Navajo phonology

This article is about the sound system of the Navajo language. The phonology of Navajo is intimately connected to its morphology. For example, the entire range of contrastive consonants is found only at the beginning of word stems. In stem-final position and in prefixes, the number of contrasts is drastically reduced. Similarly, vowel contrasts (including their prosodic combinatory possibilities) found outside of the stem are significantly neutralized. For details about the morphology of Navajo, see Navajo grammar.
Like most Athabascan languages, Navajo is coronal heavy, having many phonological contrasts at coronal places of articulation and less at other places. Also typical of the family, Navajo has a limited number of labial sounds, both in terms of its phonemic inventory and in their occurrence in actual lexical items and displays of consonant harmony.
Consonants.
The consonant phonemes of Navajo are listed below.
Phonetics.
All consonants are long, compared to English: with plain stops the hold is longer, with aspirated stops the aspiration is longer, and with affricates the frication is longer. The voice onset time of the aspirated and ejective stops is twice as long as that found in most non-Athabaskan languages. described Navajo consonants as "doubled" between vowels, but in fact they are equally long in all positions.
All stops and affricates, except for the bilabial and glottal, have a three-way laryngeal contrast between unaspirated, aspirated, and ejective. The labials are found in only a few words. Most of the contrasts in the inventory lie within coronal territory at the alveolar and palatoalveolar places of articulation.
The aspirated stops (orthographic , ) are typically aspirated with velar frication (they are phonetically affricates — homorganic in the case of , heterorganic in the case of ). The velar aspiration is also found on a labialized velar (orthographic ). There is variation within Navajo, however, in this respect: some dialects lack strong velar frication having instead a period of aspiration. An aspirated occurs only in loanwords, for instance "Mísísípii" , from English "Mississippi".
Similarly the unaspirated velar (orthographic ) is realized as with optional voiced velar frication following the stop burst: . The unaspirated lateral (orthographic ) typically has a voiced lateral release, , of a duration comparable to the release of the and much shorter than the unaspirated fricatives . However, the aspirated and ejective laterals are true affricates.
While the aspiration of stops is markedly long compared to most other languages, the aspiration of the affricates is quite short: the main feature distinguishing and from and is that the frication is half again as long in the latter: . is similarly long, . The ejectives , on the other hand, have short frication, presumably due to the lack of pulmonic airflow. There is a period of near silence before the glottalized onset of the vowel. In there may be a double glottal release, or a creaky onset to the vowel not found in the other ejective affricates.
Navajo voiceless continuants are realized as fricatives. They are typically noisier than the fricatives that occur in English. The palato-alveolars are not labialized unlike English and other European languages.
Navajo also does not have consistent phonetic voicing in the "voiced" continuant members. Although are described as voiced in impressionist descriptions, data from spectrograms shows that they may be partially devoiced during the constriction. In stem-initial position, tends to be fully voiced, has a slight tendency to be voiceless near the offset, is often mostly voiceless with phonetic voicing only at the onset, is also only partially voiced with voicing at onset. A more consistent acoustic correlate of the "voicing" is the duration of the consonant: "voiceless" consonants have longer durations than "voiced" consonants. Based on this, argues that the distinction is better captured with the notion of a fortis/lenis contrast. A further characteristic of voicing in Navajo is that it is marginally contrastive (see the voicing assimilation section).
Navajo lacks a clear distinction between phonetic fricatives and approximants. Although the pair ~ has been described as a fricative and an approximant, respectively, the lack of a consistent contrast between the two phonetic categories and a similar patterning with other fricative pairs suggests that they are better described as continuants. Additionally, observations have been made about the less fricative-like nature of and the more fricative-like nature of .
A more abstract analysis of Navajo posits two different phonemes (see the below for elaboration).
The glottalized sonorants are the result of "d"-effect on the non-glottalized counterparts. A strict structuralist analysis, such as that of and , considers them phonemic.
Consonants involving a glottal closure — the glottal stop, ejective stops, and the glottalized sonorants — may have optional creaky voice on voiced sounds adjacent to the glottal gesture. Glottal stops may also be realized entirely as creaky voice instead of single glottal closure. Ejectives in Navajo differ from the ejectives in many other languages in that the glottal closure is not released near-simultaneously with the release of the oral closure (as is common in other languages) — it is held for a significant amount of time following oral release. The glottalized sonorants are articulated with a glottal stop preceding the oral closure with optional creaky voice during the oral closure: .
