Proceedings Published by the LSA (Linguistic Society of America)
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Four inclusive practices for the phonology classroom
Get PDFThis article presents four classroom practices, intended to increase inclusion and equity, that phonology teachers may find useful. The first is going beyond the simple land acknowledgement to substantively incorporate recognition of local Indigenous people(s) and language(s) into the first day of class. The second is putting languages in richer cultural, historical, and political context. The third is including author photos in class materials both to combat stereotypes and as a self-accountability tool. And the fourth practice is integrating spoken and sign languages in our teaching rather than treating sign language phonology as a separate topic (or not at all)
Situating Blackfoot within a typology of (mobile) boundary tone grammars
No full textWe propose that boundary tones are best understood as derived from the interaction of constraints that introduce tones at certain levels of the prosodic hierarchy and constraints that govern the alignment of those tones to segmental material. On this decomposition of the classic notion of a boundary tone, we expect to find languages in which a tone introduced by a prosodic constituent surfaces away from the edge of that constituent. We refer to these as \u27mobile\u27 boundary tones. Informed by a quantitative analysis of pitch contours, we argue that Blackfoot is a mobile boundary tone language. We provide a grammar to account for the Blackfoot pattern, where a L tone introduced by the prosodic word surfaces before a H tone docked to the stress syllable, and we situate Blackfoot within a mini-typology predicted by re-ranking of the proposed constraints
Substantive Bias and Variation in the Acquisition of /n/~/l/ Alternation
Get PDFPhonological biases suppose that language learners are predisposed toward certain sound patterns. A widely studied phonological bias is substantive bias, a bias that favors phonetically natural or motivated patterns. Experimental results for substantive bias have been mixed. Against this background, this study explores the possible factors influencing the effect of substantive bias, and the focus is on the input variability. An artificial language learning study on /n/~/l/ alternation by native speakers of Hong Kong Cantonese was conducted. There were two categorical learning conditions and two variable learning conditions. In the categorical learning conditions, all the initial /n/ changed to /l/ either in phonetically motivated or unmotivated contexts. In the variable learning conditions, the dominant percentage of initial /n/ changed to /l/ in phonetically motivated or unmotivated context. Substantive bias arose only in variable learning conditions, which suggests that the substantive bias effect is not global, but it is activated under certain circumstances. This study found that the shape and distribution of input could influence the effect of substantive bias.
Harmonic Gradience in Greek Rap Rhymes
Get PDFThis study investigates the gradience in mismatch acceptability in Greek rap Imperfect Rhyme. We consider that the rhyme domains of a rhyming pair are in a Base-Reduplicant correspondence relationship, requiring segmental identity in Place of Articulation, Manner of Articulation and voicing, and manifesting a gradient acceptability of featural mismatches. Analysis shows that voicing mismatches are highly marked in Greek rap rhyme, implying a high perceptual salience, which seems to be language-specific. Mismatches only in Place of Articulation seem to be the most harmonic and frequent mismatch pattern, while Harmony and similarity decrease in inverse proportion to the number of mismatching features. Mismatches in Greek rap rhyme are, in principle, accepted between unmarked corresponding consonants. Obstruents, mainly Stops mismatch in Place of Articulation, and Coronals mismatch in Manner of Articulation. In general, mainly Coronal Obstruents and, to a lesser extent, Nasals are involved in mismatches. Due to the attested high avoidance of voicing mismatches, which are acoustically non-salient, we propose that, in Standard Modern Greek, perceptual salience is not purely phonetic, as it seems to be also based on the language-specific phonological grammar
Icy Targets in Karajá ATR Harmony as Contrast Preservation
Get PDFThis paper presents a novel application of Contrast Preservation (Lubowicz 2003) to analyze a puzzling pattern of icy targets (Jurgec 2011). Icy targets are segments which harmonize but then block the spread of harmony, and a particularly theoretically challenging type is present in Karajá, in which derived and underlying [+ATR] high vowels behave differently (Ribeiro 2002;2012). We show that this harmony pattern can be successfully analyzed by considering the behaviour of these icy targets as a form of contrast preservation, where high [-ATR] vowels must harmonize when followed by a [+ATR] vowel, but the underlying contrast between [-ATR] and [+ATR] high vowels is preserved on any preceding vowels. The icy target effect thus emerges as a way to compromise between the pressure to harmonize high vowels and the pressure to preserve underlying ATR contrasts in high vowels. In this way, we extend Contrast Preservation Theory to include vowel harmony patterns, opening new opportunities to analyze puzzling patterns as a choice in which contrasts to preserve
