Voicing status of syllable-initial plosives in siSwati

Abstract

This paper compares the voicing status of /ptk/ and /bdg/ in siSwati. Expanded waveform shapes and spectrographic representations of our experimental data showed us immediately that the distinction between the voiceless and voiced syllable-initial plosives could not be traced by means of the usual absence/presence of the voice bar in the spectrograms. This resulted in adopting alternative cues, such as voice onset time (VOT) and closure duration. The use of these acoustic cues allowed us to oppose unambiguously the voiced and voiceless syllable-initial stop consonants in siSwati. At the same time, this experiment permitted us to show the extent to which the voice onset of /bdg/ is delayed in siSwati. Further, this analysis resulted in confirming that voiceless and voiced plosives cannot always be opposed by the status of the glottis during their articulatory closure.