Tonal Dialects and Consonant-Pitch Interaction in Yucatec Maya

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1.2 Implosives and F0

Consonant-pitch interaction has been studied for (more than) thirty years,
and yet there is controversy about implosives in this regard. Recently,
Tang (2008) showed that, cross-linguistically, implosives can pattern with
either high or low tone in phonological consonant-tone interaction. But
what are the phonetic underpinnings of this interaction?
The majority opinion of the literature is that implosives are correlated
with high F0 (Hyman and Schuh 1974, Ohala 1973, Odden 2005, Demolin
1995). However, the only work, to my knowledge, that studies the
interaction between implosives and pitch through experimentation and
statistical analysis is Wright and Shryock (1993), who found that, in
SiSwati, the implosive [@LVDVVRFLDWHGZLWKVLJQLILFDQWO\ORZHU)LQ WKH
IROORZLQJYRZHOWKDQWKHYRLFHOHVVDVSLUDWHGVWRS>SK@EXWZLWKVLJQLILFDQWO\
KLJKHU)WKDQWKHQDVDOV>P@DQG>P]. The results of the present study will
show that in YM, implosives are again associated with lower pitch than
voiceless sounds, though they behave identically to voiced sonorants.

2 Experimental Methods
2.1 Participants
Twenty-four participants were recruited from three cities in Yucatan,
Mexico: Mrida (capital of Yucatan), Santa Elena (about 65 km south of
Mrida), and Sisbicchn (about 160 km east of Mrida). Table 3 provides
more information about the participants.
Table II-3 Participant data
6 males
Mrida
1 female
5 males
Santa Elena

Sisbicchn

7 females
2 males
3 females

ages
33, 39, 40, 41,
47, 47
39
22, 25, 43, 63,
68
19, 20, 25, 30,
33, 35, 63
30, 41
24, 29, 30

additional languages
fluent in Spanish, one
male also proficient in
English
fluent in Spanish, one
male and one female also
fluent in English
fluent in Spanish
understand Spanish, but
do not use it