An acoustic study of pulmonic and ejective stops in final coda position in Yucatec

Abstract

This paper presents preliminary acoustic analyses of contrast between pulmonic and ejective stops in phrase final coda position in Yucatec, a Mayan language. Ejective sounds are found in about 16% of the world's languages, and there are a relatively large number of acoustic studies of these sounds. However, a significant empirical shortcoming of the previous studies is their exclusive focus on the acoustic realization of ejective sounds in syllable onset position. This is partly due to a cross-linguistic tendency prohibiting ejective sounds from occurring in syllable coda position. Data from Yucatec, which allows ejective sounds to occur in coda position, fill the empirical gap. Voiceless stop /k/ and ejective stop /k'/ were compared in phrase final coda position, taking a number of acoustic measurements. The results showed (1) stop release was shorter for the ejective, (2) stop closure was shorter for the ejective, (3) stop release noise intensity was higher for the ejective, and (4) coda type affected the voice quality of the preceding vowel (H1-H2 was higher for short vowels preceding the voiceless stop).