Less Stress, Less Pressure, Less Voice

Abstract

In this paper, I provide an analysis of Tohono O'odham vowel devoicing with respect to physiological explanation. There are three points in this paper. First, this paper provides data of devoicing (consonants and vowels) in Tohono O'odham. Second, analysis of devoicing in terms of subglottal pressure drop is provided. Third, the devoicing is accounted for within the framework of OT (McCarthy and Prince 1993, Prince and Smolensky 1993). The organization of the paper is as follows. In section 2, the background of the language including both voiced and voiceless vowels is described. In section 3, the data of Tohono O'odham words with voiceless vowels are provided. Then the distribution of devoiced segments is discussed. In section 4, an analysis of devoicing with respect to subglottal pressure drop is presented with schematic diagrams. Then an OT account utilizing phonetic constraints is presented.