An Articulatory and Acoustic Investigation of Kalanguya Consonants

Paul Julian SantiagoDepartment of Lingustics, University of the Philippines Diliman

paul.santiago@yahoo.com

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses the articulatory and acoustic properties of Kalanguya consonants. This study uses static palatography to determine the articulatory positions for coronal stops and acoustic analysis to describe some characteristics of certain consonants. Some remarkable findings of this study are as follows: (a) the places of articulation of coronal stops /t/, /d/, /l/ and /n/ are at dental and alveolar regions. (b) Glottal consonants of Kalanguya can be geminated and when geminated, the length is twice longer than the single glottal sound. (c) The voiced bilabial stop /b/ is labialized. (d) Finally, the voiceless plosive /k/ is uvular, which is rare in Philippine-type languages.

Keywords: acoustics phonetics, static palatography, Kalanguya, Austronesian, uvular consonants

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 Kalanguya Language

Kalanguya is a Philippine-type language spoken by the Kalanguya ethnic group living in the municipalities of Kayapa, Ambaguio, Aritao and Sta. Fe in Nueva Vizcaya, Tinoc in Ifugao and some parts of Benguet, Pangasinan and Nueva Ecija. Kalanguya is listed in the Ethnologue of SIL International as an alternate name of Kallahan. Other names of this language are Ikalahan, Kalangoya, Kalangoya-Ikalahan, Kalkali, Kayapa and Akab1. However, groups living in Kayapa and other parts of Nueva Vizcaya prefer the name “Kalanguya” for their language, which is an autonym derived from the phrase “Kelay ngo iya?”, which means “Why/What is this?.” [3] In 2000, the population of this indigenous group is approximately 70,000 excluding the group living in Pangasinan and Nueva Ecija2.

Figure 1 is a map of the area where Kalanguya is spoken obtained from Arsenio and Stallsmith [3].

1 http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=kak2 http://www.census.gov.ph/data/pressrelease/2002/pr0233tx.html, http://www.census.gov.ph/data/pressrelease/2002/pr0247tx.html, andhttp://www.census.gov.ph/data/pressrelease/2002/pr0228tx.html

Figure 1: Kalanguya language area map

This study will be useful not only in teaching the correct articulation of speech sounds to the younger generation of Kalanguya ethnic group but also in encouraging other linguists to use the methods performed in this study when documenting Philippine-type languages. This will also help Kalanguya teachers determine the similarities and differences of their language from other languages, such as English and Filipino, and create new strategies in teaching the children on how to make pronunciation adjustments when switching to these languages.

1.2 Kalanguya Phonology and Orthography

There are only few studies done on Kalanguya language and most of them focus on morphosyntax. Hohulin and Kenstowicz’s study on Keley-i phonology and morphophonemics gives a brief description of Keley-i phonemes and some phonological changes that occur in this language [8]. But this dialect of Kalanguya is slightly different from the dialect discussed in this paper. So far, there are no studies which deal with the acoustic and articulatory properties of this language.

There are 14 consonants in Kalanguya: p, t, d, k, g, b, m, n, ng, h, w, y, l and the glottal stop. A single glottal stop is not represented before vowel letters in word-initial position and in word-final

position. Hyphen is used as a representation of the glottal stop when in between a consonant and a vowel and when geminated (e.g. ok-ok, i-ogip). The consonant /h/ will be considered as a “true fricative” for the purposes of this study. It can occur both at the beginning and at the end of syllables and before consonants. This compensates for the lack of the fricative /s/ which is present in other Philippine-type languages.

Kalanguya has four vowels: a, e, i and o. The vowel “o” is pronounced as near-close near-back rounded vowel //. The word lists used in acoustic recordings and static palatography followed this orthography.

1.3 Current study

This study examines the articulatory and acoustic properties of Kalanguya consonants to (1) provide a complete description of the place and manner of articulation of certain consonants and to (2) designate the appropriate phonetic transcription of certain consonants based on the result of the palatography and still photography. Finally, (3) a new consonant inventory will be designed to serve as a guide for learners and speakers of the language when learning the pronunciation of the sounds and when shifting from their L1 to L2. This inventory will also be compared with Tagalog and English consonant inventory.

