Acoustic Realization and Inventory Size: Kannada and Malayalam Alveolar/Retroflex Laterals and /ɻ/

This study examines formant and spectral moment data for the apical and retroflex lateral sounds /l ɭ/ of the Dravidian languages Kannada and Malayalam, together with the rhotic /ɻ/ of Malayalam. Data are presented for 10 male speakers of each language. We find that the first spectral moment is lower for retroflex laterals than for alveolar laterals, and lower for the rhotic /ɻ/ of Malayalam than for the retroflex lateral in the same language. Differences emerge when the retroflex lateral of Kannada is compared with the same sound in Malayalam. For both languages, F1 is higher and F3 and F4 are lower for the retroflex /ɭ/ than for the alveolar /l/. However, F2 is higher for the retroflex than for the alveolar sound in Kannada, but lower in Malayalam. This difference is also reflected in differences in the second spectral moment between the languages. It is suggested that since proximity of F2 and F3 is known to be a defining feature of the rhotic /ɻ/ in Malayalam, principles of phonetic dispersion apply to keep F2 from becoming too close to F3 for the retroflex lateral /ɭ/ of Malayalam, but not for the same sound in Kannada.

[1]  Claire Nance,et al.  Phonetic variation in Scottish Gaelic laterals , 2014, J. Phonetics.

[2]  P. Milenkovic,et al.  Statistical analysis of word-initial voiceless obstruents: preliminary data. , 1988, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[3]  Miquel Simonet,et al.  Dark and clear laterals in Catalan and Spanish: Interaction of phonetic categories in early bilinguals , 2010, J. Phonetics.

[4]  John Local,et al.  F2 variation in Newcastle and Leeds English liquid systems , 2007, Journal of the International Phonetic Association.

[5]  Harold F. Schiffman,et al.  The Tamil Liquids , 1980 .

[6]  Edward Carney,et al.  Course notes and workbook for introduction to sound : acoustics for the hearing and speech sciences , 1992 .

[7]  R B Thosar,et al.  Synthesis by Rule of Some Retroflex Speech Sounds , 1971, Language and speech.

[8]  M. Tabain,et al.  An acoustic study of multiple lateral consonants in three Central Australian languages. , 2016, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[9]  Paul Carter,et al.  Phonetic Interpretation Papers in Laboratory Phonology VI: Extrinsic phonetic interpretation: spectral variation in English liquids , 2004 .

[10]  Harold F. Schiffman.  A reference grammar of spoken Kannada , 1985 .

[11]  M. Garellek,et al.  Malayalam (Namboodiri Dialect) , 2016, Journal of the International Phonetic Association.

[12]  D.N.S. Bhat.  Retroflexion: An Areal Feature. Working Papers on Language Universals, No. 13. , 1973 .

[13]  Daniel Recasens,et al.  A cross-language acoustic study of initial and final allophones of /l/ , 2012, Speech Commun..

[14]  Coarticulations and Coronals in Malayalam , 1998 .

[15]  Bhadriraju Krishnamurti,et al.  The Dravidian Languages , 2003 .

[16]  A. Gelman.  Analysis of variance: Why it is more important than ever? , 2005, math/0504499.

[17]  T. Balasubramanian.  Intervocalic double nasal and lateral consonant articulations in Tamil , 1982 .

[18]  Reenu Punnoose,et al.  An auditory and acoustic study of liquids in Malayalam , 2011 .

[19]  A. Simpson,et al.  PHONETIC IMPLEMENTATION OF GEMINATES IN MALAYALAM NOUNS , 1999 .

[20]  Shrikanth S. Narayanan,et al.  Geometry, kinematics, and acoustics of Tamil liquid consonants. , 1999, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[21]  Andrzej T. Galecki,et al.  Linear mixed-effects models using R , 2013 .

[22]  P. Ladefoged,et al.  The sounds of the world's languages , 1996 .

[23]  Ghada Khattab,et al.  The Contested Fifth Liquid in Malayalam: A Window into the Lateral-Rhotic Relationship in Dravidian Languages , 2014, Phonetica.

[25]  Sam Kirkham,et al.  Ethnicity and phonetic variation in Sheffield English liquids , 2016, Journal of the International Phonetic Association.

[26]  T. Mohanan,et al.  Lexical phonology of the consonant system in Malayalam , 1984 .

[27]  S. Manuel,et al.  The role of contrast in limiting vowel-to-vowel coarticulation in different languages. , 1990, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[28]  Keith Johnson,et al.  Tamil liquids: An investigation into the basis of the contrast among five liquids in a dialect of Tamil , 1997, Journal of the International Phonetic Association.

[29]  Robert Dixon,et al.  The languages of Australia , 1980 .

[30]  Anthony Jukes,et al.  Stress Effects on Stop Bursts in Five Languages , 2016 .