| Description |
This thesis is an analysis of geminate consonant segments in Shoshoni, a member of the Numic family of Uto-Aztecan languages. Shoshoni dialects exhibit a series of consonant segments described as geminate or geminating segments contrastively characterized as a) being twice as long as initial stops, b) "not phonetically geminate, but rather very tense and slightly protracted single sound segments, or c) segments that are hardened. This variance combined with a lack of word/utterance medial unvoiced singleton consonants in Shoshoni raises questions concerning a geminate analysis. In an effort to mitigate this lack of contrast, I propose an analysis in which the surface geminate behaviors of Shoshoni are compared to known behaviors of geminates in other languages and deducing the underlying structure based on the known behaviors and underlying structures of the languages to which the comparisons are made. In this thesis I present 1) an examination of the distribution of the described Shoshoni geminates and geminating segments, 2) an examination of the underlying attributes of segments participating in geminate production and the environments in which they are found, 3) a demonstration of the predictive potential resulting from the underlying distinctions of the geminate structures in Shoshoni, and 4) a comparison of findings in Shoshoni to the exceptional behavior of geminates in other languages in support of the geminate analysis in Shoshoni. |
