CRITICAL JOURNAL REVIEW

OF SPEAKING FOR INFORMAL INTERACTION

“Patwin Phonemics, Phonetics, and Phonotactics”

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By:

RIA NATASHA GRAYCELLA SIMANJUNTAK

2163121037
DIK 16 REG B

Lecturer : Nora Ronita Dewi, S.S, M.Hum

ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

LANGUAGES AND ARTS FACULTY
STATE UNIVERSITY OF MEDAN
PREFACE

First of all, thanks to God because of the help of God, I finished writing the

assignment of Critical Journal Review right in the calculated time.

I also realized there are still many mistakes in process of writing this assignment. I hope the

criticism from the readers can help me in perfecting the next assignment. Last but not the

least, I hope this assignment can helps the readers to gain more knowledge about reading.

Medan, November 2016

Author
 CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTIONS
1.1. Background

This paper provides an overview of the phonemics, phonetics, and

phonotactics of the Patwin language, using archival data sources. Patwin is a member

of the small and underdescribed Wintuan language family. Although there is

extensive archival material available for the Patwin language, little has been published

about Patwin and there are no publications at all which deal with Patwin phonetics,

phonemics, or phonotactics in a detailed way. It is therefore desirable to analyze the

available archival data in the light of modern methodology and scholarship, and to

create a definitive description of Patwin phonemics and phonetics.

Patwin (ISO code: pwi) is a Native American language, historically spoken in

the southwestern drainage of the Sacramento River. 2 Formerly spoken by a large

speech community with a population estimated at between 8,000 and 12,000 people, it

is now spoken as a first language by only one or two living people known to me

(Whistler 1976:59 and Golla 2011:145). There are a number of Patwin language

revitalization programs underway, however, including a widely publicized program at

the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation (Dubin 2010).

1.2. Purpose
It is therefore desirable to analyze the available archival data in the light of

modern methodology and scholarship, and to create a definitive description of Patwin

phonemics and phonetics.

 CHAPTER II
SUMMARY
2.1. Journal Identity
Name of Journal : International journal of American linguistics

Volume : 81, issue 2

Publication Year : 2015

Journal Writer : Lewis C. Lawyer

The Title of the article : Patwin Phonemics, Phonetics, and Phonotactics

Download : http://linguistics.ucdavis.edu/people/lclawyer/patwin-

phonemics-phonetics-and-phonotactics

2.2. Summary of the Journal

The Patwin language

Patwin (ISO code: pwi) is a Native American language, historically spoken in the

southwestern drainage of the Sacramento River. 2 Formerly spoken by a large speech

community with a population estimated at between 8,000 and 12,000 people, it is now spoken

as a first language by only one or two living people known to me (Whistler 1976:59 and

Golla 2011:145). There are a number of Patwin language revitalization programs underway,

however, including a widely publicized program at the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation (Dubin

2010).

There are three dialects of Patwin: Hill Patwin, historically spoken by communities

living in the valleys of the Coast Range west of the Sacramento Valley; River Patwin, spoken

along the banks of the Sacramento River north of present-day Yolo County; and South

Patwin, spoken in the Sacramento Valley and in the hills north of the Sacramento River delta.

3 Of these dialects, Hill Patwin has been the most studied and has the most accumulated

archival material. South Patwin is the least studied, and very little South Patwin material is
known to exist. This paper aims to describe all dialects of Patwin to the extent possible, but

because of the availability of materials, only Hill Patwin and River Patwin can be described

in any detail.

Orthography

The palatal glide is rendered ⟨y⟩: yet ‘name’, ƛʼeye· ‘to smile’. Long vowels are indicated

with a raised dot: kʼi·r ‘cloud’. Stress is usually not indicated at all—only where directly

relevant to the discussion at hand. Primary stressed syllables are indicated by an acute accent

over the nucleus ⟨V́ ⟩, and secondary stressed syllables with a grave accent over the nucleus

⟨V̀ ⟩. Virgules “/X/” indicate phonemic transcription, square brackets “[X]” indicate phonetic

transcription of speech sounds, angle brackets “⟨X⟩” indicate an orthographic symbol, and

italicized text indicates a non-English word/phrase or any word/phrase under analysis.

Available materials

Although there are one or two first-language speakers of Patwin known to me (one

speaker of Hill Patwin and possibly one speaker of River Patwin), their reticence to work

with linguists necessitates that linguistic work be carried out on archival materials.The data in

this paper are therefore taken exclusively from existing archival sources. All three dialects are

represented in the archival record, though to different extents. Hill Patwin has the greatest

amount of archival materials, River Patwin has a moderate amount, and South Patwin has the

least. Audio recordings of word-elicitation sessions provide the best material for detailed

phonetic study of careful speech.

Phonemes

The phonemic inventory of Patwin is apparently stable across all of its dialects.

