An Acoustic and Aerodynamic Analysis of Consonant Articulation in Bininj Gun-wok

422 Pages·2015·17.74 MB·English

An Acoustic and Aerodynamic Analysis of
Consonant Articulation in Bininj Gun-wok
Hywel Martin Stoakes
December, 2013
Submitted in total fulfilment of
the requirements of the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy,
Produced on archival quality paper.
The School of Languages and Linguistics,
The Faculty of Arts,
The University of Melbourne.
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Abstract
This thesis is an acoustic and physiological phonetic analysis of the
consonant system in Bininj Gun-wok (BGW), an Australian language spo-
keninNorthWesternArnhemLand.
Theprimaryaimofthisthesisistoprovideadetailedphoneticdescrip-
tion of an Australian language looking at the articulation of intervocalic
stops and nasals. This investigation examines a number of phonological
contrasts in the language that have not had prior phonetic investigation.
The analysis is divided into three experiments, the first two of which fo-
cusondifferencesinlengthandstrengthbetweenstopseriesinBGW.The
third experiment examines patterns of coarticulation within nasals. The
materials used consist of two corpora with a total of 24 first language
speakers of BGW. Corpus I includes five speakers of the Kuninjku variety
andCorpusIIincludes19speakersoftheKunwinjkuvariety,allrecorded
under field conditions in Western Arnhem Land. Corpus I is made up of
acousticrecordingsandCorpusII,physiologicalrecordingswithassociated
time-alignedaudio.
An important phonological feature of BGW is a two stop series that
contrastsforlength. Thetwostopsintheseries,whichareallmatchedfor
placeofarticulation,arephonologicallyclassedaslenisorfortis. Thepri-
maryfocusofthisstudyistodeterminethephoneticrealisationsofthese
stopcategories. Thesecondaryfocusofthisstudyistoexaminespatterns
of coarticulation between nasals and stops in BGW, as nasalisation can
masktheacousticcuesthatareneededtoperceiveplaceofarticulation.
Earlier cross-linguistic studies have consistently shown that duration
isakeydifferencebetweenstopcategorieswithinalanguage. Thisispar-
ticularlyforlanguagesthatdonotusevoicingasacuetothecontrast. In
the current study, acoustic analysis is used to measure duration and for
analyses of burst characteristics of BGW stops. An articulatory analysis
investigates differences in strength and also the prevalence and timing of
voicing between the stop series. Findings show that there is a clear dura-
tional difference between lenis and fortis stops. Voice onset time differ-
encesaredependentonplaceofarticulationratherthanreliablysignalling
betweenstopcategories. Inadditionthereisacleardifferenceinstrength
intermsofpeakintra-oralpressure.
Inthestudy,medialhomorganicarticulationsareseparatedintothree
categories termed lenis, fortis and geminated consonants. These repre-
sent short intra-morphemic stops, long intra-morphemic stops and long
inter-morphemic stops respectively. Fortis stops and geminates clusters
do not differ in terms of duration. There are however measurable differ-
encesbetweenthemincludingpressureimpulse—pressuremeasuredover
time—showingthatdurationandpressureareindependent. Thetimingof
pressure peak is similar for lenis and fortis stops is similar, yet geminates
showadelayintheintra-oralpressurepeak.
Across languages, anticipatory nasalisation is thought to be under di-
rectcontrolofthespeaker. Carry-overnasalisationincontrasthasproven
tobearesultofbio-mechanicalinertia. Thesecondaryfocusofthisthesis
isanexaminationofnasalisationanddirectionalityofnasalassimilationin
BGW as well as the durational aspects of nasals in clusters. Aerodynamic
resultsshowthattheriseofthenasalairflow,inmedialnasals,isdelayed
to be almost coincident with the oral occlusion. The inference is that the
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velum is closed during the preceding vowel and opens quickly at the on-
set of the nasal. In a cluster of nasals followed by a stop, the nasal has a
greater duration than the stop. In clusters of stops followed by nasals, it
is the stop that has the greater duration. This suggests strengthening in a
medialposition.
