Acoustics of Kalasha laterals
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Acoustics of Kalasha laterals. / Heegård, Jan; Kochetov, Alexei; Arsenault, Paul.
In: Journal of the Acoustic Society of America, Vol. 147, No. 4, 2020, p. 3012-3027.Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Acoustics of Kalasha laterals
AU - Heegård, Jan
AU - Kochetov, Alexei
AU - Arsenault, Paul
PY - 2020
Y1 - 2020
N2 - Kalasha, a Northwestern Indo-Aryan language spoken in a remote mountainous region of Pakistan, is relatively unusual among languages of the region as it has lateral approximants contrasting in secondary articulation—velarization and palatalization (// vs /lj/). Given the paucity of previous phonetic work on the language and some discrepancies between descriptive accounts, the nature of the Kalasha lateral contrast remains poorly understood. This paper presents an analysis of fieldwork recordings with laterals produced by 14 Kalasha speakers in a variety of lexical items and phonetic contexts. Acoustic analysis of formants measured during the lateral closure revealed that the contrast was most clearly distinguished by F2 (as well as by F2-F1 difference), which was considerably higher for /lj/ than for //. This confirms that the two laterals are primarily distinguished by secondary articulation and not by retroflexion, which is otherwise robustly represented in the language inventory. The laterals showed no positional differences but did show considerable fronting (higher F2) next tofront vowels. Some inter-speaker variation was observed in the realization of //, which was produced with little or no velarization by older speakers. This is indicative of a change in progress, resulting in an overall enhancement of an otherwise auditorily vulnerable contrast. VC 2020 Acoustical Society of America.
AB - Kalasha, a Northwestern Indo-Aryan language spoken in a remote mountainous region of Pakistan, is relatively unusual among languages of the region as it has lateral approximants contrasting in secondary articulation—velarization and palatalization (// vs /lj/). Given the paucity of previous phonetic work on the language and some discrepancies between descriptive accounts, the nature of the Kalasha lateral contrast remains poorly understood. This paper presents an analysis of fieldwork recordings with laterals produced by 14 Kalasha speakers in a variety of lexical items and phonetic contexts. Acoustic analysis of formants measured during the lateral closure revealed that the contrast was most clearly distinguished by F2 (as well as by F2-F1 difference), which was considerably higher for /lj/ than for //. This confirms that the two laterals are primarily distinguished by secondary articulation and not by retroflexion, which is otherwise robustly represented in the language inventory. The laterals showed no positional differences but did show considerable fronting (higher F2) next tofront vowels. Some inter-speaker variation was observed in the realization of //, which was produced with little or no velarization by older speakers. This is indicative of a change in progress, resulting in an overall enhancement of an otherwise auditorily vulnerable contrast. VC 2020 Acoustical Society of America.
U2 - 10.1121/10.0001013
DO - 10.1121/10.0001013
M3 - Journal article
C2 - 32359329
VL - 147
SP - 3012
EP - 3027
JO - Journal of the Acoustic Society of America
JF - Journal of the Acoustic Society of America
IS - 4
ER -
ID: 229372714