Vowel height allophony and dorsal place contrsats in Cochabamba Quechua

Gillian Gallagher, New York University August, 2015

Abstract This paper reports on the results of two studies investigating vowel height allophony triggered by uvular stops in Cochabamba Quechua. An acoustic study documents the lowering effect of a preceding tautomorphemic or a following heteromorphemic uvular on the high vowels /i u/. A discrimination study finds that vowel height is a significant cue to the velar-uvular place contrast.

1. Introduction

This paper has two goals. The first is to document vowel height allophony in Cochabamba Quechua and the second is to explore how allophonic vowel quality is used in the perception of dorsal consonant place. An acoustic study finds a strong, word-level effect of a uvular consonant on surrounding vowels and a perception study finds vowel height to be a strong cue to the uvular-velar contrast. This introduction begins by describing the allophonic pattern, and then moves on to motivating the two studies.

1.1 Vowel allophony Cochabamba Quechua is a variety of South Bolivian Quechua (Lewis et al. 2014), classified in group IIC of the Quechua language family (Torero 1964) along with Cuzco Quechua and many other varieties of southern Quechua. The description of the phonological effects of uvular consonants on vowels holds across this subgroup of the language family, though the results of the acoustic study below may be specific to the Cochabamba variety. The phonemic consonantal inventory is given in Table 1 (Rowe 1950; Cusihuamán 1976; Bills et al. 1969); of particular interest are the three uvular consonants [q qh q’] which contrast with their velar counterparts [k kh k’]. In Cochabamba Quechua, the plain uvular stop /q/ is often realized as a voiced sonorant [ʁ] (Bills et al. 1969).

labial dental postalveolar velar uvular glottal plain p t tʃ k q aspirate ph th tʃh kh qh ejective p’ t’ tʃ’ k’ q’ fricative s h nasal m n ɲ liquid l ɾ ʎ glide w j

Table 1: Quechua consonant inventory.

1 Cochabamba Quechua has three underlying phonemic vowels /i u ɑ/, which correspond to the five surface vowels [i u e o ɑ].1 Mid vowels are found in the vicinity of a uvular consonant, either immediately preceding or following a uvular (1a,b) or preceding a consonant cluster with a uvular in C2 (1c). Impressionistic descriptions of this system are supported by the acoustic studies of Cochabamba Quechua in Holliday (2014) and of Cuzco Quechua in Pasquale (2001) Fabian (2011) and Molina Vital (2011).

(1) a. [q’epij] ‘to carry’ [qheʎu] ‘lazy’ [qosɑ] ‘husband’ [q’osɲi] ‘garbage’

b. [leq’e] ‘hat’ [seq’oj] ‘to smack’ [hoq’o] ‘damp’ [moq’ej] ‘to love’

c. [erqe] ‘son’ [p’esqo] ‘bird’ [soNqo] ‘heart’ [orqo] ‘mountain’

The high and mid vowels are in an allophonic relationship: the mid vowels appear in the vicinity of a uvular consonant and high vowels appear elsewhere (Bills et al. 1969; Adelaar with Muysken 2004; Hoggarth 2004; Laime Ajacopa 2007). The low vowel may appear in any consonantal context. This distribution is illustrated in (2) where the quality of vowels in words with uvulars, velars and non-dorsal consonants is shown. Similar patterns are seen in many languages with uvulars or other post-velar consonants, including Eskimo-Aleut languages (Rischel 1972; Dorais 1986), Interior Salish languages (Bessell 1998), Nuu-chah-nulth (Wakashan) (Wilson 2007), Chilcotin (Athabaskan) (Cook 1983, 1993; Bird 2014), Aymara (de Lucca 1987; Adelaar with Muysken 2004) and many varieties of Arabic (McCarthy 1994; Shahin 2002; Zawaydeh 1998; Al-Ani 1970; Butcher and Ahmad 1987).

(2) a. no dorsals: [i u ɑ] *[e o] misi ‘cat’ *mese t’uru ‘mud’ *t’oro wɑsɑ ‘back’

b. velars: [i u ɑ] *[e o] siki ‘behind’ *seke ruku ‘old’ *roko pɑkɑ ‘to cover’

c. uvulars: [e o ɑ] *[i u]

1 All vowels are also described as tense in open syllables and lax in closed syllables (Laime Ajacopa 2007). For simplicity, this distinction is not transcribed throughout the paper. 2 leq’e ‘hat’ *liq’i hoq’o ‘damp’ *huq’u ɑqhɑ ‘corn beer’

Because of allophonic lowering, the contrast between velar and uvular consonants is often accompanied by a distinction in a surrounding vowel. Minimal pairs contrasting just for place are found with surrounding low vowels (3a), but in many cases minimal pairs contrast for both place and vowel height (3b,c).

