The phonetics of the epenthetic segment

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epenthesis. For instance, in Dutch, the quality of the glide relies fully on the quality of the first vowel of the hiatus. In Ukrainian, the situation is exactly reversed, because the glide /j/ is only inserted in the /Vi/ configuration, that is, when /i/ is the second vowel of the hiatus. For some languages, e.g., Polish, this contrast is marginal, because glide epenthesis applies regardless of the configuration of the vowels in the hiatus.

Glottal stop insertion and glottalization tend to operate in the context of low vowels.

Experimental evidence from German showed that if a vowel is glottalized, it is commonly perceived as lower than it actually is.

Thus far, it has been shown that glides as intervocalic transitions in hiatus context are universal and can be found in the languages discussed so far in this dissertation.

However, in some languages, glide insertion runs counter to the generalizations made for the Slavic and Germanic languages. For instance, in Washo, a native American language spoken across the border of California and Nevada in the USA (see Staroverov, 2014; after Jacobsen, 1964), a high front glide /j/ is inserted to resolve a hiatus formed at the boundary of a root and inflectional ending. A peculiarity of glide insertion in Washo is that in contrast to the languages discussed above, speakers of Washo insert /j/ regardless of the quality of the flanking vowels in the hiatus. Thus, /j/ is inserted after both front and back vowels, and between non-high vowels. The data from Washo constitutes an example of an uncontroversial phonological glide insertion ‒ /j/ cannot arise as transition if neither of the vowels forming hiatus is /i/.

The illustrative examples are given in (53) below (after Staroverov, 2014: 109‒110).

(53) Washo: /j/ epenthesis

SPELLING UNDERLYING FORM SURFACE FORM GLOSS

wáťa-a /watɁa/+/a/ [ˈwatɁaja] ‘in the river’

dá-uwe /da/+/uweɁ/ [ˈdajuweɁ] ‘away’

di-doko-a /di/+/dokʔo/+/a/ [diˈdokʔoja] ‘at my heel’

l-adu-a /l/+/aːdu/+/a/ [ˈlaːduja] ‘in my hand’

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underlyingly present in other environments. Some studies have shown that the phonetic implementation of the epenthetic segments discussed in the previous sections is not categorical. The phonetics of epenthetic consonants is determined by several factors, such as position in which it occurs, or the rate of speech. While there has been some research on glottal stop insertion (Pompino-Marschall and Żygis, 2010 for German; Kraska-Szlenk and Żygis, 2012 for Polish; Jongenburger and van Heuven, 1991 for Dutch), the issue of the phonetic realization of epenthetic glides remains a rather understudied topic.

As has been said in the previous sections of this chapter, a glottal stop is frequently inserted at the beginning of a vowel-initial constituent. Thus, a glottal stop is used as onset-filler, but also a marker of a morphological or metrical boundary. This process is common, for instance, in German. However, as for the realization of the glottal stop itself, a study run by Pompino-Marschall and Żygis (2010) showed that its realization is not categorical. The results indicated that the degree of robustness in realization (from glottalization to a proper glottal stop) depends on several factors, such as, for instance, word type, stress, or position. The most relevant factor determining the degree of glottalization, however, turned out to be the rate of speech, with a proper glottal stop appearing in slow speech and glottalization in fast speech. The acoustic study of Polish prefixed words run by Kraska-Szlenk and Żygis (2012) showed that the degree of glottalization may also depend on the frequency of a given word in the lexicon. The study revealed that the phonetic effects occurring at the prefix-stem boundary are gradient, and this gradience is influenced by the frequency of a given word. According to the authors, words which are found more often in the lexicon are less likely to undergo glottal stop insertion or glottalization at the prefix-root juncture.

The glottalization, or insertion of glottal stop proper, however, is more likely if the word is relatively rare.

There is no unanimous interpretation of the realization of epenthetic glides cross-linguistically. In Polish, for instance, there are orthographic sequences <ua>.

According to some sources, such as Rubach (2000: 291), words spelled with <ua>

(which he analyses as containing an underlying vowel sequence) are realized with an intervening glide, for example, aktualny [aktuˈwalnɨ] ‘current’. Rubach’s analysis implies therefore that there should be no difference in the pronunciation of underlying and inserted glides. This is confirmed by the fact that they are both transcribed with

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/w/. However, other sources suggest alternative ways of realizing strings spelled with

<ua> or other sequences of vowels one of which is high. For instance, Dunaj (2006:

165–166) claims that there is variation in their realization, namely, that the sequence may be pronounced with a hiatus ([u.a]), a glottal stop ([u.Ɂa]), or a ‘weak labial element’. He does not, however, specify the exact nature of this element. Osowicka-Kondratowicz (2018: 41), discussing /Vi/ and /Vu/ sequences, states that while a glide is present between the two vowels, its robustness may differ, with the weaker glides being a natural transition between the articulation of any vowel and the following [i] and [u]. To date, the issue of putative transitional glides in Polish vowel sequences has not merited a proper articulatory or acoustic investigation. However, such studies have been conducted for other languages in which intervocalic glide epenthesis had been postulated, such as Dutch (Berendsen and den Os, 1987; van Heuven and Hoos, 1991) or American English (Davidson and Erker, 2014). The study of Dutch conducted by van Heuven and Hoos (1991) aimed at comparing lexical glides with glides ostensibly inserted in hiatus positions across word boundaries. An acoustic analysis showed substantial differences in duration: the lexical glides were considerably longer than the transitional glides. Moreover, an additional perception study indicated that native speakers of Dutch had no difficulties differentiating between lexical and transitional glides. The acoustic study of American English run by Davidson and Erker (2014) examined vowel hiatus inside words, and across word boundaries (e.g., in see otters), which were compared to vowel-glide-vowel sequences in which the glide is present underlyingly (e.g., see yachts). According to some sources (for instance, McCarthy, 1993), in American English, /j/ is inserted after /i/, or after a glide with a high vowel in the offglide (/eɪ/, /aɪ/), and /w/ is inserted after /u/, /oʊ/, and /aʊ/. Thus, the epenthetic glide is spawned by the first vowel of the hiatus.

Glide epenthesis is believed to apply both inside words (54a) and across words boundaries (54b), as illustrated with the examples given in (54) below (cf. Davidson and Erker, 2014: 482).

68 (54) American English: glide insertion

While according to the prescriptive view glide insertion resolves hiatus in American English, this view has been challenged by an acoustic study run by Davidson and Erker (2014). The results of the study indicated that there were significant differences between lexical and epenthetic glides in terms of duration and intensity. Moreover, the speakers of American English also inserted glottal stops in contexts where glides were previously reported to arise.

Additionally, a perceptual study of /ia/ sequences by Polish, German and English speakers is briefly described by Żygis (2009; 2010). The perceptual study on glide insertion manipulated the transition length between segments in the sequence /ia/.

Then, speakers of Polish, German, and English (i.e., speakers of languages, in which /j/ is present in the phonemic inventory) were played the recording and asked to write down what they had just heard. The results indicated that there is no categorical boundary of glide perception, since the replies varied significantly, and were mostly language and speaker dependent. However, Polish respondents stand out among others, as they declare to perceive an intervocalic glide in all instances, regardless of the duration of the transition. This indicates that intervocalic glides may be strongly perceptible for the speakers of Polish, which will be investigated in more detail in the following chapters.