The phonetics and phonology of emphatics in Mehri

Janet C.E. Watson & Alex Bellem

Workshop on Pharyngeals & PharyngealisationNewcastle University – 26 March 2009

Overview

BackgroundModern South Arabian (MSAL)Emphatics across SemiticEmphatics in MSAL?

DataMehri evidence

Previous descriptive accountsFieldwork

Native speaker viewsAcoustic analyses

Prepausal glottalisation in Ṣan’āni ArabicPhonological patterning

Summary, conclusion, further work

Modern South Arabian (MSAL)

Semitic languages

Based on the work of Hetzron (1972, 1974). See Faber (1997), Bennett (1998), Appleyard (2003) for overviews of Semitic classification. See Corriente (1996) for a recent alternative classification.

Emphatics in Semitic…

Proto-Semitic is generally reconstructed as having a series of consonantal triads

Proto-Semitic

Emphatics in Semitic…

These consonantal triads have a voiced member and a voiceless member, with the third member being ‘emphatic’

The ‘emphatic’ member has been the subject of controversy ‘backed’ (Arabic-style)

ejective

It is now increasingly hypothesised that the early Semitic emphatics (inherited from Afroasiatic) were ejectives

Our work (on Arabic, not just Mehri) supports this

Under such a system, ‘emphatic’ is a laryngeal (phonation) contrast in obstruents

Proto-Semitic

Emphatics across modern Semitic…

Ethiosemitic Emphatics are ejectives, and thus ‘emphatic’ is a third laryngeal contrast

(voiced–voiceless–emphatic) Neo-Aramaic

Dialects vary – ‘trajectory’ of emphatic development can be traced through different dialects*

Most often ‘emphatic’ seems to be realised in some kind of ‘backing’ feature alongside non-aspiration (voiceless non-emphatics are aspirated)

Arabic Generally, most salient correlate is ‘backing’ (uvularisation /

pharyngealisation) Certain dialects (/dialect types) show remnant of ‘laryngeal’ function, so

there is dialectal variation in terms of the development of emphatics (2-way vs 3-way phonation systems)**

MSAL Where do they fit into this typology?

* Dolgopolsky (1977)** See Watson & Bellem (in press), Bellem (2007); also see Heselwood (1996)

Emphatics in MSAL: the literature Works based on fieldwork in the first half of the 20th C generally describe MSAL emphatics

as similar to those of Arabic (but less salient)

Viennese expedition in the early 20th C (e.g. Jahn 1902, Müller 1909, Bittner 1909)

Bertram Thomas’ fieldwork (Thomas, 1937)

Wolf Leslau’s work (1947), based on Thomas (1937)

Leslau also notes, in the discussion following Johnstone 1975, his view that ‘[MSAL] glottalization did not sound to me to be of the same type as that in Ethiopic’

T.M. Johnstone’s work in the 1970s breaks with this tradition – he describes MSAL emphatics as (post-)glottalised

For Harsusi, he observes that glottalisation is ‘energetically articulated in initial and final position, but in other positions…rather weak’ (1977, see also 1975, 1987)

Marie-Claude Simeone-Senelle & Antoine Lonnet, 1983–

Simeone-Senelle (1997) describes the ‘prevailing’ articulation of MSAL emphatics as post-glottalised, but ‘The degree of this glottalization varies, depending on the position of the consonant in the word and on the dialects concerned…’

Lonnet (2009) states that emphatics in some MSAL dialects tend to be pharyngealised–uvularised, and sees this in terms of a gradual sound change

Russian researchers in Soqotra

Naumkin & Porkhomovskij (1981) say that glottalisation in Soqotri is restricted to the emphatic stops, with the emphatic fricatives (and occasionally stops) pharyngealised – they suggest that there is an ongoing transition from glottalised to pharyngealised

Question: What are the MSAL emphatics?

Until 1973, Ethiosemitic was believed to be the only Semitic language sub-family in which

emphatics were realised as ejectives

From the 1970s we find varying reports

Without assuming that emphatics are uniform across MSAL varieties, we can still say that

overall there is no clear consensus, and it is not clear from the literature where the MSAL emphatics fit into the emphatic typology

Question: What are the MSAL emphatics?

