Acoustic correlates of aspirated consonants in Maranao

Aspirated obstruents are rare in Austronesian languages, one exception being the southern Philippine language Maranao, as reported by Lobel and Riwarung [Oceanic Linguist. 48, 403–438 (2009)]. In Maranao, aspirated consonants occur as a reflex of a cluster of a former voiced stop and a homorganic obstruent (*bp > p’, *dt > t’, *ds > s’, *gk> k ’). The most obvious correlate to non-Maranao speakers is a dramatic raising of the following vowel, which also occurs after voiced obstruents, but not after historic single voiceless obstruents—e.g., /təkaw/ [təkaw] ‘startled’ (earlier *təkaw) vs. /tək’aw/ [təkʰɣw] ‘thief’ (earlier *təɡkaw) However, native Maranao speakers regard the raising as a property of the consonants, not the vowels. We examined the correlates of the apparent aspiration. The vowel raising is realized robustly and consistently, with some overlap in F1/F2 space among contrastive vowels. However, aspirated and unaspirated stops also show differences in VOT and in measures of breathiness of the following vowel, albeit with somewhat less consistency. Differences between /s/ and /s’/ were not evident except for realizations of following vowels. We explore the role of pharyngeal expansion due to voicing in the development of these Maranao segmental realizations.