Slavey phonology

## Consonants

The consonant inventories in the dialects of Slavey differ considerably. The table above lists the 30 consonants common to most or all varieties. Hare lacks aspirated affricates (on red background), which have lenited into fricatives, whereas Mountain lacks /w/ (on blue). In addition, for some speakers of Hare, an alveolar flap /ɾ/ has developed into a separate phoneme. Prenasalized stops /ᵐb, ⁿd/ may appear in Slavey proper.

The most pronounced difference is however the realization of a series of consonants that varies greatly in their place of articulation:

In Slavey proper, these are dental affricates and fricatives; comparative Athabaskan work reveals this to be the oldest sound value. Mountain has labials, with the voiceless stop coinciding with pre-existing /p/. Bearlake has labialized velars, but has lenited the voiced fricative to coincide with pre-existing /w/. The most complicated situation is found in Hare, where the plain stop is a labialized velar, the ejective member is replaced by a /ʔw/ sequence, the aspirated affricate has turned into a fricative /f/, and both the voiceless and voiced fricatives have been lenited to /w/.

### Phonological processes

The following phonological and phonetic statements apply to all four dialects of Slavey.

* Unaspirated obstruents are either voiceless or weakly voiced, e.g.
	+ /k/ → [k] or [k̬]
* Aspirated obstruents are strongly aspirated.
* Ejectives are strongly ejective.
* When occurring between vowels, ejectives are often voiced, e.g.
	+ /kʼ/ → [ɡˀ] or [kʼ]
* /t͡sʰ/ is usually strongly velarized, i.e. [tˣ].
* Velar obstruents are palatalized before front vowels, e.g.
	+ /kɛ/ → [cɛ]
	+ /xɛ/ → [çɛ]
	+ /ɣɛ/ → [ʝɛ]
* Velar fricatives may be labialized before round vowels.
	+ The voiceless fricative is usually labialized, e.g.
		- /xo/ → [xʷo]
	+ The voiced fricative is optionally labialized and may additionally be defricated e.g.
		- /ɣo/ → [ɣo] or [ɣʷo] or [wo]
* Velar stops are also labialized before round vowels. These labialized velars are not as heavily rounded as labial velars (which occur in Bearlake and Hare), e.g.
	+ /ko/ → [kʷo]
	+ /kʷo/ → [k̹ʷwo]
* Lateral affricates are generally alveolar, but sometimes velar, i.e.
	+ /tɬ/ → [tɬ] or [kɬ]
	+ /tɬʰ/ → [tɬʰ] or [kɬʰ]
	+ /tɬʼ/ → [tɬʼ] or [kɬʼ]
* /x/ may be velar or glottal, i.e.
	+ /x/ → [x] or [h]

## Vowels

* a [a]
* e [ɛ] or [æ] when followed by a back vowel
* ə [e] or [ie]
* i [i] or [ɪ] in syllable onset
* o [o]
* u [u]
* nasal vowels are marked with an ogonek accent, e.g. ⟨ą⟩ [ã]
* Vowel length is distributed as /VV/ in the dialects of Bearlake, Slavey and Mountain.
* South Slavey does not have the ⟨ə⟩ vowel.

## Tone

Slavey has two tones:

* high
* low

In Slavey orthography, high tone is marked with an acute accent, and low tone is unmarked.

Tones are both lexical and grammatical.

Lexical: /ɡáh/ 'along' vs. /ɡàh/ 'rabbit'

## Syllable structure

Slavey morphemes have underlying syllable structures in the stems: CV, CVC, CVnC, V, and VC. The prefixes of the stem occur as Cv, CVC, VC, CV, and C.

 VC | -éh | "with"

 C | h- | classifier (voice element)

## References

1. ↑ Krauss, Michael E. & Golla, Victor K. (1981) Northern Athapaskan Languages. *Handbook of North American Indians*, p. 79.