This paper takes a closer look at one variety of an MSAL – the Mahriyōt dialect

of Mehri, spoken in eastern Yemen

We aim to show why there has been such a lack of consistency in previous

descriptions

Mahriyōt: Data

111 texts recorded by Alexander Sima, to be published by Harrassowitz 2009

Oral material recorded and transcribed by Janet Watson in al-Ghaydha Jan–March 2008

5 oral narratives

Oral descriptions and examples of emphatics and laterals in Mahriyōt

Mahriyōt consonants

lab dent alv pal-alv pal vel uvu phar glott

PLOSVE

vcd b d j

vceless t k ʔ

emph ṭ ḳ

FRICTVE

vcd ð z ġ~q ʕ

vceless f θ s š x ћ h

emph θ$ ṣ č̣$

LATERAL

vcd l

vceless ś

emph ź

sonorants m n r y w

Mahriyōt emphatics

emphatic non-emphatic

ṣ s z

č̣ š

ṭ t d

ź ś

θ θ ð

ḳ k

Mahriyōt evidence

Inconsistency of much previous descriptive work

E.g. transcriptions vary considerably and are inconsistent even within one work

Hein, ed. Müller (1909)

/ḳ/ as g and k: ġalgōt ‘she saw’ for ġalḳōt, occasionally as k, as in tekefôd ‘she goes down’, but ugofôd ‘and he went down’

/ṣ/ as z, ṣ and s: zóṭer ‘basket’ for ṣōṭar, zayd ‘fish’ for ṣayd, but also as ṣ and s, particular in the word for ‘morning’, as in kṣôbaḥ and hesôbaḥ ‘in the morning’

The inconsistencies most often relate to laryngeal category

Mahriyōt evidence: fieldwork

Native-speaker descriptions:

Five sounds not attested in Arabic: /ḳ/, /ṣ/, /č̣ S/, /ś/, /ź/

/ḳ/ = /k/ + ʕayn

/č̣ S/ = ‘heavy Egyptian jīm’ + ʕayn

Mehri /ṣ/ considerably tenser than Arabic /ṣ/, sometimes partially voiced

/ṭ/ and /θ S/ not grouped by informant with ‘five sounds not found in Arabic’

/ṭ/ = ‘same’ or ‘like’ Arabic /ṭ/

/θ S/ = varies between voiced and voiceless

/ṭ, ṣ, č̣ S/

ṣā’ / ṣā’ / wa-ṭā’ wa-č̣ ā / yaʕnī / anṭughā bi-šakl at-tālī /

ṣā’ ṣā’ ṣā’ ṣā’ / wa-ṭ-ṭā’ hūwa nafs aṭ-ṭā’ fi l-... bi-l-

ʕarabīyah / ṭā’ / allī hū ʕalayh al-ʕūd hass-mā ygūlū / e:h

ṭa’ / ṭā’ ṭā’ ṭā’ ṭā’ ṭā’ / wa-ṣā’ ṣā’ ṣā’ / wa-ḥarf č̣ āʕ / e:h č̣ āʕ

č̣ āʕ č̣ āʕ / allī hēh kama l-jīm bi-l-ʕarabī wa-taḥthā θalāθa

nugaṭ tarmīz hāðā kama ttafagnā ʕalayh fī ’almāniyā

iθnā tadrīsnā fī almāniyā maʕ al-jānib al-almāni / wa-hī

tunṭug miθl al-jīm al-maṣrīyah aθ-θagīlah wa-l-ʕayn / č̣ āʕ

/ č̣ āʕ č̣ āʕ / yaʕnī law bayn-axað maθāl maθalan al-ḥarf

ṣād / maθalan / ana xað amθilah bi-xtiṣār / ṣā’ / ṣā’

maθalan ṣayd / ṣā’ ṣayd / ṣā’ ṣayd ṣayd / maθalan ṣā’

bi-ḥarf ṣā kīnaḥ maθalan / ṣift / ṣift / ṣift / maθal .../

Native-speaker judgements:

