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

Abstract

In this study, I present an acoustic analysis of contrast between pulmonic and ejective stops in the phrase final coda position in Yucatec, a Mayan language. Ejective consonants are found in about 16% of the world’s language, and there are a relatively large number of acoustic studies about these sounds. However, a significant empirical shortcoming of the previous studies is their exclusive focus on the acoustic realization of ejective consonants in the syllable onset position. This is partly due to a cross-linguistic tendency that ejective consonants are prohibited to occur in the syllable coda position. Therefore, data from Yucatec, which allows ejective consents to occur in the syllable coda position, fill the empirical gap. This study compared pulmonic stop /k/ and ejective stop /k’/ in the phrase final coda position taking a number of acoustic measurements. The results showed (1) stop release is shorter for the ejective, (2) stop closure duration is shorter for the ejective, (3) stop release noise intensity is higher for the ejective, and (4) the contrast between pulmonic and ejective stops affects the voice quality of the preceding short vowel (H1-H2 is lower for the short vowel preceding the ejective).