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Variation in contrastive phonation in Santa Ana Del Valle Zapotec

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 July 2010

Christina M. Esposito*
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, Macalester College esposito@macalester.edu
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Abstract

The present study sets out to investigate variation due to gender, F0, and/or prosodic position in Santa Ana del Valle Zapotec (Oto-Manguean), a language with phonemically breathy, modal and creaky vowels, each associated with a tone. Male and female speakers produced words in five prosodic positions: isolation (with focus, F0 higher than sentence-medial position), initial (focused, high F0), isolation (without focus, mid-range F0), medial (mid-range F0), final (lower F0). Two acoustic measures of phonation, H1-H2 and H1-A3, were made for each vowel. Results were inconclusive as to whether one gender was creakier or breathier than the other, though they did suggest that there was a difference in the production of phonation. In addition, there was also a strong effect of F0 on phonation, but not of position independently of F0. While the three-way phonation contrast was present in all five prosodic positions, it was not always well-defined. The contrast was minimized in isolation with focus (high F0) and initial position (high F0). The results obtained indicate that there is variation in phonation, even in a language with contrastive phonation.

Information

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © International Phonetic Association 2010
Figure 0

Figure 1 Pitch track of [gunaˇ leˊn ɾaˊn] ‘Elena saw a frog’.

Figure 1

Figure 2 Pitch track of [leˊn] ‘Elena’ produced in isolation without focus.

Figure 2

Table 1 Santa Ana del Valle Zapotec (SADVZ) wordlist. The fortis/lenis obstruents are represented with the symbols for voiceless and voiced consonants, respectively. This is their typical representation in Zapotec languages. The fortis/lenis sonorants are represented by their length contrast.

Figure 3

Figure 3 Average H1-H2 and H1-A3 values (in dB) for Speaker 1 (male). The range and standard deviations are presented below the graph.

Figure 4

Figure 4 Average H1-H2 and H1-A3 values (in dB) for Speaker 2 (male). The range and standard deviations are presented below the graph.

Figure 5

Figure 5 Average H1-H2 and H1-A3 values (in dB) for Speaker 3 (male). The range and standard deviations are presented below the graph.

Figure 6

Figure 6 Average H1-H2 and H1-A3 values (in dB) for Speaker 4 (female). The range and standard deviations are presented below the graph.

Figure 7

Figure 7 Average H1-H2 and H1-A3 values (in dB) for Speaker 5 (female). The range and standard deviations are presented below the graph.

Figure 8

Figure 8 Waveform, spectrogram and FFT (calculated over a 30-ms window) of [l ˆ ts] ‘field’ produced by Speaker 3. Pitch track fails at the end.

Figure 9

Figure 9 Average H1-A3 values for breathy, modal, and creaky phonation in five prosodic positions for Speaker 1 (male). The range and standard deviations are presented below the graph.

Figure 10

Figure 10 Average F0 for Speaker 1 (male) in five prosodic positions (isolation with focus, initial, isolation (not focused), medial, and final position) at three timepoints (1, 2, 3) per vowel.

Figure 11

Figure 11 Average H1-A3 values for breathy, modal, and creaky phonation in five prosodic positions for Speaker 2 (male). The range and standard deviations are presented below the graph.

Figure 12

Figure 12 Average F0 for Speaker 2 (male) in five prosodic positions (isolation with focus, initial, isolation (not focused), medial, and final position) at three timepoints (1, 2, 3) per vowel.

Figure 13

Figure 13 Average H1-A3 values for breathy, modal, and creaky phonations in five prosodic positions for Speaker 3 (male). The range and standard deviations are presented below the graph.

Figure 14

Figure 14 Average F0 for Speaker 3 (male) in five prosodic positions (isolation with focus, initial, isolation (not focused), medial, and final position) at three timepoints (1, 2, 3) per vowel.

Figure 15

Figure 15 Average H1-H2 values for breathy, modal, and creaky phonations in five prosodic positions for Speaker 4 (female). The range and standard deviations are presented below the graph.

Figure 16

Figure 16 Average F0 for Speaker 4 (female) in five prosodic positions (isolation with focus, initial, isolation (not focused), medial, and final position) at three timepoints (1, 2, 3) per vowel.

Figure 17

Figure 17 Average H1-H2 values for breathy, modal, and creaky phonations in five prosodic positions for Speaker 5 (female). The range and standard deviations are presented below the graph.

Figure 18

Figure 18 Average F0 for Speaker 5 (female) in five prosodic positions (isolation with focus, initial, isolation (not focused), medial, and final position) at three timepoints (1, 2, 3) per vowel.