Vowel quality and duration in deg xinag

A study was conducted to investigate the spectral properties of the Deg Xinag vowels, and the vowels that are significantly different in duration. Deg Xinag, an Athabaskan language spoken in western Alaska, has been described as containing certain vowel inventory, which are divided into high vowel phonemes and low vowel phonemes. Qualitative inspection of the spectral properties of the Deg Xinag vowels indicates that a low vowel phoneme similar to high vowel phonemes has a high volume allophone, which occurs surrounded by coronal consonants. Thereby, while Deg Xinag has no high vowel phonemes, there are phonetic high vowels. Statistical analysis indicates that the vowels of Deg Xinag can be divided into two sets, including a short set and a long set. Durational differences between the longer and shorter vowels of Deg Xinag are comparable to normative vowel duration data available for other Athabaskan languages, and support the reconstruction of Proto-Athabaskan as having full and reduced vowels.