Dene Ejectives
The ejective sounds in the Dene languages have a characteristic and unique profile, visible in the waveform and spectrogram and audible in sound.
The Dene ejectives are as follows:
t’ [t’], k’ [k’], tth’ [tθ’], ts’ [ts’], ch’ [tʃ’], tł’ [tɬ’]
Examples of these sounds are found through out the Dene Speech Atlas in all languages represented.
Ejective sounds have two closures and two releases. The closures are simultaneous; this is indicated at point A in Figure 1. The first closure occurs at the larynx; it is a glottal stop. The second closure occurs at a specific place of articulation in the mouth; the second closure in Figure 1 occurs at the alveolar point of the articulation to form an alveolar stop t. The air trapped between these two closures is compressed, so that when the oral closure is released, the air is pushed out, resulting in a popping or clicking sound. This is shown at point B in Figure 1.
After the oral release, the glottal stop is released. This is shown at point C in Figure 1. The release of the glottal stop is delayed after the release of the oral stop; the long period between these two releases has been referred to as a "period of silence". This is visible in the waveform and spectrogram.
Figure 1: Alveolar Ejective Stop t’ [t’] (Tsuu T’ina)
Figure 2 shows an ejective affricate ts’ [ts’] in Dene Sųłiné; the long arrow makrs the duration of the ejective; the small arrow indicates the duration of the sound from the release of the oral gesture to the onset of the vowel.
Figure 2: Alveolar Ejective Affricate ts’ [ts’] (Dene Sųłiné)
These lengths are characteristic of Dene ejectives. Hogan (1976) observed this aspect of ejectives in Dene Sųłiné; Lindau (1984) observed it independently in Navajo (a southern Athabaskan language), and also noted that the pattern was quite different from ejectives in other languages, such as those in the Bantu languages.
This same pattern was observed in a study by Wright et al (2004) on Witsuwit’in (an Athabaskan language of British Columbia). However, the authors of this study noted some interesting variability in the production of the ejective affricates they observed. Sometimes, ejective sounds were realized without a delay between the glottal and oral releases, resulting in short release periods. The authors called ejectives which followed this pattern "weak" ejectives. In a perception study, the authors found that native speakers of Witsuwit’in tended to mistake these "weak" ejectives as the plain unaspirated stop d [d]. We also found this type of variability in our data. Figure 3 shows an example of a weak ejective in Dene Sųłiné, in the word bełk’ájá [bɛɬk’ɑ́dʒɑ́] “sleepy”. In this example, the release of the oral gesture (B) and the glottal stop (C) of the ejective k’ [k’] follow each other closely. Of particular interest is that this "weak" ejective can be mistaken for an unaspirated stop d [d], which it resembles.
2018-08-07