170 research outputs found
Regional differences in the perception of a consonantal change in progress
No full textThis study aims at testing whether there are regional differences in the perception of the labiodental fricative contrast in Dutch. Previous production studies have shown that the devoicing of initial labiodental fricatives is a change in progress in the Dutch language area. We present the results of a speeded identification task in which fricative stimuli were systematically varied for two phonetic cues, voicing and duration. Listeners (n=100) were regionally stratified, and the regions (k=5) reflect different stages of this sound change in progress. Voicing turned out to be the strongest categorization cue in all regions; duration only played a minor role. Regional differences showed up in the perception of the consonantal contrast that matched regional differences in production reported in previous studies. The addition of random slopes in the mixed model regression showed the importance of within-regional variation
Hunting highs and lows: the acquisition of prosodic focus marking in Swedish and Dutch
No full textDuring the course of a conversation, speakers continuously shape their utterances in accordance with the knowledge state of the listeners. One way to do this is by prosodically highlighting important information (or focus). In order to master this linguistic skill, children not only need to assess the knowledge state of their listeners, they also need to know how such important information is to be prosodically marked in their language. The goal of this thesis is to determine whether and how the prosodic system a child is acquiring affects the acquisition of prosodic focus marking. The test cases are Dutch and (Central) Swedish. Whereas Swedish is a tonal language, where pitch is lexically distinctive, Dutch is not. In both languages pitch is used for marking focus, but in different ways; speakers of Dutch mark focus by means of a pitch accent, speakers of Swedish mark focus by means of a prominence-lending high tone (prominence H). Our initial hypothesis was that children learning a tonal language would be more sensitive to pitch contrasts than children learning a non-tonal language, possibly leading to an earlier mastery of prosodic focus marking in Swedish than in Dutch. Our main finding is that the Swedish-speaking children indeed reach adult proficiency in the use of prominence H for focus earlier than Dutch-speaking children reach adult proficiency in the use of accentuation for the same purpose. Even if tonal sensitivity may explain these results, data from adult Dutch and Swedish suggest that other factors may also be in play, such as the amount of tonal variation in the system, as well as the reliability of the mapping between certain prosodic categories and focus
Prosodic focus marking in Dali Mandarin
No full textThis study investigated prosodic marking of focus in Dali Mandarin, a variety of Xinan Guanhua (Southwestern Mandarin) spoken in Dali city, the capital of Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture, China. Dali Mandarin as a variety of Mandarin has had heavy contact with Bai, a Tibeto-Burman language, for a long time. We adopted a semi-spontaneous experimental approach to elicit SVO sentences with different focus conditions. Our data showed that native speakers of Dali Mandarin lengthened the duration of focal constituents compared to non-focal constituents for marking focus. However, they did not use duration to distinguish focus types differing in size and contrastivity. Further, pitch played no role at all in signaling focus, nor in differentiating focus types. These results thus suggested that Dali Mandarin speakers use prosody by exploiting duration to mark focus. Therefore, the encoding of focus in Dali Mandarin is more similar to Bai than to Beijing Mandarin, the latter being genetically more closely related to Dali Mandarin. This result suggests that prosodic focus marking in Dali Mandarin has been influenced by Bai due to the heavy language contact
The Relevance of Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products in the Field of Transplantation and the Need for Academic Research Access: Overcoming Bottlenecks and Claiming a New Time
No full textThe field of transplantation has witnessed the emergence of Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products (ATMPs) as highly promising solutions to address the challenges associated with organ and tissue transplantation. ATMPs encompass gene therapy, cell therapy, and tissue-engineered products, hold immense potential for breakthroughs in overcoming the obstacles of rejection and the limited availability of donor organs. However, the development and academic research access to ATMPs face significant bottlenecks that hinder progress. This opinion paper emphasizes the importance of addressing bottlenecks in the development and academic research access to ATMPs by implementing several key strategies. These include the establishment of streamlined regulatory processes, securing increased funding for ATMP research, fostering collaborations and partnerships, setting up centralized ATMP facilities, and actively engaging with patient groups. Advocacy at the policy level is essential to provide support for the development and accessibility of ATMPs, thereby driving advancements in transplantation and enhancing patient outcomes. By adopting these strategies, the field of transplantation can pave the way for the introduction of innovative and efficacious ATMP therapies, while simultaneously fostering a nurturing environment for academic research
Prosodic focus marking in Bai
No full textThis study investigates prosodic marking of focus in Bai, a Sino-Tibetan language spoken in the Southwest of China, by adopting a semi-spontaneous experimental approach. Our data show that Bai speakers increase the duration of the focused constituent and reduce the duration of the post-focus constituent to encode focus. However, duration is not used in Bai to distinguish focus types differing in size and contrastivity. Further, pitch plays no role in signaling focus and differentiating focus types. The results thus suggest that Bai uses prosody to mark focus, but to a lesser extent, compared to Mandarin Chinese, with which Bai has been in close contact for centuries, and Cantonese, to which Bai is similar in the tonal system, although Bai is similar to Cantonese in its reliance on duration in prosodic focus marking
The internally layered foot in Dutch
