The Low Vowel and Retraction in St’át’imcets: An Ultrasound Investigation

Abstract

Previous phonetic studies show a co-articulatory effect of retracted consonants on adjacent high vowels resulting in tongue-root retraction and tongue-body lowering. The present study uses ultrasound imaging to investigate whether an inherently low vowel would also show evidence for retraction or show opacity as observed cross-linguistically with other tongue root and tongue body phenomena. Focusing on the two retracted conditions claimed in previous studies (VC and CV sequences with retracted consonants), results of the present study show that compared to the position of the tongue-root in non-retracted contexts, the low vowel has a significantly more retracted tongue-root when it precedes retracted consonants. No significant difference in tongue- root position is observed between /a/ in a CV sequence with retracted consonants and /a/ in a non-retracted context. Thus even though the low vowel is not opaque to retraction in St’át’imcets, it retracts only when preceding consonants, not following retracted consonants.