Doctoral Dissertation Research: Acceptability Judgments and Laryngeal Phonotactics

Massachusetts Institute Of Technology, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

Languages form words by combining the sounds of the language. In many languages, however, certain combinations of sounds systematically do not occur, contrary to what is expected if the sounds of a language combined by chance. In Bolivian Quechua certain sounds may not co-occur in a root. While there are roots in Bolivian Quechua with a single ejective or aspirated sound, there are not roots with two ejectives or aspirates (for example, "k'ap'a", "thaqha" would be impossible roots). This project investigates native speakers' awareness of such combinatorial restrictions on laryngeal features in the lexicon of Bolivian Quechua. The goal of the research is to determine whether speakers of Bolivian Quechua are aware of these particular restrictions and, moreover, whether the systematic restrictions have a different status than "accidental gaps" in the lexicon. These questions are investigated by asking native speakers for acceptability ratings of nonce words (made up words). The experiments will contribute to an informed typology of co-occurrence restrictions and inform two broad questions in phonological research. First, the study will ascertain whether laryngeal restrictions have a synchronic status in the grammar. Some co-occurrence restrictions, and particularly laryngeal co-occurrence restrictions, are static generalizations about the shape of roots in a language and may not require a synchronic analysis. Previous studies of the psychological reality of root restrictions have not tested the kinds of laryngeal restrictions found in Quechua. Second, the comparison of laryngeal restrictions with accidental gaps will reveal whether speakers form generalizations about classes of segments in their language, or learn the attestation of individual combinations of segments. An additional component of the study is documentation and acoustic analysis of the laryngeal system of Bolivian Quechua, which contrasts voiceless unaspirated, aspirated and ejective stops. Ejectives are both relatively rare and understudied. This study will contribute to the Quechua community by further documenting the phonetic properties of the sounds of Quechua. There are many aspects of the Quechua language that are rare among the world's languages, and differ from Spanish, the second language of most Quechua speakers. This project is linguistically and culturally important in contributing a detailed description of the acoustics of laryngeal contrasts in Quechua. No comprehensive phonetic description is available for Quechua. Accurate and thorough phonetic description is valuable both for future generations of Quechua speakers who may face language loss and endangerment and for any linguist who seeks to understand the phonology of this language.