DOCSLIB.ORG

Contrast Preservation and Constraints on Individual Phonetic Variation

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Contrast Preservation and Constraints on Individual Phonetic Variation © 2017 Christopher David Eager CONTRAST PRESERVATION AND CONSTRAINTS ON INDIVIDUAL PHONETIC VARIATION BY CHRISTOPHER DAVID EAGER DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Spanish in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2017 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor José Ignacio Hualde, Chair Professor Jennifer S. Cole, Northwestern University Associate Professor Anna María Escobar Associate Professor Ryan K. Shosted Dr. Joseph Roy Abstract Ferdinand de Saussure, one of the founders of modern Linguistics, described language as a system where everything holds together. Regarding the sounds of language, this has led to the current view that the phonology of a language consists of a complex system of relations between contrastive phonemes. In this dissertation, I test whether there are constraints on individual phonetic variation from a multivariate perspective due to this system of relations, and how these constraints interact with contrast preservation. Two main views of contrast preservation are considered. The first view is that contrast preservation is merely an outcome of other regular phonetic processes that affect multiple consonants simultaneously. The second view is that contrast preservation acts as a constraint on the phonetic realization of phonemes. To this end, two phonetic experiments are performed. In both experiments, multiple acoustic measures of intervocalic consonant strength are taken, and PCA is used for dimensionality reduction, resulting in measures of overall consonant strength. These measures are then analyzed with Bayesian linear mixed effects regression (using weakly informative priors and maximal random effects structures) in order to obtain distributional information about both populations and individual speakers. In the first experiment, word-medial intervocalic /s/ and /f/ are compared for Valladolid Spanish and Barcelona Catalan. Both Catalan and Spanish have the fricatives /s/ and /f/, neither has /v/ contrasting with /f/, and only Catalan has /z/ contrasting with /s/. The results show that Catalan /s/ is stronger than Spanish /s/, but there is no evidence for a difference between the two language’s /f/ strengths, with strong evidence that the magnitude of the difference between ii Catalan and Spanish /s/ is larger than the magnitude of the difference between Catalan and Spanish /f/. I argue that these results are consistent with a role for contrast preservation as a constraint, with Catalan having stronger /s/ than Spanish because lenition of Catalan /s/ causes phonetic overlap with a contrasting phoneme, while lenition of Spanish /s/ does not. In the second experiment, the simultaneous lenition of Spanish intervocalic /ptk/ and /bdg/ in three dialects (Cuzco, Peru; Lima, Peru; and Valladolid, Spain) is examined. Cuzco is found to have the strongest productions for both /ptk/ and /bdg/, Lima the weakest for both, and Valladolid in between for both. That is, the same hierarchy of strength applies in both cases, though the evidence for the difference between Valladolid and Lima /ptk/ is considerably weaker than the evidence for the other differences. I argue that the results are consistent with constraints on multivariate variation at the dialectal level, but that further research is required to see how constraints at the individual level relate to population differences. Examining individual variation in both experiments, I find that the degree to which an individual speaker lenites /f/ is correlated with the degree to which they lenite /s/, and that the degree to which they lenite /ptk/ is correlated with both the degree to which they lenite /bdg/ and the degree to which they lenite /sf/. These correlations represent a significant constraint on individual phonetic variation from a multivariate perspective. While a connection between individuals’ /ptk/ and /bdg/ lenitions can be explained by both the constraint and outcome views of contrast preservation, the correlation between /sf/ and /ptk/ and the correlation between /s/ and /f/ lend support to the outcome view, and Catalan having stronger /s/ than Spanish but not stronger /f/ lends support to the constraint view. I argue for a framework in which acoustic lenition in a variety of intervocalic consonants may share a common articulatory source of lenition, giving rise to constraints on individual phonetic iii variation that may lead to contrast preservation as an outcome, but where there may additionally be a role for contrast preservation as a constraint. I conclude by discussing the importance of further acoustic studies that use the methodologies employed here, and studies that explore the articulatory and perceptual implications of the results. iv Acknowledgments Collection of the Peruvian speakers’ data was supported by a fellowship from the Dorothea S. and Norman E. Whitten Endowment Fund of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I’m very grateful to the members of my committee (José Ignacio Hualde, Jennifer Cole, Ryan Shosted, Anna María Escobar, and Joseph Roy) for their mentorship during my time here in Urbana; it is impossible to quantify how much I have learned by taking classes from and working with them. I’d also like to thank Mark Hasegawa-Johnson for advice on intensity measurements, and Juan María Garrido for giving me access to the Glissando corpus. v To my parents, Tim and Pam, for always being supportive and believing in me. And to my fiancé, Austin, for putting up with me while I wrote this. vi Table of Contents Chapter 1. Introduction ................