2. METHOD

2.1 Procedure

Two native speakers of Kalanguya, one male and one female, participated in palatography and still photography session. The palatographic techniques performed were exactly the techniques described in Anderson [1] and Ladefoged [9]. Palatograms were obtained by painting the speaker’s tongue with a non-toxic marking material which is a mixture of powdered digestive charcoal and olive oil. The speaker then uttered the word containing the target consonant, transferring the marking material from the tongue to the palate. Then a mirror was inserted into the mouth to reflect the contact area on the palate. This resulting image was photographed and videotaped. On the other hand, linguograms were obtained by painting the speaker’s palate, which transferred the marking material to the tongue when the word containing the target consonant was articulated. The speaker then put the tongue out to show the contact pattern on the tongue which was photographed and videotaped.

Figure 2: Set-up for palatography

Six native speakers participated in digital recording: three males and three females. All the participants were native speakers of Kalanguya and all came from Kayapa, Nueva Vizcaya. Thus only the Central Kalanguya dialect was analyzed in this study. They were recruited by a consultant who was also a native speaker of the language to make sure that the participants (1) were native speakers of Kalanguya; (2) did not show any sign of speech and voice disorder; and (3) belonged to the Central Kalanguya group. This last condition is vital because other dialects of Kalanguya might have a different phonological system. The participants’ ages range from 17 to 40 years old.

The recordings were made in a quiet room using PRAAT 5.1.12 mono sound recorder at a sampling rate of 44,100 Hz.

2.2 Stimuli

The stimuli used in this study were carefully selected by two consultants who were native speakers of Kalanguya. There were two sets of stimulus used: one for palatography and still photography and the one for acoustic recording.

In palatography, the participant uttered a word containing the target consonant. Only words containing non-high vowels were used to avoid multiple tongue-palate contacts. It is also important that the words used contain no other coronal or dorsal segments except the target segment. The consonants investigated were the coronals /t/, /d/, /n/ and /l/. Table 1 below shows a sample word list for these consonants.

Table 1: Static Palatography word list for Kalanguya coronal consonants

/t/ /d/ /n/ /l/

ˈpato “ ˈpadah ˈpana ˈpala

Still photography was also used to investigate the consonant /b/. This method was necessary because this consonant is articulated in a unique manner by Kalanguya speakers. A mirror was placed against the side of the face to get the front view and the side view of the lips simultaneously.

Figure 3: Photograph of a Kalanguya speaker. A mirror is placed at the side of the face to see the full and side view of the speaker.

Acoustic recordings of consonants /b/, /k/, /h/, and // were done by prompting the speakers to read the target words containing these consonants. These words were embedded in a frame sentence in Kalanguya “Ehel moy ni mamintalo” which means “Say three times” and were written in a piece of paper approximately one meter away from them. In addition to this, two productions of geminated /h/ and // were also recorded in order to examine the properties of these glottals when geminated.

2.3 Analysis

Palatography was performed to determine the place of articulation of the four coronal consonants of Kalanguya. Digital photographs of the palatograms and linguograms will be presented in section 3. Measurements were not necessary because the photographs alone were enough to show the palate and lingual contacts and determine the correct articulatory description of each coronal. The articulation of the consonant /b/ was also captured by a video camera to show the unique articulatory characteristic of the sound. The duration of the glottals when occurring as a single sound and when geminated was measured through spectograms and waveforms. For /b/ and /k/, formant frequencies were measured and spectograms were examined.

3. RESULTS

3.1 Kalanguya Coronal Consonants

Figure 4 to Figure 7 show the palatograms and linguograms of the four coronal consonants of Kalanguya: the stops /t/ and /d/ (Figure 4 and 5), the nasal /n/ (Figure 6) and the lateral /l/ (Figure 7).

Figure 4: /t/ Figure 5: /d/

Figure 6: /n/ Figure 7: /l/

The palatogram of the voiceless stop /t/ (Figure 4) shows that only part of the incisors was touched and that the rearmost point was the front of the alveolar ridge. The linguogram below shows that the most active articulator was the apex and front blade part of the tongue. Thus, the voiceless stop /t/ of Kalanguya may be classified as apico-laminal denti-alveolar.

