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Sounds of Tanacross

Technical Notes

Technical notes are included for most sounds on the relevant pages. They are collected together here for reference.

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Place and Manner of Articulation

Consonants are produced with an obstruction to the airflow. Consonants can be classified according to the place and manner of this obstruction. The consonant chart is structured according to these two dimensions of place and manner.

Terms referring to place

  • labial – with the lips
  • alveolar – with the tongue on the ridge behind the fronth teeth; note that the affricate sounds begin at the alveolar place and the transition to another place
  • dental – with the tongue teeth behind the upper teeth or between the teeth
  • lateral – with the the tongue pressed against the ridge behind the teeth, but allowing air to flow around the sides of the tongue
  • palatal – with the tongue against the roof of the mouth
  • velar – with the back of the tongue pressed toward the back of mouth
  • glottal – at the glottis, or vocal folds

Terms referring to manner

  • stop – completely obstructing the airflow
  • affricate – a combination of a stop with a fricative
  • fricative – allowing air to flow roughly, with much friction noise
  • sonorants – allowing air to flow most freely, almost like a vowel
  • voiced – with the vocal folds vibrating
  • voiceless – without the vocal folds vibrating

Alveolar Stops

Tanacross d represents a voiceless unaspirated alveolar stop [t]. In stem-initial position orthographic d may also be used to represent the partially or fully occluded allophone of Tanacross /n/, [nd] and [d], respectively. Thus, the d in ndîig and in teghishdek is fully voiced [d]. In stem-final position and in prefixes d regularly represents a fully voiced stop [d].

See Letter N for further examples.

Alveolar Affricates

Tanacross ts and dz are voiceless aspirated and unaspirated alveolar affricates [tsh] and [ts], respectively. At the end of syllables ts and dz are pronounced as voiceless and voiced affricates [ts] and [dz], respectively. When dz occurs phrase-finally, it tends to be devoiced to ts, for example: łuug ch’e ehmeedz [łuug ch’e ehmeets] ‘it’s fish that he’s frying’.

Alveo-Dental Affricates

Tanacross tth and ddh are voiceless aspirated and unaspirated alveo-dental affricates [tƟh] and [tƟ], respectively. At the end of syllables tth and ddh represent voiceless and voiced affricates [tƟ] and [dð], respectively. In phrase-final position tth may be pronounced as a fricative th.</p>

Lateral Affricates

Tanacross tl and dl are voiceless aspirated and unaspirated lateral alveolar affricates [tɬh] and [tɬ], respectively.

At the end of syllables tl and dl are pronounced as voiceless and voiced affricates [tɬ] and [dl], respectively. In word-final position the l of the affricate dl has nearly a syllabic quality.

Palatal Affricates

Tanacross ch and j are voiceless aspirated and unaspirated palatal affricates [tʃ] and [dʒ], respectively. These sounds occur only in syllable onsets, never at the end of a syllable.

Velar Stop

Tanacross k and g are phonologically voiceless aspirated and unaspirated velar stops /kh/ and /k/, respectively. However, in stem-initial position these sounds are heavily affricated, being realized as [kx] and [kɣ] (or even [gɣ]), respectively. For this reason learners often confuse the sounds k and x, and the sounds g and gh.

At the end of syllables k and g are pronounced as voiceless and voiced stops [k] and [g].

Ejectives

Tanacross contains six consonants which are written with an apostrophe in the practical orthography: tth’, t’, ts’, tl’, ch’, k’. These are the so-called glottalized or ejective sounds. They are produced using a glottalic airstream, made by keeping the vocal folds tightly together until after the stop is released. These sounds only occur syllable initially.

Note that the apostrophe by itself represents a glottal stop, a distinct consonant which is not an ejective. When it is necessary to differentiate in the practical orthography between an ejective and a sequence of consonant plus glottal stop, a hyphen is employed. Thus, neek’eh ‘our tracks’, with an ejective k’, versus nek-‘ęh ‘I see it’ , with a sequence k plus glottal stop ’.

Glottal Stop

Tanacross apostrophe ’ is a voiceless glottal stop. Though written with an apostrophe, it is important to remember than Tanacross glottal stop is a full-fledged consonant, not a punctuation mark. In the practical orthography glottal stop is not written at the beginning of words. Words which are written with an initial vowel are pronounced with an initial glottal stop. Thus, eek ‘dress’ is pronounced as if it were spelled ’eek. When prefixes are added which cause the glottal stop to no longer occur at the beginning of the word, then the apostrophe representing the glottal stop must be written. For example, when the first-person possessive prefix is attached to this word the result is sh’eeg’ ‘my dress’, and not sheeg’ .

