Abstract
The segmental phonology of a wide range of West African languages shows clear contrastive asymmetries between different positions within the prosodic stem—a stem defined by a fixed number of syllables and various other restrictions. Stem-initial positions are strong in that they support maximal systems of consonant contrasts. Non-initial positions are weak not just because they support fewer contrasts but also because the consonants that typically occur there form a rather small set that can be intuitively described as weak. The notion of relative consonantal strength is hard to define using standard feature classifications. However, it can be captured by drawing on the model of speech as a modulated carrier signal: the stronger the consonant, the greater the extent to which it modulates the carrier. Consonants that are non-initial in the stem form a natural class in that they perturb the carrier to a relatively small extent. This definition of consonant strength provides us with a direct way of modelling how segmental effects, alongside prosodic effects, are fully integrated into the more general phenomenon of positional prominence.
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Notes
- 1.
The phonetic symbols in (2c) suggest that the stops resulting from the neutralization of laryngeal contrasts in codas line up with the initial voiceless series in (2b). However, the unreleased realization of the coda archiphonemes makes it difficult to identify them with either the voiced or the voiceless initials. Urua notes that speakers may hesitate to make a choice: ‘In word final position /b/ is realized as unreleased, and may be perceived as a [p-]. Even for native Ibibio speakers, it is difficult to distinguish between [b] and [p] in word-final position’ (2000: 41–42). We have noted the same hesitation among speakers of other West African languages, e.g. Bamileke-Fe’fe’ (to be discussed in §3), and also Tibeto-Burman languages lacking a voicing contrast in word-final unreleased stops.
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Harris, J., Hyman, L.M. (2022). Segmental Prominence and the Modulated Carrier Signal. In: Ekpenyong, M.E., Udoh, I.I. (eds) Current Issues in Descriptive Linguistics and Digital Humanities. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-2932-8_35
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