DOCSLIB.ORG

Phonetic and Phonological Acquisition in Endangered Languages Learned by Adults: a Case Study of Numu (Oregon Northern Paiute)

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Phonetic and Phonological Acquisition in Endangered Languages Learned by Adults: a Case Study of Numu (Oregon Northern Paiute) Phonetic and Phonological Acquisition in Endangered Languages Learned by Adults: A Case Study of Numu (Oregon Northern Paiute) by Erin Flynn Haynes A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Alice Gaby, Co-Chair Professor Leanne Hinton, Co-Chair Professor Keith Johnson Professor Thomas Biolsi Spring 2010 Phonetic and Phonological Acquisition in Endangered Languages Learned by Adults: A Case Study of Numu (Oregon Northern Paiute) © 2010 by Erin Flynn Haynes ABSTRACT Phonetic and Phonological Acquisition in Endangered Languages Learned by Adults: A Case Study of Numu (Oregon Northern Paiute) by Erin Flynn Haynes Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics University of California, Berkeley Professor Alice Gaby, Co-Chair Professor Leanne Hinton, Co-Chair This dissertation compares the phonetic and phonological features of adult non-speakers’ productions of words in an endangered Native American language, Oregon Northern Paiute (also known, and hereafter referred to, as Numu), to productions by fluent speakers. The purpose of this comparison is two-fold. The first purpose is to examine the differences in pronunciation that non-speakers bring to the language, which point to possible directions of future language change in a language that is no longer being learned as a first language by children. Changes brought to the language by second language learners are likely to occur due to transfer effects from English and processes of regularization, but may also occur due to the intensification of socially salient language features, or hypercorrection (see Wolfram, 2002). For this reason, two groups of non- speakers were included in the study: English speaking members of the community where Numu is spoken (Warm Springs, Oregon) and English speakers from outside the community. It was hypothesized that the latter group would only exhibit transfer effects or regularization, while the Warm Springs group would also exhibit hypercorrection of what they perceive to be salient features of Numu. By comparing the productions of the two non-speaker groups, specific aspects of potential change are identified and classified as transfer, regularization, or hypercorrection. The second purpose of the comparison between speaker and non-speaker productions is to ascertain specific differences in pronunciation that result in perceivably accented speech. This research goal is achieved by examining fluent speakers’ reactions to non-speakers’ productions. It was hypothesized that not all features unique to non-speaker produced speech would result in a perceivable accent. Learners who wish to improve their pronunciation from the perspective of the Numu community could then focus particularly on the features that do contribute to a noticeable accent. This research makes contributions to our understanding of phonetic and phonological change in endangered language contexts, both from a second language acquisition perspective and a socio- phonetic perspective. The theoretical framework for this research is described in Chapter 1, along with information about Numu and about the Warm Springs community. The second 1 chapter provides a phonetic sketch of Numu based on data from four fluent speakers of the language. This sketch forms the basis for comparison of non-speaker productions in later chapters, but also contributes a phonetic record of several features of Numu for future generations of learners and researchers. Chapter 3 repeats these phonetic measurements for non- speakers, and also examines a number of phonological features of non-speaker speech, finding that study participants from Warm Springs generally have a production advantage as compared to people from outside the community. It also finds that, in some cases, study participants from Warm Springs produce novel segments that are not present in the fluent speaker input, but that do exist in other geographically close Native American languages. Chapter 4 discusses these findings in terms of the possible changes that adult learners may bring to Numu. These changes are explored with regards to three theoretical proposals of endangered language change, including transfer effects from a dominant language, adoption of universal language features, and hypercorrection of socially salient language features. A fourth mechanism of endangered language change is proposed, based on findings that non-speakers incorporate phonological elements of other Native American languages, of which they are not speakers. Chapter five presents and discusses results from a perception test in which fluent speakers provided ratings for non-speaker productions. These ratings are compared to the non-speaker features present in a given production in order to determine which features are linked to lower ratings. These features are hypothesized to contribute to a perceivable accent in the speech community. Finally, Chapter 6 concludes the dissertation with a discussion of wider implications for endangered language change, as well as implications for the use of electronic media in endangered language learning. 2 To Belén and Paula, for whom nothing is impossible. i TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................................... 1 LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................................................ V LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................................ VII ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................................... IX CHAPTER 1 .................................................................................................................................. 1 1.1 Overview ............................................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Language acquisition and language change .......................................................................... 2 1.3 The Numu language .............................................................................................................. 3 1.3.1 Numu people in Warm Springs...................................................................................... 4 1.3.2 The Warm Springs languages ........................................................................................ 7 1.3.3 The Warm Springs language program ........................................................................... 7 1.4 Overview of the research and methodology ....................................................................... 11 1.4.1 Methods........................................................................................................................ 11 1.4.2 Research philosophy .................................................................................................... 12 1.4.3 Non-speakers vs. learners ............................................................................................ 12 1.4.4 Phonetic vs. phonological change ................................................................................ 13 1.5 Theoretical and practical contributions ............................................................................... 13 1.6 Organization of the dissertation .......................................................................................... 14 CHAPTER 2 ................................................................................................................................ 16 2.1 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 16 2.2 Methods............................................................................................................................... 17 2.3 Consonants .......................................................................................................................... 18 2.3.1 Fortis and lenis consonants .......................................................................................... 18 2.3.1.1 Fortis and lenis obstruent VOT ............................................................................. 20 2.3.1.2 Fortis and lenis obstruent/fricative duration ......................................................... 21 2.3.1.3 Fortis and lenis nasal duration .............................................................................. 23 2.3.1.4 Acoustic measurements of the fortis and lenis burst ............................................ 25 2.3.1.5 Acoustic correlates of the Numu lenis/fortis contrast ........................................... 28 2.3.2 Onset obstruents ........................................................................................................... 29 2.3.3 Comparison of VOT in onsets, fortis, and lenis obstruents ......................................... 29 2.4 Vowels ................................................................................................................................ 30 2.4.1. Vowel quality .............................................................................................................. 31 ii 2.4.2 Vowel duration............................................................................................................
Load more

Recommended publications
  • What Is and What Is Not an Articulatory Gesture in Speech Production: the Case of Lateral, Rhotic and (Alveolo)Palatal Consonants
    What is and what is not an articulatory gesture in speech production: The case of lateral, rhotic and (alveolo)palatal consonants Daniel Recasens [email protected] Universitát Autònoma de Barcelona Gradus Revista Brasileira de Fonologia de Laboratório Vol. 1, nº 1 Dezembro de 2016 https://gradusjournal.com Bibtex: @article{recasens2016what, author = {Daniel Recasens}, journal = {Gradus}, month = {dec}, number = {1}, pages = {23–42}, title = {What is and what is not an articulatory gesture in speech production: The case of lateral, rhotic and (alveolo)palatal consonants}, volume = {1}, year = {2016}} Este texto pode ser livremente copiado, sob os termos da licença Creative Commons Atribuição-NãoComercial 4.0 Interna- https://creativecommons.org/ cional (CC BY-NC 4.0). licenses/by-nc/4.0/deed.pt_BR Gradus 1 (1) 24 Abstract Articulatory data are provided showing that, in lan- guages in which they have phonemic status, (alve- olo)palatal consonants, dark /l/ and the trill /r/ are articulated with a single lingual gesture instead of two independent tongue front and tongue body gestures. They are therefore simple, not complex segments. It is argued that tongue body lowering and retraction for dark /l/ and the trill /r/ is associated with manner of articulation re- quirements and with requirements on the implementation of the darkness percept in the case of dark /l/, and that tongue body raising and fronting for (alveolo)palatals results naturally from the contraction of the genioglossus muscle. These consonant units resemble truly complex palatalized and velarized or pharyngealized dentoalveo- lars regarding lingual coniguration and kinematics, as well as coarticulatory efects and phonological and sound change processes.
