Aspects of Arrernte prosody

- Six female speakers of Arrernte read the South Wind and the Sun text.
- In terms of duration, /a/ is an elastic vowel and schwa is a non-elastic vowel.
- /a/ duration varies according to stress.
- /a/ duration varies if it is adjacent to a cluster vs. a singleton consonant.
- Homorganic vs. heterorganic clusters result in different timing effects.

This study presents duration data for six female speakers of Central Arrernte, based on continuous read speech. The vowels of Arrernte are treated separately in the durational analyses, and it is found that the vowel /a/ is much more "elastic" than the vowel /ə/ and the (relatively infrequent) vowel /i/, which are comparatively "non-elastic". The elastic vowel /a/ is lengthened considerably under stress, and also shows great durational variability when preceding or following consonant clusters - it is lengthened following the cluster, and slightly shortened before the cluster. By contrast, the non-elastic vowels /ə/ and /i/ show relatively stable durational values in these various prosodic contexts.In addition, it is shown that the singleton consonant is lengthened when it precedes a stressed vowel (i.e. when it is part of a CV sequence). This is despite Arrernte phonology having an underlying VC syllable structure. As regards consonant clusters, homorganic vs. heterorganic clusters result in different timing effects, which hint at different syllabic affiliations for the two different types of clusters.Together, these results present a picture of Arrernte durational patterns which are very dependent on elastic vs. non-elastic vowels, on stress, on the presence of singleton consonants vs. clusters, and the presence of homorganic vs. heterorganic clusters.