Laryngealization in Upper Necaxa Totonac

• Author / Creator

  Rebekka Puderbaugh

• This dissertation examines laryngealization contrasts in vowels and fricatives in Upper Necaxa Totonac. In vowels the contrast is presumed to be realized as a form of non-modal phonation, while fricatives are supposed to differ according to their production mechanism. The goal of this dissertation is to provide evidence that will help to determine whether the phonetic characteristics of these sounds align with the impressionistic descriptions of their phonological categories.Laryngealization categories were first examined via a corpus analysis in Chapter 3. The analysis revealed a highly frequent co-occurrence of laryngealized vowels and following glottal stops. No relationship was found between vowel laryngealization and ejective fricatives. In Chapter 4 an analysis of the difference in amplitude between the first and second harmonics (H1-H2) in laryngealized and non-laryngealized vowels showed that H1-H2 values were not influenced by vowel laryngealization categories, but were influenced the presence of a glottal stop following the vowel. This finding suggests that the laryngealization contrast neutralizes in vowels before glottal stops.In order to consider the potentially glottalic nature of ejective fricatives in UNT, Chapter 5 compared durations of phonetic events that occur during fricative production, including oral closure and frication. Contrary to expectations, ejective fricatives were longer than pulmonic fricatives in overall duration due to longer silent intervals between the end of frication and the onset of vowel phonation. The closure intervals of the ejective fricatives fit nicely into a cross-linguistically attested continuum of decreasing closure duration at places of articulation nearer the back of the oral cavity, suggesting that ejective fricatives may be phonetic clusters in Upper Necaxa Totonac.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • laryngealization
  • vowels
  • phonetics
  • phonation
  • ejective fricatives
  • glottal stops
  • Totonac

• Graduation date

  Fall 2019

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Doctor of Philosophy

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-t418-g508

• License

  Permission is hereby granted to the University of Alberta Libraries to reproduce single copies of this thesis and to lend or sell such copies for private, scholarly or scientific research purposes only. Where the thesis is converted to, or otherwise made available in digital form, the University of Alberta will advise potential users of the thesis of these terms. The author reserves all other publication and other rights in association with the copyright in the thesis and, except as herein before provided, neither the thesis nor any substantial portion thereof may be printed or otherwise reproduced in any material form whatsoever without the author's prior written permission.