    [Show full text]
  • Open Research Online Oro.Open.Ac.Uk
    Open Research Online The Open University’s repository of research publications and other research outputs “You can just give those documents to myself’: Untriggered reflexive pronouns in 21st century spoken British English Book Section How to cite: Paterson, Laura (2018). “You can just give those documents to myself’: Untriggered reflexive pronouns in 21st century spoken British English. In: Brezina, Vaclav; Love, Robbie and Aijmer, Karin eds. Corpus Approaches to Contemporary British Speech. Sociolinguistic Studies of the Spoken (BNC2014). Abingdon: Routledge. For guidance on citations see FAQs. c 2018 Routledge Version: Accepted Manuscript Link(s) to article on publisher’s website: https://www.routledge.com/Corpus-Approaches-to-Contemporary-British-Speech-Sociolinguistic-Studies/Brezina-Love-Aijmer/p/book/9781138287273 Copyright and Moral Rights for the articles on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. For more information on Open Research Online’s data policy on reuse of materials please consult the policies page. oro.open.ac.uk You can just give those documents to myself’: Untriggered reflexive pronouns in 21st century spoken British English Laura L. Paterson, The Open University, UK 1. Introduction Reflexive pronouns, such as myself, herself, yourselves, share a real-world referent with other components of the clause (or local domain) in which they occur. As such, they require a coreferent noun phrase (NP) to fulfil their syntactic criteria. In the sentence ‘The cat washes herself’, the NP the cat and the reflexive pronoun herself correspond to the same entity and share a syntactic bond. However, despite formal syntactic constraints, reflexive pronouns are used without coreferent NPs in (some varieties of) English (Parker, Riley and Meyer 1990).
    [Show full text]
  • A Phonetic, Phonological, and Morphosyntactic Analysis of the Mara Language
    San Jose State University SJSU ScholarWorks Master's Theses Master's Theses and Graduate Research Spring 2010 A Phonetic, Phonological, and Morphosyntactic Analysis of the Mara Language Michelle Arden San Jose State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/etd_theses Recommended Citation Arden, Michelle, "A Phonetic, Phonological, and Morphosyntactic Analysis of the Mara Language" (2010). Master's Theses. 3744. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31979/etd.v36r-dk3u https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/etd_theses/3744 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Master's Theses and Graduate Research at SJSU ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of SJSU ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A PHONETIC, PHONOLOGICAL, AND MORPHOSYNTACTIC ANALYSIS OF THE MARA LANGUAGE A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of Linguistics and Language Development San Jose State University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts by Michelle J. Arden May 2010 © 2010 Michelle J. Arden ALL RIGHTS RESERVED The Designated Thesis Committee Approves the Thesis Titled A PHONETIC, PHONOLOGICAL, AND MORPHOSYNTACTIC ANALYSIS OF THE MARA LANGUAGE by Michelle J. Arden APPROVED FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS AND LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT SAN JOSE STATE UNIVERSITY May 2010 Dr. Daniel Silverman Department of Linguistics and Language Development Dr. Soteria Svorou Department of Linguistics and Language Development Dr. Kenneth VanBik Department of Linguistics and Language Development ABSTRACT A PHONETIC, PHONOLOGICAL, AND MORPHOSYNTACTIC ANALYSIS OF THE MARA LANGUAGE by Michelle J. Arden This thesis presents a linguistic analysis of the Mara language, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in northwest Myanmar and in neighboring districts of India.
    [Show full text]
  • A Feasibility Study of Hypercorrection in The
    I IS PRESTIGIOUS: A FEASIBILITY STUDY OF HYPERCORRECTION IN THE ACCUSATIVE CASE IN AMERICAN ENGLISH A RESEARCH PAPER SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS BY BENJAMIN D. BISHOP GUILHERME DUARTE GARCIA - ADVISOR BALL STATE UNIVERSITY MUNCIE, INDIANA MAY 2020 1 I IS PRESTIGIOUS Page 2 Contents 1 Abstract 4 2 Introduction 4 2.1 Linguistic Viruses . 4 2.2 Hypercorrection . 5 2.3 Identity in L1 English Hypercorrection . 7 2.4 Instructional Implications . 9 2.5 Objective . 10 3 Methods 12 4 Experiment 1 13 4.1 Methodology, Experiment 1 . 13 4.2 Results, Experiment 1 . 15 4.3 Discussion, Experiment 1 . 17 4.3.1 Hypercorrection and grouping . 17 4.3.2 Hypercorrection and time in residence . 18 4.3.3 Hypercorrection and age . 19 4.3.4 Hypercorrection and degree . 19 4.4 Overall Discussion . 19 5 Experiment 2 20 5.1 Methodology Experiment 2 . 20 5.2 Results, Experiment 2 . 21 5.3 Discussion, Experiment 2 . 23 5.3.1 Positional Import . 23 5.3.2 Education . 24 5.3.3 Age . 24 I IS PRESTIGIOUS Page 3 6 General Discussion 25 6.1 Degree and hypercorrection in culture . 25 6.2 Age and hypercorrection in culture . 26 6.3 The linguistic virus' structure . 27 6.3.1 The Linguistic Virus' Internal Structure . 27 6.3.2 The Linguistic Virus' External Placement . 28 6.3.3 The Linguistic Virus' Virulence . 28 6.4 Implications for instruction . 28 7 Conclusions 29 8 Implications for Future Research 30 I IS PRESTIGIOUS Page 4 1 Abstract Hypercorrection is an overgeneralization of a prestige semantic struc- ture (Piattelli-Palmarini and Uriagereka, 2004).