(3) a. wɑkɑj ‘my cow’ wɑqɑj ‘to cry’

b. kiru ‘tooth’ qeru ‘vase’

c. kusɑ ‘good’ qosɑ ‘husband’

1.2 Motivating the acoustic study The current study contributes to the description of vowel lowering by documenting lowering across morpheme boundaries for the first time and by comparing the lowering effects of preceding and following uvular consonants. The available literature on Southern Quechua explicitly states that vowels are lowered immediately preceding and following a uvular, as in [leq’e] ‘hat’, and preceding a cluster that contains a uvular, as in [senqa] ‘nose’ (Bills et al. 1969; Cerrón Palomino 1994). The existence of lowering in these contexts, as well as its categorical nature, has been confirmed in two acoustic studies. Holliday (2014) looks at Cochabamba Quechua vowels following word-initial uvular and velar consonants, e.g., [qosɑ] ‘husband’ vs. [kusɑ] ‘good’, and finds that vowels following uvulars have a significantly higher F1 (indicating a lower vowel) than vowels following velars, and that this difference is present for the entire duration of the vowel. Molina Vital (2011) similarly found a categorical lowering effect by uvular consonants in Cuzco Quechua. Molina Vital’s study included uvular consonants in a variety of contexts (word initial, intervocalic and in a cluster), but did not systematically compare these different contexts. The current study focuses on vowel height at morpheme boundaries, comparing the height of root final vowels preceded by a non-dorsal consonant (4a) or a velar (4b) to those preceded by a uvular consonant (4c). The effects of a suffixal uvular on a root final vowel are also compared across roots with different consonantal content (5).

(4) a. /hɑp’i-ni/ ‘have, 1 sg’ /tɑpu-ni/ ‘ask, 1 sg’

b. /tɑki-ni/ ‘sing, 1sg’ /hɑk’u-ni/ ‘grind, 1sg’

c. /sɑqi-ni/ ‘leave, 1 sg’

3 /siq’u-ni/ ‘slap, 1 sg’

(5) a. /hɑp’i-rqɑ/ ‘have, 3sg past’ /tɑpu-rqɑ/ ‘ask, 3sg past’

b. /tɑki-rqɑ/ ‘sing, 3sg past’ /hɑk’u-rqɑ/ ‘grind, 3sg past’

c. /sɑqi-rqɑ/ ‘leave, 3sg past’ /siq’u-rqɑ/ ‘slap, 3sg past’

Based on the previous literature, a significant difference in height is expected between the vowels in the forms in (4a,b) vs. (4c): e.g., [hɑp’ini] ‘have, 1sg’, [takini] ‘sing, 1sg’ but [sɑqeni] ‘leave, 1sg’. While Molina Vital (2011) reports that lowering of a stem vowel is not triggered by a suffix, to my knowledge no phonetic study has ever examined vowels in this position. The current study explicitly addresses the question of whether suffixes trigger lowering across a morpheme boundary and finds that such lowering does occur, regardless of whether the root contains a velar, e.g., [hɑp’erqɑ] ‘have, 3sg past’ and [takerqɑ] ‘sing, 3sg past’. Because lowering is found across morpheme boundaries, a comparison of the lowering effects of a preceding and following consonantal trigger is possible, e.g., [sɑqeni] ‘leave, 1 sg’ vs. [hɑp’erqɑ] ‘have, 3sg past’. Gick & Wilson (2006) report that, in some languages, uvulars have a stronger impact on preceding vowels, while in other languages following vowels are more strongly affected. In Nuu-chah-nulth (Wakashan), high front vowels preceding uvulars have a schwa-like offglide, but are not fully lowered /iq/ ! [iəq]. High front vowels following uvulars, however, are more fully lowered to a mid vowel /qi/ ! [qe] or [qɛ] (Wilson 2007). In Chilcotin (Athabaskan), the reverse pattern is found (Cook 1983, 1993; Bird 2014). The high front vowel is slightly lowered when it precedes a uvular /iq/ ! [ɪq], but following a uvular only a schwa- like offglide is found /qi/ ! [qəi]. Directional asymmetries in the effects of post-velar consonants on surrounding segments are also found in studies of several Arabic dialects (Shahin 2002; Zawaydeh 1998; Al-Ani 1970; Butcher and Ahmad 1987), where effects on preceding segments are typically found to be stronger than effects on following segments. The interest of comparing roots with and without velar consonants lies in understanding the importance of height allophony to the dorsal place contrast. Comparing lowering by a suffixal uvular consonant in stems with and without a velar consonant, e.g., [hɑp’erqɑ] ‘have, 3sg past’ vs. [takerqɑ] ‘sing, 3sg past’, assesses whether the contrast enhancing properties of vowel allophony may block or alter the lowering effect of a uvular. To summarize, the acoustic study first asks whether vowel lowering applies across a morpheme boundary. Given the positive result indicating such lowering, two further questions are posed. First, do preceding and following uvular consonants have the same effect on vowel height? And second, does vowel lowering triggered by a suffix have the same effect on roots with and without velar consonants?

