Linguistics 414: Phonetics for Linguists

The Sounds of Cypriot Greek

Elena Serkin
16 December 2010

1. Linguistic Biography
The speaker is a 22 year old male, born in 1988 in Nicosia, Cyprus, to parents
who spoke only Greek. He studied English in school from 3rd grade through the
highest academic level. During high school, he also studied French, reaching a
conversational level. However, he is no longer conversational in the language. He
lived in Nicosia until 2006, when he lived for 4 months in Crete as a member of the
Cypriot military. After this, he returned to Nicosia until September 2009, at which
time he moved to Amherst, Massachusetts. He currently studies at UMass, and is
now fluent in English.

2. The Sounds of Greek

2.1. Consonants
The consonants observed in this speaker’s Greek dialect are shown in Table 1:
Bilab Lab-Dent Dent Alv Post-Alv Pal Vel Glot
Stops and Affricates
Voiced b d1 g
Voiceless p t1 k
Fricatives
Voiced v ð z ʝ γ
Voiceless f θ s ç x
Nasal m m: n ŋ
Lateral l l: ʎ
Rhotic ɾ r
Glides
Table 1: Consonants of Cypriot Greek

2.1.1. Stop Place

1
These stops were always (visibly) dental, and never alveolar; the symbols [d] and [t] here and
throughout this text refer to the dental stops.
1
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The words recorded from this speaker show only voiceless stops in word-
initial position. The respective voiced counterparts of the bilabial, dental, and velar
stops occur only when preceded by a nasal of the corresponding place, e.g. “swim”
[kolimbo], “tooth” [ðondi]2, and “squeeze” [sfiŋgo]. Inversely, no voiceless stops
occurred following a nasal. Additionally, the velar nasal as evident in “squeeze”
[sfiŋgo] only appears when preceding a velar stop, while the bilabial and alveolar
nasals occur independently of a following consonant.

2.1.2 Laryngeal Articulations in Stops

The stops were analyzed in both word-initial and intervocalic positions to
determine the laryngeal articulations which occur. These measurements indicate
generally minimal aspiration of the stops; VOT is rarely greater than 40 ms. The
stops are voiceless unaspirated when they occur intervocalically and do not begin a
stressed syllable; otherwise, they are voiceless aspirated. Again, the voiced stops
occur only when following a nasal, and these prevoiced stops are always unaspirated.
The aspirated stops often reveal rather ambiguous VOT between 20-30 ms. The most
significant aspiration occurs consistently in the syllable-initial fricative-stop clusters.
The ranking of aspiration is illustrated in the velar stop in the following examples:
compare the relatively long VOT of 38 ms in “dust” [skhoni] to the shorter VOT of 27
ms in “horn” [kherato] and the very short VOT of 10 ms in the voiceless unaspirated
velar stop which begins the final syllable of “worm” [skhuliki], where the penultimate
syllable is stressed.

2.1.3 Consonantal Variation

While the voiced stops appear only when following a nasal, the voiced and
voiceless fricatives occur in contrastive distribution, differentiated by the presence or
absence of voicing during the constriction. The voiced fricatives occur both initially
and intervocalically, but not finally, as the only consonantal sounds appearing finally
among the data are [n] and [s]. However, when a fricative occurs as the initial
segment of a cluster, voicing of the segments is always identical. Therefore, since
voiced stops never occur without a preceding nasal, a fricative-stop cluster (such as

2
There is no dental nasal evident; the corresponding nasal causing voicing of the dental stop is the
alveolar nasal.
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the very frequent [ft] [st] [sk] and [xt]) is always both voiceless. A fricative-fricative
cluster can be either both voiced or both voiceless (e.g. [vγ] [sx] and [sf]).
This speaker’s dialect includes the palatal fricatives [ʝ] and [ç], which seem to
be the palatalized counterparts of the velar fricatives [γ] and [x]. The voiceless palatal
fricative is apparent in the word “stab” [maçeɾono], shown in Figure 1 (the segment
from 25.242 s to 25.349 s), where the raised F2 and F3 at the end of the [a] preceding
the fricative indicate its anticipation of the following palatal, rather than velar, place
of articulation. The vowel-like segment immediately upon release of the fricative,
resembling the approximant [j], is too brief (20 ms) to be a true vowel, but rather is
another indicator of the palatal fricative, being created during the release of the
fricative as the tongue body moves away from the palate.