Note that the apostrophe is also used to indicate ejective sounds tth’, t’, ts’, tl’, ch’, k’. However, the glottal stop is not an ejective sound. When there is potential for confusion between an apostrophe meant to represent a glottal stop and an apostrophe which represents an ejective, a hyphen is used to ensure that the sound is pronounced as a glottal stop. For example, nek-‘ęh ‘I see’ contains a k followed by a glottal stop (not a k’).

Alveolar Fricatives

Tanacross s and z are voiceless and voiced alveolar sibilant fricatives [s] and [z], respectively.

Letter s is a semi-voiced fricative. It can generally be described as beginning voiceless and transitioning to a fully voiced fricative.

Palatal Fricatives

Tanacross sh is a voiceless palatal fricative [ʃ]. This sound occurs most commonly in the morpheme representing the first person singular subject in certain verb conjugations. For example, ishnąą ‘I am drinking it’. Elsewhere this is a fairly rare sound in Tanacross, occurring for example in a few nouns such as shét ‘wart’.

Letter sh is a semi-voiced fricative. It can generally be described as beginning voiceless and transitioning to a fully voiced fricative.

There is no fully voiced palatal fricative in Tanacross. Where neighboring Athabascan languages exhibit a voiced palatal fricative, Tanacross has a semi-voiced palatal fricative (in stem-initial position) or a voiced palatal approximant (elsewhere).

Dental Fricatives

Tanacross th and dh are voiceless and voiced dental fricatives [Ɵ] and [ð], respectively.

Letter th is a semi-voiced fricative. It can generally be described as beginning voiceless and transitioning to a fully voiced fricative.

Velar Fricatives

Tanacross x and gh are voiceless and voiced velar fricatives [x] and [ɣ], respectively.

Letter x is a semi-voiced fricative. It can generally be described as beginning voiceless and transitioning to a fully voiced fricative.

Lateral Fricatives

Tanacross ł is a voiceless lateral fricative [ɬ], and l is a voiced lateral approximant [l]. While l is phonetically an approximant, it patterns phonologically as the voiced counterpart to the voiceless lateral fricative, participating in all relevant phonological voicing alternations which apply to other fricatives. Neighboring languages, such as Han, exhibit a voiced lateral fricative corresponding to the Tanacross l

Letter ł is a semi-voiced fricative. It can generally be described as beginning voiceless and transitioning to a fully voiced fricative.

Glottal Fricative

Tanacross h is a voiceless glottal fricative [h]. It is much more common at the end of syllables than at the beginning.

Semi-Voiced Fricatives

Tanacross contains five consonants which are represented in the practical orthography with an underscore: ł, th, s, sh, x. These consonants have been described as semi-voiced or partially voiced fricatives. They can be informally described as beginning voiceless and transitioning to a voiced sound.

The voicing transition can be seen quite clearly in the following spectrogram for <bshłig’</b> ‘my dog’. Voice bars are not present at the beginning of the lateral fricative ł, but they are present at the end.



For other segments the voicing transition is not quite so evident. For example, compare the voiceless dental fricative th in the following spectrogram for na’ihthet   ‘I am standing’



with the semi-voiced fricative in the spectrogram of na’ethet   ’s/he is standing’.



No clear evidence of voicing is present in either spectrogram. The distinguishing feature is the presence of a much greater degree of high-amplitude noise in the voiceless segment. It is this observation which leads to the characterization of the voiceless segments as fortis, and the semi-voiced and voiced fricatives as lenis.

For more information see Holton (2001) Fortis and lenis fricatives in Tanacross Athapaskan. International Journal of American Linguistics.

Bilabial Nasal

Tanacross m is a voiced bilabial nasal stop. Its phonetic realization varies between nasal [m], prenasalized [mb], and fully occluded [b].

Alveolar Nasals

Tanacross n is a voiced alveolar nasal stop. In stem-initial position its phonetic realization varies between nasal [m], prenasalized [nd], and fully occluded [d]. Note that this fully occluded variant differs from the phoneme written d in the practical orthography, which is realized as a voiceless unaspirated stop [t]. Unlike the variation between the regular and occluded variants of the bilabial nasal, the occurrence of the occluded variant of the alveolar nasal is largely predictable. The occluded variant occurs stem-initially in stems which do not contain another nasal or nasalized vowel. Thus [nûun] ‘animal’ but [nduu] ‘island’.

