Duhumbi Phonology - Plosive Distinction Based on Maximum VOT
Creators: name: Bodt, Timotheus Adrianus
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2018
Subjects: Duhumbi
Arunachal Pradesh
Chugpa
Kho-Bwa
Tibeto-Burman
phonology
Voice Onset Timing
distinctiveness obstruents
distinctiveness plosives
historical linguistics

description: This phonological topic is based on the observation that Duhumbi has a relative paucity of non-aspirated, unvoiced plosive consonants. Whereas the are many attestations of aspirated onsets /kh, g, ph/ and voiced onsets /b, t, th/ there are much fewer attestations of onsets /k, p, t/, especially in word-initial position. It is observed that this observation is replicated in the other Western Kho-Bwa languages; by contrast, Puroik has relatively few attestations of aspirated plosive onsets (p.c. Ismael Lieberherr). The unvoiced plosives /k, t, p/ are characterised by both the lack of voicing and lack of aspiration. The onset of voicing commences with the release of the unvoiced plosive, resulting in a Voice Onset Timing (henceforth VOT) close to zero. For the voiced plosives /g, d, b/, the onset of voicing well precedes the release of the plosive, resulting in a negative VOT, whereas for the aspirated plosives /kh, th, ph/ the onset of voicing is delayed by the aspiration, resulting in a positive VOT. The above observations appear to indicate that at the Proto-Duhumbi level there was a distinction between unvoiced aspirated and voiced plosives, i.e. between *tʰ- and *d-, *kʰ- and *g-, *pʰ and *b-. There were no distinctive unvoiced unaspirated plosives †t-, †k-, †p-, although the unvoiced unaspirated plosives [t, k, p] occurred as allophones of either of the voiceless aspirated or voiced variant in syllable-final position. There is a phonological explanation for this distribution: the distinction, as measured in VOT, between an unvoiced unaspirated plosive and a voiced unaspirated plosive is significantly larger than that between either an unvoiced unaspirated plosive and an unvoiced aspirated plosive or an unvoiced unaspirated plosive and a voiced unaspirated plosive. It is thus easier to create the distinction in speech and similarly to audibly distinguish between, for example, /ph/ and /b/ than between /p/ and /pʰ/ or between /p/ and /b/. If at the proto-level a two-way, rather than a three-way opposition between plosives has to be presumed, then, the opposition between *pʰ and *b is more natural than an opposition between *p and *b or between *p and *ph. This, however, does not mean a distinction in more than one phonological feature, i.e., not between both voicing and aspiration: it is a single opposition, namely, the distinction in Voice Onset Timing. This material is made freely available to everyone for informative or scientific purposes as long as the source (this DOI) / the collectors are properly credited. Please note that use of the material for commercial purposes <em><strong>of any kind</strong>, which includes conversion into commercial audio-visual media (documentaries etc.), storage and dissemination through sites that require registration &amp; payment for access, or sites that rely on advertisement (including YouTube) </em>is <strong>not</strong> permitted without <strong>specific written consent</strong> from the speakers and their community, obtained through the collectors of the material. By downloading our material, you agree to these restrictions. This data set falls under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA) license. This license lets you remix, tweak, and build upon this work non-commercially, as long as you credit us and license your new creations under the identical terms. License Deed on https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/. Legal Code on https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/legalcode. Tim Bodt: bodttim (at) gmail (dot) com