4 1.3 Motivating the perception study The perception study investigates the role of allophonic vowel lowering in the perception of the uvular-velar place contrast. As mentioned above, the identity of a given stop as uvular or velar is often accompanied by differences in surrounding vowel height as well as in the cues internal to the consonant. This is a common situation. Across languages, many contrasts are cued by phonetic properties internal to the contrasting segments as well as on surrounding segments, and listeners are often very sensitive to the cues in surrounding segments. In Korean, for example, the ternary laryngeal contrast in stops is largely cued by VOT and F0 distinctions in the following vowel and Korean listeners use both as strong cues to the laryngeal category of a stop (Cho 1996; Cho et al. 2002; Kim, Beddor & Horrocks 2002). In English, the voicing contrast is partially cued by the length of the preceding vowel (Raphael 1972; Luce & Charles-Luce 1985; Bybee 2003). F2 transitions and allophony in vowel backness are strong cues to the sibilant place contrast in Polish (Lee-Kim 2014, under review). It is expected that vowel height will be used by Quechua speakers as a cue to distinguishing uvular and velar stops. To test this, the perception experiment uses cross-spliced stimuli to assess the role of burst properties and vowel height in identifying whether a consonant is uvular [q’] or velar [k’].

2. Acoustic study

2.1 Methods 2.1.1 Participants Nine native speakers of Cochabamba Quechua were recorded in Kalallusta, Bolivia, a rural Quechua speaking community. All participants used Quechua as their primary language and had only limited knowledge of Spanish. The participants were 6 males and 3 females, ages 20-50. Participants were paid the equivalent of $7 for completing the experiment, which took about 20 minutes.

2.1.2 Stimuli The stimuli were verbal roots, presented to participants in the infinitive and elicited in two conjugated forms: with [-ni], the 1st person singular present tense, and [-rqɑ], the 3rd person singular past tense. Verbal roots were disyllabic, (C)V(C)CV, and were grouped based on the place of articulation of the rightmost stop - labial, velar or uvular - and the backness of the final vowel - front or back. The rightmost consonant in the root was always a stop, but could be plain, ejective or aspirated. Holliday (2014) found no effect of laryngeal features on lowering, so stops with different laryngeal features are not compared here. The number of items in each cell ranges from 4-12, based on the number of existing verbs that could sensibly appear with the relevant suffixes. The stimuli are given in Table 2 in the infinitival form, which is the root followed by the suffix [-j]. An item like [hɑmpij] ‘to cure’, for example, was used to elicit the two forms [hɑmpini] ‘cure, 1sg’ and [hɑmperqɑ] ‘cure, 3sg past’. Stress is fixed on the penultimate syllable in Quechua, and so the target vowel was always in stressed position.

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labial velar uvular h front V2 hɑmpij ‘cure’ wɑkij ‘negotiate’ ɑrq ej ‘gasp’ hɑsp’ij ‘scratch’ p’ɑkij ‘break’ ʎɑwq’ej ‘rummage’ hɑp’ij ‘grab’ tɑkij ‘sing’ sɑqej ‘leave’ tipij ‘harvest’ k’uskij ‘look carefully’ moq’ej ‘love’ t’ipij ‘pinch’ ʎik’ij ‘rip’ t’eqej ‘stuff’ tʃumpij ‘wrap’ t’inkij ‘unite’ qɑnqej ‘heat’ sɑpij ‘take root’ muskij ‘smell’ ɑjqej ‘escape’ ʎusp’ij ‘slip away’ tʃ’uskij ‘skin’ ʎiphij ‘shine’ phinkij ‘jump’ punkij ‘swell’ k’iskij ‘pack’ back V2 tɑrpuj ‘plant’ tinkuj ‘meet’ seq’oj ‘slap’ umphuj ‘weaken’ winkhuj ‘lie down’ t’oqoj ‘drill’ tɑpuj ‘ask’ jɑjkuj ‘enter’ ʎosq’oj ‘flatten’ tupuj ‘weigh’ phukuj ‘sigh’ oqoj ‘swallow’ t’impuj ‘boil’ siʎk’uj ‘to pinch’ poqoj ‘ripen’ wɑjk’uj ‘cook’ onqoj ‘be sick’ t’ukuj ‘think’ qhɑrqoj ‘banish’ tʃhukuj ‘swaddle’ hoq’oj ‘get wet’ rikuj ‘see’ mosqoj ‘dream’ hɑk’uj ‘grind’ p’osqoj ‘turn sour’ hik’uj ‘hiccup’ mikhuj ‘eat’ Table 2: Stimulus verbs in their infinitival form.

