DOCSLIB.ORG

Effect of Utterance Length on F0 Scaling

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Effect of Utterance Length on F0 Scaling EFFECT OF UTTERANCE LENGTH ON F0 SCALING Maria del Mar Vanrell Bosch Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona [email protected] ABSTRACT utterance on scaling of nuclear accents, the research suggests that speakers can make a This study examines the effect of utterance length meaningful use of the presence or absence of on utterance-initial F0 values and H and L scaling downstep. The present study tests whether of nuclear accent in Majorcan Catalan. Research utterance length affects the scaling of utterance- on the correlation between utterance length and initial F0 values as well as H leading tone and L initial F0 values has thus far yielded contradictory tone F0 values. answers to the question of whether utterance length is a determining factor for initial pitch height. Regarding the impact of utterance length on 2. METHODS scaling of nuclear accents (known as downstep), it Yes-no questions and what-questions in has been shown that downstep may be under the Majorcan Catalan have been described as conscious control of the speaker and be governed containing a difference in pitch height in the by a clearly communicative function. Firstly, the pretonic nuclear syllable. Thus, although both results reveal that there exists a correlation types of questions are characterized by a falling between sentence length and initial pitch height, nuclear accent H+L*, that is, an H leading tone but this correlation is not constant across speakers aligned with the pretonic nuclear syllable and a L* and sentence-types, suggesting that this is an tone associated with the last stressed syllable, in instance of soft preplanning. Secondly, our results the case of yes-no questions, the H leading tone show that downstep or, more precisely, the failure has been shown to be systematically realized with of downstep may be grammaticalized in a a higher tone than that found in what-questions particular phonological context. ([15]). Moreover, yes-no questions are headed by Keywords: utterance-length, F0 scaling, the unaccented interrogative particle que (‘that’) preplanning, downstep. while what-questions are headed by the accented what-particle què (‘what’). Previous work ([5]) has 1. INTRODUCTION also reported that analogous prosodic features are able to disambiguate between different question The effect of utterance length on the scaling of types. utterance-initial F0 peaks is a controversial issue in intonational studies. A correlation between utterance-initial F0 peaks and length of utterance 2.1. Material and experimental procedure would mean that speakers are able to plan F0 The data used in this study consisted of yes-no contours at a phrase level by beginning higher questions and what-questions of lengths ranging when the utterance is longer and lower when the from 1 to 3 pitch accents and divided into blocks utterance is shorter (what is known as hard according to the number of pitch accents in each preplanning or the global hypothesis). utterance. Each block was made up of paired yes- Alternatively, speakers may proceed at a more no and what-questions that were identical or very local level, that is, accent-by-accent (i.e. the local similar at the segmental level (see Table I). The hypothesis). Work in this field has produced last word always contained the stress on the conflicting results. Thus, some findings have penultimate syllable to provide more room for reported that speakers begin higher or lower nuclear accent and boundary tone realization. depending on utterance length ([3], [4], [10], [11]), Table 1: Examples of the utterances used in this while other researchers have reported no utterance experiment. Stressed syllables are marked in boldface. length effect on peak values ([1], [2], [6], [7], [8], [12], [13], [14]). As regards the impact of length of Yes-no questions What-questions Que en va vendre? Què en va vendre? (‘Did s/he sell any of it?’) (‘What did s/he sell of it?’) Speaker FF Speaker MC 220,0 Number of 270,0 Number of pitch pitch 260,0 [k va vnd] [k va vnd] accents accents 195 1 200,0 1 250,0 Que n’esperava vendre? Què n’esperava vendre? 