    [Show full text]
  • LEXICAL and SOCIOLINGUISTIC VARIATION in QATARI ARABIC by Darwish Ghuloom Hussein Yousef Al-Amadidhi Thesis Submitted for the De
    LEXICAL AND SOCIOLINGUISTICVARIATION IN QATARI ARABIC by Darwish Ghuloom Hussein Yousef Al-amadidhi Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Edinburgh 1985 Dedication To my parents and my wife with love and gratitude Abstract This thesis embodies the result of an investigation into two linguistic variables: the (d3) and the (Q) in QD. The basic issue tackled is this: are variations observed in these variables rule governed? If so, are they linguistic or non-linguistic? A close examination of the data has shown that the variables are governed to a great extent by the class of lexical item containing the variaoles. Moreover they have demonstrated co-variation with paralinguistic factors such as social group membership, age, level of education and style. The social motivation for change and variation are highlighted. Such processes occur as a result of status-ranking of local social dialects and as a result of the tendency of the younger people to modify their speech in the direction of the superimposed variety, which is learnt at school. The impact of the process of modernization on linguistic change is also examined. Acknowledgement I would like to thank the University of Qatar for providing me with the full scholarship which made it possible for me to continue my post graduate studies and complete this work. I must also- express my deep appreciation and thanks to the Cultural Attache's Office (Embassy of Qatar) in London for the help they offered during my stay in Britain-. This thesis would perhaps not have been completed without the interest, encouragement, patience and perspicacious criticism of my supervisor, Professor James R.
    [Show full text]
  • Usage, Rules, and Style
    USAGE, RULES, AND STYLE BY JACK LYNCH, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH RUTGERS UNIVERSITY, NEWARK , NEW JERSEY Web: http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Writing/links.html Email: <[email protected]> The Above, The Following. Lists are common in some sorts of writing, introduced by the following and referred to by the above. But you can often make a sentence clearer and punchier with simple pronouns: instead of the above topics, try these topics — the context makes your subject clear. Action Verbs. Action verbs, as the name reveals, express actions; contrast them with verbs of being. Think of the difference between "I study" (action verb, even if it's not the most exciting action) and "I am a student" (verb of being). It's often wise to cut down on verbs of being, replacing them (whenever possible) with action verbs; that'll make your writing punchier. Whatever you do, though, don't confuse action verbs with the active voice, which is the opposite of the passive voice. Sentences with verbs of being (such as am, is, are, were) aren't necessarily passive sentences, even if they're often weak ones. Affect versus Effect. Affect with an a is usually a verb; effect with an e is (usually) a noun. When you affect something, you have an effect on it. The usual adjective is effective. If the usuals leave you curious, here's the rest of the story: affective as an adjective means "relating to or arousing an emotional reaction"; effect as a verb means "to bring about" or "to accomplish," as in "to effect a change." All of.
