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In:The Documentarist Turn: From observable linguistic behaviour to typological generalizations
Edited by Sonja Riesberg, Uta Reinöhl and Birgit Hellwig
[Studies in Language Companion Series 240] 2026
► pp. 429–463

Chapter 17
The phonetics and phonological behaviour of vowel length in Meto

ORCiD logo with link | University of Canterbury
ORCiD logo with link | University of Canterbury
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
Abstract
This paper examines the acoustic cues and phonological behaviour of vowel length in Meto (Austronesian, Timor), which is described as having a distinction between “double” (/aa/ → [aː]) and “single” (/a/ → [a]) vowels. We examine acoustic evidence for this distinction, finding that putative double vowels are ~40% longer than single vowels. There is also some evidence of following consonant duration and vowel quality differences between single and double vowels.
We then examine the phonological behaviour of the putative double vowels, showing that their phonotactic patterning and (morpho)phonological behaviour is identical to unambiguous vowel sequences. This study highlights how field data can be used in phonetic and phonological research, and the importance of analysis in language documentation.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Acoustic cues of vowel length
    • 2.2The phonological patterning of vowel length
  • 3.Language background
  • 4.Acoustic cues of vowel length in Meto
    • 4.1Data selection and annotation
    • 4.2Measurements, outlier removal and normalisation
    • 4.3Statistical analysis
    • 4.4Results
      • 4.4.1Vowel duration
      • 4.4.2Consonant duration
      • 4.4.3Vowel quality
      • 4.4.4Summary
  • 5.Phonological behaviour of vowel length in Meto
    • 5.1Phonotactic distribution (criterion (1c))
    • 5.2Morphophonological behaviour
      • 5.2.1Evidence for a lack of integrity (criterion (1a)): Glottal stop infixation
      • 5.2.2No evidence of being inalterable (criterion (1b)): Plural enclitic allomorphy and consonant insertion
      • 5.2.3Double vowels arise from a morphological process (criterion (1d)): Metathesis
    • 5.3Analytical parsimony (criterion (1e))
    • 5.4Summary
  • 6.Discussion and conclusion
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
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