An Electropalatographic Study of Variability in Arrernte Consonant Production
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Marija Tabain
Abstract
Arrernte is a language with a relatively large consonant inventory, and a relatively small vowel inventory. In this study, electropalatography is used to examine lingual consonant production according to lexical stress, in the context of the two most common vowels in the language, the central vowels /a/ and /ə/. The consonants examined are /t̪ n̪ l̪ t n l ʈ ɳ ɭ ɻ c ɲ ʎ j k ŋ w/. Data are for two female speakers and are taken from a large database of read texts. Results show very little articulatory variation in consonant production depending on the contexts examined. Although consonants before a stressed vowel have greater duration than consonants before an unstressed vowel, there is no consistent difference in tongue-palate contact patterns between the two prosodic contexts. The main exception to this pattern is the retroflex stop, nasal and lateral, which show a more posterior contact before an unstressed vowel: it is suggested that this is because the preceding stressed vowel contains the primary cues to retroflex place of articulation.
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References
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- 1
For example, in the database of read texts used in the present study, there are 7,793 tokens of schwa, 3,730 tokens of /a/, 228 tokens of /i/ and 164 tokens of [u]. Schwa is therefore about 40 times more frequent than either /i/ or [u], and /a/ is about 20 times more frequent than either /i/ or [u]. /i/ and [u] tokens are restricted to a relatively small number of lexical items and therefore occur in a limited set of consonant contexts.
- 2
I thank Gavan Breen for discussion on these issues.
- 3
The reader may wonder what effects of the consonant were found on adjacent vowels. Although overall schwa shows more EPG contact at temporal midpoint than does /a/, there is much inconsistency when the vowels are examined according to adjacent consonant context, similar to the results reported above for the consonants themselves.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Contents
- Contents
- Further Section
- Front & Back Matter
- Research Article
- An Electropalatographic Study of Variability in Arrernte Consonant Production
- Detecting Foreign Accents in Song
- Temporal Aspects of Word Initial Single Consonants and Consonants in Clusters in Spanish
- Publications Received for Review
- Publications Received for Review
Articles in the same Issue
- Contents
- Contents
- Further Section
- Front & Back Matter
- Research Article
- An Electropalatographic Study of Variability in Arrernte Consonant Production
- Detecting Foreign Accents in Song
- Temporal Aspects of Word Initial Single Consonants and Consonants in Clusters in Spanish
- Publications Received for Review
- Publications Received for Review
