Abstract

GONZALEZ POOT, Antonio A.. Acoustic traits of plain and ejective obstruents in Camino Real Yucatec Maya: bases for a dialectal characterization. Cuad. Lingüíst. Col. Méx. [online]. 2018, vol.5, n.1, pp.108-147. ISSN 2007-736X.  https://doi.org/10.24201/clecm.v5i1.97.

Our analysis of Yucatec Maya (YM) ejective and plain obstruents in pre and postvocalic contexts contributes to the need for acoustic studies of the non-pulmonic members of this contrast. The results of our work suggest the presence of well-defined acoustic cues for the sounds under scrutiny. YM prevocalic plain and ejective stops can be minimally differentiated in terms of voice onset time (VOT) and burst intensity; in a postvocalic context, the same contrast is identified by differences in terms of the duration of the period of silence between vowel offset and consonant release, as well as by the intensity of the latter. On the other hand, YM prevocalic plain and ejective affricates are differentiated acoustically by noise duration and intensity, by VOT values and by the presence/absence of a period of silence prior to the glottal release. Finally, YM postvocalic plain and ejective affricates differ on three measures: silence duration after vowel offset, friction intensity and friction duration.

Keywords : Yucatec Maya; ejective and plain obstruents; pre and postvocalic contexts; acoustic cues.

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