On the Back of the Tongue: Dorsal Sounds in Australian Languages

© 2004 S. Karger AG, Basel0031–8388/04/0611–0022

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Original Paper

Phonetica 2004;61:22–52DOI: 10.1159/000078661

Prof. Andrew ButcherSchool of MedicineFlinders UniversityGPO Box 2100Adelaide, SA 5001 (Australia)Tel. +61 (8) 82045938, Fax +61 (8) 82045935E-Mail [email protected]

On the Back of the Tongue: Dorsal Sounds in Australian Languages

Andrew Butchera Marija Tabainb

aHuman Communication Research Group, Flinders Institute for Health andMedical Research, Flinders University, Adelaide, andResearch Centre for Linguistic Typology, Institute for Advanced Study,La Trobe University, Melbourne

bSpeech, Hearing and Language Research CentreandMacquarie Centre for Cognitive Science, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

AbstractIn this paper we provide an overview of dorsovelar articulations and acoustics

in several Australian Aboriginal languages, and we compare these results with datafrom English. We examine languages that have a single dorsal, as well as languagesthat have two dorsal places of articulation. Using direct palatography and F2 transi-tion measures, we show that Australian languages appear to have a distinct velartarget for each of the three major vowel contexts, with a high degree of coarticula-tion between each velar allophone and its following vowel target, whilst Englishhas only two velar targets – back and non-back, with a lower degree of coarticulationbetween velar allophones and their corresponding vowel targets. Thus, whilst therange of allophonic variation for velars extends further back in the Australian Aborig-inal languages than in English, there appears to be no difference in the articulationof velars in the front vowel context. Drawing on results from the biomechanics,language acquisition, speech perception and acoustics literatures, we suggest thatthis result may be due to conflict between systemic constraints imposed by the place-rich consonant systems of Aboriginal languages and universal acoustic constraintson the identity of front-velar sounds, which may contribute to the instability of sucharticulations and the relative infrequency of velar + high vowel combinations in theworld’s languages.

Copyright © 2004 S. Karger AG, Basel

Background

It appears that all languages have at least one1 DORSAL place of articulation2. Fur-thermore, some 10–12% of languages in the UPSID database [Maddieson, 1984] makea distinction between VELAR and UVULAR sounds within one or more stop series. Thedescription of these sounds in most current textbooks appears to be relatively straight-

Received: October 18, 2003Accepted: April 16, 2004

forward [Catford, 1977, p. 160; Laver, 1994, p. 136; Ladefoged and Maddieson, 1996,p. 15]. According to Catford [1977], for example, velars are made with ‘the dorsal sur-face of the tongue, about two thirds of the distance from apex to tip of epiglottis, artic-ulating against the soft palate’ and uvulars with ‘the dorsal or radical surface of [the]tongue against [the] extreme end of [the] soft palate’. Another 2% of the UPSID lan-guages make at least one contrast between a PLAIN VELAR sound and a PALATALIZED

VELAR sound. The latter appears to be the kind of sound that Keating [1988, pp. 81ff.]refers to as a ‘fronted velar’, which, according to the X-ray evidence she discusses,can occur in many languages as an allophone of a single VELAR category (typically in afront close vowel environment) or as a sound in contrast with PLAIN or back VELARS inlanguages such as Russian and Czech. Keating [1988, p. 83] shows that these are notthe same as true palatal sounds: ‘…velars may be front or back, but fronting a velardoes not turn it into a palatal… A palatal consonant covers the whole palatal regionat once with a very long contact. A velar consonant has a much shorter contact, some-where within the velar region.’

The vast majority of Australian languages have a single DORSAL place of articula-tion. In the light of the apparently uncontroversial nature of such articulations, it is notsurprising that impressionistic descriptions of VELARS in these languages are usuallybrief. Patz [2002, p. 19] is typical, for example, in stating that in the Queensland lan-guage Kuku Yalanji ‘the back of the tongue [is] raised against the soft palate as forEnglish’. Blake [1969, p. 12] says that in Kalkatungu ‘the tip of the tongue is … behindthe lower teeth, but the occlusion is made by pressing the back of the tongue to thevelum’. Several writers do, however, refer to the wide degree of allophonic variationwhich occurs. Rumsey [1982, p. 3] and McGregor [1990, p. 52] make similar, butslightly divergent statements concerning VELAR articulations in two Western Australianlanguages. Rumsey [1982] states that in Ungarinjin ‘before front vowels …contact isrelatively far forward: almost, but not quite, in the palatal region. In the environmentof stressed /a/, contact is postvelar or uvular. Elsewhere it is velar’. McGregor [1990],on the other hand, observes that Gooniyandi VELARS, whilst also fronted before /i/, are‘almost in the uvular region when followed by back vowel allophones, and somewherein between these extremes when followed by central vowel allophones’. With referenceto yet another western language, Dench [1991, p. 130] describes VELARS in Panyjima asbeing ‘articulated further back in the mouth than is usual for an Australian languageand for some speakers /k/ and /\/ approach the uvular [q] and [N]’. As elsewhere in theworld, VELAR sounds are also prone to lenition in many Australian languages, and thereare probably aerodynamic constraints underlying this tendency [Ohala, 1983, p. 198].In Wangkumara, for example, McDonald and Wurm [1979] note that the single VELAR

stop ‘is frequently a lenis fricative [W] intervocalically’, and Coleman [1982, p. 3]reports that in Kunbarlang, voiced (or lenis) /b/ and /)/ ‘tend to be given similar ‘lax’articulations: they are commonly pronounced as fricatives, unlike other stop and nasalphonemes’. Our own observations [Butcher, 1996] confirm this same tendency inmany Northern Australian languages, including Kunbarlang, Burarra, Murrinh-Patha,

Dorsal Sounds in Australian Languages 23Phonetica 2004;61:22–52

1 Maddieson [1984, p. 31] reports that there are two languages (0.3%) in the UPSID corpus without velar stops,but both the languages in question have [q], [x] and [\].2 Note that labels for phonological categories appear in SMALL CAPITALS in order to distinguish them from similaror identical phonetic terms used to describe articulations. The term ‘place of articulation’ is here used throughout ina strictly phonological sense, to denote a type of phonological contrast. The term ‘constriction location’ is used torefer to the physical position of an articulation along the vocal tract.

and possibly Marrithiyel, although we would prefer to describe the sounds in questionas approximants ([≥]) rather than as fricatives.

Most Australian languages have a comparatively large number of CORONAL placecategories – commonly three or four, and in a few rare cases, five. It has been suggested[Butcher, 1995] that the ‘crowding’ of this articulatory area leads to a heighteneddegree of articulatory precision, and thus a restricted degree of (random and allo-phonic) variation in the realization of these sounds [Tatham, 1984; Manuel, 1990,1999]. In the case of the DORSAL sounds, however, as we have seen, some impression-istic descriptions have suggested that these are subject to noticeable allophonic varia-tion and that the range of that variation extends quite far back on the soft palate. Thefirst aim of this study was thus to investigate the nature of DORSAL articulations in agroup of languages with a large number of place contrasts and in particular to answertwo questions: Does habitual precision in the articulation of CORONAL sounds extend tothe realization of DORSALS or does the comparative lack of ‘crowding’ in the dorsal areaallow a greater degree of variation? Whether or not there is increased variation, aresome or all of these articulations more posterior than those of DORSAL sounds in Euro-pean languages?

A small number of Australian languages have also been described as havinga contrast between two DORSAL categories, usually referred to as VELAR and PALATO-VELAR3. This would not be so remarkable, were it not for the fact that, in commonwith many other Australian languages, these languages also have either three or (in onecase) four contrasting CORONAL places of articulation. The languages in question are

Butcher/Tabain24 Phonetica 2004;61:22–52

Table 1. Summary of the occurrence of DORSAL sounds in Australian languages of the north-easternNorthern Territory

Lack of a boundary between symbols indicates doubtful contrastive status.

