Palatalization and tongue root harmony in Mongolian

Abstract

Khalkha Mongolian exhibits Tongue Root harmony, in which vowels in a word share specification of root features, as well as vowel fronting in the environment of palatalized consonants. This paper examines the interaction of the two processesof interest because the acoustic cues for tongue root harmony and palatalization oppose one another. Vowels in tongue root harmony systems are categorized by tongue root position, which triggers changes in F1. Advanced Tongue Root (ATR)corresponds to a decreased F1 (see Starwalt, 2008), while Retracted Tongue Root (RTR), active in Mongolian, corresponds to increased F1 (Svantesson, 1985). Meanwhile, a primary cue of palatalization is raised F2. In Mongolian, palatalized consonants contrast only in RTR words. Palatalized consonants front adjacent vowels, which exhibit increased F2 and decreased F1. These adjacent vowels are therefore targets for both F1 raising attributable to RTR and F1 lowering due to palatalization. The specific correlates of such vowels have not been previously reported, however. Thus, using data from a corpus of six Khalkha Mongolian speakers recorded in a laboratory setting, this paper reports on the acoustic correlates of RTR in Mongolian vowels in the context of palatalization.