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1 Vowel Height Allophony and Dorsal Place Contrsats in Cochabamba

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1 Vowel Height Allophony and Dorsal Place Contrsats in Cochabamba 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’ h [q eʎu] ‘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.
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