The phonetic basis of a phonological pattern
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Emily Cibelli
Abstract
Prenasalized voiced consonants demonstrate an unusual phonologization pattern: in some languages, they have phonologized their depressor effects (the reliable lowering of pitch on a following vowel) — that is, they always coincide with low-tone syllables, while in other languages they have not. The potential origins of this pattern are hard to determine without data on the intrinsic phonetic effects of prenasalized segments on F0. This study reports data on consonant-F0 interaction in Chichewa, a language with prenasalized segments in both high tone and low tone segments, in order to measure these effects in an environment where depressor effects have not been phonologized. The data suggests that the intrinsic phonetic effects of prenasalized consonants fall somewhere between the effects of plain stops and those of plain nasals, positioning these prenasalized segments to pattern either as depressors or as non-depressors, depending on language-specific conditions.
Abstract
Prenasalized voiced consonants demonstrate an unusual phonologization pattern: in some languages, they have phonologized their depressor effects (the reliable lowering of pitch on a following vowel) — that is, they always coincide with low-tone syllables, while in other languages they have not. The potential origins of this pattern are hard to determine without data on the intrinsic phonetic effects of prenasalized segments on F0. This study reports data on consonant-F0 interaction in Chichewa, a language with prenasalized segments in both high tone and low tone segments, in order to measure these effects in an environment where depressor effects have not been phonologized. The data suggests that the intrinsic phonetic effects of prenasalized consonants fall somewhere between the effects of plain stops and those of plain nasals, positioning these prenasalized segments to pattern either as depressors or as non-depressors, depending on language-specific conditions.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Foreword & acknowledgments vii
- Editors’ introduction ix
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Part I First and second language acquisition
- Devil or angel in the details? 3
- Effects of Spanish use on the production of Catalan vowels by early Spanish-Catalan bilinguals 33
- Cues to dialectal discrimination in early infancy 55
- Phonology versus phonetics in loanword adaptations 71
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Part II Prosody
- A preliminary study of penultimate accentuation in French 93
- Sentence modality and tempo in Neapolitan Italian 109
- Glottalization at phrase boundaries in Tuscan and Roman Italian 125
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Part III Segments
- Acoustic analysis of syllable-final /k/ in Northern Peninsular Spanish 151
- The phonetic basis of a phonological pattern 171
- The production of rhotics in onset clusters by Spanish monolinguals and Spanish-Basque bilinguals 193
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Part IV Methodology
- Secondary correlates of question signaling in Manchego Spanish 211
- Modeling prosody and rhythmic distributions in Spanish speech groups 239
- Categories and gradience in intonation 259
- Subject Index 285
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Foreword & acknowledgments vii
- Editors’ introduction ix
-
Part I First and second language acquisition
- Devil or angel in the details? 3
- Effects of Spanish use on the production of Catalan vowels by early Spanish-Catalan bilinguals 33
- Cues to dialectal discrimination in early infancy 55
- Phonology versus phonetics in loanword adaptations 71
-
Part II Prosody
- A preliminary study of penultimate accentuation in French 93
- Sentence modality and tempo in Neapolitan Italian 109
- Glottalization at phrase boundaries in Tuscan and Roman Italian 125
-
Part III Segments
- Acoustic analysis of syllable-final /k/ in Northern Peninsular Spanish 151
- The phonetic basis of a phonological pattern 171
- The production of rhotics in onset clusters by Spanish monolinguals and Spanish-Basque bilinguals 193
-
Part IV Methodology
- Secondary correlates of question signaling in Manchego Spanish 211
- Modeling prosody and rhythmic distributions in Spanish speech groups 239
- Categories and gradience in intonation 259
- Subject Index 285
