Spectral properties of voiceless affricates in Hunza Burushaski
Varvara Dmitrievna Petrova
Докладчик
студент 4 курса
Московский государственный университет им. М. В. Ломоносова
Московский государственный университет им. М. В. Ломоносова
Ключевые слова, аннотация
The present work features an acoustic analysis of frication phase of six affricate phonemes in Hunza Burushaski. Affricate phones were extracted from the recordings of monologues produced by four speakers. For four spectral moments, mean values and values at the onset, midpoint, and offset were received. Current findings speak in favor of center of gravity (CoG) of Burushaski affricates following the previously established cross-linguistic pattern of decreasing from the onset to the offset, as opposed to fricative CoG peaking at midpoint.
Тезисы
Keywords: centre of gravity; affricates; Burushaski
Burushaski is a language isolate spoken by approx. 96800 people in Northern Pakistan [Hussain, 2021]. Its three main dialects include Yasin, Nagar, and Hunza Burushaski, the latter of which is the focus of the present research. With the exception of several studies of stop consonant features [Hussain, 2021: 1], Burushaski is severely underresearched. This work is the first attempt of investigating properties of fricative noise in affricates of Hunza Burushaski using instrumental methods.
The most well-known cues for place of articulation are the first four spectral moments of fricative phase: center of gravity (CoG), standard deviation, skewness, and kurtosis. Studies that involve an analysis of changes in spectral properties throughout the frication are very few. Key differences in dynamics of fricative spectra of intervocalic fricatives and affricates (where the noise is preceded by a coronal hold phase) seem to be mean CoG values going either down or up respectively from the onset to the midpoint of the noise phase [Adell, 2016].
Burushaski possesses a rich sibilant inventory with voiceless affricates of dental, alveolopalatal, and retroflex place of articulation, either plain or aspirated, resulting in six affricate phonemes. As has been shown with the studies of Mandarin and Kalasha affricates [Mays, 2008], [Kochetov, Arsenault, 2019: 12—14], in systems with tripartite affricate place opposition, some spectral features might distinguish one phoneme from two other rather than serve as a cue for place in all three possible pairs. Moreover, spectral moments appear to produce cross-linguistically multidirectional statistically significant contrasts. For instance, anterior affricate in Mandarin appears to have lower skewness than its posterior counterparts, whereas for Polish skewness is reported to decrease with posteriority.
Glossed and transcribed audio recordings of four speakers of Hunza Burushaski from Burushaski Language Resource were analyzed using Praat. Preliminary results demonstrate Burushaski affricates to follow the aforementioned dynamic pattern of CoG decreasing from the onset toward the offset of the frication. Connection between spectral moments, place of articulation, and aspiration will be discussed in detail in the talk.
References:
Adell E. Dynamic properties of noise: Acoustics of fricative, affricate, and ejective sibilants of Chajul Ixil. Manuscript, 2016.
Hussain Q. Phonetic correlates of laryngeal and place contrasts of Burushaski // Speech Communication, 2021. Vol. 126. 71—89.
Kochetov A., Arsenault P. Kalasha affricates: An acoustic analysis of place contrasts // Journal of South Asian Languages and Linguistics, 2019. Vol. 6 (2). 245—280.
Mays C. An acoustic study of affricates in the Songyuan dialect of Mandarin Chinese. Manuscript, 2008.
Burushaski is a language isolate spoken by approx. 96800 people in Northern Pakistan [Hussain, 2021]. Its three main dialects include Yasin, Nagar, and Hunza Burushaski, the latter of which is the focus of the present research. With the exception of several studies of stop consonant features [Hussain, 2021: 1], Burushaski is severely underresearched. This work is the first attempt of investigating properties of fricative noise in affricates of Hunza Burushaski using instrumental methods.
The most well-known cues for place of articulation are the first four spectral moments of fricative phase: center of gravity (CoG), standard deviation, skewness, and kurtosis. Studies that involve an analysis of changes in spectral properties throughout the frication are very few. Key differences in dynamics of fricative spectra of intervocalic fricatives and affricates (where the noise is preceded by a coronal hold phase) seem to be mean CoG values going either down or up respectively from the onset to the midpoint of the noise phase [Adell, 2016].
Burushaski possesses a rich sibilant inventory with voiceless affricates of dental, alveolopalatal, and retroflex place of articulation, either plain or aspirated, resulting in six affricate phonemes. As has been shown with the studies of Mandarin and Kalasha affricates [Mays, 2008], [Kochetov, Arsenault, 2019: 12—14], in systems with tripartite affricate place opposition, some spectral features might distinguish one phoneme from two other rather than serve as a cue for place in all three possible pairs. Moreover, spectral moments appear to produce cross-linguistically multidirectional statistically significant contrasts. For instance, anterior affricate in Mandarin appears to have lower skewness than its posterior counterparts, whereas for Polish skewness is reported to decrease with posteriority.
Glossed and transcribed audio recordings of four speakers of Hunza Burushaski from Burushaski Language Resource were analyzed using Praat. Preliminary results demonstrate Burushaski affricates to follow the aforementioned dynamic pattern of CoG decreasing from the onset toward the offset of the frication. Connection between spectral moments, place of articulation, and aspiration will be discussed in detail in the talk.
References:
Adell E. Dynamic properties of noise: Acoustics of fricative, affricate, and ejective sibilants of Chajul Ixil. Manuscript, 2016.
Hussain Q. Phonetic correlates of laryngeal and place contrasts of Burushaski // Speech Communication, 2021. Vol. 126. 71—89.
Kochetov A., Arsenault P. Kalasha affricates: An acoustic analysis of place contrasts // Journal of South Asian Languages and Linguistics, 2019. Vol. 6 (2). 245—280.
Mays C. An acoustic study of affricates in the Songyuan dialect of Mandarin Chinese. Manuscript, 2008.