Performing Rhythm: Expressions of Meter in Two Yupik Languages

• Author / Creator

  Alden, McKinley R.

• This dissertation is a series of studies that explore the acoustic production of stress, length, non-stress metrical phonology, and other syllable structure altering phenomena in
  Central Alaskan Yup’ik and Chugach Alutiiq. The intricate systems of weight, length, and stress that conspire to produce the notable rhythmic pattern in these languages have been the
  subject of much theoretical discussion, but little laboratory attention. The studies presented here apply laboratory phonological techniques of acoustic analysis to archival recordings of Yup’ik and Alutiiq. The first of these, which focuses on Yup’ik, examines gemination as a syllable-closing fortition process and addresses the relationship between stress and length. It shows a trichotomy of length among unstressed short, stressed short, and long vowels. The second study focuses on Alutiiq. In addition to a ternary stress-length distinction, Alutiiq metrical phonology also governs onset fortition, tone, and both binary and ternary feet. Moreover, Alutiiq also neutralizes vowel length, making an acoustical examination on metrical production especially interesting. The results show that, like Yup’ik, Alutiiq prefers to maintain a stress-length trichotomy, even where length is targeted for neutralization. They further show that the acoustic correlates of non-stress metrical phonology are considerably more complex than described in the literature. Lastly, the third study presents an exploration of culminativity in both languages. The findings do not provide evidence for word-level culminativity among stressed vowels in either language, which is typologically rare and leads to a discussion on the function of culminativity in metrical systems. The principal contributions of this dissertation include a detailed acoustical analysis of Yup’ik and Alutiiq metrical prosody, a discussion of the implications of this analysis on metrical stress theory, and a demonstration of the application of laboratory analytical methods on archival data.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Linguistics
  • Phonetics
  • Phonology
  • Language Documentation
  • Yupik Languages

• Graduation date

  Fall 2023

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Doctor of Philosophy

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-38jx-sf09

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.