Johnson K, Martin J
Department of Linguistics, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210-1298, USA.
Phonetica. 2001 Jan-Jun;58(1-2):81-102. doi: 10.1159/000028489.
Eight speakers (4 male and 4 female) of the Muskogee dialect of Creek pronounced a set of words illustrating the vowels and diphthongs of Creek. These recordings were analyzed acoustically and data on vowel duration and vowel formant frequencies are presented in this paper. The ratio of the durations of dictinctively long and short vowels was 1.8. This ratio showed a sex difference, being larger for female speakers than it was for male speakers. Final lengthening was also observed: both distinctively long and short vowels were longer in word-final position than in word-initial position. The vowel formant data showed two additive, orthogonal phonetic vowel reduction processes: short vowel centralization and positional reduction. Short vowel centralization has been found in many languages. Distinctively long vowels in Creek tended to be more peripheral in the acoustic vowel space than were the distinctively short vowels. Positional reduction is also evident in these data: vowels in word-final position were reduced relative to vowels in word-initial position. Short vowel centralization was preserved in both positions in the word. Positional reduction has been documented in several languages, and these results from Creek lend support to the hypothesis that it is a general property of speech production. The results of this acoustic-phonetic study, the first such study of Creek, are discussed in light of cross-linguistic phonetic trends.
八位讲克里克语马斯库吉方言的人（4男4女）朗读了一组展现克里克语元音和双元音的单词。对这些录音进行了声学分析，本文呈现了元音时长和元音共振峰频率的数据。明显的长元音与短元音时长之比为1.8。该比例存在性别差异，女性说话者的这一比例高于男性说话者。还观察到了词末延长现象：无论是明显的长元音还是短元音，在词末位置都比在词首位置更长。元音共振峰数据显示出两种叠加的、正交的语音元音缩减过程：短元音央化和位置性缩减。短元音央化在许多语言中都有发现。克里克语中明显的长元音在声学元音空间中往往比明显的短元音更靠外围。位置性缩减在这些数据中也很明显：词末位置的元音相对于词首位置的元音有所缩减。短元音央化在词的两个位置都得以保留。位置性缩减在几种语言中都有记录，克里克语的这些结果支持了它是言语产生的一个普遍特征这一假设。本文根据跨语言语音趋势对这项声学语音学研究（对克里克语的首次此类研究）的结果进行了讨论。