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 2. Phonetic methods ........................................................................................................ 27 Chapter 3. Statistical methods ....................................................................................................... 54 Chapter 4. Spanish and Catalan fricative results ........................................................................ 103 Chapter 5. Spanish plosive results .............................................................................................. 117 Chapter 6. Individual variation results ........................................................................................ 143 Chapter 7. Discussion ................................................................................................................. 154 References ................................................................................................................................... 164 Appendix A. Fricative experiment supplement .......................................................................... 177 Appendix B. Plosive experiment supplement ............................................................................. 181 vii Chapter 1. Introduction 1.1. Goal of this dissertation Ferdinand de Saussure, one of the founders of modern Linguistics, described language as a system where everything holds together (Saussure, 1986[1916]). Regarding the sounds of language, this has led to the current view that the phonology of a language consists of a complex system of relations between contrastive phonemes. The goal of this dissertation to demonstrate that there are constraints on individual phonetic variation from a multivariate perspective due to this system of relations, and that these constraints interact with contrast preservation. In so doing, I also make methodological contributions to phonetics by increasing the degree to which measures are automated and employing dimensionality reduction on multivariate response variables, and to statistical modeling in linguistics through the use of Bayesian mixed effects regressions to obtain distributional information about individual speakers. These methodological contributions allow inference to be made on both populations and individuals using all of the information available in a dataset. In this chapter, I begin in Section 1.2 with a discussion of differing views of contrast preservation (contrast preservation as a constraint and as an outcome) and why we might expect individual phonetic variation to be constrained from a multivariate perspective. In Section 1.3, I introduce the phonemic inventories for two related Western Romance languages, Spanish and Catalan, which serve as the languages of study in this dissertation. In Section 1.4, I describe the motivations for the first experiment, which compares Spanish and Catalan /s/ and /f/ lenition. In Section 1.5, I describe the motivations for the second experiment, which compares /ptk/ and 1 /bdg/ lenition in three dialects of Spanish. In Section 1.6, I give specific hypotheses concerning the results of these experiments. In Chapter 2, I discuss the phonetic measurements of consonant strength taken as dependent variables, and the factors and covariates included as fixed effects in the analyses. I also discuss the following three phonetic methodological contributions I make in detail: (1) the automation of a duration measurement that can apply to any intervocalic consonant; (2) the treatment of zero-valued observations and non-zero-valued observations in a continuous fashion when a value of zero has meaning; and (3) the use of principal components analysis to reduce the dimensionality of multivariate dependent variables rather than running multiple regressions,
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Systemic Contrast and Catalan Rhotics*
    Systemic Contrast and Catalan Rhotics* Jaye Padgett - University of California, Santa Cruz (January 2003) 1. Introduction Catalan, a Romance language spoken primarily in the northeast of Spain, has two contrasting rhotics: a tap [r] and a trill [r]. The two sounds contrast only between vowels with the distribution otherwise being predictable. The facts closely parallel the better known facts of Spanish, and the problems they raise are similar. In this paper I take a new look at Catalan rhotics, arguing that we can achieve a better account of them if we explicitly acknowledge the role of contrast in their behavior. Specifically, the explanation calls on constraints requiring that contrast be maintained, on the one hand, and on constraints requiring that contrasts be perceptually distinct, on the other. The account is cast within Dispersion Theory (Flemming 1995, to appear), which is designed to express such notions. In approaching the Catalan facts in this way I follow Bradley (2001), who applies Dispersion Theory to Spanish rhotics. Some of the main conclusions we reach differ, all the same. A good deal of recent work argues that both neutralization avoidance and perceptual distinctiveness play important roles in shaping phonologies. (Besides the above, see Ní Chiosáin and Padgett 2001, Sanders 2002, Padgett to appear-a,b, and Sanders in progress.) The theoretical framework of these works, Dispersion Theory, remains rather new, and this paper offers another case study. The appeal to contrast leads to a simpler and more explanatory account of Catalan (and Spanish) rhotics compared to previous ones. The analysis also illustrates how it is possible to incorporate more systematic phonetic detail into phonology, increasing our descriptive coverage, without predicting the overgeneration of contrast.