2.1.3 Procedure The experiment was conducted entirely in Quechua by a Quechua speaking research assistant from Kalallusta. The RA pronounced a stimulus item in the infinitival form, and the participant was instructed to give the same verb in a short sentence, either noqɑ VERB-ni ‘I VERB-1sg’ or qajna paj VERB-rqa ‘Yesterday he VERB-3sg.past’. For example, if the RA said [hampij] ‘cure, inf’ the participant then said [noqɑ hampini] ‘I cure’. All the forms with -ni were elicited first, followed by all the forms with -rqɑ. If a production was disfluent, the participant was asked to repeat the sentence. In a few cases, where the conjugated verb was semantically awkward (due to a missing reflexive or causitive suffix), the experimenter produced the form and the participant then repeated the sentence. Participants were recorded with a Marantz PMD560 digital recorder, at a sampling rate of 44 kHz, and an Audio Technica 831b lapel microphone.

2.2 Analysis The target vowel was segmented in Praat (Boersma and Weenink 1992-2014) based on the onset and offset of F1 and F2. F1 and F2 were then measured at the midpoint of the vowel. 52 tokens, 5% of the data, were removed from analysis due to (i) excessive background noise (usually wind

6 since the recordings were done outside) or (ii) a vowel being unsegmentable due to reduction of surrounding consonants. The statistical models reported below were all Linear Mixed Models fit with the lmer() function in the lme4 package (Bates & Maechler 2014) in the statistical software R (R Development Core Team 2012). Front and back vowels were analyzed separately. All models had a maximal random effects structure, with random slopes for participant and random intercepts for participant and item. Effects with a t value of ±2 were considered significant (Gelman & Hill 2006). Vowel plots were created using the vowels package in R (Kendall & Thomas 2012).

2.3 Results 2.3.1 Overview A consistent lowering effect of both preceding and following uvular consonants is found, independent of the presence of a velar consonant in a stem. Lowering effects are found in vowels following uvulars within the stem, as described in previous literature. The study here also finds a comparable lowering effect of a suffixal uvular on a stem vowel, a previously undescribed pattern. The plots in Figure 1 below illustrate the results. The vowel space in forms with the suffix –ni is shown on the left, where it can be seen that vowels following uvulars are substantially lower than vowels following velars or labials. The vowel space in forms with the suffix –rqa is shown on the right. The suffixal uvular results in a lowered vowel, regardless of whether the stem has a labial, velar or uvular consonant. The values plotted below are not normalized, and thus some of the variability in the production of a single vowel is due to intra- speaker variation.

-ni -rqa

200 200

300 300

i-velar 400 i-labial u-labial 400 u-velar

F1 F1 u-labial 500 i-uvular u-uvular 500 i-velar i-labial u-velaru-uvular i-uvular 600 600

700 700

AllSpkrs AllSpkrs

800 800 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 F2 F2 Figure 1: F1 and F2 of stem final vowels in stems with labial, velar or uvular consonants. Distributions are shown for stems suffixed with -ni (left) and for stems suffixed with -rqa (right).

2.3.2 Vowel lowering within a root The first step in the analysis is to verify the presence of vowel lowering within a root. To establish the effects of a tautomorphemic trigger for vowel lowering, vowels in the –ni forms of

7 roots with labials and uvulars were compared, e.g., [hampini] ‘cure, 1sg’ vs. [saqeni] ‘leave, 1sg’. Strong effects of vowel lowering following a uvular were found for both front and back vowels. Front vowels have a higher F1 (β = 100.26, SE = 16.73, t = 5.99) and lower F2 (β = - 216.24, SE = 45.16, t = -4.79) following a uvular than following a labial. Back vowels also have a higher F1 (β = 100.99, SE = 22.28, t = 4.53) following a uvular than following a labial, but F2 does not differ (β = 29.68, SE = 68.57, t = 0.43).

2.3.3 Vowel lowering across a morpheme boundary The second step in analyzing the results is to determine the effect of a suffixal uvular on a root vowel. To do this, vowels in the –ni and –rqa forms of roots with labial consonants were compared, e.g., /hɑmpi-ni/ ‘cure, 1sg’ vs. /hɑmpi-rqɑ/ ‘cure, 3sg past’. Only labial roots were included in this analysis, since velar or uvular consonants in a root could influence vowel height. Both front and back vowels were found to differ based on the consonantal make-up of the suffix. When suffixed with a uvular, front vowels have a higher F1 (β = 119.36, SE = 17.72, t = 6.73) and a lower F2 (β = -372.55, SE = 39.29, t = -9.48) than when suffixed with a non-uvular, indicating lowering and retraction of a front vowel in the presence of a following uvular. Back vowels also have a higher F1 (β = 93.81, SE = 12.96, t = 7.24) when a uvular follows in the suffix, but F2 does not differ between the two suffixed forms (β = -50.24, SE = 65.03, t = -0.77), indicating lowering of a back vowel in the presence of a uvular.

