Haida phonology

Consonants

 * The plain stops are partially voiced in syllable-initial position.
 * For some speakers, occurs only at the beginning of syllables, while  does not occur there, making them allophones of the same phoneme.
 * In Northern Haida (Masset Haida and Alaskan Haida), historically developed into, with  then being reintroduced by occasional borrowings from Southern Haida, Tlingit, Tsimshian, and Chinook jargon. The actual realization of the pharyngeal consonants  varies with dialect. In Masset Haida they are pharyngeal fricatives, , whereas in the variety of Alaskan Haida spoken in Hydaburg they have been described as an epiglottal trill  and a trilled epiglottal affricate  or an epiglottal stop  respectively.

In Alaskan Haida, all velar, uvular, and epiglottal consonants, as well as for some speakers, have rounded variants resulting from coalescence of clusters with. Alaskan Haida also shows simplification of to  when preceding an alveolar or postalveolar obstruent, and of  to.

In Skidegate Haida, has allophone  in syllable-final position.

Masset Haida phonology is complicated by various spreading processes caused by contiguous sonorants across morpheme boundaries, caused by loss of consonants in morpheme-initial position.

Vowels
The high vowels may be realized as upper mid to high and include lax as well as tense values.

The vowels are rare in Skidegate Haida. only occurs in some interjections and borrowings, and only occurs in the two words ' 'five' and ' '[clitic]'. In Masset Haida and  are both very common are involved in spreading and ablaut processes. Alaskan Haida has neither of these, but has a diphthong, introduced from contraction of low-toned and  sequences.

In Skidegate Haida some instances of the vowel are on an underlying level unspecified for quality; Enrico (2003) marks specified  with the symbol $\langle@\rangle$. Unspecified becomes  after,  after (non-lateral) alveolar and palatal consonants, and syllabic  after lateral consonants. This does not exist in Masset Haida. A small class of Masset Haida words has a new vowel in place of this unspecified vowel which differs in quality from the vowel.

is the short counterpart of and so can also be analyzed as. Though quite variable in realization, it has an allophone when occurring after uvular and epiglottal consonants. The sequences and  tend towards  and  for some speakers.

A number of the contrasts between vowels, or sequences of vowels and the semivowels and, are neutralized in certain positions:
 * The short vowels do not contrast after the alveolar and postalveolar fricatives and affricates. Only one short vowel occurs in this position, in Alaskan Haida usually realized as, but when further followed by , and  when followed by any rounded consonant.
 * The contrasts of with, and  with  are neutralized when preceded by a velar/uvular/epiglottal consonant, as well as word-initially before the glottal stop.
 * No contrast exists between long high vowels and short high vowels followed by a semivowel. Thus, is equivalent to, and  is equivalent to ; moreover,  is also equivalent to , and  to.
 * After consonants other than velar/uvular/epiglottal, and  are also neutralized to  and.
 * Long vowels are shortened before syllable-final glottal consonants, the high vowels also before sonorant (nasal or approximant) consonants. Where productive, this is a late process that applies after the preceding neutralizations, so that e.g.  "the rock" is realized as, not.

The vowels and short  occur in nonsense syllables in Haida songs.

Tone
Haida features phonemic tone, the nature of which differs by dialect.

The Canadian dialects (Skidegate and Masset) have a tone system with low functional load. Unmarked heavy syllables (those with long vowels or ending in sonorants) have high pitch, and unmarked light syllables have low pitch: ' 'dog', '  'sapwood'. Examples of marked syllables include ' 'among' (Masset), ' 'tiny' (Skidegate). In Masset Haida marked low tone syllables are more common, resulting from elision of intervocalic consonants: compare Skidegate ' to Masset ' 'net'. Some alternations may be interpreted as results of syllable parsing rather than marked tone: compare Masset ' 'muskreg' to ' 'be suspicious of', where . marks a syllable boundary.

In Skidegate Haida, short vowels which do not have marked tone are phonetically lengthened when they are in a word-initial open syllable, thus ' 'grass' becomes '  'grassy'.

In Masset Haida, marked low tone syllables have extra length, thus ' 'thing', ' 'mother'.

In Kaigani the system is primarily one of pitch accent, with at most one syllable per word featuring high tone in most words, though there are some exceptions (e.g.  'almost'), and it is not always clear what should be considered an independent "word". High tone syllables are usually heavy (having a long vowel or ending in a sonorant).

Phonotactics
The syllable template in Haida is (C(C(C))V(V)(C(C)). In Skidegate Haida the two unaspirated stops /p t/ can occur in the syllable coda, while none of the other unaspirated or aspirated stops can. In Masset Haida the unaspirated stops and affricates which may be in the syllable coda are, in Alaskan Haida . Would-be final in loanwords may be nativized to zero.

In Skidegate Haida a long syllabic lateral may appear in VV position, e.g.  'sew'. Historically this developed from long ' after a lateral consonant, but a few Skidegate words retain ' in this position, e.g. ' 'inside', ' 'mountain goat wool'. Syllabic resonants occur frequently in Masset Haida and occasionally in Kaigani Haida, but they are not present on the phonemic level.

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