Abstract:
Babine/Witsuwit'en, an Athabaskan language, has been said to have a phonemic contrast between voiceless unaspirated, voiceless aspirated, and ``glottalized'' stops. A study of alveolars in initial position [K. Davis and S. Hargus, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 96, 3348(A) (1994)] found that B/W has three types of ``glottalized'' consonant production: a classic ejective type, a type distinguishable only by lowered F0, and a type indistinguishable from the voiceless unaspirate. Speaker-dependent production type variation was proposed to be indicative of a sound change in progress. The present study investigates the same contrast in intervocalic position. Field recordings of ten native speakers were measured for closure duration, VOT, and the F0 of the following vowel. Many exemplars in the present study exhibited voicing during closure; depending on the speaker, this was true for stops in one, two, or all three phonemic categories. It was also found that some subjects produced a classic ejective with silent period after the burst and some did not. For all speakers, however, significantly lowered F0 and significantly longer VOTs were consistent indicators of the ``glottalized'' stops. Intervocalic data from additional speakers may yet reveal speaker-dependent neutralization, as was found in the case of initial stops. [Work supported by NSF.]