    [Show full text]
  • Newsletter — February 2004
    Research Centre for Linguistic Typology Institute for Advanced Study VICTORIA 3086, AUSTRALIA FACSIMILE: +61 3 9467 3053 email: [email protected] http://www.latrobe.edu.au/rclt Newsletter — February 2004 The past year has again been attended by success, in terms of the excellence of Research Fellows, Visiting Fellows and Doctoral Students, both the quality and the quantity of the publications we produce, and the continuing grants and fellowships we attract. The International Workshops we host each year produce seminal volumes that are acknowledged as substantial contributions to the field. RCLT provides a relaxed but intense intellectual milieu which engenders research of the highest order. Who'll be at RCLT in 2004 Besides Professor R. M. W. (Bob) Dixon (Director), Professor Alexandra Y. (Sasha) Aikhenvald (Associate Director) and Ms Siew Peng Condon (Executive Officer), we'll have the following scholars with us this year: Research Fellows — Dr. Nicole Kruspe, on a three-year Research Fellowship, has undertaken a lengthy fieldtrip to work on Ceq Wong, a previously undescribed Northern Aslian language from Malaysia. She will continue writing a draft grammar of this language while working on Mah Meri, another Aslian language from Malaysia. — Dr. Catriona Hyslop, on a La Trobe University Postdoctoral Research Fellowship until February 2004, will then take up at RCLT her two year Individual Postgraduate Fellowship from the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme. She will continue working on the documentation of the grammar, lexicon and oral tradition of the Vurës language of west Vanua Lava, Vanuatu. — Dr. Stephen Morey is a La Trobe University Postdoctoral Research Fellow.
    [Show full text]
  • Transfer and Developmental Processes in Adult Foreign Language Speech Production
    - Applied Psycholinguistics (1984) 5, 323-347 Printed in the United States of America #/3 Transfer and developmental processes in adult foreign language speech production JAMES EMIL FLEGE University of Alabama in Birmingham RICHARD D. DAVIDIAN Northwestern University ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE James E. Flege, Department of Biocommunication, University of Alabama in Birmingham. Birmingham. AL 35296 ABSTRACT This study tested the hypothesis that factors that shape children's production of their native language (Ll) will also influence adults' pronunciation of sounds in a foreign language (L2). The final stops in CVC English words produced by 12 adult native speakers each of English, Polish, Spanish. and Chinese were phonetically transcribed. The frequency with which these stops were devoiced. de• leted, or fricativized was tabulated. The Spanish subjects (unlike the Chinese or Poles) showed the effect of a transfer process, producing word-final /b,d,g/as fricatives. Subjects in all three non-native groups (but not the native English subjects) resembled English-learning children in devoicing word• final/b,d,g/. Subjects whose Ll does not have word-final stops (i.e., the native speakers of Chinese and Spanish) showed another process .commonly observed in English Ll acquisition: final stop deletion. A number of language background variables (e.g., age of arrival in the United States) were found not to be significantly correlated with the accuracy of final stop production. These findings' suggest that, in addition to transfer processes arising from LJ/L2 phonetic and phonological dif• ferences, developmental processes similar to those affecting child L I speech production also influ• ence adult L2 speech production.
