Bora's high vowels involve a two-way dental contrast, not a three-way backness contrast

Abstract

The Bora language of Peru has six phonemic vowels, conventionally transcribed as /i ε a o ɨ ɯ/. This inventory is noteworthy since it appears to exhibit a three-way backness distinction among three high unrounded vowels. In this paper we present audiovisual data which confirms two significant facts: (1) /ɯ/ is high, back, and unrounded; and (2) the only vowel produced with lip rounding is /o/. However, the experiment further reveals that the Bora segment traditionally written /ɨ/ is actually not central but rather a possibly novel type of front vowel, articulated with substantial contact between the tongue and both the upper and lower teeth. We use the methodology of Iskarous (2010) to estimate vocal tract area functions for Bora vowels based on their observed formant frequencies and amplitudes. The results of this procedure support our claim that /ɨ/ is front and /ɯ/ is back. Several phonological alternations also motivate this characterization. The opening of the mouth and dental contact visible in the production of /ɨ/ are correlated with its acoustic measurements, albeit in a previously undocumented way. We conclude that Bora’s /ɨ/ should be reclassified as /i̪/ – front and dental.p { line-height: 115%; text-align: left; orphans: 2; widows: 2; margin-bottom: 0.1in; direction: ltr; background: transparent }