An Articulatory and Acoustic Investigation of Kalanguya
Consonants
Paul Julian Santiago
Department of Lingustics, University of the Philippines Diliman
paul.santiago@yahoo.com
ABSTRACT
This paper discusses the articulatory and acoustic properties of
Kalanguya consonants. This study uses static palatography to
determine the articulatory positions for coronal stops and acoustic
analysis to describe some characteristics of certain consonants.
Some remarkable findings of this study are as follows: (a) the
places of articulation of coronal stops /t/, /d/, /l/ and /n/ are at
dental and alveolar regions. (b) Glottal consonants of Kalanguya
can be geminated and when geminated, the length is twice longer
than the single glottal sound. (c) The voiced bilabial stop /b/ is
labialized. (d) Finally, the voiceless plosive /k/ is uvular, which is
rare in Philippine-type languages.
Keywords: acoustics phonetics, static palatography, Kalanguya,
Austronesian, uvular consonants
1. INTRODUCTION
Figure 1: Kalanguya language area map
1.1 Kalanguya Language
Kalanguya is a Philippine-type language spoken by the Kalanguya
ethnic group living in the municipalities of Kayapa, Ambaguio,
Aritao and Sta. Fe in Nueva Vizcaya, Tinoc in Ifugao and some
parts of Benguet, Pangasinan and Nueva Ecija. Kalanguya is
listed in the Ethnologue of SIL International as an alternate name
of Kallahan. Other names of this language are Ikalahan,
Kalangoya, Kalangoya-Ikalahan, Kalkali, Kayapa and Akab 1 .
However, groups living in Kayapa and other parts of Nueva
Vizcaya prefer the name “Kalanguya” for their language, which is
an autonym derived from the phrase “Kelay ngo iya?”, which
means “Why/What is this?.” [3] In 2000, the population of this
indigenous group is approximately 70,000 excluding the group
living in Pangasinan and Nueva Ecija2.
Figure 1 is a map of the area where Kalanguya is spoken obtained
from Arsenio and Stallsmith [3].
1
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=kak
http://www.census.gov.ph/data/pressrelease/2002/pr0233tx.html,
http://www.census.gov.ph/data/pressrelease/2002/pr0247tx.html,
and
http://www.census.gov.ph/data/pressrelease/2002/pr0228tx.html
2
This study will be useful not only in teaching the correct
articulation of speech sounds to the younger generation of
Kalanguya ethnic group but also in encouraging other linguists to
use the methods performed in this study when documenting
Philippine-type languages. This will also help Kalanguya teachers
determine the similarities and differences of their language from
other languages, such as English and Filipino, and create new
strategies in teaching the children on how to make pronunciation
adjustments when switching to these languages.
1.2 Kalanguya Phonology and Orthography
There are only few studies done on Kalanguya language and most
of them focus on morphosyntax. Hohulin and Kenstowicz’s study
on Keley-i phonology and morphophonemics gives a brief
description of Keley-i phonemes and some phonological changes
that occur in this language [8]. But this dialect of Kalanguya is
slightly different from the dialect discussed in this paper. So far,
there are no studies which deal with the acoustic and articulatory
properties of this language.
There are 14 consonants in Kalanguya: p, t, d, k, g, b, m, n, ng, h,
w, y, l and the glottal stop. A single glottal stop is not represented
before vowel letters in word-initial position and in word-final
position. Hyphen is used as a representation of the glottal stop
when in between a consonant and a vowel and when geminated
(e.g. ok-ok, i-ogip). The consonant /h/ will be considered as a
“true fricative” for the purposes of this study. It can occur both at
the beginning and at the end of syllables and before consonants.
This compensates for the lack of the fricative /s/ which is present
in other Philippine-type languages.
Kalanguya has four vowels: a, e, i and o. The vowel “o” is
pronounced as near-close near-back rounded vowel //. The word
lists used in acoustic recordings and static palatography followed
this orthography.
Kalanguya and all came from Kayapa, Nueva Vizcaya. Thus only
the Central Kalanguya dialect was analyzed in this study. They
were recruited by a consultant who was also a native speaker of
the language to make sure that the participants (1) were native
speakers of Kalanguya; (2) did not show any sign of speech and
voice disorder; and (3) belonged to the Central Kalanguya group.
This last condition is vital because other dialects of Kalanguya
might have a different phonological system. The participants’ ages
range from 17 to 40 years old.