2.3.4 Comparing the effects of preceding vs. following uvulars on vowel height Having established that vowels are lowered both when following a tautomorphemic uvular and when preceding a uvular in a suffix, the magnitude of these two effects is now compared. The analysis compared vowels in the –rqa form for labial roots to vowels in the –ni form for uvular roots, e.g., [hɑmperqɑ] ‘cure, 3sg past’ vs. [sɑqeni] ‘leave, 1sg’. No significant differences were found for F1 in front vowels (β = -18.78, SE = 21.43, t = -0.88) or back vowels (β = 7.8, SE = 25.83, t = 0.30), indicating the lowering effects of a tautomorphemic, preceding trigger do not differ from the lowering effects of a heteromorphemic, following trigger. A significant difference in F2 was found for front vowels, with a higher F2 in uvular –ni forms like [saqeni] than in labial –rqa forms like [hamperqa] (β = 154.95, SE = 41.55, t = 3.71). A smaller effect in the same direction was also found for back vowels (β = 81.20, SE = 46.99, t = 1.73). This result may indicate that the backing effect of a following uvular is stronger than the backing effect of a preceding uvular. Alternatively, this result could indicate a fronting effect of the following dental nasal in –ni forms.

2.3.5 Vowel height in roots with velars We now turn to testing whether the lowering effect of a suffixal uvular is affected by a velar stem consonant, as in /ʎik’i-rqɑ/ ‘tear, 3sg past’. Velar consonants may be expected to block lowering of a following stem vowel due to the potential use of vowel height to cue the uvular- velar contrast. This analysis included two predictors, place (labial vs. velar stems) and form (-ni vs. -rqa), as well as their interaction. For front vowels, a significant effect of place was found (β = -21.58, SE = 8.13, t = -2.53) due to a lower F1 in vowels following velars. This effect indicates that front vowels are slightly

8 higher when following a velar than when following a labial. A significant effect of form reveals that vowels are lower (higher F1) when the suffix is –rqa than when it is –ni (β = 119.14, SE = 14.82, t = 8.04), indicating lowering triggered by the uvular in –rqa. The interaction term is not significant (β = -0.57, SE = 11.10, t = -0.05), however, meaning that the lowering effects of a suffixal uvular do not differ between stems with labial and velar consonants. For back vowels, a significant effect of place was again found (β = 34.12, SE = 13.00, t = 2.63), but, as opposed to front vowels, back vowels were found to be lower (higher F1) following velars than following labials. A significant effect of form (β = 86.47, SE = 13.14, t = 6.58) indicates lowering by a suffixal uvular in –rqa forms as compared to –ni forms. The absence of a significant interaction (β = -11.69, SE = 19.24, t = -0.61) again reveals no differences in the lowering effects of a suffixal uvular on vowels in stems with labial and velar consonants. The analyses in this section reveal no blocking effect of velar stem consonants. A front vowel following a labial is 119 Hz lower when the suffix is –rqa than when it is –ni, and a front vowel following a velar is 120 Hz lower. A back vowel following a labial is 93 Hz lower when the suffix is –rqa, and a back vowel following a velar is 79 Hz lower.

2.4 Discussion The acoustic study confirms the impressionistic description that high vowels lower adjacent to a uvular consonant. Lowering was observed both root internally and across a morpheme boundary from a suffix onto a root. This strong effect of a uvular consonant on a surrounding vowel is not affected by the presence of a velar consonant: lowering applies equivalently from a suffixal uvular to a root vowel preceded by a velar (e.g., [takerqɑ] ‘sing, 3sg past) and a non-velar (e.g., [hap’erqɑ] ‘grab, 3sg past).

3. Identification study Having established the acoustic effects of a uvular consonant on a surrounding vowel, we now proceed to the interaction of vowel height and consonant place in perception. This section presents the results of an identification study designed to assess the contribution of burst properties and vowel height in the perception of the uvular-velar place distinction.

3.1 Methods 3.1.1 Participants Twenty-seven native speakers of Cochabamba Quechua completed the identification task, which was conducted in a hotel room in the city of Cochabamba, Bolivia. All participants were literate in Quechua and bilingual in Spanish, though they used Quechua on a regular basis. It was not possible to conduct the experiment with monolingual Quechua speakers as such speakers are not literate and would likely have difficulty completing an identification task, which requires attaching an orthographic label to a stimulus. The participants were 7 males and 20 females, ages 20-37. Participants were paid the equivalent of $7 for completing the experiment, which took about 10 minutes.

