENZER-KING Thesis Director: Shigeto Kawahara This paper looks at the acoustics of uvulars in Tlingit, an Athabaskan language spoken in Alaska and Canada. Data from five native speakers was used for acoustic analysis for tokens from five phoneme groups (alveolars, plain velars, labialized velars, plain uvulars, and labialized uvulars). The tokens were ana- lyzed by computing spectral moments of plosive bursts and fricatives, and F2 and F3 values for post-consonantal vowels, which were used to calculate locus equations, a descriptive measure of the relationship between F2 at vowel onset and midpoint. Several trends were observed, including a greater difference be- tween F2 and F3 after uvulars than after velars, as well as a higher center of gravity (COG) and lower skew and kurtosis for uvulars than for velars. The comparison of plain versus labialized consonants supports the finding of Suh (2008) that labialization lowers mean burst energy, or COG, and additionally found labialization to raise skew and kurtosis. ii Acknowledgements There are numerous people without whom this work would not have been possible. I mention some of them here, but there are many more whom I relied upon for personal and academic support during its writing. First and foremost I must thank my chair Shigeto Kawahara, who suggested that this might be an interesting project worth pursuing, and who taught me a great deal about phonetics, statistics, and the useful relationship that exists between the two. Akin Akinlabi provided invaluable encouragement, insight, and criticism throughout the course of this research. Bruce Tesar, in addition to helpful comments throughout, was a major force in the focusing and presentation of the final result of this research, and his ability to bring clarity to all he touches is hopefully in evidence here. Aaron Braver answered numerous questions as I struggled through learning R and Praat scripting, as well as contributing mightily to my knowledge of LATEX so that I could provide a clearer format for my research. Will Bennett, Jeremy Perkins, and Alan Prince contributed valuable comments at the early stages of this research. I must also thank James Crippen, Seth Cable, audiences at the 2010 Athapaskan/Dene Languages Conference and RUMMIT 2010, and students in Shigeto Kawahara's Phonology III seminar for useful comments on a related project which inspired the present work. Last and certainly not least I must thank my wife Amanda, who helped me emotionally and editorially at all stages of this project. iii Contents Title Page i Abstract of the Thesis ii Acknowledgements iii Table of Contents iv List of Tables v List of Figures vi 1 Introduction 1 2 Method 3 2.1 Speakers . .4 2.2 Data . .4 2.3 Procedure . .5 3 Results 12 3.1 Plosive bursts . 12 3.2 Fricatives . 15 3.3 Formant Transitions & Locus equations . 19 4 Discussion 24 5 Conclusion 28 Bibliography 29 iv List of Tables 1 Tlingit phonological inventory . .3 2 Number of tokens per speaker by place of articulation . .5 3 Number of tokens by manner and place of articulation . .6 4 COG (95% confidence interval) . 13 5 Skew (95% confidence interval) . 14 6 Kurtosis (95% confidence interval) . 14 7 Slope, y-intercept, and R2 for locus equations . 21 v List of Figures 1 Spectrogram for syllable [ka:] from speaker HD . .7 2 Spectrogram for syllable [qha:] from speaker FD . .7 3 Spectrogram for syllable [Xa:] from speaker AJ . .8 4 Spectrogram for syllable [tsU] from speaker FD . .8 5 Spectrogram for syllable [k'E] from speaker JM . .9 6 Spectrogram for syllable [X'a:] from speaker AJ . .9 7 Fricative COG . 16 8 Fricative Skew . 17 9 Fricative Kurtosis . 18 10 Locus Equations . 20 11 Formant onset and target results for vowel /a/ . 22 12 Formant onset and target results for vowel /a:/................ 23 vi 1 1 Introduction This paper investigates the acoustic properties of uvulars in Tlingit by examining the corre- lates of place of articulation and labialization in Tlingit obstruents at the alveolar, velar, and uvular places of articulation, including labialized velars and uvulars. Measurements were made to determine the properties of plosive burst and fricative spectra and formant values for post-consonantal vowels, which were used to calculate locus equations for alveolar, velar, and uvular obstruents. Identifying the acoustic correlates of a phoneme group is a necessary first step in the study of how the acoustic signal is mapped onto phonemes that enter into phonological and other linguistic processes, and in fact the dispersion theory of contrast (Flemming 2002) argues that such acoustic properties are directly involved in phonological perception and production. Taking into account these acoustic facts allows us to predict a number of empirical phonological