Thepost-tonicmedialpositionisprosodicallyeminent,asthisiswhere
themajorityofphoneticcontrastsarefoundforBininjGun-wokandAus-
tralianlanguagesingeneral. Thisinvestigationintomedialconsonantsin
BGW represents the first major phonetic investigation into stop articula-
tion in an Australian language and provides key support for this proposi-
tion.
keywords: phonetics,phonology,speechproduction,aerodynamics,Aus-
tralianAboriginallanguage
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Declaration
This is to certify that:
(i) The thesis comprises only my original work towards the PhD,
(ii) Due acknowledgement has been made in the text to all other material
used,
(iii) Thethesisislessthan100,000wordsinlength,exclusiveoftables,maps,
bibliographies and appendices.
Signed,
Hywel Stoakes,
(10th September, 2014)

Acknowledgements
Firstly,mydeepestthanksgotomyacademicsupervisors,JanetFletcherandAndyButcherfor
theirguidanceandpatience. IalsothankNickEvansforignitingenthusiasmforlanguageand
imparting a small portion of his knowledge of Bininj Gun-wok. Murray Garde for furthering
myunderstandingofcross-culturalcommunication. Thanksforyourorganisingofcommunity
accessandintroducingmetothepeopleofMamardawerre. Mostimportantly,Ngamanjbom(my
enduringgratitude)tothegenerousandpatientpeopleofMamardawerre, particularlyConrad
MaralngurraandRosemaryNabulwad. Geoffforthebuffaloandthedriving. Thankstoallofmy
Yabok: EspeciallyMargaret,Janice,Molly,Doreen,OldStephanie,Marlene,Jillwhoeachgently
pushedmeintherightdirection. KokokwhochangedhowIseetheland. My Kakkali, Wudip
who guided me with his incredible eyesight and Isaiah Burrunali. Thanks especially go to the
wurdurdwurd (children) who patiently taught me the most language ofall. The staff at Injalak
ArtscentreinKunbarllanjnjawhenIfirstcrossedintoArnhemLand,AnthonyMurphy,Rebecca
Say, Andrew Sinclair and Gabriel Maralngurra. Esther Djayhgurmga. The representatives for
the traditional owners of Kunbarllanjnja, Donald Gumurdul and Jacob Nayinggul. My thanks
gototheNorthernLandcouncilforarrangingpermitsandthestaffatNARU,ANU:Especially
Helen, Andrew, and Lyle, for vehicle and equipment hire. My colleagues at the University of
Melbourne, Mary Stevens and Debbie Loakes who I cannot thank enough for the support and
motivationaswellasteaandthoughtfuldiscussion. ThanksfortheeditingDeb. Mythanksgo
to Marija Tabain, Nicola Piper, Bruce Birch, Nick Thieberger, Rachel Nordlinger, Ruth Singer,
Alice Gaby, Brett Baker, Rikki Bundgaard-Neilsen, Mark Harvey, John Hajek. Lesley Stirling,
ErichRound,IanGreen,IsabelO’Keeffe,JudithBishop,SebastianFedden,JohnHendersonand
Alan Dench who have all had influence on the direction of this thesis at various stages of its
longgestation. MycolleaguesinthePhoneticsLaboratoryattheUniversityofMelbourne,past
and present: Debbie and Mary, Colleen Holt, Bella Ross, Amos Teo, Olga Maxwell, Tom Har-
ris,SimoneGraetzer,HilmiHamzah,RoseyBillington,JoshuaClothier,EleanorLewisandour
compatriotsinthefield-worklab. GavinNebauerfortechnicalsupportandconversationsabout
sound recording in general. Bob Evans for relating some of his teaching and language expe-
riences in Western Arnhem Land to me. Jonathan Harrington, Steve Cassidy, Tina Johns and
LasseBombianfortheireffortsindevelopingandmaintainingtheEmuSpeechDatabase. Chris-
telButcherformakingmefeelsowelcomeonmyvisitstoAdelaide. JVTforsharinghisoffice
withmeinthedrawn-outfinalstages. Lastbutnotleastmywonderfulfamily: Aliceforherlove,
friendship,supportandspectacularproofreadingskills,ourchildrenFfionandAnwenforbeing
aconstantinspirationandawelcomediversion. MyMum,Marie,andDad,Cris,forgivingme
suchinspiringexperiencesgrowingupandfeedingmypassionforknowledge,Dad: thanksfor
themapsandediting. Micheleforbeingtheworld’sbestkurrungandthankstoDonforcoaxing
mebackintoacademia. Lucy,Jeremy,SisterElizabethandthenunsofS.MariadelCarmineal
Morrocco,Tavernelle. TomyfriendsinCastlemaineandontheBellarine,thankyoufordivert-
ingmyattentionwithmusic,foodandathoughtfulear. Thanksalsotoalltheprofessionalstaff
in the Linguistics Department over the years. This research was made possible by grants from
TheUniversityofMelbourne(Fieldworkfund,MATSPORES),aStudentshipfromthelinguistics
department and funding from an Australian Research Council grant (DP0557540) awarded to
JanetFletcherandAndrewButcher.

