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The Nature of Vocoids Associated with Syllabic Consonants in Tashlhiyt Berber

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The Nature of Vocoids Associated with Syllabic Consonants in Tashlhiyt Berber THE NATURE OF VOCOIDS ASSOCIATED WITH SYLLABIC CONSONANTS IN TASHLHIYT BERBER John Coleman University of Oxford, UK ABSTRACT pronounced as [4], >T], or >^], with brief vocoids before and Tashlhiyt Berber has entered the phonological folklore as an sometimes after the tap, and between the individual closures of unusual language in which any consonant can be syllabic, many trills. Consonants may be contrastively geminate, even word- words consisting entirely of consonants. I shall argue for an initially (e.g. /VVI9I9C/ ‘be washing clothes’). Typically for an alternative analysis, according to which the epenthetic vowels Afroasiatic language, many words are formed by intercalating which frequently accompany syllabic consonants are the phonetic realizations of syllable nuclei. Where no epenthetic vowel is independent vowel and consonant melodies, e.g. singular C5CM95 K5WMC5 evident, it can be regarded as hidden by the following consonant, / / ‘pile of stones’, plural / /. I shall refer to phonemic according to a gestural overlap model. On this view, Tashlhiyt /i/, /u/, and /a/ as ‘lexical vowels’ and to the so-called syllable structure is a quite unmarked CV(C(C)), and ‘transitional schwas’ as ‘epenthetic vowels’. syllabification is unproblematic. 2. MATERIALS 1. INTRODUCTION 2.1. Recordings Many influential phonology texts (e.g. [9, 13]) repeat Dell and In the absence of a Tashlhiyt dictionary, an unsorted list of 555 Elmedlaoui’s analysis of Tashlhiyt [3], which holds that all words was collated from various papers. Each word was written µ µ µ Tashlhiyt phonemes, even obstruents, are sometimes syllabic, and down in the frame sentence “ini za — yat tklit CF P KP ” (‘please that numerous words consist only of consonants (e.g. /V:B\PBVPBV/ say — again’), and the list of sentences was read aloud by two ‘and store them’). If that is correct, the cross-linguistic native speakers. The list was recorded twice by each speaker. syllabification algorithm of [8, 10], according to which syllable The specific questions to be investigated were not known at the nuclei are projections of vowels, is inapplicable to Tashlhiyt. [3] time of recording, so the database is unbalanced, aiming more for also proposed a syllabification procedure in which relative, rather breadth of coverage than numerous repeats. In each session, 311 than absolute, sonority plays the main part in locating syllable words occurred only once, 218 words were spoken twice, 15 nuclei. However, that procedure rather implausibly requires nine words were spoken three times and 11 words were spoken four iterative passes through each word. In this paper I shall present times, giving 895 tokens per session. The words in [3] were evidence in support of an alternative proposal [2], according to recorded from two to four times by each speaker, so that words which syllabic consonants are phonologically analyzed as a containing syllabic consonants are well-represented in the vowel+consonant sequence. In defence of this view I shall show database. Due to constraints on research time, only data from one that in Mohamed Elmedlaoui’s speech, syllabic consonants are session with one speaker, Prof. Elmedlaoui, is discussed below. frequently (but variably) spoken as vowel+consonant sequences. Since he is the principal informant for prior publications [3, 4, I shall confirm Dell and Elmedlaoui’s claim [3, 4, 5] that the 5], it is hoped that this limitation of the present study will be quality of these vowels (which they call ‘transitional schwas’) is excused. predictable on the basis of the neighbouring consonants, and I Digital audio recordings were made in a sound-treated booth shall show that the openness of the next vowel is also a factor. at Oxford University Phonetics Laboratory using an AKG C451E The vowels in question are thus epenthetic. I shall show that their microphone, an AKG B46E preamplifier, and a Sony DTC-1000 distribution is better accounted for by the hypothesis that they ES PRO DAT recorder at 48,000 samples/s. The recordings were occur to fill syllable nucleus positions that would otherwise be digitally transferred to the hard disk of a Silicon Graphics Indy empty than by the alternative proposal of [3, 4, 5]. computer using Silicon Graphics DATman software, and down- The phonemes of Tashlhiyt are: voiceless stops sampled to 16,000 samples/s. The sample resolution was 16 bits. /VVµ MM9SS9/, voiced stops /DFFµ II9/, voiceless fricatives All subsequent waveform editing and acoustic analysis was µ µ µ µ performed using Entropics waves speech processing software. /HUU 55 ::9Ï J/, voiced fricatives /\\ == ¯¯9/, nasals µ µ µ /OPP/, liquids /NN TT/, approximants /LYµ/, and vowels 2.2. Acoustic Measurements /KWC/. I shall accept the claim in [3] that /j/ and /w/ are not In each word containing