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Communication dans un congrès Année : 2023

Neutralization of laryngeal settings of word-final stops in Buto languages

Résumé

In the word-initial position, Buto languages (aka Bena-Mboi) distinguish voiced, voiceless and implosive oral stops for the labial and coronal places of articulation and voiced and voiceless for the velar place of articulation. The same distinctions are also generally found in word-internal intervocalic position, albeit with some limitations. In the word-final position (in fact, syllable-final in general), all Buto languages neutralize this three-way distinction to a single value. The stops in the word-final position may be lexical or derived through the deletion of the final vowel in certain morphosyntactic contexts. Remarkably, lexical word-final consonants, especially oral stops, tend to be limited to words of minor word classes, such as adverbs. Buto languages vary as to how frequent such word-final consonants are in the lexicon and as to how general the morphosyntactic rules resulting in derived word-final consonants are. Of all the Buto languages, Bena and the closely related Laala appear to be the languages with the highest frequency of both lexical and derived word-final consonants. In non-prepausal positions, the phonetic outcome of the neutralization of word-final oral stops is generally similar across all Buto languages, viz. a stop whose laryngeal settings variably assimilate fully or partially to those of the following segment, of which the realization may also be affected by the stop. Before a pause, the realization of stops can be described (more or less felicitously) with the traditional term devoicing only in Kaan, while all other Buto languages appear to prefer the realization as a glottalized stop typically also lacking audible release, viz. something like [p͡ʔ ̚, t͡ʔ ̚] for the labial and coronal places of articulation and [k͡ʔ ̚] for the velar place, that is a value that does not coincide with any of the values found in the word-initial position, viz. [b, p, ɓ] and [t, d, ɗ] for the labial and coronal places of articulation and [k, g] for the velar place. I will adduce evidence that phonologically (that is, if we adhere to the phonemic approach requiring only one set of phonemic values across all positions) lexical word-final stops are implosives for the labial and coronal places of articulation, viz. /ɓ/ and /ɗ/, and voiceless stops for the velar place of articulation, viz. /k/. This outcome is interesting both typologically, as it appears that it has not been acknowledged as such in the literature so far, and practically in terms of orthography development. In the latter perspective, I will provide concomitant evidence from an orthography development attempt by a non-linguist native speaker of Bena that indeed Bena speakers do not perceive this neutralization through glottalization as devoicing and the neutralization is perceived differently for velar and non-velar stops.
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Dates et versions

halshs-04248560, version 1 (18-10-2023)

Licence

Paternité - Pas d'utilisation commerciale - CC BY 4.0

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  • HAL Id : halshs-04248560 , version 1

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Dmitry Idiatov. Neutralization of laryngeal settings of word-final stops in Buto languages. 2nd Adamawa Conference, LLACAN, Sep 2023, Paris, France. ⟨halshs-04248560⟩
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Dernière date de mise à jour le 28/04/2024
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