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Geminate Typology and the Perception of Consonant Duration

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Geminate Typology and the Perception of Consonant Duration GEMINATE TYPOLOGY AND THE PERCEPTION OF CONSONANT DURATION A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS AND THE COMMITTEE ON GRADUATE STUDIES OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Olga Dmitrieva August 2012 Abstract The crosslinguistic typology of geminate consonants demonstrates several prominent tendencies: geminates are typically found in intervocalic positions, often after stressed vowels, but are avoided in adjacency to other consonants and on word boundaries, more so word-initially than word-finally; sonorant geminates are more infrequent than obstruent geminates. This dissertation investigates the effect that the contextual en- vironment (vocalic or consonantal neighbors, position with respect to the edges of the word, and stressed vowels) as well as the phonetic properties of the consonants them- selves (sonority, continuancy, and voicing) has on the perception of the contrast be- tween short and long consonants. The primary goal of the perceptual experiment with speakers of Russian, American English, and Italian as participants was to demonstrate that perception of the durational distinction in consonant was context-dependent. In particular, it was hypothesized that listeners would have greater difficulties in catego- rizing the consonants as short and long in contexts where geminates are rarely found across languages, which would provide an explanation for the typological patterns. The experimental results established that perceptual contrast distinctiveness was higher in the intervocalic than in the preconsonantal environment, and in the word- initial than in the word-final position. These generalizations are based on the facts that the perception of the distinction was less categorical in the preconsonantal and word-final conditions: consonants were less consistently categorized as either short or long, while a greater portion of a durational continuum caused indecision about the category membership of the consonant. In addition, perception of durational distinctions in the preconsonantal and word-final conditions was affected by singleton- bias: listeners were more reluctant to categorize consonants in these environments as iv long. Distinctiveness-based explanation for the crosslinguistic preference for post-tonic and obstruent geminates was not supported by the experimental results. It was found that stress did not affect perception of consonant duration. However, a survey of several languages for which a stress-geminacy connection was reported showed a striking correlation between weight-sensitivity and tendency to geminate in the post- stress position. Thus, an alternative account for this typological pattern is proposed, which states that gemination is used in the weight-sensitive languages to repair light stressed syllables, creating a typological connection between geminate consonants and stress. Results concerning the perception of consonant duration as a function of the pho- netic properties of the consonant showed that the durational distinction was easiest to perceive in sonorant consonants (liquids and nasals) and alveolar voiceless fricatives. Both voiced and voiceless alveolar stops conditioned a less well-defined perceptual contrast. These results contradict typological observations and some previous exper- imental data, thus warranting further research in this domain. The dissertation also develops an optimality-theoretic account of typological asym- metries in the distribution of duration contrasts, focusing on the effects of segmental environment (intervocalic and preconsonantal) and word-position (word-initial and word-final). The proposed model is based on contrast dispersion theory and incorpo- rates phonetically-based constraints on the minimal perceptual distinctiveness that the contrast needs to satisfy in order to be included into the phonological inventory of the language. The model which incorporates contrast perceptibility and sylla- ble weight constraints generates most of the geminating languages in the typological survey. v Acknowledgements I would like to thank many people who contributed to the creation of this thesis and without whom it would not have been possible. First of all, my advisors and the members of the dissertation committee and the oral committee: my advisor Prof. Arto Anttila, for his knowledge, support, dedication, and tireless work; my co-advisor Prof. Meghan Sumner, for her help, kindness, and good advice; Prof. Jaye Padgett, for his time, for great attention to my work, and for the stimulating discussions; Prof. Dan Jurafsky, for his up-beat attitude and enthusiasm, which have always been a great encouragement; and Prof. Paul Kiparsky for