The distribution of the sounds [nd] versus [d] is more difficult to predict. For at least some speakers the pre-nasalized variant occurs following first-person singular voiced classifier, i.e., ish- and eg-.

medhegndax [meðɛgndax] ‘I forgot’
medhildax [meðildax] ‘you forgot’

In stem-final position the alveolar nasal may occur lengthened, written nn. Thus compare:

kón’ ‘fire’
shkónn’ ‘my fire’

Tanacross nh is a voiceless alveolar nasal stop. It occurs only in stem-final position. n is the voiced counterpart to nh, so that words which end in nh occur with n in their possessed forms.

menh ‘lake’
Dihthâad Měnn’ ‘Mansfield Lake’

Palatal Approximants

Tanacross yh is a voiceless palatal approximant (sonorant) [ç]. While it may sometimes be produced with slight friction, it patterns phonologically as an approximant, not a fricative. It is restricted to syllable-final position. Tanacross y is a voiced palatal approximant [j]. It may occur in both onset and coda positions. The contrast between yh and its voiced counterpart y can be seen in pairs xeyh ‘spruce roots’ versus xey ‘winter’.

At the end of a syllable y may occur lengthened, written yy, as in sh’ǎayy’   ‘my snowshoes’.

Low Back Vowel

Short a and long aa both represent a low central vowel [a].

Mid Front Vowels

Tanacross orthographic e actually represents two distinct phonemes: a mid-front vowel /e/ and a lowered mid-front vowel /ɛ/. The contrast between these phonemes is neutralized in stem (final) syllables, where the lowered variant occurs preceding glottal consonants and the raised variant occurs elsewhere. Thus compare -ke’ [-keʔ] ‘foot’ versus k’et[k’ɛt] ‘on’.

In prefix syllables orthographic e may represent either of the phonemes /e/ or /ɛ/. However, preceding a glottal consonant e is realized as /e/.

In contrast, long ee always corresponds to the mid-front vowel phoneme /e/ and is pronounced as [e]. Thus, in existing Tanacross materials long ee is often used to represent both short /e/ and short /ɛ/. In practice, in prefix syllables short e is used almost exclusively to indicate vowel length (short) rather than quality. Thus, in the first example below the e in the first syllable is short, whereas, in the last example the ee in the first syllable (corresponding to the postpositional object prefix nee- is long. In the second example short e represents a lowered mid-front vowel.

mech’axdekdiix [mečaxdɛktiix] ‘I am teaching him’
xetlghihtiił [xɛtlghihthiił] ‘I am driving a sled’
nee’ech’axdehdiix [nee’ečaxdehtiix] ‘she is teaching us’

High Front Vowel

Short i and long ii both represent a high front vowel [i]. Short i may be lowered to [ɪ] in prefix syllables preceding a n. However, short i is never lowered when it corresponds to the second-person singular subject prefix. Also, short i is never lowered when it precedes a glottal consonant (apostrophe or h). Elsewhere i represents [i]. varies quite a bit in height, ranging from a high front vowel to a mid-high front vowel.

shtthí’ [ʃtƟhiʔ] ‘my head’
xdéltth’ih [xtéltƟ‘ih] ‘they are sitting’
sínt’eh [sɪnt’eh] ‘he/she/it is’
intsax [ʔintshax] ‘you are crying’
ihtsax [ʔihtshax] ‘I am crying’

Mid Back Vowel

Tanacross o is a mid-back vowel [o]. Unlike the other vowels, it always occurs short.

High Back Vowel

Short u and long uu both represent a high back vowel [u]. When it occurs between velar consonants, the phoneme /u/ may be lowered to [o], in which case it is generally written o rather than u. Thus, note the difference in the pre-stem vowel in the following examples.

naxghogdeg ‘I should tell a story’
naxghuldeg ‘you should tell a story’

Nasal Vowels

All Tanacross vowels except o may occur nasalized, that is, with air flowing through the nose as well as the mouth. A nasalized vowel is pronounced in exactly the same manner as the corresponding plain (oral) vowel, except that air is allowed to flow through the nose as well. Nasalization is indicated with a small hook written under the vowel. The difference between plain and nasalized vowels is important to the meaning of Tanacross words. For example, consider the contrast between delgeyh ‘white’ and delgęyh ‘dry’.

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