3 When referring to Australian languages we use the traditional Australianist terms for these categories – see table 2.

situated immediately south-west of the Gulf of Carpentaria (fig. 1). The group com-prises Yanyuwa [Kirton and Charlie, 1979], Western Garrwa [Furby, 1974], EasternGarrwa and Wanyi [Breen, in press], which could be said to have a contrast amongst


Fig. 1. Geographical location of languages referred to in this paper. Shading indicates languages withPALATOVELAR sounds.

both stops and nasals, and the West Barkly languages Jingulu, Ngarnga, Binbinkaand Gudanji [Chadwick, 1971, 1975, 1978, 1979; Pensalfini, 2003], which appearto have contrastive PALATOVELARS in the stop series only. The fifth West Barkly lan-guage, Wambaya, does not appear to have palatovelars at all [Nordlinger, 1998].Table 1 is an attempt to summarize the above (from a maximally ‘unitarist’ point ofview).4

It is generally agreed that the palatovelar sounds have evolved from earlierALVEOPALATAL + VELAR sequences. It should be pointed out that the sounds in questionare rare, even in the languages in which they are clearly contrastive. Kirton and Char-lie [1979, p. 188] note that the oral stop /k

+/ has the highest frequency of the three types

of stop (i.e. oral, nasal and prenasalized) in Yanyuwa, appearing in 20 out of approxi-mately 2,700 words. Chadwick [1979, p. 659] observes that palatovelar stops occur‘extensively’ in Ngarnga, but only ‘rarely’ in Binbinka, and Chadwick [1978, p. 11]records only a single occurrence of such a sound in Gudanji – between two high frontvowels. However, the vast majority of alleged palatovelar sounds occur between non-high vowels. There are a few instances of putative /k

+/ preceded by /i/ in Garrwa (e.g.

/|wik+u/ = goanna species) and Jingulu (e.g. /|lijik

+u/ = name), but we are aware of only

one possible example of /k+/ followed by /i/ (Jingulu /|muk

+i-/ = ‘forget’)5. Breen [in

press] analyses the palatovelar stops in Wanyi and Eastern Garrwa as a sequence of/c/+/k/6, and would prefer to analyse those in Western Garrwa and Yanyuwa in thesame way (with the nasals as /&/+/\/ and the prenasalized stops as /&/+/k/). Kirton andCharlie [1979, p. 186] also agree that their Yanyuwa PALATOVELAR phonemes havedeveloped historically from the sequences suggested by Breen [in press]. Hale’s [e.g.1960, p. 9] transcription of the Jingulu palatovelar stops as a sequence [tyk] (= our [t

�k])

appears to indicate a similar analysis by him for this language7. Moreover, Chadwick[1978, pp. 9ff.] only deems it necessary to analyse some palatovelar sounds in Jinguluand Ngarnga as unitary phonemes (and none at all in Binbinka and Gudanji), theremainder being resolvable on morphological grounds as sequences of either /c/+/k/ or/k/+/c/. Pensalfini [2003, pp. 26ff.] concludes that all occurrences of [k

+] in contempo-

rary Jingulu can be analysed in this way and apparently finds no corresponding nasalsin his data.

It is also worth pointing out that the sequence LAMINAL STOP + DORSAL STOP wouldbe extremely marked. For example it violates two of Hamilton’s [1996, pp. 129f.,157ff.] constraints on heterorganic clusters in Australian languages. The place con-straint *[hi][hi], predicts that sequences of consonants with raised tongue body aremarked and the manner constraint *[obstr] assigns a high degree of markedness to theappearance of obstruents in C1 position of a cluster. This would predict that the hypoth-esized /c/+/k/ sequences would have been diachronically unstable. Note, however, thatlenition of the LAMINAL STOP to a GLIDE would eliminate neither violation (GLIDES are


4 The vast majority of Australian languages do not contrast VOICED and VOICELESS stops; stops in these languagestend to be voiced in intervocalic position, and voiceless in utterance-initial position. We have used the symbols forvoiceless stops throughout this text, except in the comparisons with English (see footnote 11).5 Since we would suggest that palatovelars are more easily distinguishable from velars in a non-high vowel context,it is possible that this apparent distribution reflects the perceptual skills of the linguist rather than the facts of thelanguage (however, see below our discussion of the uneven distribution of VELARS in different following vowelcontexts in the world’s languages).6 Note that where phonemic notation is quoted from other sources, symbols are standardized as in table 1.7 As far as we know, no one has ever suggested that these sounds originate from sequences such as [d)] and [n\],as stated by Ladefoged and Maddieson [1996, p. 34]. This may well be a typographical error.

just as marked as OBSTRUENTS in C1) [see Hamilton, 1996, pp. 167ff.]8. Only coales-cence of the two into a single PALATOVELAR phoneme would eliminate violation of bothconstraints by producing a single intervocalic consonant.

Most of our data on PALATOVELARS come from Yanyuwa, a language which at thetime of recording had between 40 and 60 speakers, most of whom live in and aroundBorroloola, NT (and all of whom would be over the age of 40). The system of conso-nantal contrasts in this language, as analysed by Kirton and Charlie [1979], is repre-sented in table 2. A detailed description of the phonetics of the CORONAL categories isclearly beyond the scope of a paper which seeks to redress a perceived excess of atten-tion paid to such sounds [but see Ladefoged and Maddieson, 1996, pp. 28ff.; Butcher,1990, 1995]. Briefly, the ALVEOLARS are truly apical and alveolar, the POSTALVEOLARS

are (typically) sublaminal and postalveolar; the DENTALS are laminal and interdentaland the ALVEOPALATALS are tip-down laminal postalveolar (we use the symbols [t

�n

�l

�],

etc. to represent these latter articulations phonetically). The two remarkable featuresof this phonological analysis (even by Australian standards) are the seventh order ofDORSAL PALATOVELAR consonants and the complete series of PRENALIZED STOPS. Of thethree other languages for which a contrast between PALATOVELAR and VELAR places ofarticulation has been proposed, none has been analysed as having unitary PRENALIZED

STOPS, and none has a LAMINAL (i.e. DENTAL versus ALVEOPALATAL) contrast either.Thus, on the basis of this analysis, Yanyuwa would be unique in having seven placesof articulation and in distinguishing VELAR from PALATOVELAR orders in three series ofconsonants.

The realization of PALATOVELAR sounds has not been described in any great detail.Furby [1974, p. 1] labels these articulations in Garrwa as ‘lamino-velar’, which doesnot appear to be an accurate description of the sounds in question or, for that matter,even a physiologically possible one [e.g. Catford, 1977, p. 161]. Chadwick [1975, p. 4,1978, p. 9] describes the realization in Jingulu and the other West Barkly languagesas a ‘palatovelar stop… with onset near the front of the velum and with palatalizedrelease’. Somewhat later [Chadwick, 1979, p. 659] the sound is similarly described


Table 2. Maximal consonant inventory of Yanyuwa

8 A number of northern Australian languages do allow /-jk-/ clusters, however. These include Burarra, Gurr-goni,Yol\u Matha, Guugu Yimidhirr, Kuku Yalanji and many other Queensland languages.

as ‘a palatal stop which has an onset on the hard palate and the front part of the softpalate with a palatal off-glide release’. Pensalfini [2003, p. 26] concurs with this,as far as Jingulu is concerned, although he maintains that ‘the release involves a dif-ferent articulator, the tongue blade’. He points out that, at the time of his recordings,there was a great deal of variability in pronunciation, even of the same words by thesame speaker, ranging from [t

�k] in careful speech through [k

+

j] to a lengthened [t�’] or

a plain [t�].

