Mechanisms of Language Change Vowel Reduction in 15 Century
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Phonetics and Phonology in Russian Unstressed Vowel Reduction: a Study in Hyperarticulation
Phonetics and Phonology in Russian Unstressed Vowel Reduction: A Study in Hyperarticulation Jonathan Barnes Boston University (Short title: Hyperarticulating Russian Unstressed Vowels) Jonathan Barnes Department of Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures Boston University 621 Commonwealth Avenue, Room 119 Boston, MA 02215 Tel: (617) 353-6222 Fax: (617) 353-4641 [email protected] Abstract: Unstressed vowel reduction figures centrally in recent literature on the phonetics-phonology interface, in part owing to the possibility of a causal relationship between a phonetic process, duration-dependent undershoot, and the phonological neutralizations observed in systems of unstressed vocalism. Of particular interest in this light has been Russian, traditionally described as exhibiting two distinct phonological reduction patterns, differing both in degree and distribution. This study uses hyperarticulation to investigate the relationship between phonetic duration and reduction in Russian, concluding that these two reduction patterns differ not in degree, but in the level of representation at which they apply. These results are shown to have important consequences not just for theories of vowel reduction, but for other problems in the phonetics-phonology interface as well, incomplete neutralization in particular. Introduction Unstressed vowel reduction has been a subject of intense interest in recent debate concerning the nature of the phonetics-phonology interface. This is the case at least in part due to the existence of two seemingly analogous processes bearing this name, one typically called phonetic, and the other phonological. Phonological unstressed vowel reduction is a phenomenon whereby a given language's full vowel inventory can be realized only in lexically stressed syllables, while in unstressed syllables some number of neutralizations of contrast take place, with the result that only a subset of the inventory is realized on the surface. -
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W., D. (Fictitious character) William Kerr Scott Lake (N.C.) Waaddah Island (Wash.) USE D. W. (Fictitious character) William Kerr Scott Reservoir (N.C.) BT Islands—Washington (State) W.12 (Military aircraft) BT Reservoirs—North Carolina Waaddah Island (Wash.) USE Hansa Brandenburg W.12 (Military aircraft) W particles USE Waadah Island (Wash.) W.13 (Seaplane) USE W bosons Waag family USE Hansa Brandenburg W.13 (Seaplane) W-platform cars USE Waaga family W.29 (Military aircraft) USE General Motors W-cars Waag River (Slovakia) USE Hansa Brandenburg W.29 (Military aircraft) W. R. Holway Reservoir (Okla.) USE Váh River (Slovakia) W.A. Blount Building (Pensacola, Fla.) UF Chimney Rock Reservoir (Okla.) Waaga family (Not Subd Geog) UF Blount Building (Pensacola, Fla.) Holway Reservoir (Okla.) UF Vaaga family BT Office buildings—Florida BT Lakes—Oklahoma Waag family W Award Reservoirs—Oklahoma Waage family USE Prix W W. R. Motherwell Farmstead National Historic Park Waage family W.B. Umstead State Park (N.C.) (Sask.) USE Waaga family USE William B. Umstead State Park (N.C.) USE Motherwell Homestead National Historic Site Waahi, Lake (N.Z.) W bosons (Sask.) UF Lake Rotongaru (N.Z.) [QC793.5.B62-QC793.5.B629] W. R. Motherwell Stone House (Sask.) Lake Waahi (N.Z.) UF W particles UF Motherwell House (Sask.) Lake Wahi (N.Z.) BT Bosons Motherwell Stone House (Sask.) Rotongaru, Lake (N.Z.) W. Burling Cocks Memorial Race Course at Radnor BT Dwellings—Saskatchewan Wahi, Lake (N.Z.) Hunt (Malvern, Pa.) W.S. Payne Medical Arts Building (Pensacola, Fla.) BT Lakes—New Zealand UF Cocks Memorial Race Course at Radnor Hunt UF Medical Arts Building (Pensacola, Fla.) Waʻahila Ridge (Hawaii) (Malvern, Pa.) Payne Medical Arts Building (Pensacola, Fla.) BT Mountains—Hawaii BT Racetracks (Horse racing)—Pennsylvania BT Office buildings—Florida Waaihoek (KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa) W-cars W star algebras USE Waay Hoek (KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa : USE General Motors W-cars USE C*-algebras Farm) W. -
Theme: “The English Vowels and Their Modifications”