186 2 2 3 240,0 3 (‘Did s/he expect to sell any (‘What did s/he expect to sell 180,0 230,0 of it?’) of it?’) 238 187 220,0 160,0 197 198 210,0 [k nspeav vnd] [k nspeav vnd] 310 200,0 140,0 v0 (Hz) Frequency Fundamental Que hi volia tornar a Què hi volia tornar a (Hz) v0 Frequency Fundamental Yes-no questions What-questions Yes-no questions What questions vendre? (‘Did s/he want to vendre? (‘What did s/he Sentence type Sentence type sell there again?’) want to sell there again?’) Speaker MV [kj vuli tona vnd] [kj vuli tona vnd] 408 Number of pitch 260,0 accents Five native speakers of Majorcan Catalan (two 1 2 240,0 females and three males) read three repetitions of 3 the three blocks of utterances. Thus a total of 450 220,0 utterances (5 sentences x 2 types x 3 lengths x 3 200,0 361 repetitions x 5 speakers) were obtained. In order to (Hz) v0 Frequency Fundamental Yes-no questions What-questions facilitate interpretation of the utterances by the Sentence type speakers, each test question was answered verbally Results of Friedman tests (Table 2) revealed that by the author of this study. speakers AB, AC and MC showed a significant Pitch extraction and measurements were tendency in what-questions to anticipate the length performed using Praat software. As the aim of this of the utterance by beginning higher if the work was to examine the effect of utterance length utterance was longer (presumably to avoid the on utterance-initial F0 values and H and L scaling pitch falling much lower) and lower if the of nuclear accent, no measurements related to utterance was shorter. This anticipation also prenuclear pitch accents were taken. Non- occurred in yes-no questions, though for only two parametric statistical tests were used to test for speakers (AB and MC). differences in F0 values. Table 2: Results of Friedman tests with significance level set at 0.05. 3. RESULTS Subject Yes-no questions What-questions AB χ2(2)=12.4 χ2(2)=6.40 3.1. Utterance-initial F0 values. AC χ2(2)=1.00, ns χ2(2)=8.22 2 2 Figure 1 shows the box plots of F0 for the vowel FF χ (2)=3.60, ns χ (2)=1.85, ns MC χ2(2)=12.13 χ2(2)=12.13 [´] of the particle que/què in yes-no questions (left- MV χ2(2)=.93, ns χ2(2)=.40, ns hand boxes) and what-questions (right-hand boxes) for each of the five speakers, broken down into 3.2. H leading tone F0 values different utterance lengths (1-3 pitch accents). Figure 2 shows the box plots of F0 at the start of Figure 1: Box plots of F0 for the vowel [´] of the the fall within the falling nuclear accent H+L* in interrogative particles que (yes-no questions) and què utterances containing from 1 to 3 pitch accents for (what-questions) in utterances of different lengths for yes-no questions (left-hand boxes) and what- each speaker. questions (right-hand boxes). Speaker AB Speaker AC 200,0 Number of 250,0 Number of 85 pitch pitch Figure 2: Box plots of H-F0 within the nuclear accent 190,0 accents 225,0 accents 71 1 1 H+L* for yes-no questions and what-questions in 180,0 150 2 200,0 2 utterances of different lengths for each speaker. 170,0 3 3 2 175,0 160,0 75 Speaker AB Speaker AC 150,0 250,0 220,0 150,0 Number of Number of pitch pitch 125,0 103 140,0 92 225,0 accents 200,0 accents 8 24 1 1 Fundamental Frequency v0 (Hz) v0 Frequency Fundamental Fundamental Frequency v0 (Hz) v0 Frequency Fundamental 130,0 100,0 200,0 2 180,0 2 21 40 3 3 Yes-no questions What-questions Yes-no questions What-questions 37 175,0 160,0 Sentence type Sentence type 60 79 126 150,0 140,0 86 125,0 120,0 33 Fundamental Frequency H (Hz) Frequency Fundamental 100,0 (Hz) H Frequency Fundamental 100,0 Yes-no questions What-questions Yes-no questions What-questions Sentence type Sentence type Speaker FF Speaker MC Speaker FF Speaker MC 220,0 Number of 300,0 Number of 150,00 Number of 220,00 Number of pitch pitch pitch pitch accents 280,0 accents accents accents 314 200,0 1 1 140,00 1 200,00 1 314 2 260,0 2 2 2 3 329 3 3 3 249 180,0 240,0 130,00 180,00 302 236 220,0 325 302 160,0 120,00 160,00 200,0 335 243 Fundamental Frequency L (Hz) L Frequency Fundamental (Hz) L Frequency Fundamental Fundamental Frequency H (Hz) Frequency Fundamental Fundamental Frequency H (Hz) H Frequency Fundamental 140,0 180,0 110,00 140,00 Yes-no questions What-questions Yes-no questions What-questions Yes-no questions What-questions Yes-no questions What-questions Sentence type Sentence type Sentence type Sentence type Speaker MV Speaker MV 320,0 180,00 Number of 391 Number of pitch pitch 300,0 accents 378 accents 1 1 280,0 170,00 2 384 2 260,0 3 3 240,0 160,00 220,0 376 400 415 380 200,0 150,00 Fundamental Frequency L (Hz) Frequency Fundamental Fundamental Frequency H (Hz) H Frequency Fundamental 180,0 Yes-no questions What-questions Yes-no questions What-questions Sentence type Sentence type A constant utterance-length effect is not present Note that although there is evidence that in the L-F0 value.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Part 1: Introduction to The