syllabic consonants (429 tokens), the separate phonemes, but non-nuclear variants of /i/ and /u/. A following were measured: 1) duration of epenthetic vowels, 2) word containing a pharyngealized phoneme exhibits duration of lexical vowels, 3) duration of syllabic consonants µ pharyngealization throughout, and has backer, slightly more open (except /T/ and /T /), 4) frequencies of the first three formants. F1– vowel qualities. Labialization of velar and uvular obstruents is F3 of some lexical vowels were also measured, not as a control, usually contrastive (e.g. /KMVK/ ‘hot’ vs. /KM9VK/ ‘recall’) /T/ is but as indicators of the periphery of the speaker’s vowel space. Epenthetic vowels were also impressionistically transcribed. page 735 ICPhS99 San Francisco 3. DISTRIBUTION OF EPENTHETIC VOWELS epenthesis was never observed, i.e. before /H/, /5/ and /</, and 3.1 Method of Analysis between two voiceless consonants (except in one instance of /qs/, The database contained 929 sequences of two consonant but the word-list spelling may have been wrong in this case). phonemes (dyads), the environment in which epenthetic vowels Other than these, the probability of epenthesis was never below may occur. Epenthetic vowels occurred in 368 (40%) of these. 0.05, though before /s/ it comes close (p = 0.07). The observed probability of epenthesis was calculated for every In the comparative evaluation of models, both performed dyad and for every pair of consonant classes listed in section 1. well. Model A predicted 75% of the 368 observed epenthetic Exceptions to Dell and Elmedlaoui’s model [5] and to mine vowels, but also expected epenthesis in 41% of the cases in [2] were found, necessitating an analysis of their relative which it did not occur, giving a d’ of 4.34. The false alarm rate of correctness. Signal detection theory [11] was used to compare the Model B was similar, 43%, but the hit rate was higher, 89%, goodness-of-fit between the observed distribution of epenthetic yielding a better d’ of 4.74. Although the two scores are quite vowels and their expected occurrence according to the two close, Model B should be favoured on three counts: 1) its better models. Each dyad was classified according to each model as coverage at explaining occurring instances of epenthesis; 2) the either a ‘hit’ (i.e. epenthesis occurred as expected), a ‘miss’ fact that its statement of where epenthesis is expected is much (epenthesis was not expected even though it occurred), a ‘false more succinct than the list of separate cases given in [5]; 3) alarm’ (epenthesis was expected but it did not occur), or a epenthesis in empty syllable nuclei is paralleled in many other ‘correct rejection’ (epenthesis was not expected and did not languages [7, 12]. occur). Note that there are two different ways in which a model can be wrong, and two ways in which it can be right. The hit rate 4. QUALITY OF EPENTHETIC VOWELS was expressed as the probability of occurrence and the false 4.1. Variation in Quality alarm rate as the probability of non-occurrence, and these [2] reports that a variety of epenthetic vowel qualities are found. probabilities translated into z-scores using the inverse z- In this study, [+], [+],B [G],B [(B], [4B], [$B], [£],A [)],A [n], [], [], [3], transform. The difference between z(hits) and z(false alarms), d’, [RB], [oB], [8], and [<] were recorded. The first three formant provides a measure of how well each model distinguishes between the occurrence and non-occurrence of epenthetic frequencies were carefully estimated from a 14-pole discrete vowels. The higher d’, the better the model’s performance. Fourier transform of a portion of signal centred on the amplitude In Model A, epenthetic vowels were expected to occur peak of each epenthetic vowel and windowed with a 25.6 ms according to the account given in [5]: in brief, they are not Hanning window. Vowels for which estimation of F1 or F2 expected 1) between two voiceless consonants, 2) between proved problematic were disregarded. Figure 1 is a scatter plot of homorganic stops (including the two parts of a geminate), 3) the F1 and F2 of epenthetic vowels. The allophones listed above between a stop and a homorganic noncontinuant with a different lie in overlapping clusters which fill the vowel space. A value for the feature [sonorant] (e.g. /tn/, /dn/, /tl/, /dl/), or 4) distinction between a more open and a closer group of vowel after fricatives. Epenthetic vowels are expected to occur 1) qualities is evident, however. between two non-homorganic stops (including nasal stops), especially if both are voiced, and 2) after liquids. In Model B, epenthetic vowels are expected to occur 1) in a 2500 syllable nucleus that is not filled by a lexical vowel, and 2) after 2000 /r/. Syllable nuclei are expected to occur according to the 1500 closer template CV(C(C)), where single-consonant codas are preferred 1000 more open over empty codas and coda clusters, and the second coda F2 (Hz) consonant may not be more sonorous than the first.
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