Patterns in Phonological and Social Variability
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Lenition and Optimality Theory
Lenition and Optimality Theory (Proceedings of LSRL XXIV, Feb. 1994) Haike Jacobs French Department Nijmegen University/Free University Amsterdam 1. Introduction Since Kiparsky (1968) generative historical phonology has relied primarily on the following means in accounting for sound change: rule addition, rule simplification, rule loss and rule reordering. Given that the phonological rule as such no longer exists in the recently proposed framework of Optimality theory (cf. Prince and Smolensky 1993), the question arises how sound change can be accounted for in this theory. Prince and Smolensky (1993) contains mainly applications of the theory to non-segmental phonology (that is, stress and syllable structure), whereas the segmental phonology is only briefly (the segmental inventory of Yidiny) touched upon. In this paper, we will present and discuss an account of consonantal weakening processes within the framework of Optimality theory. We will concentrate on lenition in the historical phonology of French, but take into account synchronic allophonic lenition processes as well. This paper purports to demonstrate not only that segmental phonology can straightforwardly be dealt with in optimality theory, but, moreover, that an optimality-based account of lenition is not thwarted by the drawbacks of previous proposals. This paper is organized as follows. In section 2, we will present the main facts of lenition in the historical phonology of French. After that, section 3 briefly discusses previous analyses of this phenomenon, mainly concentrating on their problematic aspects. Section 4 considers the possibilities of accounting for lenition in Optimality theory. Finally, in section 5 the main results of the present paper are summarized. -
Segmental Phonology and the Perception of Syntactic Structure
JOURNAL OF VERBAL LEARNING AND VERBAL BEHAVIOR 23, 450-466 (1984) Segmental Phonology and the Perception of Syntactic Structure DONIA R. SCOTT University of Sussex AND ANNE CUTLER MRC Applied Psychology Unit, Cambridge Recent research in speech production has shown that syntactic structure is reflected in segmental phonology--the application of certain phonological rules of English (e.g., pala- talization and alveolar flapping) is inhibited across phrase boundaries. We examined whether such segmental effects can be used in speech perception as cues to syntactic structure, and the relation between the use of these segmental features as syntactic markers in production and perception. Speakers of American English (a dialect in which the above segmental effects occur) could indeed use the segmental cues in syntax perception; speakers of British English (in which the effects do not occur) were unable to make use of them, while speakers of British English who were long-term residents of the United States showed intermediate performance. Anyone who has had to make the sepa- dangerous") (Lehiste, 1973). But the fact rate meanings of an ambiguous sentence that listeners can successfully identify the clear to listeners will know that often the intended meaning even in the absence of a most efficient method is just to say the sen- disambiguating context suggests that tence in different ways. Of course, some speakers can exploit acoustic features to sentences will be more difficult to disam- highlight the distinction that is to be con- biguate in this manner than others; in gen- veyed to the listener. eral, surface structure ambiguities (e.g., In recent years, a number of studies on "The old men and women stayed at English speech perception have investi- home") prove easier than deep structure gated just what these acoustic correlates of ambiguities (e.g., "Flying planes can be syntactic structure are, and how useful they are to the listener. -
Imperceptible Incomplete Neutralization
Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect Lingua 152 (2014) 24--44 www.elsevier.com/locate/lingua Imperceptible incomplete neutralization: Production, non-identifiability, and non-discriminability in American English flapping Aaron Braver * Texas Tech University, Department of English, P.O. Box 43091, Lubbock, TX 79409-3091, United States Received 1 November 2012; received in revised form 6 September 2014; accepted 9 September 2014 Available online Abstract Flapping in American English has been put forward as a case of incomplete neutralization---in other words, /d/-flaps and /t/-flaps differ at the phonetic level. This paper first presents a production experiment which shows that, in line with previous work, flapping in American English is incompletely neutralizing: vowels before /d/-flaps are slightly longer than those before /t/-flaps---even in nonce words. Early studies on the perceptibility of this difference, almost exclusively identification tasks, have shown mixed results. However, recent identification experiments (including one reported here) show that listeners are unable to properly categorize /d/- and /t/-flaps. Listeners’ poor performance on identification tasks can be due to two factors: either (a) listeners’ grammars lacking the relevant phonological categories, or (b) an effect of the type of perception tasks employed. In a 2AFC discrimination task presented here, listeners were unable to distinguish between /d/- and /t/-flaps, suggesting that poor perception performance generalizes to multiple task types. © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Incomplete neutralization; Flapping; Phonetics; American English 1. Introduction In American English flapping, underlying /d/ and /t/ become [ɾ] in certain prosodic configurations (e.g., Kahn, 1980). -
