Acoustic evidence for high vowel devoicing in Lezgi: Implications for a
gestural analysis

Ioana Chitoran
Dartmouth College / Collegium de Lyon

In this talk I will discuss data from Lezgi (Northeast Caucasian),
involving a systematic variation in the realization of unstressed pretonic
high vowels [i, y, u]:
sík'    -       sik'-ár         'fox(es)'
thúph   -       thup-ár         'cannon(s)'
Such alternations are traditionally described as "syncope", but the
results of a spectral analysis (Chitoran & Iskarous 2008) suggest that the
vowels in this context are more likely devoiced rather than deleted. The
vowel gesture is overlapped and consequently devoiced by a preceding C
gesture under increased overlap between C1 and V, resulting from stress
shift away from the vowel. The same analysis can be extended to C2 voicing
alternations which at first sight are independent of the vowels. The Lezgi
data offer a good testing ground for some of the major claims made in
Articulatory Phonology (Browman & Goldstein 1986) and in the competitive
coupling model on which it relies (Goldstein et al. 2006).