Running head: Paradigmatic and syntagmatic effects in Estonian spontaneous speech Paradigmatic and syntagmatic effects in Estonian spontaneous speech Kaidi L~oo University of Tartu, Estonia Fabian Tomaschek University of T¨ubingen,Germany P¨artelLippus University of Tartu, Estonia Benjamin V. Tucker University of Alberta, Canada University of T¨ubingen,Germany Word count: 4909 Version: February, 2021 Corresponding author: Kaidi L~oo Institute of Estonian and General Linguistics, University of Tartu Jakobi 2-405, 50090 Tartu, Estonia e-mail: [email protected] Paradigmatic and syntagmatic effects in Estonian spontaneous speech Abstract Recent evidence has indicated that a word's morphological family and inflectional paradigm members get activated when we produce words. These paradigmatic effects have previously been studied in careful, laboratory context using words in isolation. This previous research has not investigated how the linguistic context affects spontaneous speech production. The current corpus analysis investigates paradigmatic and syntagmatic effects in Estonian spontaneous speech. Following related work on English, we focus on mor- phemic and non-morphemic word final /-s/ in content words. We report that linguistic context, as measured by conditional probability, has the strongest effect on the acoustic durations, while inflectional properties (internal structure and inflectional paradigm size) also affect word and segment durations. These results indicate that morphology is part of a complex system that interacts with other aspects of the language production system. Keywords: morphological complexity, inflection, paradigm size, conditional probability, acoustic durations. Paradigmatic and syntagmatic effects in Estonian spontaneous speech 1 Introduction Most investigations of paradigmatic effects on speech production have used experimental methods to in- vestigate them (e.g. L~ooet al., 2018b, and references therein). However, very few researchers have used actual spontaneous speech production data or considered the effect of context on these productions. Further, many of these studies have investigated, relatively speaking, morphologically impoverished languages (see Strycharczuk, 2019, for a recent overview). What happens when we investigate a morphologically complex language like Estonian? By way of example, a language like English, an Indo-European language, arguably has two noun cases (Quirk et al., 1985), German (also an Indo-European language) has four (Drosdowski and Eisenberg, 1998), and Serbian (also an Indo-European language) has five (Hamm, 1981). Estonian is a Finno-Ugric language known for its' complex morphology. Each noun and adjective in Estonian has 14 cases in singular and plural (Erelt, 2003). Therefore the probability that one encounters all of the inflected forms is relatively high in English, whereas in Estonian it will be relatively low. This distribution difference may imply differences in how Estonian paradigms are represented and processed during speech production. The present study investigates the phonetic effects of morphological complexity in Estonian and how it is realized in spontaneous speech. By investigating phonetic effects at the word and segment level, we obtain a broader picture of the interaction between a word's morphological structure, its paradigmatic family and the context it is located in. In the next subsection, we describe some of the previous literature investigating morpho-phonetic interactions. Then we describe two phonetic analyses performed using a corpus of Estonian spontaneous speech. We conclude this paper with a discussion about the implications of our findings for theories of speech production. 1.1 Morphological effects Two types of morphological information affect phonetic realizations of complex words: internal structure (Cohen, 2014, 2015; Kuperman et al., 2007; Plag et al., 2017) and paradigmatic relations (Bell et al., 2020; Cohen, 2014, 2015; L~ooet al., 2018b). Regarding a word's internal structure, simplex and complex words are articulated differently even if they consist of phonologically identical segments. Recent research on phonetic properties of the speech signal (Plag et al., 2017; Seyfarth et al., 2018; Tomaschek et al., 2019; Zimmermann, 2016) has reported systematic duration differences between morphemic and non-morphemic word final /-s/, as well as differences between different inflectional functions of morphemic /-s/. A relevant body of literature not often discussed in the morphology literature is research into the strength- ening of prosodic domains. It was shown that articulatory processes differ depending on the strength and level of prosodic boundaries. Prosodic boundaries lengthen articulatory gestures and increase the amount Paradigmatic and syntagmatic