Ling 230/503: Articulatory Phonetics and Transcription English Vowels
Ling 230/503: Articulatory Phonetics and Transcription Broad vs. narrow transcription. A narrow transcription is one in which the transcriber records much phonetic detail without attention to the way in which the sounds of the language form a system. A broad transcription omits those details of a narrow transcription which the transcriber feels are not worth recording. Normally these details will be aspects of the speech event which are: (1) predictable or (2) would not differentiate two token utterances of the same type in the judgment of speakers or (3) are presumed not to figure in the systematic phonology of the language. IPA vs. American transcription There are two commonly used systems of phonetic transcription, the International Phonetics Association or IPA system and the American system. In many cases these systems overlap, but in certain cases there are important distinctions. Students need to learn both systems and have to be flexible about the use of symbols. English Vowels Short vowels /ɪ ɛ æ ʊ ʌ ɝ/ ‘pit’ pɪt ‘put’ pʊt ‘pet’ pɛt ‘putt’ pʌt ‘pat’ pæt ‘pert’ pɝt (or pr̩t) Long vowels /i(ː), u(ː), ɑ(ː), ɔ(ː)/ ‘beat’ biːt (or bit) ‘boot’ buːt (or but) ‘(ro)bot’ bɑːt (or bɑt) ‘bought’ bɔːt (or bɔt) Diphthongs /eɪ, aɪ, aʊ, oʊ, ɔɪ, ju(ː)/ ‘bait’ beɪt ‘boat’ boʊt ‘bite’ bɑɪt (or baɪt) ‘bout’ bɑʊt (or baʊt) ‘Boyd’ bɔɪd (or boɪd) ‘cute’ kjuːt (or kjut) The property of length, denoted by [ː], can be predicted based on the quality of the vowel. For this reason it is quite common to omit the length mark [ː]. -
An Acoustic Account of the Allophonic Realization of /T/ Amber King St
Linguistic Portfolios Volume 1 Article 12 2012 An Acoustic Account of the Allophonic Realization of /T/ Amber King St. Cloud State University Ettien Koffi St. Cloud State University Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.stcloudstate.edu/stcloud_ling Part of the Applied Linguistics Commons Recommended Citation King, Amber and Koffi, Ettien (2012) "An Acoustic Account of the Allophonic Realization of /T/," Linguistic Portfolios: Vol. 1 , Article 12. Available at: https://repository.stcloudstate.edu/stcloud_ling/vol1/iss1/12 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by theRepository at St. Cloud State. It has been accepted for inclusion in Linguistic Portfolios by an authorized editor of theRepository at St. Cloud State. For more information, please contact [email protected]. King and Koffi: An Acoustic Account of the Allophonic Realization of /T/ AN ACOUSTIC ACCOUNT OF THE ALLOPHONIC REALIZATIONS OF /T/ AMBER KING AND ETTIEN KOFFI 1.0 Introduction This paper is a laboratory phonology account of the different pronunciations of the phoneme /t/. Laboratory phonology is a relatively new analytical tool that is being used to validate and verify claims made by phonologists about the pronunciation of sounds. It is customary for phonologists to predict on the basis of auditory impressions and intuition alone that allophones exist for such and such phonemes. An allophone is defined as different realizations of the same phoneme based on the environments in which it occurs. For instance, it has been proposed that the phoneme /t/ has anywhere from four to eight allophones in General American English (GAE). To verify this claim Amber, one of the co-author of this paper recorded herself saying the words <still>, <Tim>, <kit>, <bitter>, <kitten>, <winter>, <fruition>, <furniture>, and <listen>. -
UC Berkeley Phonlab Annual Report
UC Berkeley UC Berkeley PhonLab Annual Report Title Strengthening, Weakening and Variability: The Articulatory Correlates of Hypo- and Hyper- articulation in the Production of English Dental Fricatives Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1hw2719n Journal UC Berkeley PhonLab Annual Report, 14(1) ISSN 2768-5047 Author Melguy, Yevgeniy Publication Date 2018 DOI 10.5070/P7141042482 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UC Berkeley Phonetics and Phonology Lab Annual Report (2018) Yevgeniy Melguy Susan Lin, Brian Smith M.A. Qualifying Paper 9 December 2018 Strengthening, weakening and variability: The articulatory correlates of hypo- and hyper- articulation in the production of English dental fricatives 1. INTRODUCTION A number of influential approaches to understanding phonetic and phonological variation in speech have highlighted the importance of functional factors (Blevins, 2004; Donegan & Stampe, 1979; Kiparsky, 1988; Kirchner, 1998; Lindblom, 1990). Under such approaches, speaker- and listener-oriented principles—ease of articulation vs. perceptual clarity—often work in opposite directions with respect to consonantal articulation. Minimization of effort is thought to drive a general “weakening” of consonants (resulting in decreased articulatory constriction and/or duration) which often makes them more articulatorily similar to surrounding sounds. This can result in assimilation, lenition, and ultimately deletion, and generally comes at the expense of clarity. By contrast, maximization of clarity drives consonantal “strengthening” processes (resulting in increased articulatory constriction and/or duration) that makes target segments more distinct from neighboring sounds, which can result in fortition. Clear speech generally involves more extreme or “forceful” articulations, and usually comes at the expense of requiring more articulatory effort from the speaker. -
