Phonetic structures of Aleut

Abstract

A detailed analysis of the phonetic structures of Aleut, a moribund language spoken in Alaska, shows how much general phonetic information can be gathered from the investigation of an endangered language. Aleut has an unusual distribution of consonants, with varying functional loads. There are no bilabial stops. Among alveolar, velar and uvular stops, VOT is shorter for alveolar than for velar or uvular stops, but, despite current general phonetic theories, there is no difference in VOT between velar and uvular stops. VOT is also longer before long vowels than before short vowels. Uvular consonants have a significant effect on the formants of following high vowels. There are three vowels and a vowel length contrast. Again, despite previous general phonetic predictions concerning languages with vowel-length contrasts, length plays a role in characterizing stress. Contrastive ratios are maintained between short and long vowels and stressed syllables are longer. Analyses of intonation show that each content word has a peak at its beginning and a trough at its end. Word contours combine with sentence downtrends to form sentence contours of cascading F 0, each word a step in the cascade. But, unlike the situation in other languages, yes/no questions have the same intonation contours as declarative sentences. Phonetic descriptions and measurements of general theoretical interest include C and V inventories, VOT measurements for coronal, velar and uvular stops, vowel-quality plots, vowel-duration measurements, question and declarative pitch tracks, pitch-track smoothing, and question vs. declarative sentence pitch medians.