    [Show full text]
  • A Sociophonetic Study of the Metropolitan French [R]: Linguistic Factors Determining Rhotic Variation a Senior Honors Thesis
    A Sociophonetic Study of the Metropolitan French [R]: Linguistic Factors Determining Rhotic Variation A Senior Honors Thesis Presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation with honors research distinction in the undergraduate colleges of The Ohio State University by Sarah Elyse Little The Ohio State University June 2012 Project Advisor: Professor Rebeka Campos-Astorkiza, Department of Spanish and Portuguese ii ABSTRACT Rhotic consonants are subject to much variation in their production cross-linguistically. The Romance languages provide an excellent example of rhotic variation not only across but also within languages. This study explores rhotic production in French based on acoustic analysis and considerations of different conditioning factors for such variation. Focusing on trills, previous cross-linguistic studies have shown that these rhotic sounds are oftentimes weakened to fricative or approximant realizations. Furthermore, their voicing can also be subject to variation from voiced to voiceless. In line with these observations, descriptions of French show that its uvular rhotic, traditionally a uvular trill, can display all of these realizations across the different dialects. Focusing on Metropolitan French, i.e., the dialect spoken in Paris, Webb (2009) states that approximant realizations are preferred in coda, intervocalic and word-initial positions after resyllabification; fricatives are more common word-initially and in complex onsets; and voiceless realizations are favored before and after voiceless consonants, with voiced productions preferred elsewhere. However, Webb acknowledges that the precise realizations are subject to much variation and the previous observations are not always followed. Taking Webb’s description as a starting point, this study explores the idea that French rhotic production is subject to much variation but that such variation is conditioned by several factors, including internal and external variables.
    [Show full text]
  • MIXED CODES, BILINGUALISM, and LANGUAGE MAINTENANCE DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requi
    BILINGUAL NAVAJO: MIXED CODES, BILINGUALISM, AND LANGUAGE MAINTENANCE DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Charlotte C. Schaengold, M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 2004 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Brian Joseph, Advisor Professor Donald Winford ________________________ Professor Keith Johnson Advisor Linguistics Graduate Program ABSTRACT Many American Indian Languages today are spoken by fewer than one hundred people, yet Navajo is still spoken by over 100,000 people and has maintained regional as well as formal and informal dialects. However, the language is changing. While the Navajo population is gradually shifting from Navajo toward English, the “tip” in the shift has not yet occurred, and enormous efforts are being made in Navajoland to slow the language’s decline. One symptom in this process of shift is the fact that many young people on the Reservation now speak a non-standard variety of Navajo called “Bilingual Navajo.” This non-standard variety of Navajo is the linguistic result of the contact between speakers of English and speakers of Navajo. Similar to Michif, as described by Bakker and Papen (1988, 1994, 1997) and Media Lengua, as described by Muysken (1994, 1997, 2000), Bilingual Navajo has the structure of an American Indian language with parts of its lexicon from a European language. “Bilingual mixed languages” are defined by Winford (2003) as languages created in a bilingual speech community with the grammar of one language and the lexicon of another. My intention is to place Bilingual Navajo into the historical and theoretical framework of the bilingual mixed language, and to explain how ii this language can be used in the Navajo speech community to help maintain the Navajo language.
    [Show full text]
  • Yiddish and Relation to the German Dialects Bryan Witmore University of South Carolina
    University of South Carolina Scholar Commons Theses and Dissertations 6-30-2016 Yiddish and Relation To The German Dialects Bryan Witmore University of South Carolina Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd Part of the German Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Witmore, B.(2016). Yiddish and Relation To The German Dialects. (Master's thesis). Retrieved from https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/ etd/3522 This Open Access Thesis is brought to you by Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. YIDDISH AND ITS RELATION TO THE GERMAN DIALECTS by Bryan Witmore Bachelor of Arts University of South Carolina, 2006 Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Master of Arts in German College of Arts and Sciences University of South Carolina 2016 Accepted by: Kurt Goblirsch, Director of Thesis Lara Ducate, Reader Lacy Ford, Senior Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies © Copyright by Bryan Witmore, 2016 All Rights Reserved. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis project was made possible in large part by the German program at the University of South Carolina. The technical assistance that propelled this project was contributed by the staff at the Ted Mimms Foreign Language Learning Center. My family was decisive in keeping me physically functional and emotionally buoyant through the writing process. Many thanks to you all. iii ABSTRACT In an attempt to balance the complex, multi-component nature of Yiddish with its more homogenous speech community – Ashekenazic Jews –Yiddishists have proposed definitions for the Yiddish language that cannot be considered linguistic in nature.