    PREVIEW OF THE IPA HANDBOOK Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A guide to the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet PARTI Introduction to the IPA 1. What is the International Phonetic Alphabet? The aim of the International Phonetic Association is to promote the scientific study of phonetics and the various practical applications of that science. For both these it is necessary to have a consistent way of representing the sounds of language in written form. From its foundation in 1886 the Association has been concerned to develop a system of notation which would be convenient to use, but comprehensive enough to cope with the wide variety of sounds found in the languages of the world; and to encourage the use of thjs notation as widely as possible among those concerned with language. The system is generally known as the International Phonetic Alphabet. Both the Association and its Alphabet are widely referred to by the abbreviation IPA, but here 'IPA' will be used only for the Alphabet. The IPA is based on the Roman alphabet, which has the advantage of being widely familiar, but also includes letters and additional symbols from a variety of other sources. These additions are necessary because the variety of sounds in languages is much greater than the number of letters in the Roman alphabet. The use of sequences of phonetic symbols to represent speech is known as transcription. The IPA can be used for many different purposes. For instance, it can be used as a way to show pronunciation in a dictionary, to record a language in linguistic fieldwork, to form the basis of a writing system for a language, or to annotate acoustic and other displays in the analysis of speech.
    [Show full text]
  • Vowel Length/ Duration in Geminated and Non-Geminated Arabic Words
    =================================================================== Language in India www.languageinindia.com ISSN 1930-2940 Vol. 18:4 April 2018 India’s Higher Education Authority UGC Approved List of Journals Serial Number 49042 ================================================================ Vowel Length/ Duration in Geminated and Non-geminated Arabic Words Asmaa Adel Abdulrahman and Dr. L. Ramamoorthy =========================================================== Abstract This paper investigates vowel length in Arabic and how it gets affected by neighboring consonants, in particular when it occurs in geminated or non-geminated phonetic environment in words. The paper examines vowel length before and after geminated and non-geminated consonants. It also focuses on the length of geminated/non-geminated consonants themselves and the proportion between them. The present study also investigates the proportion of vowels to consonants in the words and the proportion of geminated words to their non-geminated counterparts as a whole. Eighteen geminated and non-geminated Arabic words are selected and recorded randomly by the researcher who is a native speaker of Arabic. The data were recorded at the Phonetics Lab of the English and Foreign Languages University in Hyderabad/India. It was concluded that gemination in Arabic affects vowel and consonants as well as total length/ duration of the word as a whole. It is also observed that some vowels/ consonants have greater proportion than their non-geminated counterparts. The whole words were also affected by germination in terms of length and duration. Keywords: Duration, Gemination , Arabic,Vowels, consonants, Acoustic analysis. 1. Introduction Arabic is the mother tongue of over 400 million people. Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) _ the descendant of Classical Arabic branches into 22 vernacular dialects in the 22 Arab countries, each country having its own regional vernacular variety (Humran.A and Shyamala.K.C.