In their discussion of Yanyuwa, Kirton and Charlie [1979, pp. 185f.] are moreconcerned with the phonology of the PALATOVELARS, rather than their phonetics, butthey indicate that the realization of the stop may be somewhat different in the easternlanguages from that in Jingulu. Rather than the ‘palatalized’ release, the main featureof the sound in Yanyuwa and Garrwa appears to be ‘a strongly glided vowel preceding/)/’. Furthermore, ‘Initial aural reaction was always to the length and marked nature ofthe vowel glide, and a spectrograph [sic] of the equivalent sounds in Garawa [Furby,1974] demonstrated a marked long vocoid glide and some palatalisation of the follow-ing contoid.’ Ladefoged and Maddieson [1996, pp. 34f.] prefer to label the Yanyuwasounds as ‘palatal’, ‘although we agree [with Kirton and Charlie] that these soundsare made further back than the sounds that are usually called palatal. In additionthe velar stops in Yanyuwa appear to us to be made slightly further back than those inother languages; but they are in no way equivalent to stops classified as uvular in otherlanguages.’

Thus the second aim of this study was to clarify the nature of the so-calledpalatovelar articulations and perhaps throw some light on their phonological status.How are these sounds made? Is there phonetic evidence for or against the analysis ofthem as single phonemes? Are there any parallels between the contrastive VELAR andPALATOVELAR articulations and the allophonic variation within the VELAR articulationsof the single-DORSAL languages?

We will first present palatographic data from selected ‘single-DORSAL’ Australianlanguages, and compare these with palatographic data from English and German. Wewill then present palatographic data from the ‘double-DORSAL’ language Yanyuwa,followed by spectrographic data from this language, in order to contrast more fully theVELAR, PALATOVELAR and ALVEOPALATAL articulations. Finally, we will present F2 datafrom Yanyuwa and from two single-DORSAL languages, and compare these with F2

data from English.

Method

The palatographic data presented here are part of a larger set of direct palatography data, madeby the first author with a number of Australian language speakers, using much the same method as thatdescribed by Ladefoged and Traill [1980, pp. 37ff.]. An almost black contrast medium, consisting ofdrinking chocolate powder, powdered charcoal and vegetable oil was painted on to the top surfaceof the speaker’s tongue. He or she then pronounced the word under investigation once only. A flashphotograph of the speaker’s palate was taken, using a Polaroid CU-5 close-up camera with a 3-inchlens and a 1:1 palatal reflector, which was inserted into the mouth. In the following figures, each cross-sectional profile was traced directly from an impression of the speaker’s palate made using dentalalginate. Contact between tongue and palate on the sagittal cross sections is marked according to thelocation of contact at the midline on the corresponding palatogram. The outline of the rest of thetongue (i.e. the part not in contact with the palate), however, is no more than a reasonable estimationof the shape of the tongue along the midline at the moment of maximum constriction. A 10-mm con-


tour line traced from the alginate impression is included on the palatograms to provide an indicationof the steepness of the palatal vault.

Palatograms and accompanying sagittal cross sections are divided into zones according tothe speaker’s maxillary dentition, as shown in figure 2. Each zone is bounded by lines connecting theanteriormost points of a (left-right) pair of teeth. Thus the dental zone consists of the inferior edges ofthe first incisors (1), forward of a line connecting the anteriormost points of the second incisors (2).The postdental zone then extends back from this line as far as a line connecting the anteriormost pointsof the canines (3), and so on. Finally the boundary between the (back) palatal and the (front) velarzones is a line connecting the anterior edges of the back molars (8). (It is not normally possible to seefurther back in the mouth than this, using the above methodology.) The zoning and labelling are almostidentical to those proposed by Firth [1957, p. 151]. This method of division has the advantage of beingbased on objective criteria and seems to tally well with traditional landmarks when transferred to themid-sagittal profile [cf. e.g. Catford, 1977, p. 143; Ladefoged and Maddieson, 1996, p. 13]. In partic-ular, the border between the hard palate and the velum at the midline (usually clearly visible on at leastsome of the photographs) almost always falls exactly on the line between the middle and back molars(7 and 8)9. Our Yanyuwa palatography co-worker (BC) had a full denture, with 14 teeth, whichcovered the hard palate and extended some 8 mm behind the line connecting the posterior surfaces ofthe back teeth. Thus it was not possible to determine with any accuracy the relationship of the borderbetween hard and soft palates to this (artificial) posterior molar line. The dividing lines on palatograms


Fig. 2. Anatomically definedtectal zones used in describingthe location of tongue contacton palatograms.

9 In the case of 2 speakers (RW, Nyangumarta and LJ, Guugu Yimidhirr) the back molars were not present andthe remaining molars (6 and 7) were accordingly in a more posterior position than in other speakers. Thus, whilst thedivision between velar and back palatal zones on palatograms of these speakers is still drawn at the actual borderbetween the hard and soft palates, it does not correspond to a line drawn behind the No. 7 molars, and the divisionbetween mid- and back palatal zones is drawn halfway between this border and the posterior boundary of theprepalatal zone.

of this speaker have therefore been drawn according to the artificial dentition, but the position of theposterior edge of the denture is also marked. Each word used in the palatography study is chosen tohave only one consonant with linguo-tectal contact. Nevertheless, it should be borne in mind thatthe palatogram is a record of tongue contact throughout the whole utterance, and that – particularlyin words containing close front vowels or palatal glides – not all of this contact may necessarily bedirectly related to the closure phase of the consonant.

The Arrernte data used in the acoustic part of this study were recorded in a sound studio on reel-to-reel tape, partly at 7.5 ips and partly at 3.75 ips and digitized at 22.05 kHz. The English data wererecorded directly onto a PC at a sampling rate of 44.1 kHz in a sound-treated room. These two sets ofdata were also used in the Tabain et al. [in press] study. Both sets were segmented and labelled usingthe EMU system [Cassidy and Harrington, 2001]. The remaining Aboriginal language data wererecorded in the field, using a Sony TCM-5000EV cassette recorder and a Sony ECM-D8 ‘boundaryeffect’ microphone and subsequently digitized at 16 kHz. The Yanyuwa and Yintjiparnti F2 formantdata were also used in the Tabain and Butcher [1999] study. These data were labelled using Waves+.In all cases, formants were automatically tracked and hand-corrected. F2 onset data were sampled atthe acoustic release of the consonant, and F2 target data were sampled at the temporal midpoint of thevowel. It should be noted that for the purposes of calculating the midpoint of the vowel, total vowelduration included any burst/noise portion. Figure 1 shows the approximate locations where the abovelanguages are spoken.

In the present study, we have separated the VELARS into front, central and back vowel contexts.The vowel contexts were assigned to these three broad categories according to the phonetic valuesof the major vowel allophones. Our Arrernte data contain the vowels /a ˜ w˜/, where the first two vow-els are central and the third is a back vowel (with the phonetic value [T]), Bininj Gun-wok has fivevowels – /i e a o u/, Murrinh-Patha has four – /i e a u/, and all other Aboriginal languages in this studyhave only /i a u/. In all cases /i e/ are front, /a/ is central, and /o u/ are back. Our Australian English datacontain the vowels /T o ˘ a $ i R e £ æ/, where /i R e £ æ/ are front, /a $/ are central and /T o ˘/ are back.It should be noted that we do not have any schwa vowels (i.e. unstressed vowels) in our dataset forEnglish. We have also excluded the vowel /u/ for Australian English, because of its uncertain status:although traditionally regarded as phonologically a BACK vowel, its phonetic value varies between [§]and [Y] and it is often pronounced as a diphthong moving between these two values. (The /i/ also oftenhas a more central onset, but the target is still high front as the symbol implies.) Table 4 gives the num-ber of tokens for each speaker in each velar context.