The American Intrusive L
THE AMERICAN INTRUSIVE L BRYAN GICK University of British Columbia The well-known sandhi phenomenon known as intrusive r has been one of the longest-standing problems in English phonology. Recent work has brought to light a uniquely American contribution to this discussion: the intrusive l (as in draw[l]ing for drawing and bra[l] is for bra is in southern Pennsylvania, compared to draw[r]ing and bra[r] is, respectively, in British Received Pronunciation [RP]). In both instances of intrusion, a historically unattested liquid consonant (r or l) intervenes in the hiatus between a morpheme-final nonhigh vowel and a following vowel, either across or within words. Not surprisingly, this process interacts crucially with the well- known cases of /r/-vocalization (e.g., Kurath and McDavid 1961; Labov 1966; Labov, Yaeger, and Steiner 1972; Fowler 1986) and /l/-vocalization (e.g., Ash 1982a, 1982b), which have been identified as important markers of sociolinguistic stratification in New York City, Philadelphia, and else- where. However, previous discussion of the intrusive l (Gick 1999) has focused primarily on its phonological implications, with almost no attempt to describe its geographic, dialectal, and sociolinguistic context. This study marks such an attempt. In particular, it argues that the intrusive l is an instance of phonological change in progress. Descriptively, the intrusive l parallels the intrusive r in many respects. Intrusive r may be viewed simplistically as the extension by analogy of a historically attested final /r/ to words historically ending in a vowel (gener- ally this applies only to the set of non-glide-final vowels: /@, a, O/). -
Guide to Preparation of Camera-Ready Manuscript
Morphological effects on the darkness of English intervocalic /l/ Sang-Im Lee-Kim, Lisa Davidson, and Sangjin Hwang New York University To appear in Laboratory Phonology 4:2, October 2013. Abstract Articulatory and acoustic studies have provided evidence that in word-initial and word-final positions, English /l/ exhibits substantial differences in ‘darkness’: dark [ɫ] in word-final position is produced with a more retracted tongue dorsum and lowered tongue body than light [l] in word-initial position. The darkness of intervocalic /l/, however, is variable. While Sproat and Fujimura (1993) argue that /l/ darkness is on a continuum strongly affected by duration, Hayes (2000) maintains that the morphological status of intervocalic /l/s should affect whether they are produced as light or dark variants. In this study, ultrasound imaging is used to investigate whether the morphological affiliation of the /l/ affects the degree of tongue dorsum retraction and tongue body lowering and the acoustic characteristics of /l/ darkness. Six American English speakers produced three types of stimuli which were predicted to increase in darkness in the following order: (1) when /l/ corresponded with the onset of a suffix (e.g. flaw-less), (2) when /l/ corresponded with the final position of the stem word (e.g. tall-est), and (3) when /l/ was the final consonant of a stem word (e.g. tall). For both articulatory and acoustic measures, the predicted order was upheld. The strongest articulatory correlate of darkness was tongue body lowering, and acoustic differences were mainly manifested in F1 and normalized intensity. Phonological implications of these findings are discussed. -
Vowel Shifts in English John Goldsmith January 19, 2010
Vowel shifts in English John Goldsmith January 19, 2010 English vowels English vowels may be divided into those that are found in stressed syllables, and those found in unstressed syllables. We will focus here on the vowels in stressed syllables, and the rest of this section is about stressed vowels when we do not explicitly mention stress. We may focus on monosyllabic words that are produced as a full utterance to guarantee that we are looking at a stressed syllable. Unstressed syllables allow two vowels, [@] and [i] (e.g., the second vowels of sofa and silly) (and probably one more: the final vowel in 1 motto). 1 That is perhaps controversial; one English vowels are divided into short and long vowels. reason to believe it is that flapping is possible in words such as motto and Among the short vowels, there are 3 front unround vowels, 2 tomato. back round vowels, and 2 back unround vowels. For the three front Short vowels Long vowels unround vowels, see Figure 1, where you see an example in stan- pit ˘i [I] by ¯i [aj] pet e˘ [E] Pete e¯ [ij] dard orthography, in typical dictionary form, and in the IPA sym- pat ˘a [æ] pate a¯ [ej] bols that we shall use (that linguists normally use). For the 4 back Figure 1: Front vowels short vowels, see Figure 2, left column. The vowels of putt and pot (in most dialects of the US) are unround. Short vowels Long vowels put oo˘ [U] boot oo¯ [uw] Please note: many of you (at least half of you) do not distinguish putt u˘ [2] bound ou [æw] between [a] and [O]: you pronounce cot and caught the same way. -