Consonants are predictable variants that occur before the rounded oral vowel . However, these sounds also occur before the vowels where they contrast with their non-labialized counterparts .
Velar , palatal.
The phonological contrast between the velar obstruent and the palatal glide is neutralized in certain contexts. However, in these contexts, they may often be distinguished from each other by their different phonological patterning.
Before the rounded , is phonetically strongly labialized as ; elsewhere, it lacks the labialization. As noted above, the lenis continuants like are often very weak fricatives somewhere between a typical fricative constriction (e.g. ) and a more open approximant constriction (e.g. ) — this will be symbolized here as . describes the realization as being similar to English but differing in having slight frication at the beginning of the articulation. The realization before varies between an approximant and a weakly fricated approximant . The following verb stem has different velar allophones of the stem-initial consonant:
The palatal glide is also phonetically between an approximant and a fricative . compares it to English with a "slight but audible 'rubbiness' or frication."
The contrast between velar and palatal is found before both back vowels as the following contrasts demonstrate:
Before the front vowels , however, the contrast between and is neutralized to a palatal articulation much like the weakly fricative realization of that occurs before back vowels. However, the underlying consonant can be ascertained in verb stems and noun stems via their different realizations in a voiceless (i.e. fortis) context. The underlying velar surfaces as a voiceless palatal fricative in these environments:
The stem-initial velar of the noun stem has a voiceless fortis realization of (as ) when word-initial. When intervocalic, it is realized as lenis (as ). Likewise, the underlying velar of the verb stem is a voiceless after the preceding voiceless and lenis when intervocalic. Thus, the alternation of in the two contexts is indicative of an underlying velar consonant. Similarly before the back vowels, the velar continuant has the alternations and as shown in the examples below:
An underlying palatal can be determined by alternations which differ from the velar alternations. However, has two different alternation patterns which have led to the positing of two distinct phonemes. Incidentally, the two different phonemes are also connected to two different reconstructed consonants in Proto-Athabascan. One of these phonemes is considered an obstruent as it has a fricative realization of in fortis contexts. It is often symbolized as a palatalized (or front velar) fricative (in Americanist phonetic notation) and is a reflex of Proto-Athabascan . It may be considered coronal because of its coronal voiceless allophone.
In the above examples, the fortis realization is in the stems , , while the lenis realization is the glide in the corresponding , , . Since the fortis reflex of this phoneme is there is also a neutralization between this phoneme and the alveolar phoneme. The alveolar phoneme has a alternation in fortis-lenis contexts:
Thus, the different alternations also distinguish between underlying and underlying .
The other underlying (or morphophonemic) palatal is considered a sonorant and has an invariant realization in both fortis (voiceless) and lenis (voiced) contexts. This phoneme is relatively rare, occurring in only a few morphemes. It is a reflex of Proto-Athabascan (as symbolized in Americanist notation). Two examples are below:
A further distinction between the different phonemes are found in the context of d-effect.
The varying contextual realizations of these three underlying segments are summarized in the following table:
Voicing assimilation.
The voiced continuants at the beginning of stems vary with their voiceless counterparts , respectively. The voiceless variants occur when preceded by voiceless consonants, such as while the voiced variants occur between voiced sounds (typically intervocalically). For example, the verb stems meaning 'spit it out', 'be burning', 'spit', and 'be ticklish' have the following forms with alternating voiced and voiceless stem-initial consonants:
Since the voicing is predictable, it can be represented more abstractly as an underlying consonant that is underspecified with respect to voicing. These archiphonemes can be indicated with the capital letters . The variant voicing of the stem-initial consonant can be found in the context of subject person prefixes which are added to the verb stem:
As the above examples show, the stem-initial consonant is voiced when intervocalic and voiceless when it is preceded by a voiceless first person singular subject prefix or a voiceless in the two person dual subject prefix.
Another example of contextual voicing of verb-stem-initial consonants occurs when a voiceless classifier prefix occurs before the stem as in the following:
In the verb-form ('we two dribble it along'), the occurs between a voiced and the voiced stem vowel . Thus it is realized as a voiced . Here the classifier is voiced due to the d-effect of the preceding first person dual subject prefix. In the other verb-forms, the stem-initial is preceded by voiceless classifier which results in a voiceless realization of . In the surface verb-forms, the underlying classifier is not pronounced due to a phonotactic restriction on consonant clusters.
