EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATIONS INTO THE PERCEPTUAL AND ARTICULATORY ORIGINS OF CROSS-LINGUISTIC ASYMMETRIES IN PLACE ASSIMILATION DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Stephen James Winters, M.A. * * * * * The Ohio State University 2003 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Keith Johnson, Adviser Professor Mary Beckman Adviser Professor Elizabeth Hume-O’Haire Linguistics Graduate Program ABSTRACT Some researchers have claimed that nasals are cross-linguistically more likely than stops to undergo place assimilaton because they have weaker perceptual cues to their place of articulation. This dissertation investigates this hypothesis by testing perceptual differences between speakers of English and Dutch, two languages which have different assimilatory patterns with respect to nasals and stops. The first perception experiment involves a magnitude estimation task, which requires Dutch and English listeners to make subjective estimates of the differences between nasals and stops of various places of articulation in VC syllables. The results of this study show that release burst cues significantly increase the estimated magnitudes of differences in stops over nasals, but that stops without these cues do not have a perceptual advantage over nasals. A second experiment, testing the perception of place in VCCV sequences in an AX discrimination task, yielded similar results to the first. A subsequent production experiment tested the possible relevance of stop release burst cues to perceptual influences on the stop/nasal asymmetry in place assimilation. The results of this study showed that stops did have release bursts more often in this context than nasals, for speakers of both languages. Re-interpreting the data from the previous perception experiments indicates the proportion of bursts in the two languages is not great enough to give stops a consistent perceptual advantage over nasals. ii A final experiment tests the hypothesis that articulatory constraints might motivate nasals to undergo place assimilation more often than stops. To test this hypothesis, Dutch and English speakers attempted to reproduce the VCCV stimuli from the AX discrimination experiment. The results of this study show that speakers of both languages exhibited less accuracy in reproducing nasals than stops, suggesting that articulatory difficulties might motivate nasals’ cross-linguistic susceptibility to place assimilation. This dissertation concludes by investigating how the frequency of particular places of articulation in English and Dutch could determine the targets of place assimilation in those languages. The results of this analysis suggest that cross-linguistic patterns in place assimilation are best understood as the product of various phonetic factors on the structure of phonology. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thanks go first and foremost to Keith Johnson, who not only provided direct intellectual inspiration and guidance for the work in this dissertation, but who also helped me survive through seven long years of grad school. Thanks also go to Beth Hume for her guidance, advice and vision. Beth was also the person who introduced me to Jongho Jun's work and encouraged me to apply my thoughts on place perception to Jun's findings. The rest, as they say, is history. Mary Beckman also helped by providing copious amounts of advice and an always challenging perspective on my basic assumptions about things linguistic. Edgar Huitema, Annemarie Bodaar, Grant McGuire and Hope Dawson helped by recording the original set of stimuli for this experiment. Despite the fact that I couldn't use their recordings--due to my own stupidity--I'd like to thank them all for helping out, anyway. I did use the recordings I made of Jos Bosch, Josja Eggen, Jeff Mielke and Julie McGory and would like to thank them for agreeing to let numerous strangers listen to their voices, again and again and again. Allison Blodgett, Robin Dautricourt, Matt Makashay, Georgios Tserdanelis, Peggy Wong, Kiyoko Yoneyama, Tsan Huang and Laurie Maynell all took part in the iv stimulus quality pre-test, and deserve an extra special thanks for suffering through that uninspiring task. I hope you all enjoyed the doughnuts. Tjeerd Dijkstra helped me find Dutch-speaking subjects in Columbus by putting me in contact with the entire Columbus Dutch Club. I would like to thank John Nerbonne for coordinating my stay at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. Among other things, John put me in touch with Mariette Dijkstra, who probably did more than any other person to make sure this entire project was a success. Mariette not only shouldered the onerous task of scheduling two weeks' worth of subjects at Groningen--during exams--but also spent countless hours in that little sound booth room, making sure nothing blew up while subjects were running through the experiments. For all of her time and help, I would like to thank Mariette. At Groningen, I also had the pleasure of getting to know Laurie Stowe, who helped right my experimental ship when things started falling apart. And, speaking of things falling apart, I can't write an acknowledgments section without thanking that mousey, white-haired, middle-aged guy in the A/V department at Groningen who dug up and donated to me his home-made voltage transformer. I wouldn't have been able to do anything at Groningen without it. I'd like to thank him for his help, and apologize to him for never getting his name. Back home, Jim Harmon and Jeff McCune provided more computer and technical help than I can even remember. Thanks, guys. Pauline Welby also pitched in by helping me apply the Praat segmentation script she had written to my own data. v And, last but not least, my Mom, Suzanne Winters, made my trip to Holland feasible by loaning me the money I needed to pay subjects while I was at Groningen. This material is based partly upon work supported under a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship. On a personal level, I would also like to thank: Robin Dautricourt, for the soccer games on Saturday mornings; Jeff Mielke, for asking me to come back after my first practice with the band; Paul Davis, for introducing me to Perl; Patrick Arnold, for knowing more about baseball than I do; Georgios Tserdanelis, for the nights of basketball at the Greek Church; Jason Packer, for explaining to me the difference between kelvar and olvar; Jenny Vannest, for always inviting me to Larry's; Grant McGuire, for combining Axis & Allies with Eastwood one Saturday afternoon; and my family, who, after all these years, are pretty much the only people who ever call anymore. vi VITA May 10, 1974.....................................Born – Alexandria, Minnesota 1992....................................................B.A., Linguistics, Pomona College 1998....................................................M.A., Linguistics, Ohio State University 1996-present.......................................Graduate Teaching and Research Associate, The Ohio State University PUBLICATIONS 1. Hume, E. and Winters, S. 2002. Distinctive Features. In The Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science. London: MacMillan 2. Munroe, R.L., Munroe, R.H., and Winters, S. 1996. Cross-Cultural Correlates of the Consonant-Vowel (CV) Syllable. Cross-Cultural Research 30 (1), 60-83. FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Linguistics vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Acknowledgments..........................................................................................................iv Vita................................................................................................................................vii List of Tables...................................................................................................................x List of Figures...............................................................................................................xix Chapters: 1. Prologue: the importance of perception in phonology.........................................1 2. Background and motivation: theoretical and empirical approaches to understanding place assimilation........................................................................15 2.1 Which kinds of place assimilation occur?...............................................15 2.2 Why does place assimilation occur?.......................................................26 2.3 Evidence for perceptual influences on place assimilation......................41 2.4 Refining the perceptual analysis of cross-linguistic patterns in place assimilation.............................................................................................48 2.5 Motivation for the following study........................................................54 3. Perceptual influences on place assimilation: magnitude estimation..........................64 3.1 Free magnitude estimation: introduction and background.....................64 3.2 Magnitude estimation materials: stimulus construction.........................69 3.3 Stimulus quality pre-test........................................................................71 3.4 Magnitude estimation task: stimulus presentation.................................85 3.5 Magnitude estimation: analysis..............................................................87 viii 4. Perceptual influences on place assimilation: AX discrimination...........................106 4.1 Experimental design............................................................................110