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Second, I argue in Chapter 4 that labialization and palatalization do not bear tone. This
claim is essentially a phonological claim, that is, the distribution of these segments with
respect to tone argues for an interpretation in which they are considered not to bear tone.
Nevertheless, phonetic evidence could be considered an additional argument in support of
my analysis.
I first address the question of whether Mono secondary articulations are closer to
mid or high vowels. My auditory impressions indicate that they are best transcribed as [A']
and [']. However, offering acoustic evidence for this claim is difficult. In normal speech
there is no steady state during their articulation such as found in vowels. As a result, it is
necessary to turn to tokens spoken at a slow rate of speech in order to identify formant
values. In my corpus, I was not able to identify a case of palatalization with steady-state
formants. On the other hand, acoustic evidence for labialization is more apparent. The
utterance shown in Figure 8.42 gives an example of labialization with an unmistakable
steady state. The steady state is indicated by the arrows in the figure.
Table 8.7 compares the average values of F1 and F2 for K and measured in
Section 8.2.1 with the values measured for the token in Figure 8.42. The average value of
F2 is identical for the two vowels. However, we see that the value of F1 of the secondary
articulation in Figure 8.42, 350 Hz, is much closer to the average value of F1 for (385
Hz) than the average value of F1 for K (270 Hz). As a result, for this token, it is preferable
to interpret labialization as corresponding to a mid vowel rather than a high vowel.
Table 8.7: Comparison of the values of F1 and F2 for the labialization in the token
(CM= (CM= ‘pack, wrap up’ spoken at a slow rate and the average values of F1 and F2 for K
(CM= (CM=
and measured in Section 8.2.1.
(CM= (CM= (CM= (CM= K (average) (average)
F1 350 270 385
F2 875 897 897
168