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 Athabaskan 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.
Bilabial Alveolar Palato-alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal plain lateral affricate plain lab. Nasal plain glottalized () () Stop unaspirated aspirated ejective Continuant fortis lenis Glide plain glottalized () ()
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.
Stops and affricates All stops and affricates, except for the bilabial and glottal, have a three-way laryngeal contrast between unaspirated, aspirated, and ejective. The labial is 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 ). and find these to be affricates and not clusters. The acoustic difference between an affricate and a stop + fricative consonant cluster is the rate of increase in the amplitude of the frication noise (i.e. the rise time); affricates have a short rise time, consonant clusters have a longer rise time between the stop and fricative . 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. reports that this variation is salient to Navajo speakers and that speakers with aspirated stops called the speakers with velar frication ('-speakers').The velar frication on is also seen in the closely related Chiricahua Apache language; however, the Western Apache language does not typically have this velar aspiration.
Similarly, the unaspirated velar (orthographic ) is realized 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 affricates . 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 from 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.
Continuants 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,For example, 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 .
Sonorants A more abstract analysis of Navajo posits two different phonemes (see 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.
Glottal(ized) consonants 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.Similar observations have been noted for the closely related Western Apache language. 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: .
Labialized consonants 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 . does not note the approximant-like nature of before although he does do so for the labialized allophone. The following verb stemNavajo verb stems have complex vowel ablaut involving different vowel qualities, length, nasalization, and tone. The verb stem "make bubbling noise" has the following verb stem-forms: , , , , , . has different velar allophones of the stem-initial consonant:
{| class="wikitable" ! Word !! Underlying !! Phonetic !! ! Gloss |- | || || || 'make bubbling noise' (iterative, continuative) |- | || || || 'make bubbling noise' (iterative, repetitive)
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:
{| class="wikitable" ! !! Word !! Underlying !! Phonetic !! Gloss |- ! rowspan="2" | contrast before | || || || 'its fur' |- | || || || 'its lice' |- | style="background-color: lightGrey;" colspan="5" | |- ! rowspan="2" | contrast before | || || || 'its marrow' |- | || || || 'its breath'
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:
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: right;" ! colspan="3" | Fortis context ! colspan="3" | Lenis context |- style="font-size: x-small;" ! Word !! Phonetic !! Gloss !! Word !! Phonetic !! Gloss |- | || || 'bundle' | || || 'her bundle' |- | style="background-color: lightGrey;" colspan="7" | |- | || || 'I pick (corn)' | || || 'she picks (corn)'
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:
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: right;" ! rowspan="2" | ! colspan="3" | Fortis context ! colspan="3" | Lenis context |- style="font-size: x-small;" ! Word !! Phonetic !! Gloss !! Word !! Phonetic !! Gloss |- | style="background-color: lightGrey;" colspan="7" | |- ! before | || || 'you make it boil' | || || 'it comes to a boil' |- | style="background-color: lightGrey;" colspan="7" | |- ! before | || || 'he's sleeping' | || || 'he's pretending to be asleep'
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.
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: right;" ! rowspan="2" | ! colspan="3" | Fortis context ! colspan="3" | Lenis context |- style="font-size: x-small;" ! Word !! Phonetic !! Gloss !! Word !! Phonetic !! Gloss |- ! before | || || 'song' | || || 'her song' |- | style="background-color: lightGrey;" colspan="7" | |- ! before | || || 'I'm wise' | || || 'she's wise' |- | style="background-color: lightGrey;" colspan="7" | |- ! before | || || 'I drive them out' | || || 'she drives them out'
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:
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: right;" ! colspan="3" | Fortis context ! colspan="3" | Lenis context