MINISTRY OF HIGHER AND SECONDARY SPECIALIZED EDUCATION OF THE REPUBLIC OF UZBEKISTAN ANDIJAN STATE UNIVERSITY FACULTY of FOREIGN LANGUAGES Rahmonov A. The phonetic phenomenon of reduction and unstressed vocalism in English Qualification work 5111400 – foreign language and literature (English) Scientific supervisor associate professor S.Solijonov Andijan– 2017 1 Contents Introduction................................................................................................4 Chapter I. The nature of English vowel phonemes. I.1. Characteristic features of English vowel phonemes...................10 I.2. Vowel-consonant distinctions......................................................17 I.3. Problems of classification of vowels............................................21 Chapter II. English vowel phonemes in connected speech and unstressed vocalism of English. II.1. Modification of vowel phonemes and unstressed vocalism of English.................................................................................................36 II.2. Changes of vowel phonemes in connected speech.......................43 II.3. The phenomenon of reduction, vowel harmony and elision in English and methodical recommendations on teaching them ...................48 Conclusion....................................................................................................63 Literature ...................................................................................................68 2 Introduction It is known that after gaining the Independence in Uzbekistan -
An Instrumental Study of Vowel Reduction and Stress Placement in Spanish-Accented English
SSLA. 11. 35-62. Printed in the United States of America. -------- -.- AN INSTRUMENTAL STUDY OF VOWEL REDUCTION AND STRESS PLACEMENT IN SPANISH-ACCENTED ENGLISH James Emil Flege Ocke-Schwen Bohn University of Alabama, Birmingham Morphophonological alternations in English words such as able versus ability involve changes in both stress and vowel quality. This study examined how native speakers of Spanish and English produced four such morphologically related English word pairs. Degree of stress and vowel quality was assessed auditorily and instrumentally. Stress placement generally seemed to constitute less of a learning problem for the native Spanish speakers than vowel reduction. The results suggest that Englishlike stress placement is acquired earlier than vowel reduction and that the ability to unstress vowels is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for vowel reduction. The magnitude of stress and vowel quality differences for the four word pairs suggests that L2 learners acquire stress placement and vowel reduction in English on a word-by-word basis. INTRODUCTION Many second language (12) learners retain a foreign accent long after achieving proficiency in other aspects of 12 production. A foreign accent may result from segmental substitutions of replica for model sounds as well as non-12-like rhythmic, intonational, and stress patterns (Flege, )984). Even though it is generally agreed that This study was supported by NIH grant NS20963-04. The authors would like to thank Sherry Sutphin for fabricating the pseudopalates and for data analysis. ~ 1969 Cambridge Univenity Press OZ7Z·Z63 1/69 $5.00 + .00 3S 36 James Emil Flege and Ocke-Schwen Bohn the use of full instead of reduced vowels in unstressed syllables may contribute impor• tantly to foreign accent and this phenomenon "is extremely typical" (Hammond, 1986) in Spanish-accented English, to our knowledge it has never been examined empirically. -
The Boarnsterhim Corpus: a Bilingual Frisian-Dutch Panel and Trend Study
The Boarnsterhim Corpus: A Bilingual Frisian-Dutch Panel and Trend Study Marjoleine Sloos, Eduard Drenth, Wilbert Heeringa Fryske Akademy, Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences (KNAW) Doelestrjitte 8, 8911 DX Ljouwert, The Netherlands {msloos, edrenth, wheeringa}@fryske-akademy.nl Abstract The Boarnsterhim Corpus consists of 250 hours of speech in both West Frisian and Dutch by the same sample of bilingual speakers. The corpus contains original recordings from 1982-1984 and a replication study recorded 35 years later. The data collection spans speech of four generations, and combines panel and trend data. This paper describes the Boarnsterhim Corpus halfway the project which started in 2016 and describes the way it was collected, the annotations, potential use, and the envisaged tools and end-user web application. Keywords: West Frisian, Dutch, sociolinguistics, language variation and change, bilingualism, phonetics, phonology 1. Background The remainder of this paper describes the data collection and methodology in section 2. Section 3 West Frisian is mostly spoken in the province of Fryslân in describes the embedding in a larger infrastructure and the north of the Netherlands. All its speakers are bilingual section 4 provides background information about the tool with Dutch, which is the dominant language. West Frisian that is used to retrieve lexical frequency. Section 5 is mainly used in informal settings (van Bezooijen discusses previous and ongoing research, and further 2009:302) but also the most formal, viz. in the provincial research opportunities that this database may make parliament. In semi-formal interactions (e.g.shopping, in possible. Finally, section 6 concludes. church), Dutch is usually the preferred language. -