The initial consonant of noun stems also display contextual voicing:
Here an intervocalic context is created by inflecting the nouns , , , with a third person prefix which ends in a vowel. In this context, the stem-initial consonant is voiced. When these nouns lack a prefix (in which case the stem-initial consonant is word-initial), the realization is voiceless.
However, in some noun stems, the stem-initial continuant does not voice when intervocalic: ('salt').
Dorsal place assimilation.
The dorsal consonants (written , , , , ) have contextual phonetic variants (i.e. allophones) varying along place of articulation that depend on the following vowel environment. They are realized as palatals before the front vowels and and as velars before the back vowels and . Additionally, they are labialized before the rounded back vowel . This likewise happens with the velar frication of the aspirated .
Coronal harmony.
Navajo has coronal sibilant consonant harmony. Alveolar sibilants in prefixes assimilate to post-alveolar sibilants in stems, and post-alveolar prefixal sibilants assimilate to alveolar stem sibilants. For example, the "si-" stative perfective is realized as "si-" or "shi-" depending upon whether the stem contains a post-alveolar sibilant. For example, while "sido" ('it is hot' perfective) has the first form, "shibeezh" ('it is boiled' perfective), the stem-final triggers the change to .
D-effect.
A particular type of morphophonemic alternation (or mutation) occurring in Athabascan languages called "d-effect" is found in Navajo. The alternation in most cases is a fortition (or strengthening) process. The initial consonant of a verb stem alternates with a strengthened consonant when it is preceded by a (orthographic ) "classifier" prefix or the first person dual subject prefix. The underlying of these prefixes is absorbed into the following stem. D-effect can be viewed prosodically as the result of a phonotactic constraint on consonant clusters that would otherwise result from the concatenation of underlying segments. There is thus an interaction between a requirement for the grammatical information to be expressed in the surface form and an avoidance of having sequences of consonants (see the syllable section for more on phonotactics).
The fortition is typically a change from continuant to affricate or continuant to stop (i.e. adding a period of closure to the articulation). However, other changes involve glottalization of the initial consonant:
The two occurrences of in the chart above reflect two different patterns of d-effect involving stem-initial . Often different underlying consonants are posited to explain the different alternation. The first alternation is posited as a result of underlying leading to a d-effect mutation of . The other is resulting in . (See the velar /ɣ/, palatal /j/ section for further explanation.)
Another example of d-effect influences not the stem-initial consonant but the classifier prefix. When the first person dual subject prefix precedes the (orthographic ) classifier prefix, the classifier is realized as voiced :
Vowels.
Navajo has four contrastive vowel qualities at three different vowel heights (high, mid, low) and a front-back contrast between the mid vowels . There are also two contrastive vowel lengths and a contrast in nasalization. This results in 16 phonemic vowels, shown below.
There is a phonetic vowel quality difference between the long high vowel (orthographic ) and the short high vowel (orthographic ): the shorter vowel is significantly lower at than its long counterpart. This phonetic difference is salient to native speakers, who will consider a short vowel at a higher position to be a mispronunciation. Similarly, short is pronounced . Short is a bit more variable and more centralized, covering the space . Notably, the variation in does not approach , which is a true gap in the vowel space.
Although the nasalization is contrastive in the surface phonology, many instances of nasalized vowels can be derived from a sequence of Vowel + Nasal consonant in a more abstract analysis. Additionally, there are alternations between long and short vowels that are predictable.
There have been a number of somewhat different descriptions of Navajo vowels, which are conveniently summarized in .
Acoustic phonetics.
 has acoustic measurements of the formants of Navajo long and short vowel pairs as pronounced by 10 female and 4 male native speakers. Below are the median values of the first (F1) and second (F2) formants for this study.
An earlier study () has measurements from seven female speakers:
Tones.
Navajo has two tones: high and low. Orthographically, high tone is marked with an acute accent over the affected vowel, while low tone is left unmarked This reflects the tonal polarity of Navajo, as syllables have low tone by default.