    [Show full text]
  • Pronunciation Notes (PDF)
    Pronunciation Notes for the Pronouncing Dictionary of the Supreme Court of the United States Jason A. Zentz IPA Garner Examples IPA Garner Examples p p pie, pea i ee heed, bead b b by, bee ɪ i hid, bid t t tie, tea eɪ ay hate, bait d d die, D ɛ e head, bed k k buckeye, key æ a had, bad ɡ g guy, foggy ɑ ah ha, baa ʔ (none)1 uh-uh, Hawaiʻi ɑ ah2 hot, body tʃ ch chai, cheetah ɔ aw hawed, bawd dʒ j jive, G oʊ oh hoed, bode f f fie, fee ʊ uu hood, book v v vie, V u oo whoʼd, booed θ th thigh, theme ə ə ahead, aboard ð th thy, thee ʌ ə Hudson, bud s s sigh, sea aɪ ɪ hide, bide z z Zaire, Z aʊ ow howʼd, bowed ʃ sh shy, she ɔɪ oi ahoy, boy ʒ zh vision, regime iɹ eer here, beard χ kh3 chutzpah ɛɹ air hair, bared h h high, he ɑɹ ahr hard, bard m m my, me ɔɹ or horde, board n n nigh, knee uɹ oor poor, boor ŋ ng rang, clingy əɹ ər herd, bird, over l l lie, Lee ɹ r rye, reed w w wide, we hw hw why, which j y yes, ye 1 For Americanized pronunciations that include the glottal stop, it is represented in our IPA transcriptions but not our Garner transcriptions. 2 Garner (2009a,b, 2011) distinguishes between IPA /ɑ/ and /ɒ/, giving /ah/ for the former and /o/ for the latter.
    [Show full text]
  • A Phonetic Study of Length and Duration in Kyrgyz Vowels
    Swarthmore College Works Linguistics Faculty Works Linguistics 2019 A Phonetic Study Of Length And Duration In Kyrgyz Vowels Nathaniel Ziv Stern , '20 Jonathan North Washington Swarthmore College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-linguistics Part of the Linguistics Commons Let us know how access to these works benefits ouy Recommended Citation Nathaniel Ziv Stern , '20 and Jonathan North Washington. (2019). "A Phonetic Study Of Length And Duration In Kyrgyz Vowels". Proceedings Of The Workshop On Turkic And Languages In Contact With Turkic. Volume 4, 119-131. DOI: 10.3765/ptu.v4i1.4577 https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-linguistics/256 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. This work is brought to you for free by Swarthmore College Libraries' Works. It has been accepted for inclusion in Linguistics Faculty Works by an authorized administrator of Works. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 2019. Proceedings of the Workshop on Turkic and Languages in Contact with Turkic 4. 119–131. https://doi.org/10.3765/ptu.v4i1.4577 A phonetic study of length and duration in Kyrgyz vowels Nathaniel Ziv Stern & Jonathan North Washington∗ Abstract. This paper examines the phonetic correlates of the (phonological) vowel length contrast in Kyrgyz to address a range of questions about the nature of this contrast, and also explores factors that affect (phonetic) duration in short vowels. Measurement and analysis of the vowels confirms that there is indeed a significant duration distinction be- tween the Kyrgyz vowel categories referred to as short and long vowels.
    [Show full text]
  • Expressing Concession by Means of Nuclear Pitch Accent
    Nima Sadat-Tehrani Centennial College, Canada Expressing Concession by Means of Nuclear Pitch Accent The purpose of this research is to introduce a certain function of the nuclear pitch accent in Persian, i.e., the expression of concession. A nuclear pitch accent in this usage serves as a preface to a following statement, in which the speaker offers an alternative or contradictory point of view towards a previously highlighted discourse. This nuclear pitch accent is on a final verbal element in the utterance, and crucially, this final element is not associated with any pitch accent in the normal declarative reading of the same utterance, and it is only in this structure that it becomes nuclear-accented. Thus, the nuclear pitch accent behaves here as an intonational morpheme, but one that is bound to its location in the utterance. The paper also investigates the occurrence of this phenomenon in monoclausals, biclausals, and scrambled sentences, and identifies the constraints on its realization. Keywords: Persian, intonation, nuclear pitch accent, concession, contrast. 1. Introduction This paper explores an intonation pattern in modern colloquial Persian. The meaning conveyed by this pattern is that of concession or contradiction directed towards a proposition highlighted in the previous discourse, and it acts as an introduction to an upcoming assertion. What makes this pattern unique is the location of the nuclear pitch accent (NPA), i.e., the last pitch accent in an intonational phrase, a.k.a. sentence stress. Consider the ordinary declarative in Example (1) accompanied by its pitch track and wave form in Figure 1. The stressed syllable in each accentual phrase (AP) is shown with an accent mark, and the NPA is underlined.1 (1) hævá æbrí !od–".