Apocope in Heritage Italian
languages Article Apocope in Heritage Italian Anissa Baird 1, Angela Cristiano 2 and Naomi Nagy 1,* 1 Department of Linguistics, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5S 3G3, Canada; [email protected] 2 Department of Classical Philology and Italian Studies, Università di Bologna, 40126 Bologna, Italy; [email protected] * Correspondence: [email protected] Abstract: Apocope (deletion of word-final vowels) and word-final vowel reduction are hallmarks of southern Italian varieties. To investigate whether heritage speakers reproduce the complex variable patterns of these processes, we analyze spontaneous speech of three generations of heritage Calabrian Italian speakers and a homeland comparator sample. All occurrences (N = 2477) from a list of frequent polysyllabic words are extracted from 25 speakers’ interviews and analyzed via mixed effects models. Tested predictors include: vowel identity, phonological context, clausal position, lexical frequency, word length, gender, generation, ethnic orientation and age. Homeland and heritage speakers exhibit similar distributions of full, reduced and deleted forms, but there are inter-generational differences in the constraints governing the variation. Primarily linguistic factors condition the variation. Homeland variation in reduction shows sensitivity to part of speech, while heritage speakers show sensitivity to segmental context and part of speech. Slightly different factors influence apocope, with suprasegmental factors and part of speech significant for homeland speakers, but only part of speech for heritage speakers. Surprisingly, for such a socially marked feature, few social factors are relevant. Factors influencing reduction and apocope are similar, suggesting the processes are related. Citation: Baird, Anissa, Angela Cristiano, and Naomi Nagy. 2021. Keywords: heritage language; apocope; vowel centralization; vowel reduction; variationist sociolin- Apocope in Heritage Italian. -
Modeling a Historical Variety of a Low-Resource Language: Language Contact Effects in the Verbal Cluster of Early-Modern Frisian
Modeling a historical variety of a low-resource language: Language contact effects in the verbal cluster of Early-Modern Frisian Jelke Bloem Arjen Versloot Fred Weerman ILLC ACLC ACLC University of Amsterdam University of Amsterdam University of Amsterdam [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Abstract which are by definition used less, and are less likely to have computational resources available. For ex- Certain phenomena of interest to linguists ample, in cases of language contact where there is mainly occur in low-resource languages, such as contact-induced language change. We show a majority language and a lesser used language, that it is possible to study contact-induced contact-induced language change is more likely language change computationally in a histor- to occur in the lesser used language (Weinreich, ical variety of a low-resource language, Early- 1979). Furthermore, certain phenomena are better Modern Frisian, by creating a model using studied in historical varieties of languages. Taking features that were established to be relevant the example of language change, it is more interest- in a closely related language, modern Dutch. ing to study a specific language change once it has This allows us to test two hypotheses on two already been completed, such that one can study types of language contact that may have taken place between Frisian and Dutch during this the change itself in historical texts as well as the time. Our model shows that Frisian verb clus- subsequent outcome of the change. ter word orders are associated with different For these reasons, contact-induced language context features than Dutch verb orders, sup- change is difficult to study computationally, and porting the ‘learned borrowing’ hypothesis. -
