Acoustic characteristics of glottalized obstruents in Gitksan

Abstract

Glottalized obstruents are a defining feature in the phonetic inventory of languages of the Pacific Northwest. Gitksan (Tsimshianic), an endangered and understudied language in this region, is no exception. However, these segments, which have typically been labelled as ejectives by fieldworkers, have also been variously described as implosives or even as voiced ejectives. Evidently, the ability of fieldworkers to perceive these segments has proven difficult, even by those who have worked on the language for many years. This project seeks to describe some of the salient acoustic cues associated with glottalized obstruents in Gitksan by comparing glottalized and plain stops. While previous work has examined these stops only in word-initial position, the present study compares stops across positions within the word and across stressed and non-stressed environments. Speech tokens were collected from three fluent native speakers of three dialects of Gitksan in order to describe the prominent acoustic cues which characterize glottalized obstruents in Gitksan. © 2013 Acoustical Society of America.