Vowel quality and duration in deg xinag

Authors

  • Sharon Hargus Dept. of Linguistics, University of Washington, Box 354340, Seattle, WA 98195-4340, United States

Keywords:

Holograms, Query languages, Qualitative, Spectral properties, Statistical analysis, Vowel inventories

Abstract

A study was conducted to investigate the spectral properties of the Deg Xinag vowels, and the vowels that are significantly different in duration. Deg Xinag, an Athabaskan language spoken in western Alaska, has been described as containing certain vowel inventory, which are divided into high vowel phonemes and low vowel phonemes. Qualitative inspection of the spectral properties of the Deg Xinag vowels indicates that a low vowel phoneme similar to high vowel phonemes has a high volume allophone, which occurs surrounded by coronal consonants. Thereby, while Deg Xinag has no high vowel phonemes, there are phonetic high vowels. Statistical analysis indicates that the vowels of Deg Xinag can be divided into two sets, including a short set and a long set. Durational differences between the longer and shorter vowels of Deg Xinag are comparable to normative vowel duration data available for other Athabaskan languages, and support the reconstruction of Proto-Athabaskan as having full and reduced vowels.

Published

2008-09-01

How to Cite

1.
Hargus S. Vowel quality and duration in deg xinag. Canadian Acoustics [Internet]. 2008Sep.1 [cited 2021May11];36(3):64-5. Available from: https://jcaa.caa-aca.ca/index.php/jcaa/article/view/2039

Issue

Vol. 36 No. 3 (2008)

Section

Proceedings of the Acoustics Week in Canada

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