The diachronic emergence of retroflex segments in three languages

The present study shows that though retroflex segments can be considered articulatorily marked, there are perceptual reasons why languages introduce this class into their phoneme inventory. This observation is illustrated with the diachronic developments of retroflexes in Norwegian (North- Germanic), Nyawaygi (Australian) and Minto-Nenana (Athapaskan). The developments in these three languages are modelled in a perceptually oriented phonological theory, since traditional articulatorily-based features cannot deal with such processes

Intonation & Prosodic Structure in Beaver (Athabaskan) - Explorations on the language of the Danezaa

This dissertation reports on qualitative and quantitative investigations on the intonation and the prosodic structure of Beaver, an endangered Athabaskan language of Northwest Canada. The focus of the study is on the Northern Alberta dialect of Beaver, which has lexical tone and is a high marking Athabaskan language. The theoretical framework of the analysis is the Autosegmental Metrical (AM) theory. Following some background on intonation and prosody as well as the theoretical modelling, we summarize contributions dealing with intonation in languages that share certain features with Beaver, i.e. tone languages, polysynthetic languages and finally the related Athabaskan languages. After a brief introduction to the grammatical structure and the sociolinguistic situation of Northern Alberta Beaver, the database of the present study is introduced. It consists of narratives and task oriented dialogues as well as recordings elicited with stimuli sets. In the domain of intonation and prosody, three topics are investigated in detail. First, domain initial prosodic strengthening is analyzed. We show that a boundary initial position at higher constituents of the prosodic hierarchy has a lengthening effect on VOT of both aspirated and unaspirated plosives, while nasals are shortened in this context. Additionally, effects of morphological category (stem vs. prefix) and intervocalic position � two mechanisms that have been described for other Athabaskan languages � are also attested for Beaver to some degree. Second, the intonational tones that have been found in the corpus are analyzed within the AM theory. In Northern Alberta Beaver, boundary tones and phrase accents make up the intonational inventory. Most notably, an initial phrase accent is used to mark contrast, which is a device that has not been reported for the marking of information structure in other languages. Lastly, the interaction of information structure with pitch range in complex noun phrases is tested in a controlled experiment. Here, we find that pitch range is significantly wider for new information than for given, which is due to a raising of the top line, while the baseline is not affected to the same extend

On beginning the study of the tone system of a Dene (Athabaskan) language: Looking back

In this paper I review the methodology that I used in beginning my early fieldwork on a tonal Athabaskan language, including preparation through reading and listening, working with speakers, organizing data, and describing and analyzing the data, stressing how these are not steps or stages, but intersect and interact with each other. *This paper is in the series How to Study a Tone Language, edited by Steven Bird and Larry HymanNational Foreign Language Resource Cente

The partially denasalized bilabial plosive in Southern Min: comparison to [mb] in Amdo Tibetan

Regular SessionThis pilot study focuses on the biphasic plosive [mb] in Southern Min. Acoustic analysis suggests that its nasal portion tends to be weak in nasality (nasal flow) but tighter in integrity (not readily separable from the plosive portion) in comparison with prenasalized plosives described in the literature. On the other hand, the [mb] in Amdo Tibetan is similar to known prenasalized plosives in other languages, which allows a preliminary comparison of [mb] in Southern Min with the prenasalized plosive [mb] in Amdo.published_or_final_versio

Tonogenesis in Korean

The Korean language appears to be in a transitory state, with some evidence supporting the emergence of a phonemic tonal contrast, and other evidence pointing more towards phonetic variation in vowel pitch. Most theories of tonogenesis are based upon the idea that consonants influence the sounds around them, which makes Korean a particularly interesting case due to its unusual series of three-way contrasting consonants. This paper traces the trajectory of Korean’s consonants over the last century, investigates evidence for and against an emerging tonal contrast in Korean, and describes my own parallel experiment in English and the implications it has on our understanding of tone in Korean. I conclude that Korean is in a very late stage of tonogenesis

Phonetic & Phonological Salience Effects in Different Speech Processing Tasks

This paper provides evidence for both effects of both phonetic and phonological salience in speech processing. Results from three experiments are presented, each examining the relative processing of two speech sounds by speakers of two different languages. In each experiment, one of the two sounds is more phonetically salient and the other is more phonologically salient given the morphophonological patterning of one of the langauges. Phonetic salience effects emerged in shorter-term tasks and phonological salience effects emerged in tasks that were longer-term and that required more phonological processing

Sounds in grammar writing

While there has been much written on writing grammars in recent years, relatively little has been written on the place of sounds and their patterning in grammar writing. In this chapter I provide an overview of some of the challenges of writing about sounds, and discuss the kinds of information on sounds that are generally included in grammars. I then address what a grammar might ideally include on the sounds of a language, advocating the inclusion of sound files to augment the usual topics, increasing both the scientific merit and the human value of the grammar.National Foreign Language Resource Cente

An acoustic study of stem prominence in Hän Athabascan

Thesis (M.A.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2012Observations in many studies of Athabascan languages have indicated that the stem syllable displays phonetic prominence, perhaps due to its semantic or structural importance, which is realized through a variety of acoustic means. Features such as voicing, duration, manner of articulation, voice quality, and vowel quality pattern differently in stems and prefixes, both in the diachronic developments of Athabascan phonology as well as in the synchronic, phonetic realizations of individual phonemes. This acoustic study of the Hän language investigates the synchronic realization of this morphological conditioning in fricatives, stops, and vowels, and attempts to unify several different phonological effects into a single theory of stem prominence. The results show that the most regular and predictable of these correlates of stem prominence is the increase in duration of segments in stem onsets (consonants) and nuclei (vowels). Additional variations in features that pattern according to morphological category, such as voicing (in fricatives), voice quality (in ejectives), and vowel quality are considered secondary effects largely influenced by duration

Pitch and voice quality: acoustic evidence for tone in lower Koyukon

Thesis (M.A.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2019This thesis addresses the acoustic realization of tone in the Lower dialect of the Koyukon language. The Lower dialect is the only one of the three Koyukon dialects attested to have tone. Its exact nature, however, remains unclear. This study seeks to corroborate previous attestations of low tone in Lower Koyukon by providing acoustic evidence of its realization. Therefore, there are three primary objectives: a) to determine how tone is produced in Lower Koyukon with respect to pitch; b) to examine any interactions between tone and potential pitch-altering phenomena; and c) to determine the realization of creaky phonation during tone production, if such exists. All of the data for this study was gathered from a single consultant, a fluent Lower Koyukon speaker. Three elicitation strategies were employed. First, a game of bingo was developed from a list of words predicted to carry a tonal syllable. Second, the consultant was asked to teach the researcher how to pronounce a series of short phrases and sentences that contained a word with a tonal syllable. Finally, the researcher selected a story written in Koyukon for the consultant to read aloud. During the analytical process, each word predicted to carry tone was compared to both a control set of non-tonal words and a set of words that may or may not carry tone. The only statistically significant difference was that the set of tokens predicted to carry tone had higher measures of creak than the control set. As creaky voice is inherently linked to tone production, this finding supports previous attestations of tone. However, both quantitative and qualitative methods were employed for this study, and several examples are cited which show both that there is a significant pitch change on syllables predicted to carry tone. Moreover, it appears that that this pitch rises. The implications of this study are therefore that tone is present in modern Lower Koyukon, and that this tone may by high, rather than low, as has been previously claimed