Comparative Study of Estonian Swedish Voiceless Laterals: Are Voiceless Approximants Fricatives?
Författare
Summary, in English
Are voiceless approximants categorically distinct from voiceless fricatives? We address this question by means of acoustic analysis of voiceless laterals in Icelandic, Welsh, and the endangered variety
Estonian Swedish. All three have a voiceless lateral functioning in contrast to a voiced lateral approximant. The analysis focused on duration – including any period of voicing (‘pre-voicing’) just
before the release of the lateral – and the intensity of the voiceless lateral relative to the following vowel. Welsh showed no pre-voicing in the lateral, whilst Icelandic and Estonian Swedish did, though
the latter less consistently. The Welsh voiceless lateral was also greater in relative intensity. This could be taken as a difference of phonetic category between a fricative [ɬ] in Welsh as against a
voiceless approximant [l̥ ] in the other two languages, but we argue that the complexity of the data from Estonian Swedish excludes a categorical interpretation.
Estonian Swedish. All three have a voiceless lateral functioning in contrast to a voiced lateral approximant. The analysis focused on duration – including any period of voicing (‘pre-voicing’) just
before the release of the lateral – and the intensity of the voiceless lateral relative to the following vowel. Welsh showed no pre-voicing in the lateral, whilst Icelandic and Estonian Swedish did, though
the latter less consistently. The Welsh voiceless lateral was also greater in relative intensity. This could be taken as a difference of phonetic category between a fricative [ɬ] in Welsh as against a
voiceless approximant [l̥ ] in the other two languages, but we argue that the complexity of the data from Estonian Swedish excludes a categorical interpretation.
Publiceringsår
2015
Språk
Engelska
Publikation/Tidskrift/Serie
Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences
Fulltext
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Länkar
Dokumenttyp
Konferensbidrag
Förlag
University of Glasgow
Ämne
- General Language Studies and Linguistics
Nyckelord
- Estonian Swedish
- pre-voicing
- phonetic categories
- lateral fricative
- voiceless lateral
Conference name
the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS XVIII)
Conference date
2015-08-10 - 2015-08-14
Conference place
Glasgow, United Kingdom
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Övrigt
- ISSN: 2412-0669
- ISBN: 978-0-85261-941-4