An acoustic description of Maku vowels.

Abstract

Maku is believed to have originated in Venezuela and migrated into Brazil in the 19th century though there are no longer believed to be any living speakers. Field recordings of a single adult male speaker made in 1953 and 1965 by Migliazza [1978] are used in the current project for an acoustic analysis of the phonemic vowel inventory of Maku. Early impressions of the vowel space indicate five to seven vowels: /i, ī, u, e, o, a/ as well as the areally unique /y/, with possible length and nasal/oral vowel distinctions. All vowels and their surrounding context in the original recordings were identified and coded. Vowel duration and values for the first three formants at 25%, 50%, and 75% through the vowel were extracted. Vowel categories were modeled from formant values using conditional inference trees [Hothorn et al. (2006)]. These models showed the likelihood of five vowel categories on the basis of the formant measures as well as the length of the vowel segment. Additional analyzes focus on consonantal context, word position, stress and pitch. The acoustic data are also used to reconstruct the vowel space from the bottom up without the influence of investigators’ perceptual judgment.