Phrasal Prominence Location is Influenced by IP Boundary Location in the Absence of Stress Clash
Get PDFSeveral factors can influence early prominence in double-stressed words (e.g., Maltese), namely the presence of foot-level stress clash with a following word, and their adjacency to domain-initial boundaries. We test whether initial accent can occur in such words even when the words are spoken in isolation. Fourteen targets and 26 tri-syllabic filler-items were produced in isolation and in a frame sentence, e.g., [Say Maltese again], by 12 English speakers. In isolation, ‘Early’ prominence on, e.g., Mal- is more likely because the target is utterance- and phrase-initial. In the Embedded condition, phrasal prominence should be less likely on the initial syllable because there is a weaker boundary preceding the target. Three linguists coded prominence location. Early prominence rates, and Early scores (sum of ‘Early’ judgements/token) were calculated. While 96% of the Embedded tokens were perceived with ‘Late’ prominence, this pattern appeared in only 48% of the Isolated targets. The Early scoreswere also significantly higher in the Isolated condition. Overall, results suggest that doubly-stressed words show stress shifting to demarcate the left IP-edge. Because this study uses contexts free of stress clash with a following word, its results provide evidence that other factors, namely domain-onset-marking, can influence prominence location
Categorical Account of Gradient Acceptability of Word-Initial Polish Onsets
Get PDFWe examine how well categorical and probabilistic phonotactic learning models extract grammars which predict Polish speakers\u27 acceptability judgments of words with varied initial consonant clusters. Polish is an especially interesting language to look at because of its rich inventory of sonority-sequencing defying consonant clusters, often as a result of yer-deletion. In line with results by Gorman (2013) and Durvasula (2020), we find that the categorical baselines considered here generally outperformed the Hayes and Wilson\u27s (2008) maximum-entropy based phonotactic learner. We conclude that gradient acceptability judgments do not provide unambiguous evidence for gradient, probabilistic grammars.
Onset Prominence in Wubuy Reduplication
Get PDFWubuy (also known as Nunggubuyu; Australia) exhibits a regular and productive pattern of partial reduplication by which the reduplicant is one syllable if its base begins with an obstruent and two if it begins with a sonorant. We compare two approaches to the synchronic analysis of this pattern based on phonotactics and weight, respectively, ultimately arguing for the latter. As we show, an analysis in terms of general markedness constraints (e.g. invoking the unmarkedness of obstruent onsets or regulating sonority combinations across syllables) is not viable. A weight-based account, by contrast, recognizes that obstruent onsets pattern as heavier than sonorant onsets in a number of languages and weight-sensitive systems. Thus, a typologically principled analysis is available in which the reduplicant must be at least as heavy as an obstruent-initial syllable
Metathesis is late and fake
Get PDFIn this paper, we argue that metathesis, an underattested phonological operation, is best understood as gestural overlap. Based on two case studies (Sevillian Spanish and Uab Meto), we observe that metathesis is (i) implemented in a phonetically gradient way and (ii) invisible to other phonology. We use these observations to propose that phonology is bifurcated into two major strata: early phonology and late phonology. Early phonology uses atomic representations, whereas late phonology uses gestural representations. While early phonology feeds into late phonology, the output of late phonology is not accessible to early phonology. Under this division, metathesis is therefore strictly late phonology because it uses gestures as its core representational unit. As late phonology, metathesis is therefore expected to be invisible to (early) phonological operations in these languages
Combining SPE and OT in descriptive language-oriented courses
Get PDFThis paper discusses a range of pedagogical strategies that can be used to introduce phonological theory in Catalan Philology BA degrees, which have an empirical and descriptive orientation. On the basis of voicing-related phenomena and vowel reduction processes in Catalan, we illustrate how fundamental concepts can be introduced and how an SPE-type rule-based approach and Optimality Theory can be incorporated in this type of descriptive courses. We also assess the advantages and drawbacks of SPE vs. OT-framed treatments. The fact that the whole grammar of a given language is taken into consideration represents a challenge for any theoretical model, and also for the instructor and students, because the analysis cannot be restricted to a limited set of data; rather, all data that characterize a grammatical system must be taken into account. However, this enterprise is possible if SPE and OT are combined in class, since the pedagogical disadvantages of one model can be counterbalanced by the advantages of the other, and vice versa