Depressing facts about Zulu

Abstract

Summary The laryngographic results show that in Zulu there is not a distinctive phonation type (breathy voice/murmur) on vowels adjacent to depressor consonants. Although typical breathy Lx waveforms are indeed found in association with some depressors, they are not reliably present for all and when they do occur the spread into adjacent vowels is minimal. The existence of breathy Lx adjacent to non-depressors as well, strongly suggests that it is incorrect to focus on phonation type as a primary characteristic of depressors in Zulu (cf. Ladefoged 1971:14). The possibility remains that Lx tracings may not yield reliable records of phonation type differences. While this seems unlikely, it would be wise to pursue the investigation with alternative methods such as those advanced by Ladefoged (1983) in which the relative amplitudes of the fundamental and first formant are compared. Our preliminary work in this direction still suggests that breathy voice is not a reliable concomitant of Zulu depressor consonants. It would naturally be necessary to extend these investigations to Swati, Xhosa and Ndebele in order to explore possible language specific differences with respect to depression and phonation type.

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