Modernising Tbe Lexicon of Tbe West Frisian Language
Modernising tbe Lexicon of tbe West Frisian Language Hindrik Sijens (LjouwertlLeeuwarden) A new toy in the world of modem electronic communications has arrived in Fryslän, namely Internet, and along with it e-mail. When asked what these new media might be ca lied in Frisian, the answers internet and e-mail are hardly surprising. We can see that both Fryslän and the Frisian language are also tak ing part in the digitalisation of the world. New concepts, new words in tech nology retain their original Anglo-American names in most European lan guages. This paper will deal with the process of developing and renewing the Frisian lexicon. But first I am going to give a brief introduction to Fryslän itself. Fryslän is one ofthe twelve provinces ofthe kingdom ofthe Netherlands and is situated in the northem part ofthe country. Fryslän is a flat province, much of its territory being below sea level. It is protected trom the sea by dikes. The capitalof Fryslän is Ljouwert, or Leeuwarden, as it is known in Dutch. In the past, Fryslän was an agricultural pro vin ce with more cattle living there than people. Nowadays farming still plays an important role in Fryslän's economy, but both the service industries and industry itself have also become important. Fryslän has a population of about 600,000 and approximately 55% of them consider Frisian to be their first language. While about 74% of the population claim that they can speak Frisian, 94% say that they can understand it when it is spoken, 65% claim that they can read Frisian, but only 17% say that they can write it (Gorter & Jonkman 1995:9-11). -
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Arxiv:2105.02855V2 [Cs.CL] 22 May 2021 However, for the Majority of the World’S Languages, These Large Corpora Are Not Available
Adapting Monolingual Models: Data can be Scarce when Language Similarity is High Wietse de Vries∗, Martijn Bartelds∗, Malvina Nissim and Martijn Wieling University of Groningen The Netherlands fwietse.de.vries, m.bartelds, m.nissim, [email protected] Abstract languages that are not included in mBERT pre- training usually show poor performance (Nozza For many (minority) languages, the resources et al., 2020; Wu and Dredze, 2020). needed to train large models are not available. An alternative to multilingual transfer learning We investigate the performance of zero-shot is the adaptation of existing monolingual models transfer learning with as little data as possi- ble, and the influence of language similarity in to other languages. Zoph et al.(2016) introduce this process. We retrain the lexical layers of a method for transferring a pre-trained machine four BERT-based models using data from two translation model to lower-resource languages by low-resource target language varieties, while only fine-tuning the lexical layer. This method has the Transformer layers are independently fine- also been applied to BERT (Artetxe et al., 2020) tuned on a POS-tagging task in the model’s and GPT-2 (de Vries and Nissim, 2020). Artetxe source language. By combining the new lex- et al.(2020) also show that BERT models with ical layers and fine-tuned Transformer layers, retrained lexical layers perform well in downstream we achieve high task performance for both target languages. With high language sim- tasks, but comparatively high performance has only ilarity, 10MB of data appears sufficient to been demonstrated for languages for which at least achieve substantial monolingual transfer per- 400MB of data is available. -
Measuring Rhythm. a Quantified Analysis of Southern Italian Dialects Stress Time Parameters
Measuring rhythm. A quantified analysis of Southern Italian Dialects Stress Time Parameters MICHELA RUSSO Université Paris 8/ UMR 7023, CNRS WILLIAM JOHN BARRY University of Saarbrücken 1. Syllable-timed vs. Stress-timed? Traditional dichotomy for language typology (Lloyd 1940; Pike 1945) is grounded on the claim of regular syllable intervals vs. regular stressed- syllable intervals (isochrony claim). This is based on the assumptions: - No shortening or lengthening of syllables as a function of stress - vs . shortening of unstressed and lengthening of stressed syllables. Measurements have failed to find any support for the isochrony claim. Differing degrees of lengthening and shortening as a function of stress have been found, however. Defence of the isochrony claim has had to retire to the level of perceived regularity, i.e. from the objective to the subjective. It is usually assumed that Italian is a syllable-timed