Vowel acoustics reliably differentiate three coronal stops of Wubuy across prosodic contexts

Abstract

The present study investigates the acoustic differentiation of three coronal stops in the indigenous Australian language Wubuy. We test independent claims that only VC (vowel-into-consonant) (word-and utterance-initial) transitions provide robust acoustic cues for retroflex as compared to alveolar and dental coronal stops, with no differentiating cues among these three coronal stops evident in CV (consonant-into-vowel) transitions. The four-way stop distinction /t, t̪ , ʈ, c/ in Wubuy is contrastive word-initially (Heath 1984) and by implication utterance-initially, i.e., in CV-only contexts, which suggests that acoustic differentiation should be expected to occur in the CV transitions of this language, including in initial positions. Therefore, we examined both VC and CV formant transition information in the three target coronal stops across VCV (word-internal), V#CV (word-initial but utterance-medial) and ##CV

Acoustic characteristics of Punjabi retroflex and dental stops

“…In Wubuy, an Australian language with a four-way coronal contrast, F2 transitions from the preceding vowel in an intervocalic /aCa/ context do not robustly distinguish dental, alveolar, and retroflex, but F3 transitions from the preceding vowel differentiate these three places of articulation. In /Ca/ contexts, the F2 onset of the following /a/ vowel differentiates retroflex vs dental and retroflex vs alveolar stops, but not alveolar vs dental stops; however, F3 onset transitions do not differentiate Wubuy dentals, alveolars, and retroflexes, suggesting that formant transitions might also be language-dependent (Bundgaard-Nielsen et al, 2012).…”

A replicable acoustic measure of lenition and the nature of variability in Gurindji stops

“…These include: Stop voicing, trilling, nasal weakening, vocalization, deletion, nasal-stop cluster reduction, and labialization. Other than Ingram et al (2008), much of the instrumental phonetic work conducted on Australian languages has focused either on place of articulation (Bundgaard-Nielsen et al, 2012, 2015Butcher, 1995;Tabain, 2009;Tabain & Butcher, 2015) or on those few languages that contrast two series of stops (Butcher, 2004;B. Evans & Merlan, 2004;McKay, 1980;Stoakes et al, 2007).…”

“…In one dimension, they host an abundance of place of articulation contrasts, particularly in the coronal region, and these are increasingly well understood (Anderson & Maddieson, 1994;Bundgaard-Nielsen et al, 2012, 2015Butcher, 1995;Proctor et al, 2010;Tabain & Butcher, 2015;Tabain & Rickard, 2007). In all other dimensions, they are impoverished: Most possess just a single obstruent series, with no contrast in laryngeal features, length, or between stops and fricatives (Busby, 1980;Evans, 1995).…”

Lexical stress and stop bursts in Pitjantjatjara: Feature enhancement of neutralized apicals and the coronal/velar contrast

“…Bundgaard-Nielsen, Baker, Kroos, Harvey, and Best (2012) showed that the alveolar vs. retroflex contrast is reliably differentiated in the vowel following consonantal 2 However, there is a high level of variability and overlap in realization for alveolars and retroflexes in languages that contain the contrast, and as a result the contrast is notoriously problematic phonetically (see for example Dart, 1991;Hamann, 2003;Simonsen, Moen, & Cowen, 2008;Tabain, 2009, as well as Evans, 1995 for general discussion). 3 We thank Alexei Kochetov for clarification on this matter.…”