The recordings were made in a quiet room using PRAAT 5.1.12
mono sound recorder at a sampling rate of 44,100 Hz.
1.3 Current study
This study examines the articulatory and acoustic properties of
Kalanguya consonants to (1) provide a complete description of the
place and manner of articulation of certain consonants and to (2)
designate the appropriate phonetic transcription of certain
consonants based on the result of the palatography and still
photography. Finally, (3) a new consonant inventory will be
designed to serve as a guide for learners and speakers of the
language when learning the pronunciation of the sounds and when
shifting from their L1 to L2. This inventory will also be compared
with Tagalog and English consonant inventory.
2. METHOD
2.1 Procedure
2.2 Stimuli
The stimuli used in this study were carefully selected by two
consultants who were native speakers of Kalanguya. There were
two sets of stimulus used: one for palatography and still
photography and the one for acoustic recording.
In palatography, the participant uttered a word containing the
target consonant. Only words containing non-high vowels were
used to avoid multiple tongue-palate contacts. It is also important
that the words used contain no other coronal or dorsal segments
except the target segment. The consonants investigated were the
coronals /t/, /d/, /n/ and /l/. Table 1 below shows a sample word
list for these consonants.
Table 1: Static Palatography word list for Kalanguya coronal
consonants
Two native speakers of Kalanguya, one male and one female,
participated in palatography and still photography session. The
palatographic techniques performed were exactly the techniques
described in Anderson [1] and Ladefoged [9]. Palatograms were
obtained by painting the speaker’s tongue with a non-toxic
marking material which is a mixture of powdered digestive
charcoal and olive oil. The speaker then uttered the word
containing the target consonant, transferring the marking material
from the tongue to the palate. Then a mirror was inserted into the
mouth to reflect the contact area on the palate. This resulting
image was photographed and videotaped. On the other hand,
linguograms were obtained by painting the speaker’s palate, which
transferred the marking material to the tongue when the word
containing the target consonant was articulated. The speaker then
put the tongue out to show the contact pattern on the tongue which
was photographed and videotaped.
Still photography was also used to investigate the consonant /b/.
This method was necessary because this consonant is articulated in
a unique manner by Kalanguya speakers. A mirror was placed
against the side of the face to get the front view and the side view
of the lips simultaneously.
Figure 2: Set-up for palatography
Figure 3: Photograph of a Kalanguya speaker. A mirror is placed
at the side of the face to see the full and side view of the speaker.
Six native speakers participated in digital recording: three males
and three females. All the participants were native speakers of
/t/
/d/
/n/
/l/
ˈpato “
ˈpadah
ˈpana
ˈpala
Acoustic recordings of consonants /b/, /k/, /h/, and // were done
by prompting the speakers to read the target words containing
these consonants. These words were embedded in a frame
sentence in Kalanguya “Ehel moy
ni mamintalo” which
means “Say
three times” and were written in a piece of
paper approximately one meter away from them. In addition to
this, two productions of geminated /h/ and // were also recorded
in order to examine the properties of these glottals when
geminated.
2.3 Analysis
Palatography was performed to determine the place of articulation
of the four coronal consonants of Kalanguya. Digital photographs
of the palatograms and linguograms will be presented in section 3.
Measurements were not necessary because the photographs alone
were enough to show the palate and lingual contacts and
determine the correct articulatory description of each coronal. The
articulation of the consonant /b/ was also captured by a video
camera to show the unique articulatory characteristic of the sound.
The duration of the glottals when occurring as a single sound and
when geminated was measured through spectograms and
waveforms. For /b/ and /k/, formant frequencies were measured
and spectograms were examined.
3. RESULTS
3.1 Kalanguya Coronal Consonants
Figure 4 to Figure 7 show the palatograms and linguograms of the
four coronal consonants of Kalanguya: the stops /t/ and /d/ (Figure
4 and 5), the nasal /n/ (Figure 6) and the lateral /l/ (Figure 7).
Figure 6: /n/
Figure 7: /l/
The palatogram of the voiceless stop /t/ (Figure 4) shows that only
part of the incisors was touched and that the rearmost point was
the front of the alveolar ridge. The linguogram below shows that
the most active articulator was the apex and front blade part of the
tongue. Thus, the voiceless stop /t/ of Kalanguya may be
classified as apico-laminal denti-alveolar.
