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The Rhotic Consonant(s) in Contemporary Modern Irish
Get PDFThe subject of this major research paper (MRP) is the status of rhotic consonant(s) in the phonemic inventory of Modern Irish (Gaeilge, Nua-Ghaeilge). Traditional studies of the phonologies of dialects of Irish have described the rhotic in Irish as consisting of the alveolar tap (/ɾ/) with contrastive palatalized and velarized secondary articulations (/ɾj/ and /ɾɣ/) (Ó Cuív 1944; de Bhaldraithe 1966; Hamilton 1974; Sutton 1993; Ó Baoill 1996; Ó Raghallaigh 2014). The alveolar approximate ([ɹ]) as an allophone of /ɾ/ has also recently been attested in some studies (Ó Sé 2000: 19; Hickey 2014; Kukhto & Nikolaev 2016). However, the emergence of this allophone, and the precise circumstances under which it occurs, have largely been unexplored. This is not to say that previous scholars have ignored the occurrence of /ɹ/ broadly, but potentially that this is a new and ongoing phenomenon. As an example, previous work of the rhotic of Montréal French has shown that changes like this can occur rapidly (Sankoff & Blondeau 2007). Most previous studies of Irish phonetics and phonology have focused on speakers living in a Gaeltacht, the rural traditionally Irish speaking geographic regions primarily located on the Atlantic fringe of the island. However, the expansion of private Irish-medium schooling in the form of Gaelscoileanna since the 1970’s, as well as substantial sustained capital and political investment from successive Irish governments have produced a great number of high-level L2 users, as well as native speakers from non-Gaeltacht backgrounds. A part of the impetus to this research is to include these “new” speakers in the conversations around language change and variation in Irish as well, particularly as the Gaeltachtaí continue to be threatened and as “urban Irish” speakers begin to form a larger and larger portion of the language’s user base. There is also evidence uncovered in scholarly work that Irish phonology and phonetics are changing in other, broader ways, even amongst Gaeltacht speakers (Welby et al. 2017; Müller et al. 2019)
The effects of prosody and production planning in external t-sandhi
Get PDFThe change in pronunciation of word-final /t/ in English is known as external coronal stop sandhi and is understood to be motivated by several phonological conditions. Though much of the research in this area (e.g., Tanner et al., 2017, Kilbourne-Ceron et al., 2016, Coetzee and Kawahara, 2013) has generally focused on a single t-sandhi alternation within a corpus (e.g., from /t/ to /ɾ/), the results of these studies make it clear that it is always a combination of factors that play a role in each alternation. In this paper, I propose that examining the distribution of various types of t-sandhi clause-internally would provide a more complete look of where speakers preferred to use different forms of /t/ in their natural speech: tightly controlling an area of analysis would make this otherwise wide scope more manageable. This project uses two production experiments to examine the interaction between prosody and other conditioning factors on t-sandhi: established segmental contexts and findings from Production Planning
studies were used to control the environment surrounding word-final /t/ and record the distribution of its pronunciation.
The results of these studies show that the more marked forms of t-sandhi (in terms of production) favor prosodically defined environments not explored in previous studies: word external, clause-internal flapping exclusively preferred environments where the following word did not carry lexical stress on the first syllable; released-t’s were never produced in environments 2 where the /t/ was preceded by a vowel and followed by a consonant, and also displayed changes in production rates that were sensitive to prosodic correlates. Production planning variables also showed some expected results which show areas of interest for further t-sandhi and production experiments focused on the production planning hypothesis (Tanner et al. 2017, Kilbourne-Ceron et al. 2016)
Feature-Geometric Harmonic Serialism and the RUKI Sound Law
No full textThe RUKI Sound Law, wherein the reflex of Indo-European *s comes down as [ʂ] in Sanskrit after [r u k i], has remained an open question in linguistics for over a century. The problem with this change is that [r u k i] do not form a natural class: there is no way to define them as a set according to articulatory features which both include all of them, and exclude every other segment.
This project aims to provide a solid answer to the RUKI problem using current analytical techniques. Specifically, it proposes a constraint-based analysis using a modified version of Harmonic Serialism (McCarthy 2016) which has integrated the Clements & Hume (1995) version of feature geometry. It expands on the interpretation that feature changes constitute a single operation in HS GEN. We must explicitly attach a feature theory to the model so that we know which features are available in the derivation. This dissertation proposes Feature-Geometric Harmonic Serialism (FGHS) to address this issue.
This dissertation also addresses concerns about constraint-based diachronic phonology, examining and challenging many of the criticisms levied against it. While FGHS is not itself capable of solving all the concerns, it has the potential to develop into a model which does solve the problems.
