Fricative contrasts and neutralization in Marri Tjevin

ABSTRACT Marri Tjevin is the language of the Rak Thangkurral and Rak Nadirri people of the Daly River region in northern Australia. Unusually for an Australian language, Marri Tjevin has fricatives at all points of articulation /β, ð, ʐ, ʒ, ɣ/, contrasting with phonetically long, voiceless stops /p, t̪, t, ȶ, k/. These series are only contrastive word-medially, while most word-initial obstruents vary freely in stricture and voicing, which constitutes a typologically unusual form of obstruent manner neutralization. Additionally there are two contrastive voiced stops /b, d/, which occur both medially and initially. In this paper we present the first detailed analysis of Marri Tjevin’s system of obstruent contrasts and positional neutralization, as well as reporting an interesting association between phonemic stops and prosodic prominence. We argue that the Marri Tjevin stop/fricative contrast shows distributional and phonetic commonalities with fortis/lenis obstruent contrasts in some other Australian languages, while the association of phonemic stops with prosodic prominence also echoes patterns observed elsewhere in Australia. Thus, while Marri Tjevin’s system of fricative contrast and neutralization is typologically unusual, it shows striking parallels with other Australian phonologies.