Whistler (1984) gives identical inventories for Hill Patwin and River Patwin, and Shepherd
(2005:5–7) gives identical inventories for all Patwin dialects, including South Patwin. Patwin

has five contrastive vowel qualities, which may be represented as /i, e, a, o, u/. Even in

unstressed environments, vowel quality does not reduce significantly. There is also a simple

length contrast—long vs. short.

Laryngeal series

Patwin and the Wintuan languages generally are notable in having four series of oral

stops differentiated by laryngeal state: voiceless unaspirated (“plain”), aspirated, glottalized,

and voiced. All four of these series are contrastive syllable-initially. There is no voiced velar

plosive, although there are voiced plosives at the bilabial and alveolar places of articulation.

This is not an unexpected pattern. In order for a speaker to produce a voiced plosive, a

pressure differential must be maintained across the glottis. During the production of a voiced

velar plosive, the superlaryngeal cavity is small, so the pressure differential decreases rapidly.

On the other hand, during the production of an alveolar or bilabial plosive, the superlaryngeal

cavity is relatively large and the trans-glottal pressure differential is easier to maintain. 10

Probably for this reason, a voiced plosive series which lacks /g/ (and other dorsal voiced

plosives) is fairly common in the languages of the world. Thus, given Patwin’s three places

of articulation for plosives, the velar place of articulation is the most likely place to be

lacking a voiced plosive. Patwin affricates do not have all four laryngeal series. No

distinction of aspiration or voicing is made for the affricates, but there is a contrast between

glottalized (/čʼ, ƛʼ/) and plain voiceless (/č, ł/).

Voice Onset Time

Three of the Patwin laryngeal series (the aspirated, plain, and voiced series) are

differentiated primarily by Voice Onset Time (VOT). For plosives, VOT is defined as the

length of time between the beginning of the release of the oral stricture and the onset of
voicing (periodic laryngeal vibration) which carries on into the following vowel. The VOT

can be expected to be smallest for voiced plosives, larger for plain plosives, and largest for

aspirated plosives (Lisker and Abramson 1964). To describe the Patwin oral stops best, some

quantitative data on their VOTs is desirable. Since VOT is commonly measured in careful

speech, elicited forms are desirable for analysis. There are three possible sources for this kind

of data in Patwin; here, the two most robust sources are used: Ultan (1961) for Hill Patwin

and Swadesh and Melton (1953) for River Patwin. Following Cho and Ladefoged (1999),

only utterance-initial stops followed by non-high vowels are considered.

Glottalization

The glottalized series is characterized by an airstream modification whereby the oral

stricture is accompanied by a glottal stricture. Before either stricture is released, the glottis

moves upward, causing increased superglottal pressure which is released when the oral

stricture is released. This gesture means that the glottalized sounds in Patwin are initiated in a

fundamentally different way from all other Patwin speech sounds. Glottalized sounds are

initiated by glottalic pressure, whereas all other Patwin speech sounds are initiated by

pulmonic pressure.

Alveolars

The alveolar series as represented in figure 1 may not be a homogeneous set,

descriptively or phonologically. Whistler (1984:B4) notes that the place of articulation for the

voiceless laterals /ł, ƛʼ/ may be retracted. To my ear, the alveolar obstruents in general sound

like they may be retracted. Unfortunately, no palatograms were ever produced for Patwin,

and analyzing formant transition information from audio recordings is very unlikely to shed

any light on this subject.

Laterals

Varies between a fricative and an affricate ([ɬ] ~ [͡tɬ]). Between Hill Patwin speakers

Oscar McDaniel (Ultan 1961) and Nora Lowell (Bright 1952a), no clear pattern of allophony

suggests itself. In Mr. McDaniel’s speech, the fricative allophone is preferred in general, and

the affricate only occurs word-initially (though the fricative occurs word-initially as well). In

Ms. Lowell’s speech, the affricate allophone is preferred in general, but the fricative

allophone occurs in some cases postvocalically. In River Patwin speaker Ida Mitchum’s

speech (Swadesh and Melton 1953), the affricate allophone is preferred in general and in all

environments, especially utterance-initially and utterance-finally. However, the fricative

allophone occurs in almost all environments as well. For all three speakers, the affricate and

the fricative may freely vary even in different instances of the same elicited word. The

fricative and affricate allophones of /ł/ may thus safely be described as being in free variation,

their distribution being possibly subject to individual speaker preferences.

The rhotic

The rhotic /r/ has two basic allophones, a voiced alveolar flap [ɾ] and a voiceless trill

[r̥ ]. The voiceless trill occurs word-finally and in some cases syllable-finally within a word.

The flap occurs intervocalically and in some cases syllable-finally within a word. In slow

speech, the intervocalic /r/ may manifest as a voiced trill.

