Steve Fondow
Lab 6
Linguistics 600.01
7 November 2003
Problem 1. While transcribing words ending in a palato-alveolar fricative, I was
uncertain as to whether the sound was voiced or voiceless. My consultant ensured me
that I should transcribe them as voiceless. Is voicing of fricative consonants
neutralized in word final position? Particularly, does nasalization affect the voicing
of the word final fricative? Egs. [paj] ‘fish’; [kj] ‘dogs’; [l.’drõj]
‘robbers’
Analysis 1. My investigations have led me to believe that only the voiceless fricatives
occur in word final position. However, nasalization and absolute versus word final
position may be affecting voicing in that nasalization or voicing in the adjacent
sounds affects the quality of voicing or voicelessness. A good example is that of the
allophonic variation between voiced and voiceless velar fricatives in a word, e.g.
[‘xo.z] or [‘Ro.z] ‘rose’. In the voiced case, my consultant was quickly listing a
series of words and the voicing of the previous sound (a vowel) seems to have
affected the fricative.
Problem 2. I have one token of a voiceless velar fricative [x], [‘xju] ‘river’. Initially,
I interpreted this sound as a voiced velar fricative [R]. A contrast between these two
segments does not exist in Portuguese which means that there is room for sloppy
articulation of the “true” sound. The question is what is the best analysis? I
understand that a voiceless segment is expected before a voiced segment but is there a
way to distinguish between uvular and velar pronunciation without complementary
examples in a language?
Analysis 2. I believe that the sound is in fact a voiceless velar [x] and that alternate
pronunciations are acceptable provided that they correspond more or less to the target
articulation. Since the nearest fricative is a palato-alveolar [], it seems that a lot of
sloppiness can be tolerated in the articulation. Additionally, there is no voiced velar
fricative phoneme in the language while there is set of velar stops, leading me to
interpret the sound as the corresponding fricative. My consultant cannot distinguish
between the voicing or lack of voicing in these allophones. This problem ties in with
that of problem 1 above.