The distribution and acoustic properties of fricatives in Light Warlpiri

Abstract

This thesis examines potential fricatives in Light Warlpiri, an Australian mixed language with Warlpiri, Kriol, and English adstrates. Most Australian languages, including Warlpiri, lack contrastive fricatives. Because of this, any inherited fricatives in Light Warlpiri – including those that have come through Kriol – are originally from English. However, the fricative inventories of Standard Australian English, Australian Aboriginal English, and Kriol differ in terms of which places of articulation are differentiated and whether voicing is contrastive. The aim of this thesis is to establish whether fricatives exist in Light Warlpiri, to investigate their acoustic properties if so, and to compare these properties with those of the Light Warlpiri source languages. This thesis consists of two studies using elicited data from 10 first language speakers of Light Warlpiri. The first study investigates the presence and distribution of potential fricatives in Light Warlpiri. It is found that Light Warlpiri lacks /h/, and reflexes of English dental fricatives are realised as stops. The second study is an acoustic analysis of the subset of potential fricatives that are produced as fricatives. It is shown that Light Warlpiri speakers differentiate fricative production by the place of articulation of the English source. Voicing is shown to be contrastive for labiodental fricatives, but not for alveolar or postalveolar fricatives. These results show that the fricative inventory of Light Warlpiri has significant influence from Standard Australian English, but differs from all of its source languages.