Acoustic data will be presented for 5 speakers of English (2 male and 3 female), for 1 speakerof Arrernte (female), 3 speakers of Yanyuwa (1 male and 2 females) and 3 speakers of Yintjiparnti(1 male and 2 females). In addition, we will present locus equation data [Krull, 1987; Sussman et al.,1991; Tabain and Butcher, 1999] for the VELARS only for these 12 speakers, collapsing across all vowelcontexts. The slope value generated by the locus equation analysis [a regression analysis where theF2 onset (= consonant release) is treated as a dependent variable, and F2 for the vowel (in this case,as measured at the vowel midpoint) is treated as the independent variable] is deemed to provide anindication of the average amount of coarticulation across all vowel contexts for a given stop consonant(in this case, the VELAR). A value approaching 1.0 is deemed to indicate a high degree of coarticulationbetween the consonant and the following vowels, and a value approaching 0.0 is deemed to indicatea low degree of coarticulation. Both the raw F2 data and the locus equation data will be presentedin equivalent rectangular bandwidth (ERB) values. These values approximate the non-linear ‘warping’of the frequency spectrum by the human ear [Moore and Glasberg, 1996]. Frequency values in Hertzare converted into ERB values using the following formula:

(1) 21.4 × log10 (f × 0.00437 + 1)

where f is frequency in Hertz.It should be noted that all of the acoustic data come from real word tokens. The word lists were

designed to include all of the consonants in the language in all of the vowel contexts in each of word-initial, -medial and -final positions; however, the data were extracted not only from the target syllables,but from all of the syllables in the word list. This therefore led to a wide range of token numbers foreach consonant. In the data presented here, the number of tokens per consonant per speaker range from20 to 90, with the exception of the /d/ data for Yintjiparnti (for which there were fewer than 10 tokens


per speaker) and the /)/ data for Arrernte (for which there were about 130 tokens for the speaker).Additional data, for velar F2 onsets only, are presented for 1 male and 1 female speaker each ofWarlpiri, Guugu Yimidhirr, Bininj Gun-wok and Nyangumarta. These data were gathered from wordspronounced in exactly the same word list conditions as the previous 7 speakers. There were 3 tokensof each type. Formant values were measured using SIL Speech Analyzer (version 2.4) from spectro-grams such as those illustrated in figure 6.

Palatographic Data

The Single-DORSAL LanguagesThere have been two previous studies of Australian languages using direct

palatography. Jernudd [1974] focussed on LAMINAL articulations in (the Kunwinjkudialect of) Bininj Gun-wok and Anderson [2000] studied APICAL articulations in West-ern Arrernte. Jernudd [1974] also recorded (en passant) three examples of VELAR artic-ulations – /ke/ from 2 speakers and /ku/ from 1 speaker only. These are reproduced infigure 3, with the above-described tectal zones superimposed. Contact for these articu-lations extends quite far forward – this is particularly noticeable in the case of speakerM. In the back vowel environment the contact area extends almost to the front of theback-palatal zone at the midline and fully into the front-palatal zone at the sides for thisspeaker. In the front vowel environment, contact appears to reach up to and slightlyover the front palatal zone across the whole palate, although it is unclear exactly what


Fig. 3. Palatograms of initial VELAR sounds as articulated by 2 different male speakers of the samedialect of Bininj Gun-wok (Kunwinjku). Redrawn from original data of Jernudd [1974].

happens at the midline, where Jernudd [1974] has traced a broken line. In the case ofspeaker N, for whom there were no back vowel data, contact in the front vowel envi-ronment is similar to that presented below for our speakers as far as the forward edge isconcerned (fig. 5). Contact for this speaker covers only a very narrow area from frontto back, however, and is confined to the centre of the back-palatal zone. In this case,


Fig. 4. Palatograms and sagittal cross sections of VELAR articulations in non-FRONT vowel contextsin six Australian languages.

it seems quite probable that Jernudd’s [1974] broken lines represent lack of contact atthe midline in some repetitions, suggesting that there was no complete closure for thearticulations in question.

Selected data on DORSAL articulations in a total of seven ‘single-DORSAL’ lan-guages from across Australia are illustrated in figures 4 and 5 (six languages in each


Fig. 5. Palatograms and sagittal cross sections of VELAR articulations in FRONT vowel contexts in sixAustralian languages.

figure, but seven different languages in all). Some quantitative measurements fromthese palatograms are presented in table 3.

In figure 4 the consonants were produced with a following non-FRONT vowel.Notwithstanding possible differences in angle of view and so on, it is clear that thesearticulations are more retracted than in Jernudd’s [1974] single example of a non-FRONT

vowel environment. For all of these speakers contact extends no further forward thanthe border between the hard and soft palates, and in all but the Nyangumarta case,comes to within 2–5 mm of that line. The mean distance of the front edge of contactbehind this reference line is 6 mm, which is 13% of the length of the hard palate(as measured from the border of the velum to the edges of the first upper incisors).As might be expected, there is in no case any indication of how far back the contactextends. Thus for all the intervocalic tokens, including the back rounded vowel envi-ronment of Guugu Yimidhirr, these appear to be true (mid-)velar articulations [extend-ing to front-velar in the case of the Ngaatjatjarra (Western Desert) speaker]. It mayalso be noted that contact for the Arrernte speaker appears to extend quite far forward


Table 3. Position of front edge of tongue contact measured from palatograms shown in figures 3–7

Distances are measured at the midline and are expressed in millimetres relative to the borderline between theback palatal and front velar regions and as a percentage of the total distance between that line and the dental/post-dental border (0 = at the borderline, + = in front of the borderline, – = behind the borderline).

laterally on the undersurfaces of the teeth. By contrast, contact for the Nyangumartaspeaker at the midline may even be uvular. It is not clear whether this more retractedarticulation is a result of the word-initial environment or whether it is a general featureof the language or the area. It may be recalled that all the reports of retracted VELAR

articulations in the literature concerned languages from the west of Western Australia(Ungarinjin, Gooniyandi, Panyjima). In the case of the Warlpiri and Arrernte speakerscontact is less distinct towards the midline, indicating smearing due to movement of thearticulators or perhaps incomplete closure. In figure 5 the sounds were produced in theenvironment of FRONT vowels. For most of the speakers, contact for these allophonesextends forward to the midpoint of the mid-palatal zone, reaching to between 2 and4 mm of the front of that zone at the midline. The mean distance of the front edgeof contact forward of the velar/palatal border is 13 mm, which is 26% of the length ofthe hard palate. Once again, however, the Ngaatjatjarra (Western Desert Language)speaker has a rather more advanced articulation than the others, with contact in her caseextending right up to the front edge of the mid-palatal zone. For the Guugu Yimidhirrspeaker, on the other hand, contact for the initial /k/ before /i/ extends only 2 mm for-ward of the back-palatal zone. The Kuninjku (Bininj Gun-wok) /k/ following a fronthalf open vowel and followed by an open central /a/ is, not surprisingly, the leastadvanced of these articulations. Contact extends no further forward than the front-velar


Fig. 6. Palatograms and sagittal cross sections of VELAR articulations in two European languages.

zone at the midline, although, as with the Guugu Yimidhirr example, there is extensivelateral contact as far forward as the postalveolar area, which was absent in the backvowel environments. In these environments there is even more frequent indication ofincomplete closure (Nyangumarta, Guugu Yimidhirr) and possible movement of thearticulators (Warlpiri, Murrinh-Patha, Kuninjku).

For the purposes of comparison, palatograms of VELAR closures by speakers oftwo European languages are shown in figure 6 (AB is the first author). It is noticeablethat there is a much smaller degree of allophonic variation in contact area than is thecase for the Aboriginal language speakers. The contact for English /k/ in the front closevowel context is comparable with the patterns of Aboriginal speakers in a similar envi-ronment, extending sufficiently far forward to cover the entire back palatal zone at themidline (12 mm anterior to the velar/palatal border or 27% of the length of the palate).However, the contact area in the central open vowel environment is not much differentfrom this, although the contact is smeared and the rear edge appears to extend some-what further back (the front edge is 9 mm in front of the reference line or 20% ofthe palatal length). Contact for the German speaker in a similar (i.e. central vowel)environment extends halfway (3 mm or 7%) into the back palatal zone at the midline.Thus with English and German speakers contact for VELAR stops in a non-FRONT vowelenvironment does not appear to be as retracted as with Australian language speakers’articulations of similar sounds.