Contents
Contents ix
List of Figures xiii
List of Tables xix
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Bininj Gun-wok: people and language . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.2 Previous linguistic research on Bininj Gun-wok . . . . . . 8
1.3 The phonology of Bininj Gun-wok. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.3.1 Vowels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
1.3.2 Phonotactics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
1.3.3 Two stop series in Bininj Gun-wok . . . . . . . . . . 22
1.4 Previous phonetic studies in Australian languages . . . . . 27
1.5 Hypotheses and research questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
1.6 Organisation of the thesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
2 Consonants: length, strength and voicing 33
2.1 Fortis and lenis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
2.1.1 A cross-linguistic survey of lenis and fortis . . . . . . 36
2.1.2 Experimental Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
2.2 Geminates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
2.3 Voice onset time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
2.4 Voicing, aerodynamics and laryngeal tension . . . . . . . 50
2.4.1 Analyses of voicing patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
2.4.2 Voicing and devoicing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
3 Nasals and coarticulation 57
3.1 Place of articulation cues in nasals . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
3.1.1 Spectral properties of nasals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
3.1.2 Aerodynamics in nasals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
3.1.3 Vowel height and nasalisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
3.2 Coarticulation and assimilation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
3.2.1 Models of coarticulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
3.2.2 Coarticulation resistance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
3.2.3 Locus equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
3.2.4 Nasal assimilation and coarticulation . . . . . . . . . 69
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x Contents
4 Australian languages and medial consonant articulation 71
4.1 The stop contrast: Australia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
4.1.1 Experimental research: Australia . . . . . . . . . . . 78
4.1.2 The stop controversy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
4.1.3 Fricatives in Australian languages . . . . . . . . . . . 84
4.2 Nasals in Australian languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
4.3 Theplaceofarticulationimperativeandthemedialposition 87
4.4 The phonetics of consonants in Bininj Gun-Wok . . . . . . 92
4.4.1 Peripherals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
4.4.2 Coronals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
4.4.3 The glottal stop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
4.5 Aims, hypotheses and research questions . . . . . . . . . . 99
5 General method and statistical tools 105
5.1 Linguistic material . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
5.2 Speakers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
5.2.1 The word lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
5.3 The recording method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
5.4 Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
5.4.1 Labelling and segmentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
5.4.2 The annotation criteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
5.5 Statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
5.5.1 Linear mixed effects models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
5.6 The acoustic method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
5.6.1 Materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
5.6.2 Queries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
5.6.3 Measuring consonant duration . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
5.6.4 Voice onset time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
5.6.5 Voice termination time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
5.6.6 Vowel duration and vowel to consonant ratio . . . . 129
5.6.7 Analysis of burst amplitude . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
5.6.8 Spectral analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
5.6.9 Locus equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
5.7 The physiological method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
5.7.1 Aerodynamic recordings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
5.7.2 Disadvantages with aerodynamic techniques . . . . 140
5.7.3 Data processing and analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
5.7.4 Channel processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
5.7.5 Recordings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
5.7.6 Labelling. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
5.7.7 Aerodynamic measurements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
5.7.8 Ratio of maximum intra-oral pressure to peak oral
flow in stops . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
5.7.9 The pressure impulse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
5.7.10 Oral air-flow and intra-oral pressure . . . . . . . . . 151
5.7.11 Timing measurements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
5.8 The method for the analysis of geminates and voicing . . 153