Abstract
Most of the Native American languages are severely endangered and lack detailed phonetic descriptions. Our research aims to document the sound system of Southern Ute, a Numic language of the Ute-Aztecan family spoken by approximately 40 elders in southwestern Colorado, for which only basic impressionistic descriptions are available in the published grammar of the language (Givon, 1980). In this acoustic study, we focus on Southern Ute vowels. We analyze over 6,000 vowel tokens produced by 8 fluent speakers and present our findings on a variety of vocalic processes in Southern Ute, including positional allophony, vowel harmony, as well as phonetic aspects of lexical stress and durational differences related to the phonological length distinction.
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