Rejection by native speakers of ejective tokens of /ṣ/, /č̣ S/, /ṭ/, /ź/, /θ S/

…except in pre-pausal position

Let’s look more closely at the Mahriyōt emphatics and consider the acoustic evidence…

Mahriyōt evidence: fieldwork

w-tarnīk ‘and tarnīk [type of fish]’

w-wīḳad ‘and wīḳad [type of fish]’

ḳannatt ‘small’

w-ō-ð-alhōḳ ‘and I am chasing’

śīwōṭ ‘fire’

ћaṭṭōt ‘a bean / grain’

Mahriyōt evidence: conclusion I

Of the ‘emphatic’ stops:

only ḳ turns out to be ejective in all positions

ṭ is ejective only in final and prepausal position

otherwise, ṭ is similar to (the local) Arabic ṭ

non-prepausally, ṭ is ‘backed’ and unaspirated

This ‘backing’ is also the main correlate of ‘emphatic’ in the other (fricative) emphatics…

/ś/ and /ź/

Time (s)0 0.84517

0

5000

Time (s)0 0.466301

0

5000

F2

F2

śātū ‘winter’

źābal ‘cold’

bā nwās ‘Abu Nuwas’

F2

xalāṣ ‘that’s it!’

F2

marwōź ‘sick [m.pl.]’

krōṣ ‘fleas’

č̣ aʕrīr ‘back of the neck’

yā šadd ‘oh what trouble!’

Importance of environment!Pre-pausal glottalisation

Voiced and emphatic obstruents:

ġayj > ġayč̣’# ‘man’

yanhōč̣ > yanhōč̣’# ‘he shouts to s.o.’

ṭād > ṭāt’# ‘one’

śīwōṭ > śīwōt’# ‘fire’

ṣwārāb > ṣwārāp’# ‘harvest period [dim.]’

mōnaġ > mōnax’# [place name]

Liquids (after long vowel):

syōr > syōr’ # ‘he went’, b-ḥāwēl > b-ḥāwēl’ # ‘firstly’

…but:

šīt > šītʰ # ‘penis’ and yaṣkūk > yaṣkūkʰ # ‘he closes’

ṣwārāb ‘harvest period [diminutive]’

b-ħāwāl’ ‘at first’

Pre-pausal glottalisation

With the exception of ḳ, the emphatics are only clearly glottalised prepausally, otherwise they are ‘backed’

This glottalisation seems to be part of a wider process of prepausal glottalisation, which affects certain segment types:

voiced obstruents

emphatics

liquids in the environment VVL#

Pre-pausal glottalisation

Areal feature

Feature of many Yemeni Arabic dialects

In prepausal position in Ṣan’āni Arabic:

all voiced consonants are devoiced

all voiced stops and emphatics are realised as ejectives

all (non-nasal) sonorants are devoiced and glottalised

Yemen

Ṣan’āni dajāj ‘chicken’

Glottal release

Ṣan’āni dagīg ‘flour’

Glottal release

Ṣan’āni mubargaṭ ‘lumpy’

Glottal release

Ṣan’āni nār ‘flame’

Mehri emphatics: phonological patterning

Mehri emphatics pattern with pharyngeals and uvulars when it comes to vowel allophones Mahriyōt ay and aw may occur to the exclusion of ī and ū

following an emphatic, uvular or pharyngeal:

ba-ḥḥays ‘with energy’

ḳayṯ̣ ‘hot/pre-monsoon period’

ʕayd ‘sardines’

ʕaylūj ‘camel calf’

ḥayḏān ‘ear’

mṣawġat ‘jewellery shop’

śaṭrayr ‘cloth’

(strict adjacency not necessary)

Mehri emphatics: phonological patterning

Allomorphy

feminine nominal, adjectival and numeral ending:

normally -īt, but -ayt in certain words:

ṣarʕayt ‘smell under the armpits’ (cf. šabdīt ‘liver’)

bīźayt ‘egg’ (cf. rēśīt ‘snake’)

habʕayt ‘seven’ (cf. ṯ̣amnīt ‘eight’)

ṣalḥayt ‘fat f.s.’ (cf. xaṯ̣mīt ‘thin f.s.’)