    [Show full text]
  • The Phonetic Nature of Consonants in Modern Standard Arabic
    www.sciedupress.com/elr English Linguistics Research Vol. 4, No. 3; 2015 The Phonetic Nature of Consonants in Modern Standard Arabic Mohammad Yahya Bani Salameh1 1 Tabuk University, Saudi Arabia Correspondence: Mohammad Yahya Bani Salameh, Tabuk University, Saudi Arabia. Tel: 966-58-0323-239. E-mail: [email protected] Received: June 29, 2015 Accepted: July 29, 2015 Online Published: August 5, 2015 doi:10.5430/elr.v4n3p30 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5430/elr.v4n3p30 Abstract The aim of this paper is to discuss the phonetic nature of Arabic consonants in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). Although Arabic is a Semitic language, the speech sound system of Arabic is very comprehensive. Data used for this study were collocated from the standard speech of nine informants who are native speakers of Arabic. The researcher used himself as informant, He also benefited from three other Jordanians and four educated Yemenis. Considering the alphabets as the written symbols used for transcribing the phones of actual pronunciation, it was found that the pronunciation of many Arabic sounds has gradually changed from the standard. The study also discussed several related issues including: Phonetic Description of Arabic consonants, classification of Arabic consonants, types of Arabic consonants and distribution of Arabic consonants. Keywords: Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), Arabic consonants, Dialectal variation, Consonants distribution, Consonants classification. 1. Introduction The Arabic language is one of the most important languages of the world. With it is growing importance of Arab world in the International affairs, the importance of Arabic language has reached to the greater heights. Since the holy book Qura'n is written in Arabic, the language has a place of special prestige in all Muslim societies, and therefore more and more Muslims and Asia, central Asia, and Africa are learning the Arabic language, the language of their faith.
    [Show full text]
  • An Examination of Oral Articulation of Vowel Nasality in the Light of the Independent Effects of Nasalization on Vowel Quality
    DOI: 10.17469/O2104AISV000002 CHRISTOPHER CARIGNAN An examination of oral articulation of vowel nasality in the light of the independent effects of nasalization on vowel quality In this paper, a summary is given of an experimental technique to address a known issue in research on the independent effects of nasalization on vowel acoustics: given that the separate transfer functions associated with the oral and nasal cavities are merged in the acoustic signal, the task of teasing apart the respective effects of the two cavities seems to be an intractable problem. The results obtained from the method reveal that the independent effects of nasal- ization on the acoustic vowel space are: F1-raising for high vowels, F1-lowering for non-high vowels, and F2-lowering for non-front vowels. The results from previous articulatory research performed by the author on the production of vowel nasality in French, Hindi, and English are discussed in the light of these independent effects of nasalization on vowel quality. Keywords: vowel nasality, vowel quality, articulation, acoustics, sound change. 1. Introduction A traditional characterization of vowel nasality adopts a seemingly binary classification of vowel sounds based on the relative height of the velum: nasal vowels are produced with a low velum position (and, thus, air radiation from both the oral and nasal cavities), where- as oral vowels are produced with a high velum position (and, thus, air radiation from the oral cavity alone). While it is unquestionably true that nasal vowels are produced with a lowered velum, this traditional characterization carries an implicit assumption about the state of the oral cavity for the production of a nasal vowel, i.e., that the nasal vowel maintains the same articulatory characteristics as its non-nasal counterpart in all aspects except for the height of the velum.