Figure 5 shows the palatogram and linguogram of the voiced stop
/d/. As can be seen, the back of the incisors was not touched and
the rearmost point of contact was the front part of the alveolar
ridge. The active articulator was the apex of the tongue. /d/ may be
classified as apical alveolar. We can also notice that the tip of the
tongue barely touched the alveolar region. This suggests that the
contact of the tongue to the alveolar ridge is very fast.
The palatogram of the nasal /n/ (Figure 6) shows that the lower
part of the incisors was touched and that the rearmost point was
the front of the alveolar ridge. The linguogram below shows that
the most active articulator was the apex of the tongue. Thus, the
nasal /n/ may be classified as apical denti-alveolar.
For the lateral approximant /l/, no contact was made on the back of
the incisors and the most active articulator was the apex of the
tongue. The lateral approximant /l/ of Kalanguya can be classified
as apical alveolar.
The articulatory data of Kalanguya coronal consonants are
summarized in Table 2.
Table 2: Contact locations of Kalanguya coronal consonants
/t/
/d/
/n/
/l/
Figure 4: /t/
Figure 5: /d/
apico-laminal denti-alveolar
apical alveolar
apical denti-alveolar
apical alveolar
3.2 Gemination of Kalanguya Glottal
Consonants
One of the unique characteristics of Kalanguya glottal sounds is
that the glottal fricative /h/ and the glottal stop // can be
geminated. Other Philippine-type languages do not allow this kind
of gemination. When geminated, the utterance of the glottal
fricative /h/ and the obstruction of the airway in glottal stop are
prolonged. This means that when the glottal stop // is geminated,
the release is delayed. Figure 8 below shows the wide-band
spectograms and waveforms of the single /h/ and geminated /h/,
both occurring in between two low vowels /a/.
Figure 9 below shows the wide-band spectograms and waveforms
of the single glottal stop // and the geminated glottal stop //. The
length of the single // in Figure 9 is 0.152 milliseconds whereas
the length of the geminated // is 0.223 milliseconds or almost one
and a half longer than the single //.

/a
/a
h

/
a/
/a


a
/
Figure 9: Wide-band spectogram and waveform of single and
geminated //
3.3 Voiced Labialized Bilabial Plosive / bʷ /
/a
a /
h

Figure 8: Wide-band spectogram and waveform of single and
geminated /h/
In Figure 8, the duration of the single /h/ is 0.148 milliseconds
whereas the duration of the geminated /h/ is 0.315 milliseconds.
Moreover, the spectogram shows that the frication for the first /h/
is stronger than the second /h/. This means that when geminated,
the frication becomes weaker at the second half of the utterance.
Several measurements and visual investigations were performed in
order to describe the features of the voiced bilabial plosive of
Kalanguya. Video photograph of a Kalanguya speaker uttering the
sound /b/ intervocally is shown in Figure 10.
Figure 12: Plot of the F1-F2 values of /e/ during the transition
from high back (/u/) to low mid (e) in Kalanguya.
Figure 10: Kalanguya speaker uttering the word /ba/. Notice the
rounding of the lips before the release of the sound.
The rounding of the lips is one of the articulatory features of
labialization. Before unrounded vowels, the lips are rounded
before releasing and uttering the following vowel. All the six
Kalanguya participants pronounced the /b/ with the lips rounded
even in word-final position.
Examining the formant transition provided more evidence for the
claim that the Kalanguya /b/ is labialized. Figure 11 shows a
spectogram of /b/ before /e/ with red dots indicating the formant
frequencies.
Figure 12 shows the transition of the vowel /e/ when preceded by
the bilabial /b/. We can clearly see that after the release of the
burst or the start of the vowel, the F2 value is relatively low and
towards the middle of the transition, the F2 value increased until it
reached the stable region of the vowel. The long transition from
the high back region to the low mid proves that there is a
secondary articulation involved when /b/ is articulated. Due to the
rounding of the lips when articulating the bilabial /b/, the tongue is
positioned at the back part of the mouth before uttering the
unrounded front vowel /e/ and will take at least 0.3 milliseconds to
reach the front region.
Labialization of consonants is marked by a diacritic ʷ. However,
the symbol /b/ will be used instead of the symbol / bʷ / in the
inventory due to the fact that it is not phonemically contrastive.
The only purpose of placing the diacritic ʷ is to represent the
secondary articulatory feature of this consonant.