Mehri emphatics: phonological patterning

Allomorphy

nominal feminine suffix:

-āt after an emphatic, uvular or pharyngeal, but -ēt after other segments (except nasals):

ḳaṣṣāt ‘story’ barzēt ‘small hole in boat to let water out’

mṭarḳāt ‘hammer’ raḥbēt ‘village; town’

ṣafḥāt ‘hinge’ mbaxrēt ‘iron frame for incensing clothes’

xabzēt ‘piece of bread’

ḳaśrēt ‘naughtiness’

Summary I

Emphatics:

/ḳ/ = ejective

All other emphatics = non-ejective

There is a process of prepausal glottalisation that affects (among other segments) the emphatics

Why the inconsistency in the reporting of Mehri (possibly MSAL) emphatics?

The perception of ejective emphatics in one position (pre-pausally)

Presence of one ejective – /ḳ/ – in all positions

Assumption that ‘emphasis’ had one main phonetic correlate

= assumption that emphatics as a class were ejectives

Summary II

With the exception of ḳ, Mahriyōt emphatics are phonologically (‘underlyingly’) of the (local) Arabic type:

‘backed’

unaspirated (in the case of voiceless emphatics)

(…although the Mahriyōt emphatics are less ‘backed’ than Arabic emphatics tend to be)

Implications and further work I

What about other MSAL?

Our data is from Mahriyōt, but we believe that the situation may be similar in other MSAL

First impressions are: that other MSAL varieties may also have some degree of

prepausal glottalisation (not just either ‘ejective emphatics’ or freely varying emphatics)

the degree of any prepausal glottalisation may vary across the individual varieties, and that aside from the possibly varying prepausal phenomena, the phonetic correlates of /ṭ/ may also vary

Implications and further work II

It seems that there is a move across MSAL from ejective emphatics > pharyngealised emphatics

For Soqotri, two types of ‘emphasis’ are described:

ejective stops

pharyngealised fricatives and occasionally stops

(Naumkin & Porkhomovskij 1981: 12–13)

Conclusion III: postscript

Our view of the emphatics, in at least this dialect of Mehri, is thus the flip-side of Johnstone et al’s coin

We claim that they are lexically of the ‘backed’ type, but glottalised prepausally (as part of a wider process of prepausal glottalisation)

This does not negate the claim that MSAL emphatics were historically ejectives – our claim relates to the synchronic status of the emphatics, and thus their phonological identity

Selected References

Johnstone, T.M. 1975. The Modern South Arabian languages. Afroasiatic Linguistics 1/5: 93–121.

Ladefoged, P. & I. Maddieson. 1996. The Sounds of the World’s Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. Leslau, W. 1947. Four Modern South Arabian languages. Word 3: 180–203. Lonnet, A. 2009. South Arabian, Modern. In K. Versteegh (ed.) Encyclopedia of Arabic

Language and Linguistics. Vol. IV. Maddieson, I. 2008. Glottalized Consonants. In: M. Haspelmath, M.S. Dryer, D. Gil & B. Comrie

(eds.) The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Munich: Max Planck Digital Library. Naumkin, V.V. & V.Y. Porkhomovskij 1981. Ocherki po etnolingvistike Sokotry. Moskva. Sima, A. (in press) (edited, introduced and annotated by J.C.E. Watson & W. Arnold). Mehri-

Texte im Dialekt der jemenitischen Šarqiyyah.Wiesbaden. Simeone-Senelle, M-Cl. 1997. The Modern South Arabian languages. In R. Hetztron (ed.), The

Semitic Languages. London: Routledge. 378–423. Watson, J.C.E. & Y. Asiri. 2007. Pre-pausal devoicing and glottalisation in varieties of the south-

western Arabian peninsula. ICPhS. Watson, J.C.E. & A. Bellem (in press). Glottalisation and neutralisation in Yemeni Arabic and

Mehri. In B. Heselwood & Z. Hassan (eds) Instrumental Studies in Arabic Phonetics Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

For a more complete list of references, see Watson & Bellem (in press).