language and German or English are stress-timed. This assumption is based on structural differences a), b) and c) between the languages (cf. Table 1): Italian German a) Syllable Relatively simple Varies: simple-complex structure CV, CCV, CVC (CCC)V(CCC) b) Vowel No Yes quantity? c) Vowel Allophonic length in No length distinctions with [-stress ] duration? [+stress ] open syllables Table 1 Structural differentiation of Italian and German. Differences a) and b) separate Italian and German; c) brings them closer together. Phonetic evidence is presented here to support the interpretation of Southern Italian dialects as a stress-timed language. Language Design , Special Issue 2 (2008) 315-322. 316 M. Russo &W.J. Barry Distributional observations and durational measurements of tauto- and heterosyllabic VC sequences show that make a syllable-timed rhythmic structure untenable: - The occurrence of complex codas (CVCC and CVCCC) with vowel timbre instability and clearly diphthongal vowels in all types of metrical structures, violating the single-branching rime principle with complex vocalic nuclei in closed syllables. -
Prosodic Rhythm and the Status of Vowel Reduction in Greek∗
Prosodic rhythm and the status of vowel reduction in Greek∗ Mary Baltazani University of Ioannina [email protected] Abstract The present paper reports on a production experiment, in which the spectra and duration of the five Greek vowels were measured in trisyllabic and pentasyllabic words. The results suggest that vowel shortening and reduction in Greek vowels are extensive even in normal speech rates for all five vowels. Furthermore, a positive correlation was found between the number of syllables in a word and the likelihood of shortening and reduction: greater tendency for shortening and reduction was found in longer words. Finally, the rhythmic category of Greek was assessed to fall between stress timed and syllable timed languages. Keywords: vowel reduction, variability, syllable timing, stress timing 1. Introduction The term ‘vowel reduction’ refers to two parameters: duration and quality. Reduced vowels have been reported to have shorter duration and/or more centralized formants than non-reduced ones (Nord 1986; Van Bergem 1993; Moon & Lindblom 1994). The difference between reduced and non-reduced vowels contributes to prominence relations between syllables and it is one of the factors that contribute to the impression of language rhythm. Traditionally, isochrony (the rhythmic property of having some interval with stable duration) was claimed to divide languages into two rhythmic categories: “stress timing” where intervals between stresses have stable duration, and “syllable timing” where syllables have stable duration (Pike 1945; Abercrombie 1967; Ladefoged 1975). Reduced vowels were assumed to occur commonly in stress-timed languages but rarely so in syllable-timed languages. The traditional ideas about language rhythm have evolved over the past decades. -
The Phonology of Shaoxing Chinese
The Phonology of Shaoxing Chinese Published by LOT phone: +31 30 253 6006 Trans 10 fax: +31 30 253 6000 3512 JK Utrecht e-mail: [email protected] The Netherlands http://wwwlot.let.uu.nl Cover illustration: A mural painting of Emperor Gou Jian of the Yue Kingdom (497-465 B.C.) (present-day Shaoxing). The photo was taken by Xiaonan Zhang in Shaoxing. ISBN 90-76864-90-X NUR 632 Copyright © 2006 by Jisheng Zhang. All rights reserved. The Phonology of Shaoxing Chinese PROEFSCHRIFT ter verkrijging van de graad van Doctor aan de Universiteit Leiden, op gezag van de Rector Magnificus Dr. D.D. Breimer, hoogleraar in de faculteit der Wiskunde en Natuurwetenschappen en die der Geneeskunde, volgens besluit van het College voor Promoties te verdedigen op dinsdag 31 januari 2006 klokke 15.15 uur door JISHENG ZHANG geboren te Shaoxing, China in 1955 Promotiecommissie promotor: prof. dr. V.J.J.P. van Heuven co-promotor: dr. J.M. van de Weijer referent: prof. dr. M. Yip (University College London) overige leden: prof. dr. C.J. Ewen dr. M. van Oostendorp (Meertens Instituut) dr. N.S.H. Smith (University of Amsterdam) Dedicated to my mother who gave me my life and brought me up on this ancient land –– Shaoxing. Contents Acknowledgements ...................................................................................... xi 1 Background............................................................................................1 1.1 Introduction ...............................................................................................1 1.2 Methodology