3.1.2 Stimuli

9 The stimuli were nonce word quadruplets that crossed a uvular or velar ejective, [q’] or [k’], with a following high or mid front vowel, [i] or [e]. The nonce words all ended in the suffix –ni, the morphological structure of a 1st person singular present tense verb. The target CV sequence was the second syllable of a disyllablic nonce verb stem, e.g., [wɑk’ini], and was in stressed position. There were 15 frames, for a total of 60 items, given in Table 3.

consistent cues conflicting cues velar-high uvular-mid velar-mid uvular-high ʎɑk’ini ʎɑq’eni ʎɑk’eni ʎɑq’ini ʎɑnk’ini ʎɑnq’eni ʎɑnk’eni ʎɑnq’ini ʎɑsk’ini ʎɑsq’eni ʎɑsk’eni ʎɑsq’ini mɑk’ini mɑq’eni mɑk’eni mɑq’ini mɑrk’ini mɑrq’eni mɑrk’eni mɑrq’ini mɑsk’ini mɑsq’eni mɑsk’eni mɑsq’ini sɑk’ini sɑq’eni sɑk’eni sɑq’ini sɑnk’ini sɑnq’eni sɑnk’eni sɑnq’ini sɑrk’ini sɑrq’eni sɑrk’eni sɑrq’ini wɑk’ini wɑq’eni wɑk’eni wɑq’ini wɑrk’ini wɑrq’eni wɑrk’eni wɑrq’ini wɑsk’ini wɑsq’eni wɑsk’eni wɑsq’ini yɑk’ini yɑq’eni yɑk’eni yɑq’ini yɑnk’ini yɑnq’eni yɑnk’eni yɑnq’ini yɑrk’ini yɑrq’eni yɑrk’eni yɑrq’ini

Table 3: Stimuli for the identification task.

Stimulus frames were selected that resulted in a full quadruplet of nonce words. Frames with initial stops were excluded because ejectives cannot occur in medial position if the initial consonant is a stop (MacEachern 1999; Gallagher 2011). The initial vowel in the nonce word was always /ɑ/, as non-low vowels would provide additional cues to the place of the following consonant (high in velar forms or mid in uvular forms). The ejectives stops were chosen for two reasons. First, ejectives allow for easy splicing because of the period of silence, corresponding to the glottal closure, between the stop burst and the following vowel. Additionally, the glottal closure results in relatively weak formant transitions in the following vowel. Consequently, the cues to consonant place are relatively isolated to the burst in an ejective, as compared to an aspirate or a plain stop. The second reason for choosing ejectives is the variation in the production of the plain and aspirated uvulars in Bolivian Quechua. The plain uvular stop category /q/ is produced as an approximant [ʁ], and the aspirated uvular stop /qh/ is often spirantized to [χ]. Only the dorsal ejectives, then, reliably differ in only place, not manner. The waveform and spectrogram of [ʎɑk’ini] is shown in Figure 2.

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burst glottal closure

Figure 2: Waveform and spectrogram of [ʎɑk’ini] with burst and glottal closure marked.

To create the stimuli, a native speaker was recorded reading the forms with natural velar-high and uvular-mid combinations for each frame. From these recordings, each stimulus was made by cross-splicing between the dorsal burst and the following vowel. For example, [ʎɑk’ini] was made by cross-splicing [ʎɑk’ini] and [ʎɑnk’ini] during the silent period between the [k’] burst and the vowel. Similarly, a form like [ʎɑq’ini] was made by cross-splicing [ʎɑq’eni] and [ʎɑk’ini]. Stop closure duration and VOT were normalized to a value intermediate between uvulars and velars. The normalized duration for closure and VOT was determined separately depending on the presence and identity of a coda consonant in the frame. For each coda (including no coda), all naturally produced items with that coda were measured and averaged together, and stimuli were then normalized to these intermediate values.2 Additional cues to uvular-velar place are likely present in the transition into the closure from a preceding segment, particularly a vowel. These cues were not normalized, so they were available to participants to use in classifying a stimulus in addition to the cues in the burst and the height of the following vowel. All stimuli were normalized for intensity using the Scale Intensity function in Praat.

3.1.3 Procedure Stimuli were presented to participants using Psyscope X B77. Participants were instructed to listen to the stimulus, and then decide whether the item they heard contained the sound [q’] or [k’]. Participants indicated their choice by pressing one of two labeled keys on an Empirisoft Direct RT button box. Keys were labeled using the standard Bolivian Quechua orthography and and the assignment of labels to keys was balanced across participants. The experiment

2 For example, the average closure and VOT duration for intervocalic stops was determined based on the averages computed over naturally produced [ʎɑk’ini], [mɑk’ini], [sɑk’ini], [wɑk’ini], [yɑk’ini], [ʎɑq’eni], [mɑq’eni], [sɑq’eni], [wɑq’eni] and [yɑq’eni]. 11 was self-paced, though participants were asked to respond as quickly as possible. Each participant completed a short practice phase of 3-5 trials to familiarize them with the format of the experiment. There was a 150 ms lag between a button being pushed and the onset of the next trial. The set of 60 stimuli were randomized and presented to participants twice, for a total of 120 trials.