The Double-DORSAL LanguagesPalatograms of VELAR and PALATOVELAR articulations by a speaker of Yanyuwa are

compared in figure 7. It is evident that the contact area for the /k/ preceding /a/ is quitefar back: despite some uncertainty as to the location of the palatal border (see ‘Method’section above), this is quite clearly mid-velar or even uvular. For the PALATOVELAR inthe same environment, however, contact at the midline extends to the front edge of thefront-velar zone, with lateral contact extending as far forward as the postalveolar zone.On a static palatogram it is, of course, not possible to determine the timing of thislateral contact, i.e., to what degree it is a feature of the closure phase as opposed to theoffset or onset of the neighbouring vowels. However, there seems no doubt that thesearticulations cannot in any sense be described as palatal. In fact this speaker’s /k

+/ is

not as advanced as the fronted allophones of /k/ for some speakers of single-DORSAL

languages (fig. 5). Indeed contact extends only about 2 mm further forward at themidline than in her own articulation of /k/ before /i/, which is also firmly front-velar,also with lateral contact to the postalveolar zone. Comparison with the ALVEOPALATAL

contact pattern shows clearly that the latter involves a completely different articulation.Contact is in the alveolar and post-alveolar region, indicating that the tongue blade isthe likely articulator.

An Acoustic Comparison

In his acoustic analysis of Yanyuwa consonants, Bradley [1980] measured a num-ber of parameters in DORSAL sounds from recordings made by Ladefoged and Kirton.He found that mean values for F2 transition end points in non-FRONT vowel environ-ments grouped the VELARS together with (but always above) the LABIALS – around orbelow 1,000 Hz – and PALATOVELARS together with ALVEOPALATALS – between 1,500


and 2,000 Hz. Values for burst frequencies produced similar groupings. He also reportsthat /k/ is sometimes realized as [W] or [≥]: this was never the case for the PALATO-VELARS, which were found to have long silent closure duration and very long precedingglide transitions.

In figure 8, spectrograms of DORSAL articulations in three Yanyuwa words arecompared, together with one of two ALVEOPALATAL stops in a similar environment. Thedifferences between /|waka/ and /|wak

+a/ are very obvious, with a steeply rising second

formant and falling first and third formants clearly reflecting the diphthongal nature ofthe vowel preceding the PALATOVELAR (similar formant transitions were observed pre-ceding the PALATOVELAR NASAL in Tabain [1994]). As one might expect, the audible


Fig. 7. Palatograms and sagittal cross sections of VELAR, PALATOVELAR and ALVEOPALATAL articula-tions, as produced by a speaker of Yanyuwa.


Fig. 8. Wide-band sound spectrograms comparing VELAR, PALATOVELAR and ALVEOPALATAL stops aspronounced by a male speaker of Yanyuwa.

palatal on-glide of the Yanyuwa /k+/ is also the most striking spectral cue to the DORSAL

contrast. It is notable that this pattern is absent from the transition into the /k/ closure inthe sequence /|paki/. This suggests that, whereas movement from an [fl]-shaped vocaltract to an [R]-shaped one is taking place in both cases, it occurs before the closure in/ak

+a/, but during the closure in /aki/10. It is noticeable also that transitions preceding the

/k+/ closure are similar to those preceding the (second) /c/ closure in /ka|caca/ [because

the ALVEOPALATAL stop produces a somewhat fronted onset, the vowel allophones aredifferent, but the targets (F1: 460–500 Hz; F2: 2,000 Hz) and the duration (80–85 ms)are very similar], suggesting that a similar vocal tract movement is involved.

The results of our acoustic analysis of VELAR articulations are summarized infigure 9, which is a plot of mean F2 values [consonant release (= vowel onset) on thex axis, and vowel midpoint on the y axis] for 5 speakers of English, and 7 speakers ofthree Australian languages (1 speaker of Arrernte, 3 speakers of Yanyuwa and 3 speak-ers of Yintjiparnti). The VELAR consonant values are separated into FRONT, CENTRAL andBACK vowel contexts, while data for the other consonants (/b/ and /d/ in English, and/b dP d — Q/ for the Australian languages11) are collapsed across all vowel contexts. All ofthe Australian languages here have at least six places of articulation in the stop series.Although Yanyuwa contains the ‘7th’ place of articulation, the PALATOVELAR, thissound is not included in figure 9, given the description provided above. What we areinterested in here is how the ‘plain’ VELAR patterns in English, which has three placesof articulation, vs. these Australian languages, which have six places of articulation,given the hypothesis stated above that the large number of CORONAL places of articula-tion in Australian languages may restrict variability in the VELAR constriction location.

Table 4 gives the number of tokens for the VELAR consonant in each of the vowelcontexts. It shows that there are relatively few VELAR tokens in FRONT vowel contexts inthe Australian language data , whereas there are a lot more in the English data12. It canbe seen in figure 9 that for English, ‘gu’ (denoting the VELAR in the BACK vowelcontext) patterns with [b], and tends around 18 ERB (or about 1,350 Hz); however,in the Australian Aboriginal languages, the ‘gu’ patterns well below [b], and tendsaround 14 ERB (or about 800 Hz). There are some exceptions: for one of the Englishspeakers (MT, the second author), [b] patterns a little higher than ‘gu’, and for anotherEnglish speaker, RB, [b] patterns a little lower than ‘gu’. However, ‘gu’ still has amean value of around 18 ERB (±1 ERB). By contrast, ‘gi’ (denoting the VELAR in theFRONT vowel context) is a little more consistent across languages, with values tendingtowards 22–24 ERB (2,200–2,800 Hz). It is perhaps worth noting that while ‘gi’ and‘ga’ (denoting the VELAR in the CENTRAL vowel context) pattern together for most ofthe English speakers, this is not true for any of the Australian language speakers.In fact, ‘ga’ is roughly equidistant between ‘gi’ and ‘gu’ in the Aboriginal languages.


10 There is certainly a wealth of electropalatographic evidence for the latter kind of movement in English and otherEuropean languages [see, e.g., Butcher and Weiher, 1976; Butcher, 1989; Hardcastle et al., 1991].11 Although we have used the symbols for voiceless stops in Australian languages so far in this text, we use symbolsfor voiced stops in the comparisons with English (see footnote 4 above). We have chosen to compare the stops inAustralian languages with the VOICED stops in (Australian) English, since the VOICED stops in English are perhapsmore accurately described as ‘voiceless unaspirated’ (with the VOICELESS stops being more accurately describedas ‘voiceless aspirated’).12 It can be seen that for speaker RF (Arrernte) and YW (Yintjiparnti), there are no ‘gi’ data at all. Although thereare a (very) small number of words containing this sequence in Arrernte, unfortunately none was included in theoriginal word list. Yintjiparnti appears to have no autochthonous ‘gi’ words. The word measured was the Englishloanword piki-piki (= ‘pig’), which was omitted by YW (see ‘Discussion’ section for further comment on the rela-tive frequency of these sequences).

Q-


9

The English ‘ga’ tends around 21–22 ERB, whereas it tends around 18–19 ERB forthe Australian languages (i.e. around the value of the English ‘gu’).

Two-sample t tests conducted for ‘gi’, ‘gu’ and ‘ga’ showed significant differ-ences between the English data and the Aboriginal language data (pooled acrossspeakers). For ‘gu’, the mean F2 onset ERB value was 17.71 for English, and 14.47 forAustralian languages (t = 16.49, d.f. = 225.90, p < 10–15); for ‘ga’, the mean F2 onsetERB value was 21.81 for English, and 18.73 for Australian languages (t = 15.14,d.f. = 33.93, p < 10–15), and for ‘gi’, the mean F2 onset ERB value was 22.78 forEnglish, and 21.96 for Australian languages (t = 3.97, d.f. = 66.84, p < 10–3). In eachcase, the difference in means fell within the 95% confidence interval (2.85–3.62 for‘gu’; 2.67–3.49 for ‘ga’; and 0.41–1.23 for ‘gi’). The difference in means is thereforeconsiderably less for ‘gi’ than it is for either ‘gu’ or ‘ga’.


