An acoustic study of Georgian stop consonants

Abstract

This study investigates the acoustic properties of ejective, voiced and voiceless aspirated stops in Georgian, a Caucasian language, and seeks to answer two questions: (i) Which acoustic features discriminate the three stop types? and (ii) Do Georgian stops undergo initial strengthening, and if so, is it syntagmatic or paradigmatic strengthening? Five female speakers were recorded reading words embedded in carrier phrases and stories. Acoustic measures include closure duration, voicing during the closure, voicing lag, relative burst intensity, spectral moment of bursts, phonation (H1-H2) and F0. Of these, voicing lag, voicing during the closure, mean burst frequency, H1-H2 and F0 could all be used to discriminate stop type, but stop types did not differ in closure duration or relative burst intensity. Georgian stops did show initial strengthening and showed only syntagmatic enhancement, not paradigmatic enhancement. Stops showed longer closure durations, longer voicing lags, and higher H1-H2 values in higher prosodic positions.

A phonetically versatile contrast: Pulmonic and glottalic voicelessness in Scottish English obstruents and voice quality

“…closure duration and burst intensity) shown as relevant in previous research into PHONEMIC ejectives (Lindau 1984, Grawunder, Simpson & Khalilov 2010, Vicenik 2010). …”

“…On one hand, this analysis puts the Scottish English non-normative ejectives in a similar phonetic order of durational and intensity correlates attested for ejectives classified as phonologically contrastive in other non-European languages (see also e.g. Grawunder et al 2010, Lindau 1984, Vicenik 2010). On the other hand, the phonetic footprint is SUFFICIENTLY DIFFERENT from the primary correlates of /ࢤvoice/ stops in the order of importance, i.e.…”

“…To analyse ejective stops, in addition to the categorical scales in Section 2.3 and the above phonatory acoustic measures, we used a number of acoustic durational and burst intensity measures found to be relevant in previous research into phonemic ejectives (Lindau 1984, Grawunder et al 2010, Vicenik 2010 Figure 5 Percentages of creaky, breathy and modal labels in pre-stop vowels per speaker and stop /±voice/.…”

Effects of laryngeal features on vowel duration: implications for Winter’s Law

“…Spectral tilt (H1-H2) is higher for vowels next to voiceless stops than next to voiced stops, in English and Japanese (Kong et al 2012) and Geor-gian (Vicenik 1975); this likely in part re lects breathiness resulting from voiceless stops being aspirated in the languages investigated. Perceptually, spectral tilt can be used as a cue for laryngeal contrasts, e.g.…”

VOICESAUCE: A program for voice analysis.

“…For this comparison, the beginnings of tokens of the low vowel [a] after voiced, voiceless aspirated, and ejective stops from five speakers of Georgian [16] was analyzed by the three methods. In this language, the different stops audibly affect the voice quality at vowel onset.…”