facts (e.g., preferentially rounding back vowels) without requiring stipulation (e.g., a redundancy rule stipulating [+back] ! [+round]). Previous research indicates that formant transitions relative to a vowel, the first four spectral moments for plosive bursts and fricatives, and locus equations are likely starting places for acoustically distinguishing the various places of articulation (Stevens & Blumstein 1978, Walley & Carrell 1983, Werker & Tees 1984, Stevens et al. 1986, Forrest et al. 1988, Alwan 1989, Sussman et al. 1993, Jongman et al. 2000, Gordon et al. 2002, Suh 2008, Zygis_ & Padgett 2010). The interaction of these acoustic cues allow speakers to accurately assign each segment of the acoustic signal to a phoneme group. F1 drops when any constriction is made in the oral cavity, which means that F1 will lower into any consonant. The movement of F2 and F3 is variable according to place of articulation (Jakobson et al. 1952, Stevens & Blumstein 1978). When an oral constriction is released, a noise burst is released from the site of the constriction. The distribution of spectral energy in these bursts correlates with place of articulation. The distribution of formant frequencies in the portion of a vowel adjacent to a consonant also correlates with place of articulation. A neutral vocal tract configuration with no constriction has peaks for second through fifth formants around 1500, 2500, 3500, and 4500Hz (Stevens & Blumstein 1978). Labial consonants lower the amplitude of these 2 higher formants, and result in lower formant frequencies. Alveolar consonants raise the amplitude of higher formants, and shift formant frequencies upwards. Velar consonants have bursts with high and close F2 and F3 amplitudes. Uvulars have received less attention in the phonological and phonetic literature than labials, alveolars, and velars (though see Werker & Tees 1984, Alwan 1989). Werker & Tees (1984) find \little information as to the acoustic differences between velar and uvular sounds." Another known acoustic correlate of place of articulation is the slope and y-intercept of the locus equation for a phoneme group. Locus equations (Sussman et al. 1993) are a descriptive measure of formant transitions obtained by plotting F2 at the onset of a vowel following a consonant (F2 onset) against F2 at the midpoint for the vowel (a point at which coarticulation is minimal and the idealized target frequency for that vowel has been reach, hence called F2 target) and calculating a regression line, as described in Sussman et al. (1993). The equation thus calculated represents the extent of coarticulation for the phoneme group. The relationship between F2 onset and F2 target represents an important acoustic cue in determining place of articulation (Fruchter & Sussman 1997, Waibel et al. 1989). While F2 varies with both the preceding consonant and the vowel target, the slope and y-intercepts of locus equations for consonants is relatively stable. Labials have steep slopes and low y-intercepts, alveolars have shallow slopes and high y-intercepts, and velars have steeper slopes than alveolars and mid-range y-intercepts. Locus equations of uvulars are understudied (though see Shosted 2011). Tlingit1 is a Na-Dene language spoken in Alaska, British Columbia, and the Yukon. The Modern Tlingit phonological inventory is shown in Table 1. Currently the language is spoken by between 150 and 300 speakers (James Crippen, p.c.), with most speakers elderly. Because of these factors and others, this study used existing historical recordings, described in section 2.2. This paper first describes the method used in this paper, including background information about the recordings used and the speakers, then gives the results of the acoustic analysis. The paper concludes with discussion of the acoustic data and its implications for phonological theory. 1The preferred English pronunciation among members of the Tlingit speech communities is ["klIN.kIt]. 3 alveolar postalveolar palatal lateral velar lab. velar uvular lab. uvular glottal unaspirated plosive t k kw q qw P aspirated plosive th kh khw qh qhw ejective plosive t' k' k'w q' q'w unaspirated affricate ts tS tì aspirated affricate tsh tSh tìh ejective affricate ts' tS' tì' fricative s S ì x xw XXw h ejective fricative s' ì' x' x'w X' X'w nasal n approximant j w Table 1: Tlingit phonological inventory 2 Method The core method of this paper seeks to replicate aspects of three previous studies of English and other languages, looking at spectral moments of plosive bursts (Forrest et al. 1988) and fricative intervals (Jongman et al. 2000), as well as F2 and F3 values to determine formant transitions and locus equations for all tokens (Sussman et al.
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