1st Edition

The Phonetics and Phonology of Gutturals A Case Study from Ju|'hoansi

By Amanda Miller-Ockhuizen Copyright 2003
    282 Pages
    by Routledge

    282 Pages
    by Routledge

    This book is the first detailed investigation and description of phonotactic sound patterns affecting Khoesan click consonant inventories. It also includes the first quantitative study of phonation types in Khoesan languages, and the first study of phonation types associated with pharyngeal consonants all around. Although bases of OCP constraints have been presumed to be perceptual, this is the first quantitative study showing the acoustic basis of a particular OCP constraint in a specific language.

    Amanda L. Miller-Ockhuizen describes the phonetics and phonology of gutturals in the Khoesan language of Ju|'hoansi. Hers is the first study of voice quality cues associated with epiglottalized vowels. Thus, it is the first study to show that laryngeal and pharyngeal vowels are unified phonetically by non-modal voice qualities associated with them. It is also the first study to show that in addition to laryngeal coarticulation, whereby voice quality cues associated with laryngeal consonants are spread to a following vowel, pharyngeal coarticulation also involves spreading of voice quality cues. Thus, guttural consonants are united in that they all spread voice quality cues onto a following vowel. Voice quality cues found on vowels following guttural consonants are as large as similar cues associated with guttural vowels. This acoustic similarity is shown to be the basis of a novel Guttural OCP constraint found in the language, which is demonstrated to exist via co-occurrence patterns found over a recorded database of all of the known roots. Thus, this is the first book to provide a detailed perceptual basis of an OCP constraint. The database study also reports several other novel phonotactic constraints involving gutturals, as well as a reanalysis of the well-known Back Vowel Constraint.

    This book describes both phonetics and phonology of the natural class of guttural consonants, and shows through a quantitative acoustic investigation how the phonetic cues associated with these sounds are the bases of phonotactic constraints involving them.

    List of Appendices List of Figures List of Tables Acknowledgments Preface Part I: Phonetics and Phonology of Ju|'hoansi 1 Introduction 2 The phonetics of Ju|'hoansi Guttural Consonants and Vowels 2.0. Introduction 2.1. Root Shape Inventory 2.2. Tone Inventory 2.3. Consonant Inventory 2.3.1. The Obstruent Inventory 2.3.2. Some Phonetic Properties of Ju|'hoansi Click Consonants 2.3.2.1. Click Modulation 2.3.2.2. Click type differences 2.3.3. Phonetic Properties of Guttural vs. Non-Guttural Clicks 2.3.3.1. Closure Properties of Non-guttural clicks 2.3.3.2. Release Properties of Guttural clicks 2.3.4. Phonetic Properties of Sonorant Consonants 2.4. The Vowel Inventory 2.5. Parallels Between Guttural Consonants and Vowels 2.6. Conclusion 3 Ju|'hoansi Phonotactics 3.0. Introduction 3.1. Recorded Database 3.2. Word Minimality and Maximality 3.2.1. Word Minimality 3.2.2. Word Maximality 3.2.3. Constraints on Word Size 3.2.4. Conclusion 3.3. Guttural Feature Specification 3.4. Positional specification 3.1.1. Positional Specification of Manner Features 3.4.1.1. Frequency of Initial Clicks Based on Perceptual Salience 3.4.2. Positional specification of Gutturals 3.4.3. Conclusion 3.5. Co-occurrence restrictions 3.5.1. Laryngeal co-occurrence restriction 3.5.2. Tone & Guttural Co-occurrence restrictions 3.5.2.1. Description of Root Tonal Patterns 3.5.2.2. Tone & Guttural V Co-occurrence Restrictions 3.5.2.3. Tone & Guttural C Co-occurrence Restrictions 3.5.3. [pharyngeal] and other place Co-occurrence Restrictions 3.5.4. [pharyngeal] and Vowel Height Co-occurrence Restrictions 3.6. Functional Unity of Constraints 3.7. Conclusion Part II: A Quantitative Acoustic Case Study: Auditory Grounding of the Guttural OCP 4 Methods for Acoustic Case Study 4.0. Introduction 4.1. Materials for Acoustic Study 4.2. Data Collection and Preparation 4.2.1. Labeling 4.2.2. Pitch Period Determination 4.3. Acoustic measures of periodicity 4.3.1. Spectral Slope (H1-H2) 4.3.2. Harmonics-to-Noise Ratio 4.3.1. Jitter 5 Acoustic Case Study 5.0. Introduction 5.1. Harmonics-to-Noise Ratio 5.1.1. Guttural Coarticulation: HNR 5.1.2. Guttural Vowels: HNR 5.1.3. Parallels Between Guttural Consonants and Vowels 5.1.4. Conclusion 5.2. Spectral Slope 5.2.1. Guttural Coarticulation 5.2.2. Guttural Vowels 5.2.3. Parallels Between Guttural Consonants and Vowels 5.2.4. Conclusion 5.3. Jitter (PPQ) 5.4. Conclusion 6 Conclusion Index References APPENDICES A Wordlist for Acoustic Study B Place Co-occurrence Tables

    Biography

    Amanda Miller-Ockhuizen is an Assistant Professor within the Linguistics Department at Cornell University, and the Director of the Cornell Phonetics Lab. She has published articles on the phonetics and phonology click consonants, as well as the phonetics and phonology of guttural consonants and vowels in Khoesan languages.