Preliminary acoustic descriptions of the pharyngeals and sosterior plosives of Northern Haida

Abstract

Haida is a highly endangered language spoken on the archipelago of Haida Gwaii, off the coast of British Columbia, as well as in communities in Southeast Alaska. Like many languages of the Northwest Coast, Haida plosives include three manners of articulation: voiceless aspirated, voiceless unaspirated, and ejective. Analysis of recordings indicates that the Voice Onset Time of the posterior aspirated and ejective stops is nearly identical. It appears that these speech sounds differ primarily in their acoustic intensities, and a new measure called Burst Intensity Slope is proposed to quantify this difference. In addition, the Northern dialect has been described as including pharyngeal speech sounds (e.g., Krauss 1979, Enrico 1991); however, only one small acoustic study has been conducted to verify this (Bessell 1993). Using recordings of a small number of speakers, this paper aims to document the different types of pharyngeals using acoustic measurements. Of special interest is the pharyngeal plosive of Massett Haida, which often includes what appears to be concomitant aryepiglottal trilling (“growl voice”). This will be investigated by comparing the number of zero-count crossings with those of other types of plosives and vowels produced by the same speakers.