The quantity language Yakut (Sakha) has a binary distinction between short and long vowels. Disyllabic words with short and long vowels in one or both syllables were extracted from spontaneous speech of native Yakut speakers. In addition, a controlled production by a native speaker of disyllabic words with different short and long vowel combinations along with contrastive minimal pairs was recorded in a phonetics laboratory. Acoustic measurements of the vowels' fundamental frequency, duration, and intensity showed a significant consistent lengthening of phonologically long vowels compared to their short counterparts. However, in addition to evident durational differences between long and short quantities, fundamental frequency and intensity also showed effects of quantity. These results allow the interpretation that similarly to other non-tonal quantity languages like Finnish or Estonian, the Yakut vowel quantity opposition is not based exclusively on durational differences. The data furthermore revealed differences in F0 contours between spontaneous and read speech, providing some first indications of utterance-level prosody in Yakut.

1.
Anderson
,
G. D. S.
(
1995
). “
Diachronic aspects of Russianisms in Siberian Turkic
,”
Annu. Meet. Berkeley Linguist. Soc.
21
(
1
),
365
376
.
2.
Anderson
,
G. D. S.
(
1998
). “
Historical aspects of Yakut (Saxa) phonology
,”
Turkic Languages
2–3
,
1
32
.
3.
Arnhold
,
A.
(
2014
). “
Finnish prosody: Studies in intonation and phrasing
,” Ph.D. thesis,
Goethe University
, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 382 pp.
4.
Asu
,
E. L.
,
Lippus
,
P.
,
Teras
,
P.
, and
Tuisk
,
T.
(
2008
).
“The realization of Estonian quantity characteristics in spontaneous speech,”
in
Nordic Prosody. Proceedings of the Xth Conference, Helsinki 2008
,
Helsinki, Finland
, edited by
M.
Vainio
,
R.
Aulanko
, and
O.
Aaltonen
(Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main), pp.
50
56
.
5.
Baayen
,
R. H.
(
2008
).
Analyzing Linguistic Data: A Practical Introduction to Statistics Using R
(
Cambridge University Press
,
Cambridge, UK
),
368
pp.
6.
Baayen
,
R. H.
,
Davidson
,
D. J.
, and
Bates
,
D. M.
(
2008
). “
Mixed-effects modeling with crossed random effects for subjects and items
,”
J. Mem. Lang.
59
(
4
),
390
412
.
7.
Bates
,
D. M.
,
Maechler
,
M.
,
Bolker
,
B.
, and
Walker
,
S.
(
2014
). “
lme4: Linear mixed-effects models using Eigen and S4. R package (version 1.1-6)
,” http://cran.r-project.org/package=lme4 (Last viewed June 20, 2014).
8.
Boersma
,
P.
, and
Weenink
,
D.
(
2014
). “
Praat: Doing phonetics by computer (version 5.3.75) [computer program]
,” http://www.praat.org/ (Last viewed July 11, 2014).
9.
Finch
,
R.
(
1985
). “
Vowel harmony in Yakut
,”
Sophia Ling.
18
,
1
17
.
10.
Fox
,
R. A.
, and
Lehiste
,
I.
(
1987
). “
Discrimination of duration ratios by native English and Estonian listeners
,”
J. Phonetics
154
,
349
363
.
11.
Hawkins
,
S.
(
2003
). “
Roles and representations of systematic fine phonetic detail in speech understanding
,”
J. Phonetics
31
(
3
),
373
405
.
12.
Jaeger
,
T. F.
(
2008
). “
Categorical data analysis: Away from ANOVAs (transformation or not) and towards logit mixed model
,”
J. Mem. Lang.
59
(
4
),
434
446
.
13.
Järvikivi
,
J.
,
Aalto
,
D.
,
Aulanko
,
R.
, and
Vainio
,
M.
(
2007
).
“Perception of vowel length: Tonality cues categorization even in a quantity language,”
in
Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS XVI)
, edited by
J.
Trouvain
and
W. J.
Barry
, pp.
693
696
.
14.
Järvikivi
,
J.
,
Vainio
,
M.
, and
Aalto
,
D.
(
2010
). “
Real-time correlates of phonological quantity reveal unity of tonal and non-tonal languages
,”
PloS One.
59
,
e12603
, 1–10.
15.
Kaun
,
A. R.
(
1995
). “
The typology of rounding harmony: An optimality theoretic approach
,” Ph.D. thesis,
University of California
,
Los Angeles, CA
,
206
pp.
16.
Kinoshita
,
K.
,
Behne
,
D. M.
, and
Arai
,
T.
(
2002
). “
Duration and F0 as perceptual cues to Japanese vowel quantity
,”
Perception
1454
,
1
4
.
17.
Krifka
,
M.
(
2008
). “
Basic notions of information structure
,”
Acta Ling. Hungarica
55
(
3-4
),
243
276
.
18.
Krueger
,
J. R.
(
2012
).
Yakut Manual, Uralic and Altaic Ser.
, Vol. 21 (
Routledge
,
New York
),
389
pp.
19.
Lehiste
,
I.
(
1965
). “
The function of quantity in Finnish and Estonian
,”
Language
41
(
3
),
447
456
.