No full textRecent metrical studies have proposed that, under certain circumstances, a weak syllable may be adjoined to a binary foot, giving rise to a minimally recursive foot. Adding to a growing body of research from metrical stress and foot-conditioned phenomena in various languages, the goals of this paper are twofold. First, we aim at providing empirical evidence for internally layered feet based on the distribution of three foot-conditioned processes of Dutch: vowel reduction, glottal stop /ʔ/ insertion and /h/ licensing/deletion. Second, we explore a less studied theoretical and descriptive advantage of internally layered feet: their potential to predict phonological strength distinctions that go beyond the traditional weak vs. strong dichotomy. In support of this view, we will argue that all three above-mentioned foot-based processes of Dutch distinguish between two types of unstressed syllables. We will demonstrate that the metrical representation that best captures this dual patterning of unstressed syllables necessitates internally layered feet
Origin and Spread of the Personal Pronoun They: La Estorie del Evangelie, a Case Study: Medieval English in a Multilingual Context: Current Methodologies and Approaches
No full textThe modern-day 3pl. personal pronouns they, their and them derive from the þ-type 3pl. pronouns þei(-), þai(-) and þe(-); they appeared in Middle English and replaced the Old English h-type pronouns hīe, hira and him. The þ-type forms have traditionally been identified as Norse-derived (cf. the Old Icelandic pronouns þeir, þeira and þeim). Accordingly, they are often presented as one of the key examples of the significant influence that Old Norse had on the non-technical vocabulary of medieval English, a process that was facilitated by the intensity of the linguistic contact and the typological proximity of the two languages. However, close examination of the early English orthographic and distributional textual evidence indicates that there is scope for a re-evaluation of the Norse influence on the development of English 3pl. pronouns (e.g. Ogura 2001; Cole 2018, Forthcoming.). The present paper focuses on the 3pl. pronominal usage recorded in the seven manuscripts of the Middle English poem known as La estorie del evangelie. We explore how scribes from different dialectal areas responded to the (near-)categorical þ-type system of the early exemplars of Estorie. And equally, how scribes from the same dialectal area adapted (and possibly adopted) the different pronominal systems of their exemplars at a local level, and what light these processes shed on origin. We pay special attention to the mixed h-type and þ-type paradigms of the West and South-West Midlands. The findings support our hypothesis that þ-type pronouns are the result of polygenesis, as opposed to the traditional etymological explanation based solely on language contact at the expense of native derivation. With its nuanced and multifaceted approach to the data, this work offers an essential point of reference for the study of the etymology of 3pl. personal pronouns and, more broadly, the impact of Anglo-Scandinavian contact on the English lexicon
Lexical tones in Mandarin Chinese infant-directed speech: Age-related changes in the second year of life
No full textTonal information is essential to early word learning in tone languages. Although numerous studies have investigated the intonational and segmental properties of infant-directed speech (IDS), only a few studies have explored the properties of lexical tones in IDS. These studies mostly focused on the first year of life; thus little is known about how lexical tones in IDS change as children’s vocabulary acquisition accelerates in the second year (Goldfield and Reznick, 1990; Bloom, 2001). The present study examines whether Mandarin Chinese mothers hyperarticulate lexical tones in IDS addressing 18-and 24-month-old children—at which age children are learning words at a rapid speed—vs. adult-directed speech (ADS). Thirty-nine Mandarin Chinese–speaking mothers were tested in a semi-spontaneous picture-book-reading task, in which they told the same story to their child (IDS condition) and to an adult (ADS condition). Results for the F0 measurements (minimum F0, maximum F0, and F0 range) of tone in the speech data revealed a continuum of differences among IDS addressing 18-month-olds, IDS addressing 24-month-olds, and ADS. Lexical tones in IDS addressing 18-month-old children had a higher minimum F0, higher maximum F0, and larger pitch range than lexical tones in ADS. Lexical tones in IDS addressing 24-month-old children showed more similarity to ADS tones with respect to pitch height: there were no differences in minimum F0 and maximum F0 between ADS and IDS. However, F0 range was still larger. These results suggest that lexical tones are generally hyperarticulated in Mandarin Chinese IDS addressing 18- and 24- month-old children despite the change in pitch level over time. Mandarin Chinese mothers hyperarticulate lexical tones in IDS when talking to toddlers and potentially facilitate tone acquisition and word learnin
De Anglo-Boerenoorlog in de Nederlandse poëzie, 1899-1902, historische studie
No full textOp 31 mei 1902 werd te Vereeniging de vrede gesloten die een einde maakte aan de Tweede Vrijheidsoorlog, in de wandeling de (Anglo-)Boerenoorlog genoemd, die thans politiek correct de "Zuid-Afrikaanse Oorlog" moet heten. Tweeeneenhalf jaar had de bloedige en verwoestende oorlog geduurcl, een ongelijke strijd tussen de Boereurepublieken Transvaal en Oranje-Vrystaat en het imperialistische Britse wereldrijk. De twee soevereine territoria werden geannexeerd bij de Kaap, een Engelse kroonkolonie
Rhythmic grouping in English, Greek and Korean: Testing the iambic-trochaic law
No full textThe iambic-trochaic law (ITL) states that a louder sound signals the beginning of a group, while a longer sound signals its end. Although the ITL has been empirically supported in experiments with a variety of stimuli, it is not clear whether it is due to universal cognitive mechanisms or the outcome of language-specific prosodic properties. We tested the law with speakers of English, Greek and Korean who heard sequences of tones varied in duration and/or intensity. The results revealed neither significant differences among languages nor a strong bias shared by speakers of all languages. Significantly, listeners� grouping preferences were influenced by the duration of the inter-stimulus interval (ISI), with longer ISI resulting in stronger trochaic preferences, indicating that specific experimental conditions may be responsible for differences in listener responses across experiments testing the ITL
- …
