Duhumbi Phonology - Plosive Distinction Based on Maximum VOT

This phonological topic is based on the observation that Duhumbi has a relative paucity of non-aspirated, unvoiced plosive consonants. Whereas the are many attestations of aspirated onsets /kh, g, ph/ and voiced onsets /b, t, th/ there are much fewer attestations of onsets /k, p, t/, especially in word-initial position. It is observed that this observation is replicated in the other Western Kho-Bwa languages; by contrast, Puroik has relatively few attestations of aspirated plosive onsets (p.c. Ismael Lieberherr). The unvoiced plosives /k, t, p/ are characterised by both the lack of voicing and lack of aspiration. The onset of voicing commences with the release of the unvoiced plosive, resulting in a Voice Onset Timing (henceforth VOT) close to zero. For the voiced plosives /g, d, b/, the onset of voicing well precedes the release of the plosive, resulting in a negative VOT, whereas for the aspirated plosives /kh, th, ph/ the onset of voicing is delayed by the aspiration, resulting in a positive VOT. The above observations appear to indicate that at the Proto-Duhumbi level there was a distinction between unvoiced aspirated and voiced plosives, i.e. between *tʰ- and *d-, *kʰ- and *g-, *pʰ and *b-. There were no distinctive unvoiced unaspirated plosives †t-, †k-, †p-, although the unvoiced unaspirated plosives [t, k, p] occurred as allophones of either of the voiceless aspirated or voiced variant in syllable-final position. There is a phonological explanation for this distribution: the distinction, as measured in VOT, between an unvoiced unaspirated plosive and a voiced unaspirated plosive is significantly larger than that between either an unvoiced unaspirated plosive and an unvoiced aspirated plosive or an unvoiced unaspirated plosive and a voiced unaspirated plosive. It is thus easier to create the distinction in speech and similarly to audibly distinguish between, for example, /ph/ and /b/ than between /p/ and /pʰ/ or between /p/ and /b/. If at the proto-level a two-way, rather than a three-way opposition between plosives has to be presumed, then, the opposition between *pʰ and *b is more natural than an opposition between *p and *b or between *p and *ph. This, however, does not mean a distinction in more than one phonological feature, i.e., not between both voicing and aspiration: it is a single opposition, namely, the distinction in Voice Onset Timing. This material is made freely available to everyone for informative or scientific purposes as long as the source (this DOI) / the collectors are properly credited. Please note that use of the material for commercial purposes of any kind, which includes conversion into commercial audio-visual media (documentaries etc.), storage and dissemination through sites that require registration & payment for access, or sites that rely on advertisement (including YouTube) is not permitted without specific written consent from the speakers and their community, obtained through the collectors of the material. By downloading our material, you agree to these restrictions. This data set falls under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA) license. This license lets you remix, tweak, and build upon this work non-commercially, as long as you credit us and license your new creations under the identical terms. License Deed on https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/. Legal Code on https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/legalcode. Tim Bodt: bodttim (at) gmail (dot) co