    [Show full text]
  • Mimicry of Non-Distinctive Phonetic Differences Between Language Varieties *
    Mimicry of Non-distinctive Phonetic Differences Between Language Varieties * James Emil Flege Ro bert M. Ham mond Unil'l![sifyof Alabama. Birmingham Miami·Dade Community College 1\ delayed mimicry paradigm w.as used to assess speakers' ,awareness of non-dlSlLnCf!Vc phonetic differences which in part dislinguisn I:mguagcs, . The notion of " rho no logIcal fillu­ Lng" IffiroheS ttur second Lmsuagc learners may not be lIblc to perceIve: phonetic differences between thCIT native language and :01 fOrf:.gn langua~ unless the phonetic differences arc linguistically relevant in the nallve bngu2gc. If cross-bogulIgc phoncuc differences arc In fact perceIved poorly, It is unlikely [hal phon.::!;\; mod,ficallon , ..,II OCcur .n Ihc course of nalUu.hsllc second language acqu15iuon. In th.s study natlvC' English speakers familiar Wllh Spamsh·accentcd English ulempted to lead sentences With a Spamsh accent. Acoustic mC::l5Uremc:nts showed thai twO phonellc characlens!!cs of Engllsh-Ihe long VOT values aSSOC iated '''llh 'p, t, kI and hnal-syll:Jble lengthening- were altered In the direction of Spanuh anu Spanish.accented Enghsh. These results prOVide tentative eYldence that nOn -dlStlnCIIVe rhonetle differences between languages arc detecuble by I:lnguage learners and thus do nO! present an msupeuble bamer to phonetIC learning in second 1:lOgU .. gc "cqulsHlun For several decades phonologists have believed that "phonological fillering" con· tnbutes Importantly to the presence of foreign accent In the speech of second languagc learners ITrubct;:koy 1969:5 1 ffI. Having acquired the phonology of one language, the language learner will tend to mterpret sounds heard in a foreign language in terms of phonological umts found In the native language.
    [Show full text]
  • A Phonetic, Phonological, and Morphosyntactic Analysis of the Mara Language
    San Jose State University SJSU ScholarWorks Master's Theses Master's Theses and Graduate Research Spring 2010 A Phonetic, Phonological, and Morphosyntactic Analysis of the Mara Language Michelle Arden San Jose State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/etd_theses Recommended Citation Arden, Michelle, "A Phonetic, Phonological, and Morphosyntactic Analysis of the Mara Language" (2010). Master's Theses. 3744. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31979/etd.v36r-dk3u https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/etd_theses/3744 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Master's Theses and Graduate Research at SJSU ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of SJSU ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A PHONETIC, PHONOLOGICAL, AND MORPHOSYNTACTIC ANALYSIS OF THE MARA LANGUAGE A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of Linguistics and Language Development San Jose State University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts by Michelle J. Arden May 2010 © 2010 Michelle J. Arden ALL RIGHTS RESERVED The Designated Thesis Committee Approves the Thesis Titled A PHONETIC, PHONOLOGICAL, AND MORPHOSYNTACTIC ANALYSIS OF THE MARA LANGUAGE by Michelle J. Arden APPROVED FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS AND LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT SAN JOSE STATE UNIVERSITY May 2010 Dr. Daniel Silverman Department of Linguistics and Language Development Dr. Soteria Svorou Department of Linguistics and Language Development Dr. Kenneth VanBik Department of Linguistics and Language Development ABSTRACT A PHONETIC, PHONOLOGICAL, AND MORPHOSYNTACTIC ANALYSIS OF THE MARA LANGUAGE by Michelle J. Arden This thesis presents a linguistic analysis of the Mara language, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in northwest Myanmar and in neighboring districts of India.