Long vowels normally have level tones . However, in grammatical contractions and in Spanish loan words such as ('money' from Spanish ), long vowels may have falling or rising tones.
The sonorant also carries tone when it is syllabic. Here again, the high tone is marked with an acute while the low tone is left unmarked .
Even though low tone is the default, these syllables are not underspecified for tone: they have a distinct phonetic tone, and their pitch is not merely a function of their environment. This contrasts with the related Carrier language. As in many languages, however, the pitches at the beginnings of Navajo vowels are lower after voiced consonants than after tenuis and aspirated consonants. After ejective consonants, only high tones are lowered, so that the distinction between high and low tone is reduced. However, the type of consonant has little effect on the pitch in the middle of the vowel, so that vowels have characteristic rising pitches after voiced consonants.
The pitch of a vowel is also affected by the tone of the previous syllable: in most cases, this has as great an effect on the pitch of a syllable as its own tone. However, this effect is effectively blocked by an intervening aspirated consonant.
Tonological processes.
Navajo nouns are simple: "kǫ́" ('fire'), "bidił" ('his blood'). Most long nouns are actually deverbal.
In verbs, with few exceptions, only stems may carry a high tone: CV(ː)(C)(T). Prefixes are mostly single consonants, C-, and do not carry tone. The one exception is the high-tone vocalic prefix . Most other tone-bearing units in the Navajo verb are second stems or clitics.
All Navajo verbs can be analyzed as compounds, and this greatly simplifies the description of tone. There are two obligatory components, the "I" stem (for "inflection") and the "V" stem (for "verb"), each potentially bearing a high tone, and each preceded by its own prefixes. In addition, the compound as a whole takes 'agreement' prefixes like the prefixes found on nouns. This entire word may then take proclitics, which may also carry tone:
Any high tones on clitics spread to the next syllable of the word only if it is short and located immediately before the verbal stem. This can be seen with the iterative clitic . Compare
and
where the clitic "ná=" creates a high tone on the following short pre-stem syllable in bold, but,
and
where it does not.
Syllable.
"Stems." The stems (e.g. noun stems, verb stems, etc.) have the following syllable types:
That is, all syllables must have a consonant onset C, a vowel nucleus V. The syllable may carry a high tone T, the vowel nucleus may be short or long, and there may optionally be a consonant coda.
"Prefixes." Prefixes typically have a syllable structure of CV-, such as "chʼí-" ('out horizontally'). Exceptions to this are certain verbal prefixes, such as the classifiers ("-ł-", "-l-", "-d-") that occur directly before the verb stem, which consist of a single consonant -C-. A few other verbal prefixes, such as "naa-" ('around') on the outer left edge of the verb have long vowels, CVV-. A few prefixes have more complex syllable shapes, such as "hashtʼe-" ('ready') (CVCCV-). Prefixes do not carry tone.
Some analyses, such as that of Harry Hoijer, consider conjunct verbal prefixes to have the syllable shape CV-. In other generative analyses, the same prefixes are considered to have only underlying consonants of the shape C-. Then, in certain environments, an epenthetic vowel (the default vowel is ) is inserted after the consonantal prefix.
Peg elements, segment insertion.
All verbs must be at least disyllabic. Some verbs may only have a single overt nonsyllabic consonantal prefix or a prefix lacking an onset, or no prefix at all before the verb stem. Since all verbs are required to have two syllables, a meaningless prefix must be added to the verb to fulfill the disyllabic requirement. This prosodic prefix is known as a "peg element" in Athabascan terminology (Edward Sapir used the term "pepet vowel"). For example, the verb meaning "she/he/they is/are crying" has the following morphological composition: "Ø-Ø-cha" where both the imperfective modal prefix and the third person subject prefix are phonologically null morphemes and the verb stem is "-cha". In order for this verb to be complete a "yi-" peg element must be prefixed to the verb stem, resulting in the verb form "yicha". Another examples are verb "yishcha" ('I'm crying') which is morphologically "Ø-sh-cha" ("Ø-" null imperfective modal, "-sh-" first person singular subject, "-cha" verb stem) and "wohcha" ('you [2+] are crying') which is "Ø-oh-cha" ("Ø-" null imperfective modal, "-oh-" second person dual-plural subject, "-cha" verb stem). The glide consonant of the peg element is before , before , and before .