Dissertation Research: An Articulatory, Acoustic and Perceptual Study of Tiwi Coronals

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9320373 MADDIESON Arrernte, an Australian language, is unusual among the world's languages in containing several subtly but meaningfully different consonants produced by contact between the tip and/or blade of the tongue and the roof of the mouth. Their acoustic characteristics, and how the distinctions are made and perceived, are not well understood. Studies including a sufficient population to account for inter-speaker variation are also lacking. the planned research will seek to link articulatory gestures involved in producing these consonants with salient acoustic characteristics, and to determine the roles of active articulator shape, area of passive contact, and other variations in oral cavity configuration. Acoustic and palatographic records for twelve speakers will be obtained and submitted to preliminary analysis during an extended fieldwork trip to Australia. Various potential perceptual cues will be tested to evaluate which are most effective in predicting recognition of these consonants. Final analysis of field data will be completed at UCLA. This study will constitute the first comprehensive, instrumentally-backed, multi-speaker characterization of production, acoustics and perception for a language of this type. It will contribute to descriptive phonetics, the understanding of perceptual cues, knowledge about uniformity of articulations within a language, and will help shape hypotheses about linguistic universals. ***