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Uvular rhotic weakening in Yiddish adjectival suffixesGuy Tabachnick, 2020, published scientific conference contribution abstract
Abstract: In traditional Yiddish dialects, the presence vs. absence of word-final rhotics after [ɜ] in adjectival suffixes carries a heavy functional load, making distinctions of gender, number, and case. Belk et al. (2019) note that some Yiddish speakers with uvular rhotics do not fully articulate them word-finally, endangering this crucial distinction and perhaps contributing to the loss of gender and case in the Yiddish of contemporary Hasidic communities. This study analyzes adjectival endings in publicly available recordings of for speakers with uvular rhotics. The majority of speakers generally do not produce an audible [ʀ] or [ʁ] before consonants, but the rhotic leaves its mark: for some, an underlying rhotic conditions higher F1 on the preceding vowel; others have lowered F2. F1 raising of [ɜ] can also occur when followed by the dorsal fricative [x/χ], suggesting that it is the uvularity of the rhotic that causes F1 raising; F2 lowering is limited to following rhotics, suggesting that this is a rhoticity effect. In addition, vowels followed by underlying coda rhotics are longer in duration. Results indicate that the rhotic triggers phonologized changes in the preceding vowel, while its own realization is weakened, perhaps to an approximant, and masked in the acoustic signal.
Keywords: Phonetics, Human voice, Phonology, Consonants, Vowel systems
Published in RUNG: 04.03.2024; Views: 319; Downloads: 2
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