Figure 5 shows the palatogram and linguogram of the voiced stop /d/. As can be seen, the back of the incisors was not touched and the rearmost point of contact was the front part of the alveolar ridge. The active articulator was the apex of the tongue. /d/ may be classified as apical alveolar. We can also notice that the tip of the tongue barely touched the alveolar region. This suggests that the contact of the tongue to the alveolar ridge is very fast.

The palatogram of the nasal /n/ (Figure 6) shows that the lower part of the incisors was touched and that the rearmost point was the front of the alveolar ridge. The linguogram below shows that the most active articulator was the apex of the tongue. Thus, the nasal /n/ may be classified as apical denti-alveolar.

For the lateral approximant /l/, no contact was made on the back of the incisors and the most active articulator was the apex of the tongue. The lateral approximant /l/ of Kalanguya can be classified as apical alveolar.

The articulatory data of Kalanguya coronal consonants are summarized in Table 2.

Table 2: Contact locations of Kalanguya coronal consonants

/t/ apico-laminal denti-alveolar/d/ apical alveolar/n/ apical denti-alveolar/l/ apical alveolar

3.2 Gemination of Kalanguya Glottal Consonants

One of the unique characteristics of Kalanguya glottal sounds is that the glottal fricative /h/ and the glottal stop // can be geminated. Other Philippine-type languages do not allow this kind of gemination. When geminated, the utterance of the glottal fricative /h/ and the obstruction of the airway in glottal stop are prolonged. This means that when the glottal stop // is geminated, the release is delayed. Figure 8 below shows the wide-band spectograms and waveforms of the single /h/ and geminated /h/, both occurring in between two low vowels /a/.

/ a h a /

/ a h a /

Figure 8: Wide-band spectogram and waveform of single and geminated /h/

In Figure 8, the duration of the single /h/ is 0.148 milliseconds whereas the duration of the geminated /h/ is 0.315 milliseconds. Moreover, the spectogram shows that the frication for the first /h/ is stronger than the second /h/. This means that when geminated, the frication becomes weaker at the second half of the utterance.

Figure 9 below shows the wide-band spectograms and waveforms of the single glottal stop // and the geminated glottal stop //. The

length of the single // in Figure 9 is 0.152 milliseconds whereas the length of the geminated // is 0.223 milliseconds or almost one and a half longer than the single //.

/ a /

/ a a /

Figure 9: Wide-band spectogram and waveform of single and geminated //

3.3 Voiced Labialized Bilabial Plosive / bʷ /

Several measurements and visual investigations were performed in order to describe the features of the voiced bilabial plosive of Kalanguya. Video photograph of a Kalanguya speaker uttering the sound /b/ intervocally is shown in Figure 10.

Figure 10: Kalanguya speaker uttering the word /ba/. Notice the rounding of the lips before the release of the sound.

The rounding of the lips is one of the articulatory features of labialization. Before unrounded vowels, the lips are rounded before releasing and uttering the following vowel. All the six Kalanguya participants pronounced the /b/ with the lips rounded even in word-final position.

Examining the formant transition provided more evidence for the claim that the Kalanguya /b/ is labialized. Figure 11 shows a spectogram of /b/ before /e/ with red dots indicating the formant frequencies.

/ e b e /

Figure 11: Wide-band spectogram of /b/ with the formant values indicated by the red dots. The F1-F2 was measured before the release of the burst and start of the stable region of the vowel.

In Figure 11, the F1-F2 value after the burst (start of the vowel region) is 480Hz-1004Hz and when it reached the stable region of, the F1-F2 value increased up to 633Hz-2266Hz. The F1-F2 values from the release of the burst to the stable region are plotted and shown in Figure 12.

Figure 12: Plot of the F1-F2 values of /e/ during the transition from high back (/u/) to low mid (e) in Kalanguya.

Figure 12 shows the transition of the vowel /e/ when preceded by the bilabial /b/. We can clearly see that after the release of the burst or the start of the vowel, the F2 value is relatively low and towards the middle of the transition, the F2 value increased until it reached the stable region of the vowel. The long transition from the high back region to the low mid proves that there is a secondary articulation involved when /b/ is articulated. Due to the rounding of the lips when articulating the bilabial /b/, the tongue is positioned at the back part of the mouth before uttering the unrounded front vowel /e/ and will take at least 0.3 milliseconds to reach the front region.