    [Show full text]
  • Gradient Phonemic Contrast in Nanjing Mandarin Keith Johnson (UC Berkeley) Yidan Song (Nanjing Normal University)
    UC Berkeley Phonetics and Phonology Lab Annual Report (2016) Gradient phonemic contrast in Nanjing Mandarin Keith Johnson (UC Berkeley) Yidan Song (Nanjing Normal University) Abstract Sounds that are contrastive in a language are rated by listeners as being more different from each other than sounds that don’t occur in the language or sounds that are allophones of a single phoneme. The study reported in this paper replicates this finding and adds new data on the perceptual impact of learning a language with a new contrast. Two groups of speakers of the Nanjing dialect of Mandarin Chinese were tested. One group was older and had not been required to learn standard Mandarin as school children, while the other younger group had learned standard Mandarin in school. Nanjing dialect does not contrast [n] and [l], while standard Mandarin does. Listeners rated the similarity of naturally produced non-words presented in pairs, where the only difference between the tokens was the medial consonant. Pairs contrasting [n] and [l] were rated by older Nanjing speakers as if two [n] tokens or two [l] tokens had been presented, while these same pairs were rated by younger Nanjing speakers as noticeably different but not as different as pairs that contrast in their native language. Introduction The variety of Mandarin Chinese spoken in Nanjing does not have a contrast between [n] and [l] (Song, 2015), while the standard variety which is now taught in schools in Nanjing does have this contrast. Prior research has shown that speech perception is modulated by linguistic experience. Years of research has shown that listeners find it very difficult to perceive differences between sounds that are not contrastive in their language (Goto, 1971; Werker & Tees, 1984; Flege, 1995; Best et al., 2001).
    [Show full text]
  • Introductory Phonology
    3 More on Phonemes 3.1 Phonemic Analysis and Writing The question of phonemicization is in principle independent from the question of writing; that is, there is no necessary connection between letters and phonemes. For example, the English phoneme /e}/ can be spelled in quite a few ways: say /se}/, Abe /e}b/, main /me}n/, beige /be}è/, reggae /cryge}/, H /e}tà/. Indeed, there are languages (for example, Mandarin Chinese) that are written with symbols that do not correspond to phonemes at all. Obviously, there is at least a loose connection between alphabetic letters and phonemes: the designers of an alphabet tend to match up the written symbols with the phonemes of a language. Moreover, the conscious intuitions of speakers about sounds tend to be heavily influenced by their knowledge of spelling – after all, most literate speakers receive extensive training in how to spell during child- hood, but no training at all in phonology. Writing is prestigious, and our spoken pronunciations are sometimes felt to be imperfect realizations of what is written. This is reflected in the common occur- rence of spelling pronunciations, which are pronunciations that have no historical basis, but which arise as attempts to mimic the spelling, as in often [cÑftvn] or palm [pwlm]. In contrast, most linguists feel that spoken language is primary, and that written language is a derived system, which is mostly parasitic off the spoken language and is often rather artificial in character. Some reasons that support this view are that spoken language is far older than writing, it is acquired first and with greater ease by children, and it is the common property of our species, rather than of just an educated subset of it.
    [Show full text]
  • On the Anatomy of a Chain Shift1 DANIEL A
    J. Linguistics, Page 1 of 25. f Cambridge University Press 2010 doi:10.1017/S0022226710000368 On the anatomy of a chain shift1 DANIEL A. DINNSEN, CHRISTOPHER R. GREEN, JUDITH A. GIERUT & MICHELE L. MORRISETTE Indiana University (Received 4 September 2009; revised 28 April 2010) Phonological chain shifts have been the focus of many theoretical, developmental, and clinical concerns. This paper considers an overlooked property of the problem by focusing on the typological properties of the widely attested ‘s>h>f’ chain shift involving the processes of Labialization and Dentalization in early phonological development. Findings are reported from a cross-sectional study of 234 children (ages 3 years; 0 months–7;9) with functional (nonorganic) phonological delays. The results reveal some unexpected gaps in the predicted interactions of these processes and are brought to bear on the evaluation of recent optimality theoretic proposals for the characterization of phonological interactions. A developmental modification to the theory is proposed that has the desired effect of precluding certain early-stage grammars. The proposal is further evaluated against the facts of another widely cited developmental chain shift known as the ‘puzzle>puddle>pickle’ problem (Smith 1973). 1. I NTRODUCTION A common phenomenon in both first- and second-language acquisition and in fully-developed languages is for phonological processes to participate in a chain shift (e.g. Moreton & Smolensky 2002, Jesney 2005, Dinnsen 2008b). Chain shifts typically involve two phonological processes that interact in such a way that they result in an opaque generalization (i.e. one that is not surface-true). This phenomenon has generated much discussion and contro- versy in the theoretical, developmental, and clinical literature over the years and has raised questions about the very nature of chain shifts.