many important additions to the typological discussion, helpful criticism, and challenging questions. I would like to thank all my friends at Stanford, who have made my time in graduate school so much more enjoyable and who have helped me so many times, among whom I am especially grateful to Nola Stephens, Anubha Kothari, Stacy Lewis, Lev Blumenfeld, Rebecca Scarborough, Lauren Hall-Lew, Yuan Zhao D’Antilio, and Marie Catherine De Marneffe. Special thanks go to Ed King and Matt Adams for awesome copy-editing. It is with pleasure and gratitude that I include in this acknowledgement all the wonderful people at the Linguistics Program and the Department of Speech, Lan- guage, and Hearing Sciences of Purdue University, which became my second home. I am especially grateful to Prof. Alexander Francis, my mentor and friend, for all his help and limitless kindness. I am also very thankful to Prof. Ronnie Wilbur, whose vote of confidence in my abilities as a scientist and teacher have had a great impact on my me. I would also like to thank all my students at Purdue University for their trust, patience, and enthusiasm. vi Many thanks go to the statistical consulting centers at Stanford University and Purdue University, to Prof. Olga Vitek and her students, and to a friend and a great linguist/statistician/programmer Fernando Llanos. My mentors and friends at the Department of Linguistics of the University of Kansas were at the beginnings of this long journey and to them I am grateful for opening my mind to linguistics and for always remaining my friends: Prof. Allard Jongman, Prof. Jie Zhang, Prof. Joan Sereno, Nina Radkevich, and Maria Carmen Parafita Couto. I would like to thank all the participants in my experiments, for their interest, their time, and their effort, and all the participants of many conferences and forums at which various versions of this work have been presented. I am grateful to the Ric Weiland Fund, which provided financial support for my dissertation years at Stanford and made my research plan possible. I am thankful to Rick, Sara, Emily, and Jennifer Caviglia for welcoming me into their home and becoming a second family for me during my years at Stanford. I am thankful to my parents for encouraging my academic inclinations and I am thankful to my son, Daniele, for reminding me that there are other important things in life apart from dissertations and for always making me smile. And finally, I would like to thank with all my heart my husband Giulio Caviglia, who has been my most faithful and ardent supporter and who believed in me even when I did not. vii Contents Abstract iv Acknowledgements vi 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Overview.................................. 1 1.2 Perceptuallydrivenphonology. 4 1.3 Backgroundongeminates ........................ 7 1.3.1 Phonetic studies of geminates . 8 1.3.2 Phonological studies of geminates . 11 1.3.3 Typological studies of geminates . 14 1.4 Proposed explanations of typological patterns . 17 1.4.1 Typesofexplanations ...................... 17 1.4.2 Aerodynamics........................... 17 1.4.3 Effort ............................... 18 1.4.4 Perceptibility . 18 1.4.5 Geminate to singleton ratio . 20 1.4.6 Allophonic duration . 22 1.4.7 Historical ............................. 22 1.5 Proposal.................................. 24 1.6 Outlineofthedissertation ........................ 26 2 Methodology 27 2.1 The steepness of the identification curve . 27 viii 2.2 Locationoftheperceptualboundary . 30 2.3 Languages................................. 35 2.4 Participants ................................ 36 2.5 Procedures................................. 38 2.5.1 Perceptualexperiment . 38 2.5.2 Productionexperiment . 39 2.6 Stimuli................................... 40 2.7 Measurementsandsegmentation. 45 2.8 Analysis .................................. 49 2.8.1 Overview ............................. 49 2.8.2 Productiondata.......................... 50 2.8.3 Perceptiondata.......................... 53 2.8.4 Joint analysis of production and perception data . 55 3 Experiment 1: Russian 58 3.1 Overview.................................. 58 3.2 The short-long distinction in Russian consonants . 58 3.3 Prosodic effects on consonant duration in Russian . 63 3.4 ExperimentalResults........................... 64 3.4.1 Summary ............................. 64 3.4.2 The effect of the immediate phonetic environment: intervocalic vs.preconsonantal ........................ 67 3.4.3 The effect of position: word-initial vs. word-final . 71 3.4.4 The Effect of stress: following stress, preceding stress, or no stress 74 3.4.5 Theeffectofmannerofarticulation . 78 3.5 Conclusion................................. 81 4 Experiment 2: American English 88 4.1 Overview.................................. 88 4.2 ConsonantlengthinEnglish . .. .. 88 4.3 Prosodic
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