Labialization of consonants is marked by a diacritic ʷ. However, the symbol /b/ will be used instead of the symbol / bʷ / in the inventory due to the fact that it is not phonemically contrastive. The only purpose of placing the diacritic ʷ is to represent the secondary articulatory feature of this consonant.

3.4 Voiceless Uvular Plosive /q/

Uvular consonants are one of the less common consonants; 80.9% of all the languages surveyed in Maddieson [11] have no uvular consonants. Maddieson [11] also stated that uvular consonants are absent in Southern Asia including the Philippines. However, the acoustic investigation of Kalanguya suggests that the voiceless velar plosive /k/ is uvular.

One of the evidences that may verify the fact that Kalanguya /k/ is uvular is the vowel quality of the neighboring vowel. Lowering of F2 of the vowel preceded by the uvular plosive occurs due to the retraction of the back of the tongue root when the uvular is uttered. Figure 13 shows the wide-band spectograms of velar /g/ and uvular /q/. Notice the lowering of the F2 value of the vowel when preceded by the uvular plosive.

/ q e g e /

Figure 13: Wide-band spectograms of /qe/ and /ge/. A slight rise in F1 value and lowering of F2 are the effects of the uvular segment

to the low vowels.

Zawaydeh’s [14] acoustic analysis of uvularization in Ammani-Jordanian Arabic supports the idea of F2 lowering of the neighboring vowels. Table 3 shows the mean F1 and F2 values of the four vowels placed after the voiced velar /g/ and voiceless uvular /q/. It is evident that there is a rise in F1 value and lowering of the F2 value when vowels are preceded by the uvular plosive. /g/ /q/

vowel F1 F2 F1 F2a 534 1683 731 1324e 426 2056 673 1710i 340 2422 596 1820o 393 995 536 917

Table 3: Mean values in Hertz of the F1 and F2 for each vowel when preceded by velar and uvular plosive.

The results presented here remain suggestive. Further study such as spectral, cinefluorographic and perceptual analysis may help us clearly determine the differences between uvular and velar plosives.

4. DISCUSSION

4.1 Kalanguya Consonant Inventory

Figure 14: Kalanguya Consonant Inventory

The complete and precise consonant inventory of Kalanguya based on the results of the study is presented in Figure 14. The voiced bilabial /b/ is pronounced with the lips rounded and can also be phonetically transcribed as /bʷ/ to represent the secondary articulation involved when uttering the sound. Kalanguya lacks the alveolar flap // and the alveolar fricative /s/; both sounds can be found in other Philippine-type languages. The voiceless plosive /t/ is denti-alveolar and the voiced plosive /d/ is alveolar and not dental for when /d/ is articulated, the tip of the tongue does not touch the back of the incisors. The glottal fricative /h/ is considered as a “true fricative” in this paper due to the fact that it can occur both at the beginning and at the end of syllables and even before consonants. This compensates for the lack of the alveolar fricative /s/ in Kalanguya. Glottal consonants in Kalanguya can also be preconsonantal and can be geminated.

The consonant inventory can be used as a guide in teaching Kalanguya children the correct pronunciation of these sounds. With only 14 consonants, Kalanguya speakers have a lot of adjustments to do when shifting from their L1 to other languages. English has 24 consonants and almost half of these are affricates and fricatives, which are absent in Kalanguya. We cannot substitute the missing sounds with the existing consonants in Kalanguya because this will result to a localized variation of English (e.g. father will be mistakenly pronounced as pader and back will be pronounced as bwak as a result of the labialization of /b/). Kalanguya speakers will have an idea on how to articulate the English velar /k/ and the Tagalog dental stop /d/ if they know the articulatory differences between their L1 and these languages. The consonant inventory is also designed to help the teachers and students create new strategies in pronunciation adjustments.

Related studies such as stress and other prosodic features are recommended to further improve our understanding of Kalanguya phonology and phonetics. Other methods such as cinefluorography, electropalatography, spectral analysis and aerodynamic investigations may enhance the reliability of the findings in this study. An acoustic study on Kalanguya vowel space was also performed by the researcher and is currently under final revision.

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