Extreme stop allophony in Mixtec spontaneous speech: data, word prosody, and modelling.

Word-level prosody plays an important role in processes of consonant lenition. Typically, consonants in word-initial position are strengthened while those in word-medial position are lenited (Keating et al., 2003). In this paper we examine the relationship between wordprosodic position and obstruent lenition in a spontaneous speech corpus of Yoloxóchitl Mixtec, an endangered Mixtecan language spoken in Mexico. The language exhibits a surprising amount of lenition in the realization of otherwise voiceless unaspirated stops and voiceless fricatives in careful speech. In Experiment 1, we examine the relationships between word position, consonant duration, and passive voicing and find that word-