Monday, April 29th @ 3 PM, Wieboldt 408

What Can We Do with High Frame Rate Ultrasound: Investigating the Phonetic Basis of the Back Vowel Constraint in Mangetti Dune !Xung

Previously, the main articulatory field method used to investigate place of articulation was static palatography/ linguography. This method is invasive, and contact patterns are smeared over an entire syllable. Portable ultrasound can be used to find the place of articulation of consonants in field work settings, and it is safe and non-invasive. Standard ultrasound has made great gains in our understanding of sounds with relatively stable gestures: vowels, fricatives and liquids. High FR ultrasound allows us to view stop shutting and release gestures, the dynamics of diphthongs, clicks, labial-velars, and affricates, and C-V and V-V coarticulation.

I present a case study designed to investigate the phonetics basis of the Back Vowel Constraint (BVC), found in many non-Bantu and non-Cushitic click languages. The BVC is a C-V co-occurrence constraint found between alveolar and lateral clicks and the uvular fricative, with [i]. I present four experiments that investigate the phonetic basis of the BVC, by looking at the production of the four clicks, [k] and [ᵪ], in Mangetti Dune !Xung. The first two experiments investigate the production of the clicks using high FR ultrasound collected using the CHAUSA method (Miller and Finch 2011). TD and TR constriction locations prior to the anterior release are measured. The second experiment investigates the TD and TR locations over the first half of the vowel. The third experiment investigates F1 and F2 patterns in the vowel following the clicks. Regression analyses of the vowel data shows that the F2 patterns are statistically related to the TD/TR constriction locations in the alveolar and lateral clicks, while the F2 patterns in the dental and palatal clicks are best predicted by the TT constriction location. I attribute the TRR in the vowel to muscular constraints on click-vowel sequences that are similar to those found in English [r] variants.