3.4 Voiceless Uvular Plosive /q/
Uvular consonants are one of the less common consonants; 80.9%
of all the languages surveyed in Maddieson [11] have no uvular
consonants. Maddieson [11] also stated that uvular consonants are
absent in Southern Asia including the Philippines. However, the
acoustic investigation of Kalanguya suggests that the voiceless
velar plosive /k/ is uvular.
/ e
b
e
/
Figure 11: Wide-band spectogram of /b/ with the formant values
indicated by the red dots. The F1-F2 was measured before the
release of the burst and start of the stable region of the vowel.
In Figure 11, the F1-F2 value after the burst (start of the vowel
region) is 480Hz-1004Hz and when it reached the stable region of,
the F1-F2 value increased up to 633Hz-2266Hz. The F1-F2 values
from the release of the burst to the stable region are plotted and
shown in Figure 12.
One of the evidences that may verify the fact that Kalanguya /k/ is
uvular is the vowel quality of the neighboring vowel. Lowering of
F2 of the vowel preceded by the uvular plosive occurs due to the
retraction of the back of the tongue root when the uvular is uttered.
Figure 13 shows the wide-band spectograms of velar /g/ and
uvular /q/. Notice the lowering of the F2 value of the vowel when
preceded by the uvular plosive.
Figure 14: Kalanguya Consonant Inventory
/ q
e
g
e
/
Figure 13: Wide-band spectograms of /qe/ and /ge/. A slight rise in
F1 value and lowering of F2 are the effects of the uvular segment
to the low vowels.
Zawaydeh’s [14] acoustic analysis of uvularization in AmmaniJordanian Arabic supports the idea of F2 lowering of the
neighboring vowels. Table 3 shows the mean F1 and F2 values of
the four vowels placed after the voiced velar /g/ and voiceless
uvular /q/. It is evident that there is a rise in F1 value and lowering
of the F2 value when vowels are preceded by the uvular plosive.
/g/
vowel
a
e
i
o
F1
534
426
340
393
/q/
F2
1683
2056
2422
995
F1
731
673
596
536
F2
1324
1710
1820
917
Table 3: Mean values in Hertz of the F1 and F2 for each vowel
when preceded by velar and uvular plosive.
The results presented here remain suggestive. Further study such
as spectral, cinefluorographic and perceptual analysis may help us
clearly determine the differences between uvular and velar
plosives.
4. DISCUSSION
4.1 Kalanguya Consonant Inventory
The complete and precise consonant inventory of Kalanguya
based on the results of the study is presented in Figure 14. The
voiced bilabial /b/ is pronounced with the lips rounded and can
also be phonetically transcribed as /bʷ/ to represent the secondary
articulation involved when uttering the sound. Kalanguya lacks the
alveolar flap // and the alveolar fricative /s/; both sounds can be
found in other Philippine-type languages. The voiceless plosive /t/
is denti-alveolar and the voiced plosive /d/ is alveolar and not
dental for when /d/ is articulated, the tip of the tongue does not
touch the back of the incisors. The glottal fricative /h/ is
considered as a “true fricative” in this paper due to the fact that it
can occur both at the beginning and at the end of syllables and
even before consonants. This compensates for the lack of the
alveolar fricative /s/ in Kalanguya. Glottal consonants in
Kalanguya can also be preconsonantal and can be geminated.
The consonant inventory can be used as a guide in teaching
Kalanguya children the correct pronunciation of these sounds.
With only 14 consonants, Kalanguya speakers have a lot of
adjustments to do when shifting from their L1 to other languages.
English has 24 consonants and almost half of these are affricates
and fricatives, which are absent in Kalanguya. We cannot
substitute the missing sounds with the existing consonants in
Kalanguya because this will result to a localized variation of
English (e.g. father will be mistakenly pronounced as pader and
back will be pronounced as bwak as a result of the labialization of
/b/). Kalanguya speakers will have an idea on how to articulate the
English velar /k/ and the Tagalog dental stop /d/ if they know the
articulatory differences between their L1 and these languages.
The consonant inventory is also designed to help the teachers and
students create new strategies in pronunciation adjustments.
Related studies such as stress and other prosodic features are
recommended to further improve our understanding of Kalanguya
phonology and phonetics. Other methods such as cinefluorography,
electropalatography, spectral analysis and aerodynamic
investigations may enhance the reliability of the findings in this
study. An acoustic study on Kalanguya vowel space was also
performed by the researcher and is currently under final revision.
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