An acoustic study of laringeal contrast in three American Indian Languages

Abstract

A contrast between modal and nonmodal phonation is commonly found in American Indian languages. The use of laryngealized voice has been reported in a number of languages from different linguistic families. This paper investigates the acoustics of laryngealized phonation in three indigenous languages spoken in Mexico, Yalalag Zapotec, Yucatec Maya, and Mixe. These languages differ in terms of the use of other features controlled by action of the larynx, i.e., tone. In Zapotec there is a contrast between high, low, and falling tones; Maya has phonemic high and low tones, whereas Mixe does not present phonemic pitch. The results show that the production of phonemic laryngeal vowels differs from language to language. The data suggest that the specific implementation of laryngealization depends in part on the relationship with contrastive tone. The patterns of the languages investigated provide new evidence of the possible synchronization of phonation throughout the vowel. With this evidence, a typology of modal/nonmodal phonation in phonation-synchronizing languages is proposed.