    [Show full text]
  • Arabic Phonology Janua Linguarum
    ARABIC PHONOLOGY JANUA LINGUARUM STUDIA MEMORIAE NICOLAI VAN WIJK DEDICATA edenda curat C. H. VAN SCHOONEVELD INDIANA UNIVERSITY SERIES PRACTICA 61 1970 MOUTON THE HAGUE · PARIS ARABIC PHONOLOGY An Acoustical and Physiological Investigation by SALMAN H. AL-ANI INDIANA UNIVERSITY 1970 MOUTON THE HAGUE . PARIS © Copyright 1970 in The Netherlands. Mouton & Co. N.V., Publishers, The Hague. No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publishers. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 70-91210 Printed in The Netherlands by Mouton & Co., Printers, The Hague. This book is dedicated to the late Dr. Gordon E. Peterson whose untimely death occurred before its publication. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am most grateful to Dr. Wadie Jwaideh of Indiana University who encouraged me throughout my university years and to Dr. Fred W. Householder, also of Indiana University, who was my thesis director. To Dr. Charles J. Adams, Director of the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University, I owe a great debt of thanks for his help in securing financial aid and for his understanding and faith. Also at McGill, I wish to thank Dr. A. Rigault and Mr. J. Frydman for their able assistance with the acoustical work done there. I cannot too warmly express my appreciation to Dr. Gordon E. Peterson who allowed me to work at the Communication Sciences Laboratory at the University of Michigan and who helped me beyond measure. Also I am extremely grateful to Dr. June E. Shoup, of the Communication Sciences Laboratory, who spent many hours both in helping me prepare the data and in very carefully proofreading the first six chapters.
    [Show full text]
  • Tone & Intonation
    Tone & Intonation Tone • Linguistic uses of pitch (f0) gestures • Two contrasting tones (or pitch gestures): H, L • Complex tonal patterns can be decomposed into sequences of H and L. • Tone gestures and sequences of tone gestures can be coordinated with (coupled to): • syllables (“lexical tone”) — distinguish lexical items • words (“pitch accent”) — distinguish lexical items • phrases (“intonation”) — distinguish syntactic and pragmatic structures. Assignment to Syllables: Register Tones • can be used to contrast lexical items • used in a majority of the world’s languages Yoruba (Nigeria) Hombert, 1976 Shona (Zimbabwe) Bini (Nigeria) F0 of [wa] of F0 up to 5 contrastive tone levels: how do they result from H, L?? H and L tones in Embosi (Bantu Language in Congo) H L Contours • Multiple pitch gesture per syllable: contour tone • Pitch gestures may not have their own syllable to be coupled to. • Or, their coupled vowels may be elided in running speech when adjacent to another vowel. • They can then be coordinated with a preceding or following syllable creating a tonal sequence. Etsako (Nigeria) Shekgalagari (Bantu, Botswana) (Hyman & Monaka, 2011) Assignment of Tone Sequences to Syllables: Contour Tones • Tonal sequence can contrast lexical items Standard Chinese Gao (2006) Coupling Assignment of Tone Sequences to Words: Pitch Accents • Words can contrast in terms of pitch gestures assigned to them, but not every syllable can independently bear pitch gestures. • Words contrast in accent type: 2 Croatian sequences of pitch gestures. • Early rise (L+H* L-L%) /mlada/ 'the bride' • Late rise (L*+H L-L%) /mara/ proper name (‘Mara’) • Patterns are "strung out" over words of 2- or 3- syllable words.
