Voiceless vowels in Miyako

Abstract

The present study investigates the nature of vowel devoicing in Miyako, a Ryukyuan language spoken on remote Japanese islands near Taiwan. High vowels in Japanese are commonly described as being devoiced after voiceless consonants in two environments: 1) before a voiceless consonant, 2) at the end of a word (Shibatani 1990). Being a Japonic language, Miyako is also described as having a similar phenomenon but devoices all vowels in its phonemic inventory /i, ɨ, ɑ, u/ (Hayashi 2013). Data from several speakers suggests that there may be cases of vowel deletion as well. Current data suggest vowel deletion between two voiceless consonants, creating the potential for consonant clusters in Miyako—something that is said not to occur in Japanese. The acoustic nature of voiceless vowels in Miyako is investigated using both elicited data and discourse data. Data were collected from the Ikema Island community, limiting data to the Ikema dialect. Data were analyzed in Praat to determine whether potential voiceless vowels are indeed devoiced or deleted. The present investigation contributes to our overall understanding of the nature of vowel devoicing/deletion in a highly under-documented language Miyako and Ryukyuan languages in general.