Variability in the Product Sonorants: Data F

Phonetic variation in the realization of segments is increasingly recognized to have functional value in signalling matters such as constituency, but patterns of variation of rarer segment types are not as well known as those of common types such as plosives. This paper presents data on variation in production of glottalized sonorants in the Austronesian language Yapese. Initial glottalized sonorants are typically but not invariably pre-glottalized. Final ones are post-glottalized. Medial ones are the most variable and may have very attenuated glottalization. Initial ones display greater variation in the degree of glottal constriction than final ones. These positional differences would have potential value in parsing strings of segments into words in Yapese, and may contribute to accounting for an assymetry in the inventories of sonorant consonants in initial and final positions.