Fig. 9. Plots of mean F2 values for 12 speakers. F2 at consonant release is given on the x axis, and F2

at the vowel midpoint is given on the y axis. All values are in equivalent rectangular bandwidth (ERB)values. Data are collapsed across all following vowel contexts for all consonants except /)/. ‘gi’ givesF2 data for the VELAR stop in a following FRONT vowel context; ‘ga’ gives F2 data for the VELAR stopin a CENTRAL vowel context, and ‘gu’ gives F2 data for the VELAR stop in a BACK vowel context.‘D’ denotes the DENTAL stop, ‘d’ denotes the ALVEOLAR stop, ‘r’ denotes the POSTALVEOLAR stop, and‘j’ denotes the ALVEOPALATAL stop. Eng = English; Arr = Arrernte; Ya = Yanyuwa; Yi = Yintjiparnti.

Table 4. Number of /)/ tokens in the three vowel contexts presented in figure 9

See text for details of which vowels are included in each context.

Additional F2 onset data for four further Australian languages are given in table 5.These languages have only five places of articulation13, but it is clear that the sametrends are observed as in the three six-place languages for which we have more com-prehensive data. The values for /)a/ tend to be in the 18 to19 ERB range, whilst thosefor the back allophones are around 14 to 15 ERB, with speaker DW being a little lowerthan this. For the front allophones values are in the 22 to 23 ERB range, with speakersHK and EB being somewhat lower.

We turn finally to the locus equation data for /)/. Table 6 presents these data foreach of the speakers whose F2 data were presented in figure 9. It can be seen that theslope value for the English speakers tends around 0.7 (the exception is speaker RB,whose slope value is lower at 0.4, suggesting a much lower degree of coarticulation forthis speaker – indeed, the data in fig. 9 support this view), whereas for the Australianlanguage speakers the slope value tends around 1.0 (the exception is speaker RF, theArrernte speaker, whose slope value is lower at 0.8 – this was one of the speakers forwhom there were no VELAR data in the FRONT vowel context). These locus equationresults confirm our impression of greater allophonic variation for the VELAR in Aus-tralian languages than in English.

Discussion

Both palatographic and acoustic evidence indicates that Australian languagespresent a wide degree of allophonic variation in the realization of DORSAL VELAR con-sonants. In general, whereas articulations in FRONT vowel contexts are similar to thosein English, articulations in non-FRONT contexts tend to be much more retracted, and,


13 Warlpiri, Nyangumarta and Bininj Gun-wok all have /p t + c k/; Guugu Yimidhirr has /p tP t c k/.

Table 5. Additional F2 onset data from four Australian languages with five places of articulation

Values (in ERB) are means of 3 /)/ tokens in each of the three vowel contexts.

in the context of back vowels [pace Ladefoged and Maddieson, 1996], could even beuvular in some languages. It seems that Australian VELARS and English VELARS mayhave different articulatory targets and undergo different degrees of coarticulation withfollowing vowels. We have shown in this and previous studies [Tabain and Butcher,1999; Tabain et al., in press] that, whereas VELAR stops are always highly coarticulatedwith a following vowel, the degree of coarticulation in Australian languages is muchhigher than in English. Since the slope of the locus equation regression line for Aus-tralian /k/ + vowel combinations is consistently around 1.0, one could say that coartic-ulation is around 100% (whereas in English it is around 65%).

Figure 10 is an attempt to summarize schematically our results with regard to F2

trajectories. It will be recalled that VELAR allophones in Aboriginal languages aremore or less equidistantly spaced along the F2 onset continuum, and indeed the F2 onsetof each allophone corresponds very closely with the target for the following vowel,at approximately 22, 19 and 15 ERB. The three onset and target pairs are so far apartacoustically, and the members of each pair so closely aligned, that it seems likelythat there are three separate VELAR targets for the Australian languages. In English,on the other hand, the correspondence between F2 onset and vowel target is less close,although the vowel targets themselves, in terms of the mean F2 values for the FRONT,CENTRAL and BACK categories, are not dissimilar to those for the three Australian point


Table 6. Locus equation results for /)/

Note that ‘Locus’ and ‘Intercept’ values are given in ERB.

vowels, at 22, 19 and 16 ERB. Thus for the CENTRAL and BACK vowel groups, the F2

onsets of the English VELAR allophones are not particularly close to the followingvowel targets, and are in fact considerably higher, indicating a more anterior tongueposition in the mouth. The average BACK vowel target is around 16 ERB, i.e. 1–2 ERB‘further back’ than the corresponding VELAR allophone and the CENTRAL vowel target isaround 19 ERB – some 3 ERB away from the frequency of the corresponding VELAR

allophone at release. Furthermore, there is no clear separation between the onsetfrequencies for the CENTRAL and FRONT vowels, suggesting that, in the case of English,there are only two VELAR targets14 – a back target, where F2 is likely to be associatedwith a front cavity resonance and a non-back target, where F2 is likely to be associatedwith a back cavity resonance. We first discuss the relevance of these findings to theissue of the putative DORSAL contrast in certain Australian languages. We then turn to adiscussion of possible explanations for the differences between English and Aboriginallanguages in the way that velar consonants are realized.


Fig. 10. Schematic representation of F2 trajectories for VELAR STOP + VOWEL sequences in Englishand in Australian Aboriginal languages. Based on data from 5 speakers of Australian English,1 speaker of Arrernte, 3 speakers of Yanyuwa, 3 speakers of Yintjiparnti, 2 speakers of Bininj Gun-wok, 2 speakers of Guugu Yimidhirr, 2 speakers of Nyangumarta and 2 speakers of Warlpiri.

14 In the ‘Method’ section above we have drawn attention to the diphthongal pronunciation of /i/ by many AustralianEnglish speakers (i.e. with a more central on-glide), as opposed to the pure monophthongal targets of all theAboriginal vowels. It seems that this has had no discernible effect on our results, however, as (1) this was onlyone among five English vowel types included in the ‘front’ group and (2) any effect would be expected to be in theopposite direction from that which we have found, i.e., central allophones are more fronted than expected ratherthan front allophones being more centralized.

Velar Allophony and the DORSAL ContrastIt is arguable that the pre-existence of a wide range of VELAR allophony in Aus-

tralian languages might have facilitated the ‘split’ into two phonemes (in a small num-ber of languages, for a short period of time – possibly no more than a generation ortwo), along the same lines as it has been postulated that both APICAL and LAMINAL cate-gories split into two over a much wider area [see Dixon, 2002, pp. 561–565, 581–589].According to this argument, a change (coalescence) would have occurred from aninherently unstable sequence of two stops with high tongue body to a single hightongue body stop. In effect what were previously the allophones of /k, \/ whenpreceded by /c, &/ briefly became the phonemes /k

+, \

+/ with the disappearance of the

conditioning sound as a separate entity.It is perhaps worth noting that an articulatory modelling study of velar stop artic-

ulations by Perrier et al. [2003] has shown much greater instability in velar ‘loops’(the movement of the tongue body during velar stop closure) in the context of [i]as opposed to [a] or [u]. These loops are known to occur even when the vowels oneither side are the same: when the surrounding vowels are [a] or [u], the movement is aforward loop, whereas when the context is [i], there is greater variability in the trajec-tory of the loop. Perrier et al. [2003] present data suggesting that these differences aredue to the biomechanics of the tongue. They find that the tongue trajectories involving[a] or [u] are relatively insensitive to changes in the virtual target for the posterior velarstop (i.e. the stop consonant target that is assumed to exist beyond the palate), whereastongue trajectories involving [i] are very sensitive to changes in the virtual target forthe anterior velar stop [Perrier et al., 2003, use two different velar stop targets for theirmodel]. These results are in agreement with empirical data, for which there is muchgreater consistency across studies for [a] and [u] than for [i] [cf. Mooshammer et al.,1995; Hoole et al., 1998]. We might hypothesize that the relative instability of thefronted velar stop articulation in the context of a preceding ALVEOPALATAL may havecontributed to the development of the PALATOVELAR ‘phoneme’ in the small set of lan-guages discussed above.