effects in Estonian spontaneous speech of articulation contact, when gestures are located at a prosodic boundary (Cho, 2004; Keating et al., 2003; Keating, 2006; Krakow, 1999). Regarding effects of word internal structure, differences in gestural coordination have been shown to differ depending on their position in the word. Articulatory gestures show less overlap word initially than across words (Tiede et al., 2007) and word medially (Gafos et al., 2010). These effects expand to word internal boundaries. For example, Cho(2001) observed that the overlap and variability in gestural coordination during the articulation of consonant clusters was larger when the consonants were located at morpheme boundaries than when they were within a morpheme. Lee-Kim et al.(2013) have found that the `darkness' of English /-l/ depends on its morphological status. Accordingly, Plag et al.(2017) discuss the differences between morphemic and non-morphemic /-s/ in English as potential effect of prosodic boundaries. There is evidence that besides prosody, informativity modulates word internal phonetic and phonological detail (e.g., Pluymaekers et al., 2010; Torreira and Ernestus, 2012; Wedel et al., 2019). For example, word final /-s/ in Spanish becomes voiced when it is intervocalic. Torreira and Ernestus(2012) showed that voicing depends on predictability. They found that /-s/ suffixes in predictable morphosyntactic contexts were more likely to lose voicing than other word-final /-s/. Similar findings have been reported for /-s/ segments in longer affixes. For example, Smith et al. 2012 showed that transparent affixes (e.g., mis in misbehave) are pronounced longer than pseudo-affixes (e.g., mis in mistake) (see also Baker et al.(2007)). Kemps et al. (2005) showed that stems are longer when they are not followed by an affix (i.e., keep alone vs. keep in keeper). In summary, there is evidence that word internal and word external prosodic structure systematically modulates articulatory fine phonetic detail. Next, we turn our attention to effects of paradigmatic relations. There are various measures how paradigmatic relations have been assessed. For example, Hay(2003) used the relative frequency of inflected forms to the uninflected form (e.g. swiftly, swifter, swiftest vs. swift). Hay found that the consonant at the boundary between the stem and the affix was more likely to get deleted when the inflected forms were more frequent than the uninflected form. A similar finding was reported by Schuppler et al.(2012) for word final /-t/ suffixes in Dutch verbs in relation to the frequency of the inflected and uninflected stems. These effects have been interpreted to indicate that inflected verbs are composed from smaller units during the cognitive preparation stage. However, they also can be regarded to indicate that the frequency of whole word forms in relation to other word forms within a paradigm co-determines the articulation process. This assumption is supported by studies that assess paradigmatic structures by means of a word form's frequency relative to the cumulative frequency of the entire paradigm. Kuperman et al.(2007) investigated Dutch compound interfixes. They gauged paradigmatic relations by using the interfixes’ probability given the constituents of the compound in which they were located to predict Paradigmatic and syntagmatic effects in Estonian spontaneous speech their acoustic duration. Controlling for the uncertainty following the interfix, they found that the duration of interfix was longer when they were more probable and proposed the `Paradigmatic Enhancement Hypothesis'. Using a compound elicitation task in English, Bell et al.(2020) reported that consonants located at the internal boundary were longer, when the family size of the second compound was smaller. They interpret smaller family size as equivalent to smaller paradigmatic uncertainty. Thus, smaller uncertainty correlated with longer durations. These enhancement findings are opposite of what many other researcher would predict as a result of the effects of probability (e.g. Aylett and Turk, 2004; Bell et al., 2003). Nevertheless, the `Paradigmatic Enhancement Hypothesis' has been replicated in several instances. While Kuperman et al. investigated paradigmatic relations of compounds, Cohen(2014) changed the perspective to inflectional relations among verbs. Cohen(2014) found that the final /-s/ in the third-person singular English verbs (e.g., looks) was longer when the singular form was more frequent compared to the plural form (e.g., look). In another study, Cohen(2015) looked at vowel suffixes and also found that higher paradigmatic probability lead to both reduced and enhanced aspects of the articulation of vowel suffixes in Russian. Tucker et al.(2019) reported a similar finding for the modulation