Dissertation - Michael Becker

alternators. Finally, the coronals show a very minor place effect, with CVCC words actuallyhaving a slightly higher proportion of alternators than either longer or shorter words.(21) CVC CVCC CVCVCPlace n % alt n % alt n % altp 30 26.7% 16 75.0% 248 91.5%t 41 6.1% 79 19.0% 1135 17.3%Ù 23 17.4% 18 58.3% 150 67.3%k 43 3.5% 51 9.8% 1168 91.2%In other words, it is not the case that size and place each have a constant effect.Their effect on the distribution of voicing alternations cannot be accurately describedseparately. Anticipating the discussion in §2.3.2, it will be seen that indeed speakers treateach place/size combination separately.Further study of TELL reveals a correlation between the quality of the vowel thatprecedes the word-final stop and the proportion of alternating nouns: high vowels correlatewith a higher proportion of alternating stops relative to non-high vowels, and so doback vowels relative to front vowels. This correlation is rather surprising, since crosslinguistically,vowel quality in not known to influence the voicing of a neighboringobstruent 3 .A noun-final stop is about 30% more likely to alternate when following a high vowelthan when following a non-high vowel (22).3 Vowel length does correlate with voicing, with long vowels correlating universally with voicedconsonants and short vowels with voiceless consonants (Lisker & Abramson 1964; Ohala 1983; Volatis& Miller 1992). In some cases, such as that of Canadian Raising, the change in vowel length causes aconcomitant change in vowel quality. See §2.4.2 below for discussion.25