Stiff Voice/Slack Voice

David L. White dlwhite at texas.net
Tue May 1 16:24:20 UTC 2001


> "Creaky" vs "breathy" (normal) vowel register is common

        I believe creaky vs. breathy (not normal) vowel register is common.
This the "stiff-voice"/"slack-voice" contrast discussed by Ladefoged and
Maddieson.  Slack voice is not what we would call normal, and what LM call
"modal phonation".  So yes, there are languages without modal phonation of
vowels.  (There is an example or two on the UCLA database, for those who may
want to hear what such things sound like.)
        There is, strangely enough, an IE relevance beyond the development
of Sanskrit, and that is that (as I have metioned before) if PIE had this
contrast of vowel "registers" (really phonation types), and it was later
reanalyzed as being "on" associated vowels, then a /CVC/ syllable with an
original "stiff" vowel would wind up with two stiff consonants, and a /CVC/
syllable with an original "slack" vowel
would wind up with two slack consonants.  As it happens, slack voice is a
kind of murmur or "voiced aspiration", so that would result in a lot of
/DHEDH/ roots.  Not quite so nicely, stiff voice is a kind of
glottalization, and this is inherently voiceless, so if stiff voice
consonants were reanalyzed as voiceless, this would result in a lot of /TET/
roots.  Either way, /DHET/ roots or /TEDH/ roots, which do not occur (at
least commonly), would be impossible, as neither an original stiff vowel nor
an original slack vowel could lead to such a result.  This would seem to
explain a root restriction that has not been explained so far.  The
preference for sameness could be seen as going back to the orginal nature of
the vowels.
        I also suggest (again) as part of this that what we know as the
voiced obstruents were pharyngealized, which would explain both the /b/-gap
and the restriction against roots of the /DED/ type, this last because
pharyngealization, being a rather crude gesture, would have to be maintained
across the vowel, and would distort its quality in the direction of /o/,
thereby destroying information.

Dr. David L. White



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