title: Vowel Height Allophony and Dorsal Place Contrasts in Cochabamba Quechua.
abstract: This paper reports on the results of two studies investigating the role of allophony in cueing phonemic contrasts. In Cochabamba Quechua, the uvularvelar place distinction is often cued by additional differences in the height of the surrounding vowels. An acoustic study documents the lowering effect of a preceding tautomorphemic or a following heteromorphemic uvular on the high vowels /i u/. A discrimination study finds that vowel height is a significant cue to the velar-uvular place contrast. These findings support a view of contrasts as collections of distinguishing properties, as opposed to oppositions in a single distinctive feature.
authors.affiliation: Department of Linguistics, New York University, New York, N.Y., USA.
authors.forename: Gillian
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Gallagher
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001838:Bolivia; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010160:Palate, Soft / Q000502:physiology; D010699:Phonation / Q000502:physiology*; D010700:Phonetics; D013018:Sound Spectrography; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D014609:Uvula / Q000502:physiology; D055815:Young Adult