A Study of Some English Phonological Rules and Their Processes
A study of Some English Phonological Rules and Their Processes Idha Nurhamidah Fakultas Bahasa, Unissula Semarang Abstract This article discusses some English phonological rules and their phonological process. The rules dealt with in this article include aspiration, nasalization, vowel lengthening and regressive assimilation with fixed spelling—just to limit; despite the fact that there are more phonological rules. Each of the rules under study is described in terms of generative phonology followed data analysis to justify the application of the rules in line with the underlying forms. More significantly, the study will be able to give linguistic evidence that English has rules in their systems of sounds that are rule-governing and generative in nature Key words: phonological rules and processes, aspiration, nasalization, vowel lengthening, regressive assimilation, rule-governed INTRODUCTION Despite its high importance in the learning of English as a foreign language (EFL) in Indonesia, pronunciation is least paid attention to. This is understandable since EFL teachers assume that there are a lot of dictionaries equipped with phonemic or phonetic transcription for each word entry to which students can easily refer with respect to the pronunciation of a particular word. However, it is also true that the acquisition of a foreign language is much facilitated by pronunciation drill since the production of speech sounds can only be made perfect through drills. Pronunciation drills, in other words, are very important to train the speech organs for the production of at either the level of individual sounds or that of words, or even that of phrases and clauses, along with word stress and intonation patterns. -
Chapter X Positional Factors in Lenition and Fortition
Chapter X Positional factors in Lenition and Fortition 1. Introduction This chapter sets out to identify the bearing that the linear position of a segment may have on its lenition or fortition.1 We take for granted the defi- nition of lenition that has been provided in chapter XXX (Szigetvári): Put- ting aside stress-related lenition (see chapter XXX de Lacy-Bye), the refer- ence to the position of a segment in the linear string is another way of identifying syllabic causality. Something is a lenition iff the effect ob- served is triggered by the specific syllabic status of the segment at hand. The melodic environment thus is irrelevant, and no melodic prime is trans- mitted between segments. Lenition thereby contrasts with the other family of processes that is found in phonology, i.e. adjacency effects. Adjacency may be defined physically (e.g. palatalisation of a consonant by a following vowel) or in more abstract terms (e.g. vowel harmony): in any event, as- similations will transmit a melodic prime from one segment to another, and only a melodically defined subset of items will qualify as a trigger. Posi- tional factors, on the other hand, are unheard of in assimilatory processes: there is no palatalisation that demands, say, "palatalise velars before front vowels, but only in word-initial position". Based on an empirical record that we have tried to make as cross- linguistically relevant as possible, the purpose of this chapter is to establish appropriate empirical generalisations. These are then designed to serve as the input to theories of lenition: here are the challenges, this is what any theory needs to be able to explain. -
Studies in African Linguistics Volume 21, Number 3, December 1990
Studies in African Linguistics Volume 21, Number 3, December 1990 CONTEXTUAL LABIALIZATION IN NA WURI* Roderic F. Casali Ghana Institute of Linguistics Literacy and Bible Translation and UCLA A spectrographic investigation into the non-contrastive labialization of consonants before round vowels in Nawuri (a Kwa language of Ghana) sup ports the notion that this labialization is the result of a phonological, feature spreading rule and not simply an automatic transitional process. This as sumption is further warranted in that it allows for a more natural treatment of some other phonological processes in the language. The fact that labial ization before round vowels is generally not very audible is explained in terms of a principle of speech perception. A final topic addressed is the question of why (both in Nawuri and apparently in a number of other Ghanaian languages as well) contextual labialization does tend to be more perceptible in certain restricted environments. o. Introduction This paper deals with the allophonic labialization of consonants before round vowels in Nawuri, a Kwa language of Ghana.! While such labialization is gener ally not very audible, spectrographic evidence suggests that it is strongly present, * The spectrograms in this study were produced at the phonetics lab of the University of Texas at Arlington using equipment provided through a grant of the Permanent University Fund of the University of Texas system. I would like to thank the following people for their valuable comments and suggestions: Joan Baart, Don Burquest, Mike Cahill, Jerry Edmondson, Norris McKinney, Bob Mugele, Tony Naden, and Keith Snider. I would also like to express my appreciation to Russell Schuh and an anonymous referee for this journal for their helpful criticism of an earlier version, and to Mary Steele for some helpful discussion concerning labialization in Konkomba.