Arsenault, PaulDr. Paul Arsenault is Associate Professor of Linguisticshttps://digitalcollections.tyndale.ca/handle/20.500.12730/9622024-03-28T21:19:43Z2024-03-28T21:19:43ZKalasha (Bumburet Variety)Kochetov, Alexei, 1967-Arsenault, PaulHeegård Petersen, JanKalas, SikandarKalash, Taj Khanhttps://digitalcollections.tyndale.ca/handle/20.500.12730/24462023-04-12T21:53:22Z2021-12-01T00:00:00ZKalasha (Bumburet Variety)
Kochetov, Alexei, 1967-; Arsenault, Paul; Heegård Petersen, Jan; Kalas, Sikandar; Kalash, Taj Khan
2021-12-01T00:00:00ZAcoustics of Kalasha LateralsKochetov, Alexei, 1967-Heegård Petersen, JanArsenault, Paulhttps://digitalcollections.tyndale.ca/handle/20.500.12730/19872022-12-03T22:06:54Z2020-01-01T00:00:00ZAcoustics of Kalasha Laterals
Kochetov, Alexei, 1967-; Heegård Petersen, Jan; Arsenault, Paul
Kalasha, a Northwestern Indo-Aryan language spoken in a remote mountainous region of Pakistan, is relatively unusual among languages of the region as it has lateral approximants contrasting in secondary articulation—velarization and palatalization (/_/ vs /lj/). Given the paucity of previous phonetic work on the language and some discrepancies between descriptive accounts, the nature of the Kalasha lateral contrast remains poorly understood. This paper presents an analysis of fieldwork recordings with laterals produced by 14 Kalasha speakers in a variety of lexical items and phonetic contexts. Acoustic analysis of formants measured during the lateral closure revealed that the contrast was most clearly distinguished by F2 (as well as by F2-F1 difference), which was considerably higher for /lj/ than for /_/. This confirms that the two laterals are primarily distinguished by secondary articulation and not by retroflexion, which is otherwise robustly represented in the language inventory. The laterals showed no positional differences but did show considerable fronting (higher F2) next to front vowels. Some inter-speaker variation was observed in the realization of /_/, which was produced with little or no velarization by older speakers. This is indicative of a change in progress, resulting in an overall enhancement of an otherwise auditorily vulnerable contrast
2020-01-01T00:00:00ZTwo Types of Retroflex Harmony in Kalasha: Implications for Phonological TypologyArsenault, PaulKochetov, Alexei, 1967-https://digitalcollections.tyndale.ca/handle/20.500.12730/15802022-07-04T14:37:11Z2022-01-01T00:00:00ZTwo Types of Retroflex Harmony in Kalasha: Implications for Phonological Typology
Arsenault, Paul; Kochetov, Alexei, 1967-
Baart, Joan L. G. (Editor); Liljegren, Henrik (Editor); Payne, Thomas Edward, 1951- (Editor)
Recent cross-linguistic surveys by Hansson (2001; 2010) and Rose & Walker (2004) have revealed that consonant harmony systems exhibit unique typological properties that set them apart from other assimilation patterns including vowel and vowel-consonant harmony systems. This has been taken as evidence for the hypothesis that there are two distinct mechanisms of assimilation at work in languages, feature/gesture repetition (or “agreement”) and extension (or “spreading”), each with its own functional underpinnings and associated typological properties. The properties that are most characteristic of consonant harmony systems are those that are said to arise from feature repetition. They include: (i) an inherent bias toward regressive directionality; (ii) transparency of intervening segments; and (iii) sensitivity to the similarity of interacting segments. This paper presents a case study of retroflex assimilation in Kalasha, a Dardic language of northern Pakistan, and argues that the evidence from Kalasha provides support for the typological distinction between feature repetition and gesture extension. Kalasha has a (typologically rare) phonological inventory in which retroflex stops, affricates, fricatives and vowels contrast with their non-retroflex counterparts. Moreover, Kalasha exhibits two distinct patterns of long-distance retroflex assimilation: retroflex consonant harmony and retroflex vowel (or vowel-consonant) harmony. Using statistics calculated over the Kalasha lexicon (based on Trail & Cooper 1999) and historical-comparative data, the study documents a pattern of retroflex consonant harmony that is regressive, skips intervening vowels (i.e., “transparency”) and is highly sensitive to the similarity of interacting consonants. It applies to pairs of coronal obstruents that agree in manner of articulation (i.e., two stops, two affricates or two fricatives) but not to pairs with different manners of articulation (i.e., stop-affricate, stop-fricative and some affricate-fricative pairs). This is contrasted with the pattern of retroflex vowel harmony described by Heegård & Mørch (2004), which is primarily progressive (but potentially bi-directional) and does not show clear evidence of similarity or transparency effects. It applies to any pair of vowels and can even target intervening coronal consonants (e.g., /a˞in/ → [a˞i˞n] ~ [a˞i˞ɳ] ‘millet’). The Kalasha case study makes two important contributions. First, Kalasha provides unambiguous evidence for the role of similarity in retroflex consonant harmony systems. This is significant because most previously documented cases of retroflex consonant harmony are ambiguous in this respect. Second, Kalasha is the only language known to exhibit both retroflex consonant and retroflex vowel harmony. The coexistence of two patterns of retroflex harmony in the same language, each with a distinct set of typological properties, lends support to the hypothesis that two independent mechanisms of assimilation are at work: feature/gesture repetition and extension.
2022-01-01T00:00:00ZRetroflex Consonant Harmony: An Areal Feature in South AsiaArsenault, Paulhttps://digitalcollections.tyndale.ca/handle/20.500.12730/10072021-09-24T15:19:03Z2015-01-01T00:00:00ZRetroflex Consonant Harmony: An Areal Feature in South Asia
Arsenault, Paul
Retroflexion is a well-known areal feature of South Asia. Most South Asian languages, regardless of their genetic affiliation, contrast retroflex consonants with their non-retroflex dental counterparts. However, South Asian languages differ in the phonotactic restrictions that they place on retroflex consonants. This paper presents evidence that a large number of South Asian languages have developed a co-occurrence restriction on coronal obstruents that can be described as retroflex consonant harmony. In these languages, roots containing two non-adjacent coronal stops are primarily limited to those with two dentals (T...T) or two retroflexes (T...T), while those containing a combination of dental and retroflex stops are avoided (*T...T, *T...T). Historical-comparative evidence indicates that long-distance retroflex assimilation has contributed to the development of this phonotactic pattern (T...T → T...T). In addition, the paper demonstrates that the distribution of languages with and without retroflex consonant harmony is geographic in nature, not genetic. Retroflex consonant harmony is characteristic of most languages in the northern half of the South Asian subcontinent, regardless of whether they are Indo-Aryan, Dravidian or Munda (but not Tibeto-Burman). It is not characteristic of IndoAryan and Dravidian languages in the south. Thus, retroflex consonant harmony constitutes an areal feature within South Asia.
2015-01-01T00:00:00Z