Sonya Bird’s research while affiliated with University of Victoria and other places

This paper provides an acoustic description of /z/ and /z ʕ / in Tŝilhqot’in (Northern Dene). These sounds are noted by Cook (1993, 2013) to show lenition and some degree of laterality in coda position. Based on recordings made in 2014 with a single, mother-tongue speaker of Tŝilhqot’in, we describe their acoustic properties and examine their distribution as a function of prosodic position and segmental environment. We find that they vary along three dimensions: manner (fricative–approximant), degree of retraction (non-retracted–retracted), and laterality (non-lateral–lateral). In addition, some tokens have a characteristic ‘buzziness’, which has been associated with the Chinese front apical vowel (Shao & Ridouane 2018, 2019) and the Swedish ‘Viby-i’ (Westberger 2019). We argue that ‘lenition’ (Kirchner 2004, Ennever, Meakins & Round 2017) can only account for some of the observed variation and suggest that both /z/ and /z ʕ / are specified for two tongue articulations: tongue tip/blade and tongue body (Laver 1994), encompassing laterality (and concomitant retraction) in addition to the primary coronal gesture.

PREPRINT: This paper provides an acoustic description of /z/ and /zʕ/ in Tŝilhqot’in (Northern Dene). These sounds are noted by Cook (1993, 2013) to show lenition and some degree of laterality in coda position. Based on recordings made in 2014 with a single, mother-tongue speaker of Tŝilhqot’in, we describe their acoustic properties and examine their distribution as a function of prosodic position and segmental environment. We find that they vary along three dimensions: manner (fricative ~ approximant), degree of retraction (non-retracted ~ retracted), and laterality (non-lateral ~ lateral). In addition, some tokens have a characteristic ‘buzziness’, which has been associated with the Chinese front apical vowel (Shao & Ridouane 2018, 2019) and the Swedish ‘viby-i’ (Westberger 2019). We argue that ‘lenition’ (Kirchner 2004, Ennever, Meakins & Round 2017) can only account for some of the observed variation and suggest that both /z/ and /zʕ/ are specified for two tongue articulations: tongue tip/blade and tongue body (Laver 1994), encompassing laterality (and concomitant retraction) in addition to the primary coronal gesture.

Belarusian (ISO 639-3 BEL) is an Eastern Slavic language spoken by roughly seven million people in the Republic of Belarus (Zaprudski 2007, Census of the Republic of Belarus 2009), a land-locked country in Eastern Europe, bordered by Russia to the north and east, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest (Figure 1). Within the Belarusian language, the two main dialects are North Eastern and South Western (Avanesaǔ et al. 1963, Lapkoǔskaya 2008, Smolskaya 2011). Two additional regional forms of Belarusian can be distinguished: the Middle Belarusian dialectal group, incorporating some features of North Eastern and South Western dialects together with certain characteristics of its own, and the West-Polesian (or Brest-Pinsk) dialectal group. The latter group is more distinct linguistically from the other Belarusian dialects and is in many respects close to the Ukrainian language (Lapkoǔskaya 2008, Smolskaya 2011). The focus of this illustration is Standard Belarusian, which is based on Middle Belarusian speech varieties. For details on the phonetic differences across dialects, the reader is referred to Avanesaǔ et al. (1963) and Lapkoǔskaya (2008).

This paper examines the acoustic properties of Hul'q'umi'num' vowel-glide sequences [ej, ew] as well as short and long [e, eː], comparing pronunciations of a single L1 Hul'q'umi'num' speaker to those of a group of fifteen L2 speakers. Generalized Additive Models (GAMs), which permit statistical comparisons of non-linear data such as transitional formant trajectories, were used in this study to investigate dynamic changes in acoustic qualities over time. From our results, we identify three key areas within which the L1 speaker differs from the L2 speakers: vowel duration, vowel and glide articulatory target positions, and dynamics of the intensity contour. This documentation work lays the foundation for creating pedagogical resources focused on teaching and learning pronunciation, as part of ongoing, collaborative language revitalization efforts.