Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-sxzjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T01:14:27.570Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Vowel spaces in Plains Cree

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2012

Jeffrey Muehlbauer
Jeffrey Muehlbauer*
Affiliation:
The University of Manitobamuehlbau@cc.umanitoba.ca
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper presents a pilot study of the acoustic correlates of the Plains Cree vowel system. Naturalistic recordings of speakers of mid-20th-century Plains Cree, including one monolingual speaker, provide an empirical test for the general expectations from phonological descriptions. The results demonstrate that, while the hypothesized short/long vowel pairs do indeed have a strong durational contrast, the majority of vowel pairs are also distinguished by their formants. In all cases, the long vowel occupies a more extreme position in the vowel space. Plains Cree thus appears to show both a quantity and a quality contrast in its vowel pairs. The individual speaker data are then normalized to test whether there is intra-speaker variation in these results, with the results showing variation in the relation between vowels in all three parts of the vowel space.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the International Phonetic Association , Volume 42 , Issue 1 , April 2012 , pp. 91 - 105
Copyright
Copyright © International Phonetic Association 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adank, Patti, Smits, Roel & van Hout, Roeland. 2004. A comparison of vowel normalization procedures for language variation research. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 116, 3099–3107.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ahenakew, Alice. 2000. âh-âyîtaw isi ê-kî-kiskêyihtahkik maskihkiy / They knew both sides of medicine: Cree tales of curing and cursing. Told by Alice Ahenakew (Publications of the Algonquian Text Society), edited by Wolfart, H. C. & Ahenakew, Freda (eds.). Winnipeg, MB: University of Manitoba Press.Google Scholar
Ahenakew, Freda. 1987. Cree language structures: A Cree approach. Winnipeg, MB: Pemmican Publications, Inc.Google Scholar
Behne, Dawn, Moxness, Bente & Nyland, Anne. 1996. Acoustic-phonetic evidence of vowel quantity and quality in Norwegian. Speech, Music, and Hearing, Quarterly Progress and Status Report 37 (2), 13–16.Google Scholar
Blain, Eleanor M. 1997. Wh-constructions in nêhiyawêwin. Ph.D. dissertation, University of British Columbia.Google Scholar
Bloomfield, Leonard (ed.). 1930. Sacred stories of the Sweet Grass Cree (Bulletin/National Museum of Canada, Anthropological Series No. 1160). Ottawa, ON: F. A. Acland.Google Scholar
Bloomfield, Leonard. 1946. Algonquian. In Hoijer, Harry (ed.), Linguistic structures of native America, 85–129. New York: Viking Fund Publications in Anthropology.Google Scholar
Boersma, Paul & Weenink, David. 2009. Praat: Doing phonetics by computer (version 5.1.26). http://www.praat.org (8 July 2011).Google Scholar
Cook, Clare. 2006. Prosodic correlates of Plains Cree clause boundaries: Patterns from two speakers. In Wolfart, H. C. (ed.), Actes du trente-septième Congrès des Algonquinistes, 75–101. Winnipeg, MB: Université du Manitoba.Google Scholar
Cook, Clare. 2008. The syntax and semantics of clause-typing in Plains Cree. Ph.D. dissertation, University of British Columbia.Google Scholar
Dahlstrom, Amy. 1986. Plains Cree morphosyntax. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California Berkeley.Google Scholar
Dyck, Carrie, Junker, Marie-Odile & Logan, Kelly. 2009. Phonetic and phonological evidence for a vowel merger in Southern East Cree. In Rogers, Beth & Szakay, Anita (eds.), The Workshop on the Structure and Constituency of the Languages of the Americas (WSCLA) XV (UBC Working Papers in Linguistics 29), 98–114.Google Scholar
Edwards, Mary. 1954. Cree: An intensive language course. Lac La Biche, AB: Northern Canada Evangelical Mission.Google Scholar
Gordon, Matthew, Munro, Pamela & Ladefoged, Peter. 2000. Some phonetic structures of Chickasaw. Anthropological Linguistics 70 (1), 1–32.Google Scholar
Hirose, Tomio. 2000. Origins of predicates: Evidence from Plains Cree. Ph.D. dissertation, University of British Columbia.Google Scholar
Jessen, Michael. 1998. The phonetics and phonology of tense and lax obstruents in German (Foreign Language Study). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Lacombe, Albert. 1874. Dictionnaire de la langue des Cris. Montreal, QC: C.-O. Beauchemin and Valois.Google Scholar
Ladefoged, Peter. 2005. Vowels and consonants: An introduction to the sounds of the world's languages. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Lobanov, Boris. 1971. Classification of Russian vowels spoken by different listeners. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 49, 606–608.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Longacre, Robert E. 1957. Quality and quantity in Cree vowels. Journal of the Canadian Linguistic Association 3, 66–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacKenzie, Marguerite. 1980. Towards a dialectology of Cree-Montagnais-Naskapi. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Toronto.Google Scholar
Mandelbaum, David. 1940. The Plains Cree (Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, series 2, vol. 37). New York: American Museum of Natural History.Google Scholar
Marin, Paul, Grenier, Monique, Martel, Richard & Thibaudeau, René. 1977. A propos de la longeur phonologique des voyelles en montagnais. La Linguistique 13, 111–133.Google Scholar
Minde, Emma. 1997. kwayask ê-kî-pê-kiskinowâpahtihicik/Their example showed me the way: A Cree woman's life shaped by two cultures. Told by Emma Minde, edited by Wolfart, H. C. & Ahenakew, Freda. Edmonton, AB: University of Alberta Press.Google Scholar
Muehlbauer, Jeffrey. 2006. Pitch as accent in Plains Cree. In Wolfart, H. C. (ed.), Actes du Trente-septième Congrès des Algonquinistes, 229–268. Winnipeg, MB: University of Manitoba Press.Google Scholar
Muehlbauer, Jeffrey. 2008. kâ-yôskâtahk ôma nêhiyawêwin: The representation of intentionality in Plains Cree. Ph.D. dissertation, University of British Columbia.Google Scholar
Nearey, Terrance. 1977. Phonetic feature systems for vowels. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Alberta.Google Scholar
Pentland, David H. 1979. Algonquian historical phonology. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Toronto.Google Scholar
Russell, Kevin. 2008. Sandhi in Plains Cree. Journal of Phonetics 36, 450–464.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomas, Erik R. & Kendall, Tyler. 2007. NORM: The vowel normalization and plotting suite. http://ncslaap.lib.ncsu.edu/tools/norm/index.php (18 February 2011).Google Scholar
Whitecalf, Sarah. 1993. kinêhiyâwininaw nêhiyawêwin: The Cree language is our identity (The La Ronge Lectures of Sarah Whitecalf Publications of the Algonquian Text Society), edited by Wolfart, H. C. & Ahenakew, Freda. Winnipeg, MB: University of Manitoba Press.Google Scholar
Wolfart, H. C. 1973. Plains Cree: A grammatical study (Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 63(5)). Philadelphia, PA: American Philosophical Society.Google Scholar
Wolfart, H. C. 1993. Preface and introduction. In Wolfart, H. C. & Ahenakew, Freda (eds.), kinêhiyâwininaw nêhiyawêwin: The Cree language is our identity (The La Ronge Lectures of Sarah Whitecalf Publications of the Algonquian Text Society), ix–xiv. Winnipeg, MB: University of Manitoba Press.Google Scholar
Wolvengrey, Arok. 2001. Cree: Words/nêhiýawêwin: itwêwina. Regina, SK: Canadian Plains Research Center.Google Scholar