    [Show full text]
  • Phonological Variation and Change in Immigrant Speech : a Sociolinguistic Study of a 1967 Arab-Israeli War Immigrant Speech Community in Damascus, Syria
    Durham E-Theses Phonological variation and change in immigrant speech : A sociolinguistic study of a 1967 Arab-Israeli war immigrant speech community in Damascus, Syria. Jassem, Zaidan Ali How to cite: Jassem, Zaidan Ali (1987) Phonological variation and change in immigrant speech : A sociolinguistic study of a 1967 Arab-Israeli war immigrant speech community in Damascus, Syria., Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/1682/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without his prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. PHONOLOGICAL VARIATION AND CHANGE IN IMMIGRANT SPEECH A SOCIOLINGUISTIC STUDY OF A 1967 ARAB-ISRAELI WAR IMMIGRANT SPEECH COMMUNITY IN DAMASCUS, SYRIA. by Zaidan Ali Jassem (B.
    [Show full text]
  • An Ultrasound Investigation of Secondary Velarization in Russian
    An Ultrasound Investigation of Secondary Velarization in Russian by Natallia Litvin B.A., Minsk State Linguistic University, 2009 A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS in the Department of Linguistics Natallia Litvin, 2014 University of Victoria All rights reserved. This thesis may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without the permission of the author. ii Supervisory Committee An Ultrasound Investigation of Secondary Velarization in Russian by Natallia Litvin BA, Minsk State Linguistic University, 2009 Supervisory Committee Dr. Sonya Bird (Department of Linguistics) Supervisor Dr. John H. Esling (Department of Linguistics) Departmental Member iii Abstract Supervisory Committee Dr. Sonya Bird (Department of Linguistics) Supervisor Dr. John H. Esling (Department of Linguistics) Departmental Member The present study aims to resolve previous disputes about whether or not non-palatalized consonants exhibit secondary velarization in Russian, and if so what this corresponds to articulatorily. Three questions are asked: 1) are Russian non-palatalized consonants velarized or not? If so, 2) what are the articulatory properties of velarization? and 3) how is the presence or absence of secondary velarization affected by adjacent vowels? To answer these questions, laryngeal and lingual ultrasound investigations were conducted on a range of non-palatalized consonants across different vowel contexts. The results of the study show that 1) Russian non- palatalized consonants are not pharyngealized in the sense of Esling (1996, 1999, 2005), 2) /l/ and /f/ are uvularized, 3) /s/ and /ʂ/ can feature either uvularization or velarization. The study also shows that secondary articulations of Russian non-palatalized consonants are inherent rather than dependent on vowel context.
    [Show full text]
  • Uvular Approximation As an Articulatory Vowel Feature
    Uvular approximation as an articulatory vowel feature Jonathan P. Evans Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica (Taipei) [email protected] Jackson T.-S. Sun Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica (Taipei) [email protected] Chenhao Chiu Department of Linguistics, University of British Columbia [email protected] Michelle Liou Institute of Statistical Sciences, Academia Sinica (Taipei) [email protected] This study explores the phenomenon of uvularization in the vowel systems of two Heishui County varieties of Qiang, a Sino-Tibetan language of Sichuan Province, China. Ultrasound imaging (one speaker) shows that uvularized vowels have two tongue gestures: a rearward gesture, followed by movement toward the place of articulation of the corresponding plain vowel. Time-aligned acoustic and articulatory data show how movement toward the uvula correlates with changes in the acoustic signal. Acoustic correlates of uvularization (taken from two speakers) are seen most consistently in raising of vowel F1, lowering of F2 and in raising of the difference F3-F2. Imaging data and the formant structure of [l] show that uvular approximation can begin during the initial consonant that precedes a uvularized vowel. Uvularization is reflected phonologically in the phonotactic properties of vowels, while vowel harmony aids in the identification of plain–uvularized vowel pairs. The data reported in this paper argue in favor of a revision of the catalog of secondary articulations recognized by the International Phonetic Alphabet, in order to include uvularization, which can be marked with the symbol [ʶ] in the case of approximation and [X] for secondary uvular frication. 1 Introduction During uvular approximation, the tongue dorsum moves toward the uvula.
    [Show full text]