![]() The investigation of such matters bears on theories that propose language-specific influences on gestural target setting ( Keating, 1990 Guenther, 1995).Īn open research question in Articulatory Phonology and Task Dynamic approaches is whether gestural targets are to be construed as single points ( Saltzman & Munhall, 1989) or as ‘windows’ or ‘ranges’ of targets ( Keating, 1990). Nevertheless, allophonic stop lenition patterns are widely reported in descriptions of Australian languages, and raise the question of exactly how the parametric space of ‘manner of articulation’ is utilized within Australian languages. In all other dimensions, they are impoverished: Most possess just a single obstruent series, with no contrast in laryngeal features, length, or between stops and fricatives ( Busby, 1980 Evans, 1995). In one dimension, they host an abundance of place of articulation contrasts, particularly in the coronal region, and these are increasingly well understood ( Anderson & Maddieson, 1994 Bundgaard-Nielsen et al., 2012, 2015 Butcher, 1995 Proctor et al., 2010 Tabain & Butcher, 2015 Tabain & Rickard, 2007). The phonemic obstruent systems of Australian languages are systems of contrasting extremes. Precisely comparable studies of additional languages will be especially valuable in addressing these questions and others, and are possible using the method we introduce. It is an open question to what degree the patterns found in Gurindji are language particular, or can be related to the organization of obstruent systems in Australian languages more broadly. Taken together, the observed lenition, duration, and peak intensity velocities are argued to be inconsistent with a single, fully-occluded articulatory ‘stop’ target which is undershot at short durations, rather targets can be understood to span a range or ‘window’ of values in the sense of Keating (1990), from fully-occluded stop-like targets to more approximant-like targets. No significant effect is found of preceding or following vocalic environment. Contrary to expectations, no evidence is found of a positive effect on lenition due to word-medial (relative to word-initial) position, beyond that attributable to duration nor do non-coronals lenite more than their apical counterparts, which freely lenite along a continuum towards taps. The degree of stop lenition is found to vary widely. ![]() It is then applied to the phonemic stops of casual speech in Gurindji (Pama-Nyungan, Australia) to investigate the nature of their articulatory targets. ![]() ![]() The method is motivated with respect to the relationship between acoustic and articulatory phonetics and, through subsequent evaluation, is argued to correspond well to articulation. An automated method is presented for the commensurable, reproducible measurement of duration and lenition of segment types ranging from fully occluded stops to highly lenited variants, in acoustic data. ![]()
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