    [Show full text]
  • Chain Shifts in First Language Acquisition
    CHAIN SHIFTS IN FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION MASTER’S THESIS BY FRANSIEN WALTON MASTER’S PROGRAMME TAAL, MENS EN MAATSCHAPPIJ TAALWETENSCHAP UNIVERSITY OF UTRECHT STUDENT NUMBER 0419273 SUPERVISOR PROF. DR. RENÉ KAGER SECOND READER PROF. DR. WIM ZONNEVELD 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE 5 1. INTRODUCTION 7 2. PREVIOUS RESEARCH 14 2.1 EARLY GENERATIVE GRAMMAR 15 2.1.1 SMITH (1973) 17 2.1.2 MACKEN (1980) 19 2.2 OPTIMALITY THEORY 21 2.2.1 INTRODUCTION TO OPTIMALITY THEORY 21 2.2.2 CHAIN SHIFTS IN OPTIMALITY THEORY 26 2.2.3 LOCAL CONSTRAINT CONJUNCTION 28 2.2.4 FAITHFULNESS TO INPUT PROMINENCE 39 2.2.5 OPTIMALITY THEORY WITH CANDIDATE CHAINS 52 2.2.6 UNDERSPECIFIED UNDERLYING REPRESENTATIONS 58 2.3 CONCLUSION 62 3. A NEW PROPOSAL 65 3.1 INDEPENDENT PROCESSES 68 3.2 ARTICULATORY DIFFICULTIES 70 3.3 UNDERLYING REPRESENTATIONS 74 3.4 MISPERCEPTION 79 3.5 PREDICTIONS REVISITED 83 3.6 CONCLUSION 86 4. DISCUSSION 88 5. CONCLUSION 103 REFERENCES 105 3 4 PREFACE The idea for this thesis originated in the course Phonological Acquisition taught by René Kager. I read the article On the characterization of a chain shift in normal and delayed phonological acquisition by Daniel Dinnsen and Jessica Barlow (1998) and was intrigued by the phenomenon. After I started reading more on the subject, I became increasingly unhappy with the proposed analyses in the literature and decided to dive deeper into the matter. The result is this thesis. I would like to thank René for his useful comments, critical questions and positive feedback.
    [Show full text]
  • Minimal Pair Approaches to Phonological Remediation
    Minimal Pair Approaches to Phonological Remediation Jessica A. Barlow, Ph.D.,1 and Judith A. Gierut, Ph.D.2 ABSTRACT This article considers linguistic approaches to phonological reme- diation that emphasize the role of the phoneme in language. We discuss the structure and function of the phoneme by outlining procedures for de- termining contrastive properties of sound systems through evaluation of minimal word pairs. We then illustrate how these may be applied to a case study of a child with phonological delay. The relative effectiveness of treat- ment approaches that facilitate phonemic acquisition by contrasting pairs of sounds in minimal pairs is described. A hierarchy of minimal pair treat- ment efficacy emerges, as based on the number of new sounds, the number of featural differences, and the type of featural differences being intro- duced. These variables are further applied to the case study, yielding a range of possible treatment recommendations that are predicted to vary in their effectiveness. KEYWORDS: Phoneme, minimal pair, phonological remediation Learning Outcomes: As a result of this activity, the reader will be able to (1) analyze and recognize the con- trastive function of phonemes in a phonological system, (2) develop minimal pair treatment programs that aim to introduce phonemic contrasts in a child’s phonological system, and (3) discriminate between different types of minimal pair treatment programs and their relative effectiveness. Models of clinical treatment for children cognition given our need to understand how with functional phonological delays have been learning takes place in the course of interven- based on three general theoretical frameworks. tion. Still other approaches are grounded in Some models are founded on development linguistics because the problem at hand in- given that the population of concern involves volves the phonological system.
    [Show full text]