An Acoustic Analysis of Naxi Consonants
Yang Jian, Liu Bing, and Pu Yuanyuan present a digital acoustic analysis of Naxi consonants, based on a 15-speaker monosyllable speech database covering the Lijiang-plain and Dayan-town subdialects (37 and 31 initials respectively). Using custom software (VSW) for spectrographic, formant, and VOT measurement, they characterize all twelve manner/voicing classes of Naxi consonant -- nasals, the lateral, voiced and voiceless fricatives, unaspirated and aspirated stops and affricates, plain voiced stops/affricates (Lijiang-plain only, disappearing near Dayan town), and the prenasalized voiced stops and affricates unique to Naxi. Key findings include a duration hierarchy from voiced stops (shortest) to prenasalized voiced affricates (longest), confirmation that prenasalized consonants are phonetically nasal+voiced-obstruent clusters (motivating a three-way V/CV/CnCV syllable-structure analysis), and consistent [-i-] glide insertion between palatal consonants and central/low vowels, paralleling Mandarin Chinese.
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