- Title
- Rhotic contrasts in Arabana
- Creator
- Harvey, Mark; Carne, Michael; Chen, Juqiang; Luk, Ellison; Strangways, Sydney; Stockigt, Clara; Mailhammer, Robert
- Relation
- 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Proceedings of 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (Melbourne 05-09 August, 2019) p. 1278-1282
- Relation
- ARC.DP140100863 http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DP140100863
- Publisher
- Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association
- Resource Type
- conference paper
- Date
- 2019
- Description
- Arabana has a three-way rhotic phoneme contrast: /r/(alveolar trill) vs /ɾ/ (alveolar tap) vs /ɻ/ (retroflex continuant). The rhotic contrasts are prosodically restricted in Arabana. The triple contrast only appears following the tonic vowel, which is the first vowel. In other onset positions /ɻ/ is contrastive, but there is no /r/ vs /ɾ/ contrast. There is no contrast in coda positions. We undertook the first-ever production study of Arabana rhotics. Recorded audio materials were independently coded in PRAAT by two trained transcribers. We found the following allophony: /r/ [r, ɾ, ɹ]; /ɾ/ [ɾ, ɹ], /ɻ/ [ɻ]. The /r/ vs /ɾ/ contrast is thus negatively determined, /r/ permits [r] realizations, but /ɾ/ does not. The commonest realization of both /r/ and /ɾ/ is [ɹ]. The phoneme in neutralized coda position is /r/. The high degree of overlap in realizations between /r/ and /ɾ/ accords with reported perception difficulties.
- Subject
- rhotic contrasts; Arabana; tonic vowel; first vowel
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1460377
- Identifier
- uon:45950
- Identifier
- ISBN:9780646800691
- Language
- eng
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