The sibilant

Patwin has only one sibilant, which varies in its pronunciation between alveolar [s]

and postalveolar [ʃ]. Its target place of articulation is somewhere between the two—in other

words, it is a clear instance of a retracted s [s] or “California s.” See Bright (1984) for a
good cross-linguistic discussion of the California s, which he transcribes ⟨ṣ⟩. Bright finds that

the retracted [s] is more common in the California linguistic area than the European-like

alveolar [s].

The glottal fricative

The glottal fricative is generally voiceless but may sometimes be a voiced fricative

[ɦ]. This phonetic difference is not contrastive, and the two variants are in free variation.

The glottal stop

Other than a special prosodic use of the glottal stop (for which see 4.3 below), the

glottal stop only occurs morphemeinitially. Therefore, it is tempting to discard the phoneme

/ʔ/ altogether. Perhaps a glottal stop is simply inserted by a morphophonological process

wherever a morpheme would otherwise begin with a vowel. However, the distribution is not

as predictable as this description would suggest. There are two morphemes which may begin

with a vowel and never with a glottal stop, both suffixes of limited productivity occurring on

certain kinship terms and human nouns: /-e·/ (allomorph of vocative case) and /-in/

(allomorph of animate plural). Since the glottal stop is arbitrarily absent from some

morpheme boundaries, it cannot be analyzed as merely the result of a morphophonological

process (or not an exceptionless one, at any rate).

The postalveolar affricate

There is no phonemic distinction of aspiration for the postalveolar affricate /č/.

Shepherd (2005) finds that all dialects of Patwin use only an unaspirated /č/, except for the

Lodoga subdialect of Hill Patwin which, she claims, has an aspiration distinction for
postalveolar affricates. Shepherd believes that in the other dialects /č/ and /čh/ were

historically distinct but have recently merged into one phoneme.

The semivowels

In syllable-initial position, /y/ is sometimes pronounced with such extreme height that

there is audible palatal frication. This fricated /y/ is present in the speech of Hill Patwin

speaker Oscar McDaniel (Ultan 1961) and River Patwin speaker Ida Mitchum (Swadesh and

Melton 1953). Shafer (1961) notes it in both Hill and River Patwin (in the speech of Charlie

Wright and Jim Perdue, respectively), calling it “a y with friction,” transcribed ⟨ÿ⟩.

Vowel quality in unstressed syllables

Though vowel quality does vary to some extent in stressed and unstressed syllables,

there is no obvious pattern. Unstressed /a, o, i/ are all noticeably more front and high than

their stressed counterparts. This could conceivably be explained in terms of hypo-articulation:

Unstressed syllables are perhaps characterized by hypo-articulated vowels, where the oral

cavity does not open as fully as it would for fully articulated vowels (in stressed syllables). It

is not clear, however, why /a, o, i/ should pattern together without /e, u/. The quality of /e, u/

does not vary as much with stress. Moreover, /i/ would not generally be expected to be higher

and more front in an unstressed environment. It is possible that the differences in figure 8 are

merely artifacts of the noise inherent in a small data set.

Vowel length

The vowel-length distinction in Patwin is one of temporal duration and bears no

systematic relation to variation in vowel quality. Note that although long vowels are about

twice as long as short vowels, on average, still the distributions of the durations of long and
short vowels overlap significantly. This is especially visible in the largest sample, taken from

the speech of Hill Patwin speaker Oscar McDaniel, shown in figure 9a. In this sample, the

longest phonemically short vowel is 186ms—over 1.5 times longer than the shortest

phonemically long vowel (112ms). Thus, although the long/short distinction in Patwin

vowels is one of duration, this distinction is not absolute. It is difficult or impossible to

determine whether a vowel is long or short if taken out of context.

 CHAPTER III
STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES
3.1. Strengths

The first strength, it is compatibility of the journal elements is complete. Then, it is

finding is original. After that, the currency of issue is still exists untill now. Last, The

journal or article has good coherence and cohesion.

3.2. Weaknesses
The first weaknesses, the result of the finding is hard to understand. Then, it has less

of definition according some experts and less of example.And it has too much

material make the reader bored

 CHAPTER IV
CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION
5.1. Conclusion
Author found some strengths and weaknesses in this article. The first strength, it is

compatibility of the journal elements is complete. Then, it is finding is original. After

that, the currency of issue is still exists untill now. Last, The journal or article has

good coherence and cohesion. The first weaknesses, the result of the finding is hard to

understand. Then, it has less of definition according some experts and less of

example.And it has too much material make the reader bored.

5.2. Suggestion

This article has conclude all of the conditions to be a good article. I hope this kind of

good working can be last forever and get increase. But its better if we write less of material

but clear. Than we write a lot of material if the readers can not understand.
 REFERENCE
http://linguistics.ucdavis.edu/people/lclawyer/patwin- phonemics-phonetics-and-phonotactics