VOWEL ACOUSTICS IN AKUNTSU: DISPERSION AND NON-MODAL PHONATION

This paper aims to present a preliminary analysis of creaky or laryngealized vowels in Akuntsa spoken by only six monolingual indians on the mere River, at the Brazilian western state of Rondonia, Brazil. Vowel spaces are re-expressed in terms of a standard psychoacoustic scale and further quantitative information is addressed. A global measure of acoustic dispersion is presented and the value obtained for the Akuntsa vowel space is compared to similar values obtained from an independent sample of languages. Results suggest that non-modal phonation in Akuntsa can be characterized as the effect of at least two distinct articulatory mechanisms and their differing acoustic effects.