3.2 Results and analysis Responses were coded for accuracy in identifying the place of articulation of the consonantal burst: a correct response to [k’i] and [k’e] stimuli was k’ and a correct response to [q’i] and [q’e] stimuli was q’. Accuracy was then compared for target velars and target uvulars, depending on whether the vocalic cues were consistent, as in [k’i] and [q’e], or conflicting, as in [k’e] and [q’i]. The results, shown in Figure 3, show that accuracy decreased with conflicting vocalic information, and that this effect was stronger for velars than for uvulars.

100 90 80 70 60 50 consistent 40

% correct % correct conflicting 30 20 10 0 velar uvular

Figure 3: Results of identification task. Accuracy is plotted by place of articulation of the stop burst and consistent or conflicting vocalic cues.

A Mixed Logit Model was fit to the accuracy data, with fixed effects of target place of articulation (uvular or velar), vocalic cues (consistent or conflicting) and their interaction. The model had random intercepts for subject and item and random slopes for subject. The model found a significant interaction (β = 0.81, SE = 0.35, z = 2.3, p < 0.03). Post-hoc tests find that accuracy is lower when vocalic cues conflict for both velars (β = 2.45, SE = 0.54, z = 4.52, p < 0.0001) and uvulars (β = 1.78, SE = 0.43, z = 4.15, p < 0.0001). Accuracy is also significantly lower for velars with conflicting vocalic cues than for uvulars (β = -1.14, SE = 0.35, z = -3.31, p < 0.001), but no such difference is found between velar and uvular place when vocalic cues are consistent (β = -0.50, SE = 0.35, z = -1.42, p = 0.15). The interaction arises, then, because conflicting vocalic cues decrease accuracy on target velar stops more than on target uvular stops. Post-hoc, binomial tests reveal that listeners are more likely to label both [k’e] (p < 0.0001) and [q’i] (p < 0.01) stimuli as uvular than velar.

3.3 Discussion

12 The perception study found that vowel height is indeed used as a cue to the uvular-velar place contrast: given conflicting vocalic cues, accurate identification of the place of the burst decreases. This result is not particularly surprising, given the large acoustic difference between the high vowels observed following velars and the mid vowels observed following uvulars, and given previous findings that listeners are attentive to cues on surrounding segments (Raphael 1972; Luce & Charles-Luce 1985; Cho 1996; Kim, Beddor & Horrocks 2002; Lee-Kim 2014, under review). This finding is somewhat surprising, though, from a more traditional phonological perspective on non-contrastive sounds and speech perception. Typically, sounds that are non-contrastive in a language, like sounds in an allophonic distribution, are not perceived as distinct (Hume & Johnson 2003). For example, Boomershine et al. (2008) found that English speakers perceive non-contrastive [d]-[ɾ] as more similar than contrastive [d]-[ð], while Spanish speakers have the opposite pattern: non-contrastive [d]-[ð] are perceived as more similar than contrastive [d]-[ɾ]. While tasks that focus on the relative discriminability or perceived similarity of non-contrastive sounds typically find that such sounds are perceived as similar, this does not mean that non-contrastive sounds are perceived as identical. Clearly, non-contrastive properties of speech can be used as cues to a contrast, even though these properties may not be perceived particularly well independently. A second, more surprising, finding of the perception study is that the perception of a velar is more dependent on consistent vocalic cues than the perception of a uvular. This particular asymmetry is unexpected from the distribution of dorsal place and vowels in the language. High and mid vowels should be equally informative as to place of articulation, since a mid vowel is only found in the presence of a surrounding uvular and a high vowel is never found in this context. The result is further surprising given that the results of the acoustic study predict that the perception of velar place should, if anything, be less dependent on vowel height than uvular place. Because a uvular triggers lowering of a vowel preceded by a velar, e.g., [takerqɑ] *[takirqɑ] ‘sing, 3sg past’, listeners have some experience perceiving a velar with a following mid vowel. In contrast, uvulars are never followed by a high vowel. These results suggest that [k’e] forms may be perceived as velar more often than [q’i] forms are perceived as uvular, the opposite of what is actually found in the identification task. A likely source of the asymmetry between [k’e] and [q’i] forms is found by looking at the acoustic details of the experimental stimuli.3 The tokens used to make the stimuli were naturally produced, and [i] and [e] are well separated in F1-F2 space, as shown on the left side of Figure 4. Though [i] and [e] are well separated for this particular speaker, average F1 is high relative to the distributions found in the acoustic study, shown on the right of Figure 4.