    [Show full text]
  • Phonetics Suprasegmental Features
    Segmental vs. Suprasegmental Features Length Pitch Stress Summary Phonetics Suprasegmental Features Darrell Larsen Linguistics 101 Darrell Larsen Phonetics Segmental vs. Suprasegmental Features Length Pitch Stress Summary Outline 1 Segmental vs. Suprasegmental Features 2 Length 3 Pitch Intonation Tone 4 Stress 5 Summary Darrell Larsen Phonetics Segmental vs. Suprasegmental Features Length Pitch Stress Summary Segmental vs. Suprasegmental Features Segmental features are (generally) easy to determine in isolation. Suprasegmental features are relative and determined across segments. Single suprasegmental features may occur over a single segment or a sequence of segments. Darrell Larsen Phonetics Segmental vs. Suprasegmental Features Length Pitch Stress Summary Length The length of individual phones may differ. The length of a phone may depend on pragmatic reasons, phonetic reasons, or phonemic reasons (i.e. to distinguish words). Darrell Larsen Phonetics Segmental vs. Suprasegmental Features Length Pitch Stress Summary Non-distinctive Length In English, vowels preceding voiced consonants are longer than vowels preceding voiceless consonants bead > beat bag > back When identical phones end up adjacent to each other, they may be pronounced as a single, long sound two plus seven > two plus eight ghos(t)s ! [goUss] Darrell Larsen Phonetics Segmental vs. Suprasegmental Features Length Pitch Stress Summary Distinctive Length In some languages, changing the length of a phone can change a word's meaning. Korean (older generation) Czech [mal] `horse' [bit] `apartment' [ma:l] `speech' [bi:t] `to be' [nun] `eye' [dal] `gave' [nu:n] `snow' [da:l] `further' Question In English, some vowels are pronounced longer than others. Why is this not distinctive? Darrell Larsen Phonetics Segmental vs. Suprasegmental Features Length Intonation Pitch Tone Stress Summary Pitch and Speech All speakers have different average pitch.* A speaker's pitch may be culturally (and situationally) influenced.* Pitch as part of language includes both intonation and tone.
    [Show full text]
  • Phonological Distribution and Syllable Length in Spanish
    Deseret Language and Linguistic Society Symposium Volume 11 Issue 1 Article 6 2-15-1985 Phonological Distribution and Syllable Length in Spanish J. Halvor Clegg Joseph Brannen Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/dlls BYU ScholarsArchive Citation Clegg, J. Halvor and Brannen, Joseph (1985) "Phonological Distribution and Syllable Length in Spanish," Deseret Language and Linguistic Society Symposium: Vol. 11 : Iss. 1 , Article 6. Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/dlls/vol11/iss1/6 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Deseret Language and Linguistic Society Symposium by an authorized editor of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. 51 PHONOLOGICAL DISTRIBUTION AND SYLLABLE LENGTH IN SPANISH .1. Halvor Clegg cJDseph B+ilTlnen Brigham Young University Much experimental work needs to be done before any understanding of the syllable will be arrived at. This study is part of a larger, long-term study that aims at understanding some of the features of this difficult conoept. It is not the purpose of this study to provide a definition of the syllable. There are many in the different manuals that oan be referred to for definitions. We will assume the existenoe of the syllable and use its olassioal definitio~ This means having a nuoleus and limits. In our materials the nuolei .re always vowels. Our measurements will inolude these vowel nuolei and their limits. These may be realized as oonsonants, vowels or .odulations in the vowel nuoleus itself.
    [Show full text]
  • Stress-Timed and Syllable-Timed Languages and Their Impact on Second Language Acquisition Madeline M
    Wayne State University Honors College Theses Irvin D. Reid Honors College Winter 5-3-2016 A Linguistic Comparison: Stress-timed and syllable-timed languages and their impact on second language acquisition Madeline M. Conlen [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/honorstheses Part of the Latin American Languages and Societies Commons, Modern Languages Commons, Other English Language and Literature Commons, and the Spanish Linguistics Commons Recommended Citation Conlen, Madeline M., "A Linguistic Comparison: Stress-timed and syllable-timed languages and their impact on second language acquisition" (2016). Honors College Theses. 30. https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/honorstheses/30 This Honors Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Irvin D. Reid Honors College at DigitalCommons@WayneState. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors College Theses by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@WayneState. Conlen 1 A Linguistic Comparison: Stress-timed and syllable-timed languages and their impact on second language acquisition Background Acquisition of a second language can be a challenging task for a multitude of different reasons because no two languages are alike in their structure, syllabification, pronunciation, rhythm, etc. Also, after speaking one language for any amount of time, the speaker becomes accustomed to the specific qualities of that language; therefore, learning to speak another language takes extra effort because it is essentially rewiring the brain to think differently in many ways. One important element of language is prosody, or the patterns of stress and intonation in language (Dilley et al 237). The subsector of prosody that is to be studied is rhythm, explicitly isochrony and stress timing.
