Aspiration and glottalization of stops and affricates.

3.2.2 Aspiration and glottalization of stops and affricates.

Northern Pame stops and affricates can be aspirated or glottalized. 20 As an example of laryngealization on consonants, let us look at the contrast between plain, aspirated and glottalized velar stops. Acoustically speaking, the difference between a voiceless and aspirated segment is primarily one of voice onset time. 2 p~pʰ, t~tʰ~t’, k~kʰ~k’, t͡s~t͡sʰ~t͡s’, t͡ʃ~t͡ʃʰ~t͡ʃ’ P LAIN A SPIRATED G LOTTALIZED kəʔpɑ́ʔs ‘hot.place’ ləʔpʰə́n ‘he hits’ npɑ̌hɑl’ ‘horse’ npʰúhu ‘chair’ ntún ‘flower’ ntʰú ‘chili’ st’wæ̌ʔ ‘sheep’ kəntɑ̌w ‘his face’ ntʰǽʔæ ‘influenza’ nt’ɑ̃̌ ‘mesquite tree’ nkɑ̃́ʔ ‘crow’ kʰúp ‘they reject him’ k’wĩ̌n ‘he tires’ nkúp ‘I rejected’ nkʰwɑ̌ ‘rabbit’ nk’ə́ʃ ‘piece of paper’ t͡séʔ ‘he takes it’ t͡sʰə́n ‘they wash’ t͡s’éʔ ‘lime’ mɑt͡sǐ ‘pitcher’ gut͡sʰéʔ ‘snake’ nt͡s’ɑ̌wn ‘avocado’ t͡ʃɑ́ʔ ‘clearings’ t͡ʃʰúl’ ‘mirrors’ t͡ʃ’ɑ́s ‘bananas’ pit͡ʃɑ́ʔ ‘corn storehouse’ kət͡ʃʰí ‘your blood’ t͡ʃ’ə́ʔ ‘pots’ Figures 3-3 and 3-4 illustrate this contrast with a voiceless velar stop in ‘crow’ and an aspirated velar stop in ‘they reject him’. The voiceless velar stop begins occlusion at approximately .600 on the time axis with its release and subsequent burst at .775 with vocal fold vibration for the following vowel at .800. The duration from the burst to voicing for the voiceless stop in ‘crow’, that is the voice onset time VOT, is approximately 25 milliseconds compared to the aspirated stop in ‘they reject him’, which has a VOT of approximately 100 milliseconds. The difference between a voiceless and glottalized consonant is one of air stream mechanism type. Whereas a voiceless segment is produced with pulmonic air flow through the glottis, a glottalized segment is produced with glottalic air, or air that is trapped between closed vocal folds on the one hand, and some oral tract closure on the other Clark and Yallop 1995:17. The example in figure 3-5 illustrates a Northern Pame glottalized velar stop. In Northern Pame glottalized stops, there are two distinct releases; first a release for the oral tract constriction followed by the release of the glottis. 20 The one exception is that Northern Pame lacks p’. n k ɑ̃́ ʔ Figure 3-3 Voiceless velar stop in ‘crow’. kʰ ú p Figure 3-4 Aspirated velar stop in ‘they reject him’ n k’ ə́ ʃ Figure 3-5 Glottalized velar stop in ‘piece of paper’ This is represented on the spectrogram by two complete cessations of airflow and formant structure with an intervening burst. Looking at the glottalized velar stop in figure 3-5, the first is that of the tongue back retracting from its place of articulation i.e. the velum and the second release is that of the vocal folds and subsequent return to normal pulmonic airflow for the following vowel. The combination of an oral release followed by a glottal release might suggest that these are two separate segments i.e. an oral stop followed by a glottal stop. However, the distribution of glottalized segments in the phonology of Northern Pame unequivocally supports their status as a unit phoneme rather than a sequence of a consonant plus a glottal stop see chapter 4.

3.2.3 Fricatives