3 Thanks to Lisa Davidson and Colin Wilson for suggesting this analysis of the stimuli. 13

Identification stimuli Acoustic study 200 200 ii i

i i i

300 300 i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i iii i i i i i ii i i i i i i e i i i i i i i i e i ii i e i e i i i i i e i e i 400 400 i i i ii i i e e i i i i e i i e e e i i e e i i i i i e e i ii e i i i e e ei i e e i i i i i e i e e e F1 i F1 e

500 e 500 i e e i i e i e e e i ei e i e e e e i i e e i ee i e i i e e i e e e e e

600 600 e e e e e e e e eee e e e e 700 700 e e i i e e 800 800 3500 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 3500 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 F2 F2 Figure 3: Distribution of [i] (following velar) and [e] (following uvular) vowels in the experimental stimuli (left) and the acoustic study (right).

The match of each vowel in the experimental stimuli was compared to the [i] and [e] categories of the acoustic study, using the dmvnorm function in the mvtnorm package (Genz et al. 2015) for R. Given the mean and variance of the categories in the acoustic study, each experimental token was tested for how likely it was to belong to the [i] or [e] category. The log probability of experimental [i] belonging to the [i] category and experimental [e] belonging to the [e] category is about the same (both -16), but experimental [i] is more likely to belong to the [e] category (- 24) than experimental [e] is to belong to the [i] category (-17). Experimental [q’i] tokens are more likely to be classified as containing a mid vowel, i.e. [q’e], than tokens of [k’e] are to be classified as containing a high vowel, i.e. [k’i], because the mid vowels in the stimuli are less ambiguous than the high vowels. This asymmetry biases participants towards a uvular response, as observed. This bias is only found for stimuli with conflicting burst and vocalic cues; there is no difference in accuracy on tokens with consistent cues. Similar effects of the acoustic details of stimuli on the perception of phonotactically illegal strings has been found in Wilson & Davidson (2013), Wilson et al. (2014) and Wilson & Chodroff (2014). A version of the identification task that controlled for the acoustic details of the stimuli would likely not find the asymmetry between [q’i] and [k’e] forms observed here.

4. Summary and conclusion This paper has presented the results of two studies: an acoustic study documenting vowel lowering and an identification task confirming the importance of lowering to category perception. The acoustic study found that vowels preceded or followed by a uvular were significantly lower than vowels preceded or followed by a non-uvular. Comparable lowering effects were observed with a tautomorphemic, preceding uvular trigger (e.g., [sɑqeni] ‘leave, 1sg’) and with a

14 heteromorphemic, following uvular trigger (e.g., [hɑp’erqɑ] ‘grab, 3sg past’). The lowering effect of a suffixal uvular was not blocked by a preceding velar (e.g., [tɑkerqɑ] ‘sing 3sg past’), despite the use of vowel height to cue the velar-uvular place contrast. The identification task found that the allophonic distribution of vowel height serves as a strong cue to the contrast in place between velars and uvulars. When velar and uvular ejective bursts are cross-spliced with front vowels of conflicting heights, accurate perception of consonantal place goes down. That is, [k’i] and [q’e] strings are identified better than [k’e] and [q’i] strings. An asymmetry in favor of perception of a uvular was also found between the ambiguous [k’e] and [q’i] stimuli, though this finding is likely an effect of the acoustic properties of the stimuli. The data here have contributed to the description of vowel height allophony in Quechua, a system that is consistently discussed in descriptive sources but for which supporting phonetic data are sparse. In particular, neither existing descriptions nor phonetic studies have explicitly compared the effects of preceding and following uvulars or explored lowering across a morpheme boundary. The identification study presented here is also the only known investigation of the perception of vowel height by Quechua speakers. Previous work often cites the frequent mismatches between high and mid vowels found when Quechua speakers use Spanish loan words or speak Spanish (a language with five phonemic vowels) as evidence that Quechua speakers do not perceive vowel height. While this observation is consistent with difficulty discriminating vowel height, as has been found for other non-contrastive categories, the strong use of vowel height as a cue to identifying consonant place is consistent with previous work showing that listeners use a wide range of cues in category identification (e.g., Wright 2004), including cues to consonantal contrasts found on surrounding vowels. Future work should further investigate the perception of high and mid vowels, and the use of vowel height as a cue to the dorsal place contrast. A second identification study with more varied and more extreme vowels would complement the current study, as would a discrimination task. Further studies could also examine the perception of the dorsal place contrast in a variety of contexts with different vocalic cues, as opposed to the current task which focused exclusively on the contribution of a following front vowel in the stressed syllable. While vowel height is often available as a cue to the place of a dorsal consonant, it is not always available, and the relative contribution of burst and other consonantal cues is likely affected by the availability of contextual cues.

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