The Phonetic Realization of Devoiced Vowels in the Southern Ute Language

Abstract

In this article, we analyze the phonetic realizations of devoiced vowels from 8 fluent speakers of Southern Ute, a severely endangered Southern Numic Uto-Aztecan language spoken in Southwestern Colorado. Devoiced vowels are considered to be an important aspect of the phonology of Southern Ute, yet very little is known about the pronunciation of such segments. Our findings indicate that devoiced vowels are realized phonetically in three ways: (i) fully voiceless, (ii) partially devoiced, and (iii) fully reduced with concurrent lengthening, lower intensity and greater voicelessness of the preceding consonant. Such variable and noncategorical devoicing is seen for both high and nonhigh vowels and all consonants regardless of their manner of articulation.

Phonetics of Southern Ute vowels

“…Charney (1996: x) states that they are 'expressed with a puff of air'. The acoustic study in Oberly & Kharlamov (2015) reveals that their phonetic realization is more complex. Devoiced vowels can be fully voiceless, partially devoiced, or fully reduced/deleted but with a measurable effect on the duration, intensity and voicing of the preceding consonant.…”

“…We also use the measures of duration, spectral emphasis and f0 to examine vowel quantity, stress, and pitch accent (see Fry 1955, Lieberman 1960, Lehiste 1970, Beckman 1986, Traunmuller & Eriksson 2000. Since the phonetic aspects of vowel devoicing in Southern Ute have previously been investigated in detail (Oberly & Kharlamov 2015), in this study we focus specifically on the non-devoiced vowels.…”

“…Similar to other Native American languages, published and unpublished work on the grammar of Southern Ute is exceedingly rare. It consists mainly of three dictionaries (Goss 1961, Charney 1996, Givón 2016, a grammar book (Givón 2011), a doctoral dissertation (Oberly 2008), and one journal article (Oberly & Kharlamov 2015). 1 Two of the dictionaries (Charney 1996, Givón 2016) and the grammar (Givón 2011) provide limited summaries of the sound inventory that are based primarily on Givón's impressionistic transcriptions made during conversations with tribal elders in the 1970s and 1980s.…”

“…sound system that is based on a subset of the dataset used in the current study (selected tokens from four of the eight speakers). The only previously published instrumental phonetic study (Oberly & Kharlamov 2015) addresses a specific phenomenon of vowel devoicing and does not examine other patterns or contrasts.…”

The syntax of wh-questions in unaccusative and (Un)ergative structures in Mehri language: A Phase-based approach

“…Mehri is a minority-endangered language spoken in Eastern Yemen by more than 250,000 speakers, particularly in Al-Mahrah region. It is also spoken in southern Oman (Dhofar), parts of central-southern and eastern Saudi Arabia, and in diasporic communities in parts of the Arab Gulf and eastern Africa [1][2][3][4][5][6]. As a sub-group of the Semitic language family (which is a branch of Afroasiatic family), Mehri is the most spoken of the Modern South Arabian languages (MSALs) in the present Arabian Peninsula.…”