In those languages for which it is possible to posit a contrast between VELAR

and PALATOVELAR categories, the latter sounds are characterized acoustically by aclear high front off-glide from the preceding vowel – even in some cases wherethe vowel itself is HIGH and FRONT. Thus, in articulatory terms, movement of thetongue body towards the front of the soft palate would appear to take place beforethe closure, allowing the articulation of the consonant closure to be relatively staticfront velar throughout. These sounds would thus remain articulatorily distinct fromallophones of /k/ followed by /i/, in which movement to the palatovelar positiontakes place during the closure itself. This distinction may not be maintained by allspeakers in the context of a preceding HIGH FRONT vowel, but our impression is thatit can be maintained in careful speech by some speakers of Yanyuwa and Garrwa, whomay also enhance the contrast by using a non-fronted /k/ allophone in this context.In Jingulu (and possibly other eastern members of the group) the fronted articulationcontinues into a distinctly ‘palatal-sounding’ release burst and indeed with most con-temporary Jingulu speakers the sound is indistinguishable from a realization of the /c/phoneme.

Although this is a plausible account of the phonetics of these two types of articu-lation, it does not provide an answer to the question of the synchronic phonologicalstatus of the glide + stop sequences, and the relationship between them: which is


allophonically conditioned by the other? The phonetic data admit of either of the fol-lowing interpretations:

(1) The sequence represents a unitary PALATOVELAR stop phoneme in oppositionto the VELAR stop. Therefore the glide must be viewed as an unavoidable consequenceof the articulatory transition from the preceding vowel to a consonant closure whichhas a static front-velar target. The phonetic diphthong is an allophone of the vowelconditioned by the following /k

+/ or /\

+/.

(2) The sequence represents a two-consonant cluster – ALVEOPALATAL + VELAR

/ck/, /&k/ or /&\/. Thus the initial target is the ALVEOPALATAL, the first element of thecluster, whose presence causes the following VELAR closure to be fronted (from theonset). The [k

+] or [\

+] is an allophone of /k/ or /\/ conditioned by the preceding /&/ or /c/

(normally lenited in the latter case to [j]).The historical and comparative evidence that the [j] off-glide arises from a lenited

ALVEOPALATAL stop is supported by our own observation of the occurrence of friction insome contemporary speakers’ articulations of these sequences in Garrwa (particularlyfollowing a HIGH FRONT vowel) and by the reported occurrence of actual alveopalatal +velar stop articulations in careful speech in both Yanyuwa [Jean Kirton, pers. com-mun.] and Jingulu [Pensalfini, 2003, p. 26]. If we add to this the spectrographic evi-dence of close similarity between the VC transitions for /c/ and putative /k

+/ in these

languages, it seems clear that the second alternative is the more convincing.

VELAR Allophony in English and Aboriginal LanguagesIn seeking an explanation for the striking phonetic differences we have found in

the constriction location for VELARS in English and Aboriginal languages, we look firstat the possibility of a correlation with the major differences between the respectivephonemic systems. Clearly the relevant factor here is that Australian languages havemore distinctions to maintain along the place-of-articulation dimension than does Eng-lish. Some previous research has suggested that the number of phonological contrastswithin a given articulatory space may be (inversely) correlated with the degree of coar-ticulation allowed in articulations within that space. Manuel’s [1990, 1999] work oncoarticulation in various African languages, for example, showed that vowel-to-vowelcoarticulation was limited in languages with more vowels as compared to languageswith fewer vowels, and in particular that this variability was limited by the demandsof phonological contrast. If a language contained both high-mid and low-mid vowels,the amount of vowel-to-vowel coarticulation for [a] was limited when compared to alanguage that contained only one type of mid vowel. However, other research on vowelinventories does not support the hypothesis that the number of phonological contrastshas an overall effect on the (acoustic) distance between vowel realizations. Livijn[2000], for example, studied 28 vowel inventories of various sizes and concluded thatthere was no evidence for an effect of inventory size on the acoustic distance betweenpoint vowels.

We could hypothesize that either the ‘crowding’ factor of five to six places ofarticulation or simply the presence of an immediate neighbour, and potential ‘competi-tor’, in the form of the ALVEOPALATAL category, might give rise to a more posteriorarticulation of the Australian VELARS. However, since the motivation for this wouldpresumably be to increase the gap between VELARS and their more anterior neighbours,one might expect such a ‘pushing back’ to produce either a wholesale shift of all VELAR

allophones, or to apply specifically to the front allophones, resulting in a narrowing of


the allophonic range through a retraction of the front edge of that range. As it is, ourresults appear to show a difference in quite the opposite direction – i.e., relative to theEnglish allophonic range, it is the posterior edge of the Australian range which isextended further back, whilst the front edges more or less coincide. It is only if we con-sider the BACK and CENTRAL vowel environments alone that we can argue that these areindeed acoustically much better separated from their ALVEOPALATAL counterparts inAustralian languages than they would be if Australian VELARS exhibited the sameallophony as English does. Back and central allophones of /c/ in Australian languagestend to have onsets around 20–21 ERB and ALVEOPALATALs are not highly coarticulatedwith the following vowel [Tabain and Butcher, 1999]. They thus present F2 trajectorieswhich are not dissimilar to those of English VELARS. By articulating back and centralVELAR allophones further back and tightly coarticulating them with the following vow-els, Australian languages are thus enhancing the distinction between these sounds andcorresponding allophones of the ALVEOPALATALs. English, on the other hand, has fewerconsonantal places of articulation to distinguish and maintains the distinction betweenthe VELARS and their nearest ‘competitors’, PALATOALVEOLAR /tE d//, through the latter’saffricated release with its characteristic high-frequency (ca. 26 ERB) spectral peak [cf.e.g. Stevens, 1998, p. 417]. By contrast, front allophones of /c/ in Australian languages,with onsets at around 23–24 ERB, are perhaps more easily confusable with their VELAR

counterparts, which leaves us with the question as to why front VELAR allophones inAustralian languages are not retracted in order to minimize the possibility of confusionwith their ALVEOPALATAL neighbours. Of course there may be other ways in which thecontrast is enhanced. We are well aware that we have concentrated heavily on the F2

parameters, whilst ignoring other measures, such as burst frequency and voice onsettime [see e.g. Engstrand et al., 2000]. However, in seeking to account for the anteriorconstriction location we suggest that two factors are worth considering, neither ofwhich are specific to Australian languages: (1) there may be acoustic reasons formaintaining the forward articulation of front VELAR allophones, and (2) there may belinguistic reasons why the maintenance of a phonological contrast is less crucial forVELARS followed by front vowels than for VELARS in other vowel contexts.

Firstly, a high F2 onset for a front VELAR is important as a cue to the velar place ofarticulation. A low onset followed by a high vowel target may run the risk of soundinglike an ALVEOLAR (or a BILABIAL), and given that the visual cues to the VELAR-ALVEOLAR

distinction are not as clear as the visual cues to the VELAR-BILABIAL distinction, this isto be avoided. The F3-F2 changeover point (in the region of 20 ERB) [cf. e.g. Stevens,1998, p. 145] may be crucial here, as an articulation retracted beyond this point rapidlyswitches to a low F2 onset15. It is noticeable that front VELAR allophones in both Englishand Australian languages are articulated well forward of this point. It appears to beimportant for the perception of any prevocalic VELAR consonant that F2 move downtowards the vowel target. In the FRONT vowel environments this maintains the distinc-tion from both BILABIAL and ALVEOLAR consonants, whose transitions rise towards thevowel target. By contrast, for the BACK vowels, the BILABIAL transition is rising andthe ALVEOLAR transition is falling, in the latter case quite extensively. Thus thefalling VELAR transition should not be too extensive in order to avoid confusion withthe ALVEOLAR, and this is best achieved if the VELAR is relatively back, at least behind


15 For a front VELAR, F2 is most likely associated with the back cavity resonance. By contrast, F2 for the back VELAR

is associated with the front cavity resonance.

the F3-F2 changeover point. In the case of the Australian languages, the back VELAR

allophones can be very retracted and in some cases the transition may end up level orrising. Theoretically this would run the risk of confusion with a BILABIAL, but pre-sumably in most circumstances visual cues would assist to distinguish BILABIALS fromother consonants. It is thus possible that, whereas the more back VELAR articulations inthe non-FRONT vowel contexts are maximizing the distinction between the VELAR F2

transition and the CORONAL transition(s), the ‘stationary’ VELAR articulation in theFRONT vowel context results from an avoidance of potential acoustic instability at theF3-F2 crossover point. In both the front and non-front contexts, however, the strategiesadopted serve maximally to distinguish the VELARS from the CORONALS.

