Investigating the voice quality dimension in Western Nilotic vowel harmony

It has been suggested at least since 1936 (Tucker, 2nd International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Cambridge) that the vowel harmony system in Western Nilotic languages includes a dimension of voice quality contrast. X-ray studies of Dho-Luo and Ateso have shown that there are generally differences in the superalaryngeal regions (e.g., in tongue height and/or pharyngeal volume) between vowels of the two vowel harmony sets. It has remained unclear whether these vowels are additionally distinguished by a voice quality difference between “hard” and “breathy” phonation types produced by different laryngeal settings. Techniques being developed at the UCLA Phonetics Laboratory for examining phonation types in natural languages have been applied to answering this question. These tend to confirm that there are differences in laryngeal setting, although this conclusion must remain tentative until these techniques are more fully developed and more data is available. [Work supported by NINCDS.]