20.
Lehiste
,
I.
,
Teras
,
P.
,
Pajusalu
,
K.
, and
Tuisk
,
T.
(
2007
). “
Quantity in Livonian: Preliminary results
,”
Ling. Uralica
1
,
29
44
.
21.
Lippus
,
P.
,
Pajusalu
,
K.
, and
Allik
,
J.
(
2007
).
“The tonal component in perception of the Estonian quantity,”
in
Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS XVI)
, edited by
J.
Trouvain
and
W. J.
Barry
, pp.
1049
1052
.
22.
Lippus
,
P.
,
Pajusalu
,
K.
, and
Allik
,
J.
(
2009
). “
The tonal component of Estonian quantity in native and non-native perception
,”
J. Phonetics
37
(
4
),
388
396
.
23.
Lippus
,
P.
,
Pajusalu
,
K.
, and
Allik
,
J.
(
2011
).
“The role of pitch cue in the perception of the Estonian long quantity,”
in
Prosodic Categories: Production, Perception and Comprehension
, edited by
S.
Frota
,
G.
Elordieta
, and
P.
Prieto
(
Springer
, Dordrecht,
the Netherlands
), pp.
231
242
.
24.
Mixdorff
,
H.
,
Luksaneeyanawin
,
S.
,
Fujisaki
,
H.
, and
Charnivivit
,
P.
(
2002
). “
Perception of tone and vowel quantity in Thai
,” in
Proceedings of International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (ICSLP2002)
, pp.
753
756
.
25.
Nakai
,
S.
,
Kunnari
,
S.
,
Turk
,
A.
,
Suomi
,
K.
, and
Ylitalo
,
R.
(
2009
). “
Utterance-final lengthening and quantity in Northern Finnish
,”
J. Phonetics
37
(
1
),
29
45
.
26.
O'Dell
,
M.
(
2003
).
Intrinsic Timing and Quantity in Finnish
(
Tampere University Press
,
Tampere, Finland
).
27.
Pakendorf
,
B.
(
2007
). “
Contact in the prehistory of Sakha (Yakuts): Linguistic and genetic perspectives
,” Ph.D. thesis,
LOT
,
Utrecht, The Netherlands
,
375
pp.
28.
Pierrehumbert
,
J.
(
1979
). “
The perception of fundamental frequency declination
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
66
(
2
),
363
369
.
29.
R Development Core Team
(
2014
). R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing (R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria), http://www.R-project.org (Last viewed October 4, 2014).
30.
Sasa
,
T.
(
2009
). “
Treatment of vowel harmony in optimality theory
,” Ph.D. thesis,
University of Iowa
,
Iowa City, IA
,
220
pp.
31.
Samsonova
,
T. P.
(
1959
).
Comparative Characteristics of the Sound System of the Russian and Yakut Languages
(
Iakutskoe kniʐnoe izdatel'stvo
,
Yakutsk, Russia
),
92
pp. (in Russian).
32.
Smith
,
R.
,
Baker
,
R.
, and
Hawkins
,
S.
(
2012
). “
Phonetic detail that distinguishes prefixed from pseudo-prefixed words
,”
J. Phonetics
40
(
5
),
689
705
.
33.
Streeter
,
L. A.
(
1978
). “
Acoustic determinants of phrase boundary perception
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
64
(
6
),
1582
1592
.
34.
Strik
,
H.
, and
Boves
,
L.
(
1995
). “
Downtrend in F0 and Psb
,”
J. Phonetics
23
(
1
),
203
220
.
35.
Suomi
,
K.
(
2005
). “
Temporal conspiracies for a tonal end: Segmental durations and accentual f0 movement in a quantity language
,”
J. Phonetics
33
(
3
),
291
309
.
36.
Suomi
,
K.
(
2007
). “
On the tonal and temporal domains of accent in Finnish
,”
J. Phonetics
35
(
1
),
40
55
.
37.
Suomi
,
K.
(
2009
). “
Durational elasticity for accentual purposes in Northern Finnish
,”
J. Phonetics
37
(
4
),
397
416
.
38.
Suomi
,
K.
,
Toivanen
,
J.
, and
Ylitalo
,
R.
(
2003
). “
Durational and tonal correlates of accent in Finnish
,”
J. Phonetics
31
(
1
),
113
138
.
39.
Vainio
,
M.
,
Järvikivi
,
J.
,
Aalto
,
D.
, and
Suni
,
A.
(
2010
). “
Phonetic tone signals phonological quantity and word structure
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
128
(
3
),
1313
1321
.
40.
Ylinen
,
S.
,
Shestakova
,
A.
,
Alku
,
P.
, and
Huotilainen
,
M.
(
2005
). “
The perception of phonological quantity based on durational cues by native speakers, second-language users and nonspeakers of Finnish
,”
Language Speech
48
(
3
),
313
338
.
41.
Yu
,
A. C. L.
(
2008
). “
The phonetics of quantity alternation in Washo
,”
J. Phonetics
36
(
3
),
508
520
.
42.
Yu
,
A. C. L.
(
2010
). “
Tonal effects on perceived vowel duration
,”
Lab. Phonol.
10
,
151
168
.
You do not currently have access to this content.