Acoustic evidence for an emerging binary sibilant system in Telugu

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Phonetics
• Acoustic Phonetics

Background:

• Traditional descriptions of Telugu sibilants posit a three-way distinction: alveolar, palatal, and retroflex.
• Phonological systems are dynamic and can undergo changes, including sound mergers.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the current production and acoustic realization of Telugu sibilants.
• To determine if the traditional ternary distinction is maintained or if a binary system is emerging.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of production data from 16 native Telugu speakers.
• Acoustic modeling to examine the acoustic properties of sibilant sounds.
• Examination of phonetic context and lexical factors influencing sibilant realization.

Main Results:

• The majority of Telugu speakers exhibit a binary system, merging the palatal and retroflex postalveolar sibilants.
• Acoustic discriminability between sibilant categories is not uniform.
• Merger patterns are influenced by speech sound position, surrounding vowels, and lexical characteristics like word frequency and competitor density.

Conclusions:

• The Telugu sibilant system appears to be transitioning from a ternary to a binary distinction.
• Phonetic and lexical factors play a significant role in the realization and perception of sibilant mergers.