5000
Figure 1: Voiceless Palatal Fricative in [maçεɾono]
The voiced palatal fricative often audibly resembles the voiced palatal
approximant [j], but sounds noticeably closer, indicating the relative closeness of its
fricative closure. In “turn” [ʝiɾizo], illustrated in Figure 2, the high frequency energy
in its spectrogram during the initial articulation (where the margin marker at 40.372 s
indicates the end of the fricative and the beginning of the vowel) confirms its
fricative, rather than approximant, nature.
Hz)
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Figure 2: The voiced palatal fricative in [ʝiɾizo]

The rhotic is in some contexts the alveolar trill, and in others the alveolar tap.
The trill appears in clusters such as [spr] and [str] and word-initially, while the tap
tends to appear intervocalically. The trill is relatively short, having generally two
contacts and lasting 40-50 ms. The tap is yet briefer, lasting 20-25 ms. Given the
relative brevity of the trill, the tap seems to be a realization of the rhotic where the trill
fails to be fully articulated. Both sounds are illustrated in Figure 3 below in the
spectrograms for “push” [sproxno] and “some” [mεɾika] (the first spectrogram shows
only the initial syllable [spro]). The duration of the trill in the first word is 41 ms,
Frequency (Hz)

while the duration of the tap in the second is 22 ms.

5000 5000
Figure 3: Trill and Tap in [sproxno] and [mεɾika]

Both the alveolar and palatal laterals appear in the data. The single palatal
lateral is consistently longer than the single alveolar lateral: closure duration of the
lateral in “hair” [maʎa] is 131 ms, while the duration of the lateral in “big” [mεγalo]
is 84 ms. The raising of F2 and F3 in the palatal lateral, as compared to the alveolar
cy (Hz)

cy (Hz)

lateral, is obvious in the spectrogram of [maʎa], as shown in Figure 4.

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5000 Figure 4: [maʎa] vs. [mεγalo]

5000
Within the data, gemination of the lateral [l] and nasal [m] occurred, as
evidenced by the consistent differences in duration of the closures. Examples are
shown in Table 2. Although the duration of the palatal lateral [ʎ] (as in the previous
example of [maʎa]) approaches the duration of the long alveolar lateral, the data
Frequency (Hz)
Frequency (Hz)

provided no evidence of a shorter variant, and so it was not considered a geminate

sound.

Single Geminate
[l] [m] [l:] [m:]
Example “big” [mεγalo] “river” [pothami] “other” [al:os] “sand” [am:os]
Closure Duration (ms) 84 81 152 151
Table 2: Geminate Lateral and Nasal

2.2 Vowels
The data recorded revealed no great variety of vowels in Greek. Figure 5
(attached) shows the organization of the vowels, plotting the F1 values of sample
vowels from the data by their (F2-F1) values. These vowels are the cardinal vowels
[i] [ε] [a] [o] and [u], as well as the vowel [I], as listed in Table 3. The two back
vowels are pronounced with lip rounding, while the other four are unrounded.

Front Central Back

Long Short Short Long
Close i I u
Close-Mid o
Open-Mid ε

0 0
Open a

30.93 52.23
31.06
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Table 3: Vowels of Cypriot Greek

The low F2 values confirm the presence of cardinal vowel 3 rather than 2, e.g.
1716 Hz in “stone” [pεtra]. The vowel sounds are overwhelmingly confined to
monophthongs. The relatively rare occurrence of vowel sequences, as in “who”
[pios], show hiatus, and there is no evidence of diphthongs in any of the data.

2.2.1 Vocalic Variation

The single short vowel that appears, [I], seems to be a realization of cardinal
vowel 1, appearing only when preceding a velar consonant in an unstressed position,
as in “spouse” [sizIγo], where the values for F1 and F2 of the first and second vowels
of the word are given in Table 4.

[i] [I]
F1 (Hz) 326 362
F2 (Hz) 2062 1808
Vowel Duration (ms) 88 54
Table 4: Length variation in the close front vowels

The vowel [o] appeared in two instances in the data as a lengthened vowel. In
the word “animal” [zo:], the vowel has duration of 233 ms, far greater than in the
contrastive word “live” [zo] with its duration of 124 ms, while there is no significant
variation among the quality of the vowel. This is unlike the difference in the long [i]
and short [I], where the latter shows a lowered F2 along with its lesser duration. The
long [o:] also occurs in the word “eat” [tro:], where the vowel has duration of 216 ms.
All other instances of the mid back vowel show durations of approximately 120 ms.
The contrastive nature of the vowel appears to be solely due to its length, but no other
vowel reveals such a dramatic contrast in duration.
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