Semantically-Oriented Vowel Reduction in an Amazonian Language

Abstract

While it is an interesting phenomenon, semantically-oriented vowel reduction has only been demonstrated in studies with English-speaking participants. The primary objective of the current endeavor is to establish whether or not there is cross-linguistic evidence for semantically-oriented vowel reduction. In order to do so, we will consider some recently-collected data from Karitiâna (K henceforth). K is a Tupí­ language spoken in southwestern Amazonia. It is a natural subject for the current study since the author regularly conducts phonetic research on the language, and since there are a number of recent phonetic studies available in the literature on the language (Everett in press a, 2008a, inter alia). An ancillary objective for this study is to contribute to the growing acoustic-phonetic literature on the language and on Amazonian languages more generally (see discussion in Everett in press b).