    [Show full text]
  • RA Draft Phonology Sketch
    Phonemic Inventory Overview Rawàng Ata has an unusually small phonemic inventory, containing seventeen consonants and five vowel qualities. The approximate consonantal inventory is as follows: labial bilabial coronal postcoronal velar postvelar hard plosive t k soft plosive b d nasal m n ŋ hard spirant f s ʃ h soft spirant v ʒ lateral l rhotic r glide j w This inventory is not wholly uncontroversial. Two of these phonemes, /ʃ/ and /ʒ/ can be discarded as allophonic once underlying stress patterns are suitably accounted for, and if a small number of loanwords and onomatopoeic words are discounted. Two affricates are distinguished, /ts/ and /dʒ/, but these are never phonemically contrasted with the corresponding sequences, and so have not been included above; nor has the postcoronal nasal, which has been analysed as a sequence of /nj/ in all cases. The vowel inventory consists only of /i e a o u/ (approximately speaking), which may occur (with the exception of /e/) either long or short. Diphthongs formed of short vowels followed by /j/ in some ways act phonologically as unitary vowel segments, but here have been analysed as sequences, from which they are neither phonologically nor phonemically distinguishable. An additional complication of the phonology is the process here termed ‘vowel clipping’, which may be regarded in terms of vowel length, vowel quality inventory, chronemes, consonant inventory, or consonant clusters. The simplest, but typologically perhaps less appealing, analysis is simply to say that Rawàng Ata distinguishes three lengths of vowels. The general inventory having been established, the individual phonemes will now be discussed in turn, followed by a discussion of clipping, and then of the extended phonemic inventory found in non-core vocabulary.
    [Show full text]
  • Vowel Length and Phonation Contrasts in Chuxnabán Mixe
    Vowel Length and Phonation Contrasts in Chuxnabán Mixe Carmen Jany University of California, Santa Barbara 1. Introduction Chuxnabán Mixe is a previously undocumented Mixe-Zoque language spoken by about a thousand people in one village in the Mexican southern state of Oaxaca. The Mixe region is composed of two hundred and ninety communities divided into nineteen municipalities (Torres Cisneros 1997). Chuxnabán belongs to the municipality of Quetzaltepec. Each village speaks a different variety of Mixe, some of which are mutually unintelligible. The varieties differ mostly in their vowel systems (Suslak 2003). For instance, while Totontepec Mixe has nine phonemic vowels (Schoenhals 1982), only six are reported for Coatlán Mixe (Hoogshagen 1959, 1997). It is unclear at this point to what extent the different Mixe varities constitute distinct languages or dialects, due to insufficient sources of information. While some linguists divide Mixe into four main varities: Lowland Mixe, Midland Mixe, South Highland Mixe, and North Highland Mixe, the Ethnologue lists ten different Mixe languages divided into three larger branches: Eastern Mixe with six languages and Veracruz Mixe and Western Mixe with two languages each (Gordon 2005). Chuxnabán Mixe has been identified by its speakers as Midland Mixe, and is assumed to correspond to Quetzaltepec Mixe in the Ethnologue entry. Currently, there are only a few published grammars and dictionaries for the many different Mixe languages and dialects spoken (De la Grasserie 1898; Hoogshagen 1997; Ruiz de Bravo Ahuja 1980; Schoenhals 1982; Van Haitsma 1976). The scarce documentation has led to a very small number of studies concerned with the unique and typologically interesting linguistic features of these languages.
    [Show full text]