Secondly, it is possible that the above-mentioned instability of front VELAR allo-phones plays a role in the relative frequency of occurrence of the various VELAR +vowel combinations. Previous studies of the cross-linguistic frequency of soundsequences [Janson, 1986; Maddieson and Precoda, 1992; MacNeilage et al., 2000]have indicated a strong preference for certain CV combinations amongst the world’slanguages and a corresponding disfavouring of others. Of particular relevance here isthe finding that VELAR consonants occur significantly less often before HIGH FRONT

vowels than before other vowels [Maddieson and Precoda, 1992] and that there is anapparently universal preference for combinations of DORSAL consonants with BACK

vowels, not only in the world’s languages, but also in the babbling of infants [Mac-Neilage et al., 2000]. Our own brief survey of word-initial combinations in five (quitewidely separated) Australian languages16 based on dictionary data shows similartrends. As 50% of vowels in initial syllables are /a/ (with /i/ and /u/ approximately 25%each), we might expect VELAR stop + vowel combinations to occur in the proportions/#ka-/ 50%, /#ku-/ 25%, /#ki-/ 25%. In fact we find the proportions are in the orderof /#ka-/ 45%, /#ku-/ 45%, /#ki-/ 10%, which suggests that Australian languages ‘dis-prefer’ the /#ki-/ combination17. A similar exercise using the CELEX database for(British) English [Baayen et al., 1993] shows that the percentage of vowels (groupedaccording to the criteria used in this study) occurring in initial syllables is: FRONT

67.5%, CENTRAL 17.0% and BACK 15.5%. Once again, however, initial VELARS are byno means equally distributed amongst these three vowel groups. If we pool voiced andvoiceless stops together, the proportions are (using the same shorthand as above):‘gi’ 38.6%, ‘ga’ 25.2% and ‘gu’ 36.2%. In other words the trend is the same as in theAboriginal languages – the number of VELAR + FRONT vowel combinations is almosthalf what is expected and the number of VELAR + BACK vowel combinations is morethan twice what would be expected. It seems likely that there are also perceptualgrounds for the relative sparsity of the ‘gi’ combination. Hume et al. [1999], forexample, found that in a forced-choice identification task, both Korean and AmericanEnglish listeners found /k/ less salient than either /p/ or /t/ in a FRONT vowel environ-ment, whereas in BACK vowel environments /k/ is more salient than the other stops.It seems logical to argue, as do Maddieson and Precoda [1998, p. 56], that there isa connection between the ‘instability/ non-salience’ factor and the ‘sparsity’ factor inthat, in many languages, a high proportion of ‘gi’ combinations would have changed


16 Nunggubuyu [Heath, 1981]; Nyangumarta [Sharp, 2003]; Pitjantjatjara [Goddard, 1996]; Warlpiri [Laughren andHoogenraad, 1996]; Yol\u Matha [Zorc, 1986].17 Note that a similar result is found for the VELAR nasals: /#\a-/ 58%, /#\u-/ 32%, /#\i-/ 10%. Compare, however,the figures for the LAMINALS: /#ca-/ 45%, /#cu-/ 32%, /#ci-/ 23% and /#&a-/ 46%, /#&u-/ 23%, /#&i-/ 31%, which aremuch closer to the ‘expected’ proportions, based on vowel frequency.

into ‘ji’ historically, thus leaving a dip in the statistics. Interestingly, however, althoughthe velar fronting ([ki]→[ci, çi, Ei]) type of sound change is well attested all over theworld, the change [ki]→[t

�i] occurs comparatively rarely in Australian languages18,

where the contrastive ALVEOPALATALS in almost all cases seem to have developed notfrom a VELAR, but from an original (undifferentiated) LAMINAL in a FRONT vowel envi-ronment. It is nevertheless arguable that, however it has arisen, the relative infrequencyof VELAR + FRONT vowel combinations means it is more crucial for distinctions to bemaintained between non-front VELAR allophones and those of potentially competingconsonants than between the corresponding front allophones.

We cannot, of course, exclude the possibility that the striking differences betweenEnglish and Australian languages in VELAR place-of-articulation allophony are unmoti-vated by any specific systemic or acoustic factors. Differences in allophony have beendemonstrated between dialects with similar phoneme systems within languages asdiverse as English [Kelly, 1995], Swedish [Livijn and Engstrand, 2001; Livijn, 2002],Korean [Cho, 2000], Arabic [Barkat-Defradas et al., 2003] and Yoruba [Przezdziecki,2000]. Thus there would seem to be no a priori reason why similar phonetic differencesbetween totally unrelated languages should not also be explained simply as examplesof learned behaviour, unmotivated by factors such as inventory size, acoustic distinc-tiveness or functional load.

Conclusions

We have shown that the range of constriction locations for VELAR stops in Aus-tralian languages is very different from that found in English and that the chief differ-ence lies in the fact that allophones of Australian VELARS before non-FRONT vowels arearticulated further back on the soft palate than the corresponding allophones in English.Australian VELARS also seem to be more tightly coarticulated with the following vowelthan their English counterparts. We have suggested that these two factors may havefacilitated a short-lived ‘dorsal split’ into VELAR and PALATOVELAR phonemes in a smallgroup of Australian languages. Why the allophonic range of VELAR articulations inthese languages should extend further back than in English is not entirely clear, but wesuggest a number of factors may be at play: (1) There may be a need to keep the VELARS

distinct from the neighbouring ALVEOPALATALS. Retraction of VELAR articulationsbefore non-front vowels would serve to keep those sounds distinct from the corre-sponding ALVEOPALATAL allophones. (2) There may be acoustic reasons for maintainingthe forward articulation of front VELAR allophones in both English and Aboriginal lan-guages, despite the increased risk of confusion with the corresponding allophones ofnear neighbours on the hard palate. We suggest that this may be to preserve the acousticidentity of the VELARS in terms of consistently falling F2 transitions. (3) The articula-tory and acoustic instability of front velar articulations and their lack of perceptualsalience may be the reasons why most languages appear to disfavour VELAR + FRONT

vowel combinations, thus reducing the functional load of these sequences. Moreresearch is clearly needed into the nature of dorsal articulations and the motivation forthe differences and apparent universals that we find. In particular, investigations of


18 However, some cognates from Queensland languages are noted by Dixon [1981, pp. 26f.], who remarks that ‘thisset of correspondences covers a large geographical area’.

these sounds in languages with widely differing consonant inventories would throwmore light on many of the issues we have raised in the present study.

Acknowledgements

This work was funded by a grant from the Australian National University Faculties ResearchFund to R.M.W. Dixon, by an Australian Research Council Large Grant to the first author andJonathan Harrington, and by an Australian Research Council Fellowship to the second author.Completion and revision of the paper were carried out while the first author was on study leave at theResearch Centre for Linguistic Typology at La Trobe University, Victoria. Grateful thanks are due toBob Dixon; to all of our language consultants – especially Dinny McDinny, Jerry Brown and the lateBella Charlie, the main Garrwa and Yanyuwa consultants; to Kevin Ford, of the then School of Aus-tralian Linguistics, Batchelor NT; to Bevil Staley, of the Northern Territory Education Department,and to Steve Saunders, of the Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science. We are indebted to GavanBreen, John McEntee, Rachel Nordlinger and 2 anonymous reviewers for comments on an earlier draftof this paper, but we take full responsibility for the final version.

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On the Back of the Tongue: Dorsal Sounds in Australian Languages

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