The formal analysis of the RUKI Sound Law argues that it is a telescoping of at least two changes: the first was a general place-assimilation of *s to the place if the preceding segment, with the assimilated allophones later being phonemicized into the singular [ʂ]. This analysis is backed by a statistical analysis of a large sample of Sanskrit tokens of [s ʂ] which show that the RUKI set should not be defined as a natural class, but is instead as an “accidental class” shaped by distributional patterns rather than featural characteristics. *s only appeared after a subset of segments, and The RUKI Set were the only ones which would be able to assimilate /s/ to anything other than its organic dental place. Through this analysis, this dissertation shows that derivational-serial constraint-based models are entirely viable for historical research
On the prosody of reported speech in Seoul Korean
No full textA romantic description of prosody is to call it the melody of speech. Though this is not altogether wrong, a linguistic definition would state that prosody is concerned with the suprasegmental features of languages– with intonational features such as tonal structure, pitch, duration, and intensity (Féry, 2016). Elements such as pitch, tonal structure, and intensity imply that prosody is restricted to spoken languages. This is, in fact, not the case; Sandler et al. (2020) claim that prosody exists in signed languages, signalled through manual or non-manual gestures, such as repetition or duration of a sign. Prosody can be organized into a hierarchical structure, which Féry (2016) defines as “[...] the parsing of continuous speech” into “organized prosodic domains.” Though moras, syllables, and feet are all a part of the prosodic structure (Féry, 2016), these lower-level prosodic constituents are not of interest for the current study. Instead, the interest lies in the higher-level prosodic constituents, namely the phonological phrase and intonational phrase. The role of prosody in speech is multifaceted. It can aid in disambiguating structurally ambiguous strings, indicate different sentence types through pitch contours, indicate prominence, convey direct versus indirect speech acts, and signal turn-taking in conversation (Hirschberg, 2002). It is the communication of direct and indirect speech acts which is the focus of the current study.
This paper is concerned with the intonational phonology and prosodic structure of Seoul Korean, specifically with the use of reported speech. There is a structural element in Korean that indicates “quote,” and the interaction of this structural element, or rather morpheme, with intonational elements of the utterance is the focus of this paper. This morpheme (glossed as QUOT below) is illustrated in the examples of indirect and direct reported speech in Korean in (1).
(1) a. Indirect speech:
yecin ssi-nun cikum ka-ntako haysseyo
Yejin HON-TOP now go-QUOT do
“Yejin said that she’s going now.”
b. Direct speech:
yecin ssi-nun cikum ka lako haysseyo
Yejin HON-TOP now go QUOT do
“Yejin said ‘I’m going now.’”
How this structural element may influence the intonational elements, and vice versa, is of great interest. Consequently, this paper is not only concerned with prosody, but the interface between syntax and phonology. My goal is to uncover the extent that prosody is used to convey that a segment of an utterance is a reproduction of speech produced at another time, in another context, by either the current speaker or someone else. In the context of Korean, how will a structural element, the quotative morpheme, influence the use of reported speech prosody? It seems likely that the presence of what could be considered a structural “unquote” (indicating the end of the reported speech) within the utterance would reduce the need for the speaker to use other tools, such as prosody, to inform the listener that what they’re hearing is a quotation. A description of the prosody of reported speech in Korean may provide insight into how prosodic elements interact with syntax, and how prosody may be used in disambiguating not a syntactically ambiguous structure, but rather a disembodied element of a conversation, attributed to another time (and potentially another speaker)
Second Language Acquisition of Stress Patterns: A Study on the Effects of L1 Tamil Transfer on L2 English
No full textLinguistic studies have observed that during second language acquisition (SLA), L2 learners tend to produce non-target like structures, resembling grammars/patterns of the learner’s L1. Schwartz and Sprouse (1996) have accounted for these observations by proposing the Full Transfer Full Access Hypothesis. This hypothesis assumes that the initial state of L2 acquisition is the L1 grammar (Full Transfer). When L2 input data cannot be assigned to L1 representations, this will force re-structuring and L2 learners will have access to the same properties of Universal Grammar that were available to them during L1 acquisition (Full Access) and therefore target-like acquisition should be possible.
This study looked at the L2 acquisition of English stress patterns by L1 Tamil speakers. While English stress patterns can be predicted to some extent by rules that rely on syllable weight, Tamil has fixed stress, occurring in word-initial position. This study examined whether L1 Tamil transfer effects are observed during the acquisition of stress patterns in English and whether these effects weakened as proficiency and exposure to the L2 input data increased. The study consisted of three tasks. In Task 1, participants were asked to read aloud a list of real words in English, while in Task 2, the list consisted of pseudowords. For Task 3, participants were given two pronunciations of pseudowords, with either penultimate and antepenultimate stress, and asked to choose their preferred stress placement. All target words were tri-syllabic. The study was piloted with 13 native English speakers (control group) to account for any variability across the target words. The study then tested 14 L1 Tamil L2 English speakers, with differing levels of English proficiency – beginner, intermediate and advanced. When the results of the L2 learners were compared to the native speakers, an effect of L1 Tamil transfer was found, as L2 learners predicted stress as expected for APU words (with stress on the word-initial syllable) but not for PU words (where the second syllable was stressed) and therefore preferred word initial stress on all words. Furthermore, results showed that within the L2 groups, there was an effect of proficiency – advanced L2 learners performed most target-like, followed by intermediate and beginner speakers. These results were in line with the Full Transfer Full Access Hypothesis, showing that while effects of L1 transfer are stronger during earlier stages of proficiency, this effect weakens, and target-like performance is possible with increased proficiency and exposure to the L2 input
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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