Voiceless implosives in Seereer-Siin

Abstract

This paper provides articulatory and acoustic data on voiceless implosive stops in Seereer-Siin, an Atlantic language of the Niger-Congo family spoken in Senegal. Seereer is characterized by pairs of voiced and voiceless implosive stops in three places of articulation. These pairs are phonemically contrastive in lexical items. Oral air pressure measurements from Seereer stops uphold Clements & Osu's (2002) proposal that implosives and other nonexplosive stops are characterized by the absence of positive oral air pressure rather than the presence of negative oral air pressure during occlusion. Acoustic data show that voiceless implosives are characterized by a short period of silence ranging from approximately twenty to fifty milliseconds before the onset of prevoicing prior to release. These findings replicate to a certain extent those of Faye & Dijkstra (1997).

The acoustic characteristics of implosive and plosive bilabials in Shimaore

“…Thus, these sounds vary across languages around the world in terms of their phonetic and phonemic characteristics, even if they tend to be voiced (McLaughlin 2005). Defining and identifying implosives can therefore prove to be challenging at times due to these various articulatory and acoustic realizations (Grimm 2019).…”

“…Implosive consonants have drawn the attention of researchers over time, partially due to their relative rarity in the world’s languages, and partially due to their unique acoustic properties. These consonants have been described as ‘problematic’ (McLaughlin 2005: 201), due to challenges in describing the articulatory and acoustic properties involved. In fact, this category of sounds consists of several subgroups with various distinguishing properties, including at times a lack of ingressive air flow, once thought to be a criterial dimension (Ladefoged 1971).…”

“…Hainan Min (Wenchang Hainanese) has implosives that increase in amplitude during oral closure (Cun 2009). Voiceless implosives (with full glottal closure) are observed in some languages such as Owerri Igbo (Ladefoged, Kemeny & Brackenridge 1976) and Seerer-Siin (McLaughlin 2005). Furthermore, Ladefoged & Maddieson (1996: 89) hypothesize that auditory characteristics of implosives may be due to effects on formant frequencies brought on by larynx lowering.…”

Research methods in articulatory phoneticsII: Studying other gestures and recent trends

“…Signals are digitized at a very high sampling rate (e.g., 1.375 kHz) and are further down‐sampled and low‐pass filtered (to smooth the signal and reduced external noise). Airflow/air pressure systems are portable, and have been used in the field (e.g., McLaughlin, 2005). Oral airflow is often collected simultaneously with nasal airflow (as discussed in Section 3.1).…”

Issues in Bahing orthography development

“…mentions that voiceless implosives are usually more marked sounds than voiced implosives, and that certain languages have been verified to show voicelessness in their implosives. These languages include Pulaar(Gogoi 2007), Seereer-siin(Mclaughlin 2005), Lendu(Demolin 1995), and Owerri Igbo(Ladefoged and Maddieson 1996).…”