Laryngeal Contrast Across Western Iranian Languages
摘要
Western Iranian languages, spoken by ethnic minorities in Iran, are facing the risk of extinction by losing their status against the official language. As a result, they are understudied or very poorly documented. Although the typology of Iranian languages has been studied extensively (e.g., Dabir-Moghaddam M, Radeh Shenāsi-ye Zabān-hā-ye Irāni [Typology of Iranian languages]. SAMT, Tehran, 2014), less attention has been paid to their phonetic and phonological features. The present study investigates typology of voicing contrasts in stop consonants within the laryngeal realism framework in 12 Western Iranian languages of Iran selected from the Balochi, Caspian, Gorāni, Kurdic, Lārestāni, Luri, Semnāni, and Tātic subgroups. We tested the realization of voicing by measuring voice onset time (VOT) and F1 values word-initially, and the degree of closure voicing at word-medial position. Our findings reveal the existence of three VOT categories (voice lead, short-lag, and long lag) and four types of phonological laryngeal contrasts: [voice]-Ø-[s.g.], [voice]-Ø, Ø-[s.g.], [voice]-[s.g.]. Realization of the uvular obstruent that does not have a contrastive laryngeal cognate, also revealed variation: it was produced as voiced stop or fricative, voiceless unaspirated stop, or voiceless aspirated stop across languages. The results suggest that VOT is subject to geographical variation and can act as a linguistic variable in linguistic communities.