Phonation differences in the stop laryngeal contrasts of Jangli (Indo-Aryan)

Abstract

Jangli is an under-studied Indo-Aryan language spoken in Punjab, Pakistan. Thepresent study investigates phonation differences in Jangli’s four-way stop laryngealcontrast (voiceless unaspirated, voiceless aspirated, voiced unaspirated, andvoiced aspirated). A wide range of acoustic correlates were measured includingH1*-H2*, H1*-A1*, H1*-A2*, and H1*-A3*. The findings indicated that voicelessaspirated and voiced aspirated stops are characterized by higher H1*-H2*, H1*-A1*,H1*-A2*, and H1*-A3*, compared to voiceless unaspirated and voiced unaspiratedstops. These results suggest that Jangli is among those languages which have araising effect of aspiration on the spectral tilt onsets of the following vowels. Theclassification results showed that H1*-H2* is the most important acoustic correlatefor distinguishing the four laryngeal categories of Jangli. The findings of this studywill contribute to the phonetic and phonological typology of the rich laryngealcontrasts of Indo-Aryan languages.