The University of Iowa
Department of Linguistics Colloquium Series
Fall 2015
An acoustic outlook on initial stops in Northern Shoshoni
Karee Garvin
Thursday, October 22, 2015
4:00 pm
106 EPB
While there has been descriptive research done on the phonetic and phonological properties of
Shoshoni, little to no acoustic analysis has been done thus far. This paper analyzes the production of
initial stops by a native speaker of the Northern dialect of Shoshoni. Previous phonetic and phonological
work defines Shoshoni as a single stop series contrast (Gould & Loether, 2002). However, given
relatively limited acoustic work on single stop series languages, and Shoshoni’s high level of contact with
English, which has a two-way stop contrast, it was unclear what this would mean on the acoustic
level. Furthermore, in Shoshoni language classes, English stops are described as voiced and voiceless
aspirated with Shoshoni stops differing from English by being voiceless unaspirated. However,
acoustically, it is widely acknowledged that English has a contrast, not between voiced and voiceless
aspirated, but rather between voiceless aspirated and voiceless unaspirated (Lisker & Abramson, 1964).
Therefore, it was unclear how this contrast would manifest in Shoshoni acoustics. Because of the
influence of English on Shoshoni, this study also analyzes the speaker’s production of initial stops in
English to compare and contrast the production.
The study found that initial stops in Shoshoni do indeed appear to be voiceless unaspirated with
an average VOT of approximately 19 ms. However, the average voicing onset times were more
complicated for the velar stops as velar stops appear to be produced with glottalization. Interestingly,
this glottalization is also evident in the speaker’s production of initial stops in English for both /k/ and
/g/. Initially, it was hypothesized that the speaker’s production of English stops /b/, /d/, /g/ would be
voiced to explain the distinction between English and Shoshoni that is sometimes described by language
teachers. However, while it did seem that initial stops in English were more likely to be voiced by a
Shoshoni speaker than by the average native English speaker, this was not always the case.
Theories on single stop contrast languages often conclude that the range of values for voiceless
unaspirated stops in a single stop contrast language will be broader than values for language with a two
way contrast (Brookes & Kempe, 2014). These data may support this hypothesis as the average values
for voiceless unaspirated stops in Shoshoni is higher than the average for voiceless unaspirated stops in
English. However, the range of values seen in these data is not especially broad when the velars, which
should be categorized differently due to the glottal features, are excluded. Furthermore, the average
VOT for voiceless unaspirated stops in Shoshoni is still within the range of acceptability for voiceless
unaspirated stops in English. Therefore, this paper proposes a variety of options to further investigate
this theory, including a broader sampling of speakers and tokens as well as perception tests in which
speakers could rate tokens with varying VOT.
Please join us for refreshments before the talk at 3:30 pm in 571 EPB.