scholarly journals Sequences of high tones across word boundaries in Tswana

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Sabine Zerbian ◽  
Frank Kügler
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Data ◽  
Obligatory Contour Principle ◽  
Bantu Language ◽  
Word Level ◽  
Related Language ◽  
Word Boundaries ◽  
Phonological Phrase ◽  
Read Speech

The article analyses violations of the Obligatory Contour Principle (OCP) above the word level in Tswana, a Southern Bantu language, by investigating the realization of adjacent lexical high tones across word boundaries. The results show that across word boundaries downstep (i.e. a lowering of the second in a series of adjacent high tones) only takes place within a phonological phrase. A phonological phrase break blocks downstep, even when the necessary tonal configuration is met. A phrase-based account is adopted in order to account for the occurrence of downstep. Our study confirms a pattern previously reported for the closely related language Southern Sotho and provides controlled, empirical data from Tswana, based on read speech of twelve speakers which has been analysed auditorily by two annotators as well as acoustically.

Crossing boundaries: more evidence for phonological constraints on early multi-word utterances

1989 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward H. Matthei
Keyword(s):  
Phonological Development ◽  
Consonant Harmony ◽  
Word Level ◽  
Initial Syllable ◽  
Phonological Constraints ◽  
Word Boundaries

ABSTRACTA number of researchers have argued that phonological constraints may influence the emergence and form of combinatorial speech in children. Donahue (1986) presented evidence that one child's consonant harmony constraint operated across word boundaries. This paper presents further evidence for the operation of word-level phonological constraints in multi-word utterances. Selection and avoidance patterns as well as her modifications of adult forms indicate the presence of a syllable sequencing constraint in this child's grammar: an initial syllable must begin with a consonant whose sonority value is not less than that of the following syllable. The same constraint governs the form of her early word combinations. The existence of evidence for the operation of word-level constraints in word combinations, it is pointed out, has consequences for how we interpret two-lexicon models of phonological development.

scholarly journals L2 acquisition of high vowel deletion in Quebec French

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guilherme Duarte Garcia ◽  
Heather Goad ◽  
Natália Brambatti Guzzo
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Lexical Stress ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Phonological Word ◽  
Word Level ◽  
Quebec French ◽  
Vowel Deletion ◽  
The Right ◽  
Phonological Phrase

In languages with lexical stress, stress is computed in the phonological word (PWd) and realized in the foot. In some of these languages, feet are constructed iteratively, yielding multiple stressed syllables in a PWd. English has this profile. In French, by contrast, the only position of obligatory prominence is the right-edge of the phonological phrase (PPh), regardless of how many lexical words it contains (Dell 1984). This has led some to analyze French "stress" as intonational prominence and French, in contrast to most languages, as foot-less (Jun & Fougeron 2000). In earlier work, we argued that high vowel deletion (HVD) motivates iterative iambic footing in Quebec French (QF), although the typical signatures of word-level stress are absent. In this paper, we examine the L2 acquisition of HVD and the prosodic constraints that govern it. We show that L2ers can acquire subtle aspects of the phonology of a second language, even at intermediate levels of proficiency.

scholarly journals Phonological phrasing and questions in Chimwiini

2011 ◽  
Vol 55 ◽  
pp. 83-116
Author(s):  
Charles W. Kisseberth
Keyword(s):  
Bantu Language ◽  
Wh Questions ◽  
Phonological Phrase

This paper examines how questions, both Wh-questions and yes-no questions, are phrased in Chimwiini, a Bantu language spoken in southern Somalia. Questions do not require any special phrasing principles, but Wh-questions do provide much evidence in support of the principle Align-Foc R, which requires that focused or emphasized words/constituents be located at the end of a phonological phrase. Question words and enclitics are always focused and thus appear at the end of a phrase. Although questions do not require any new phrasing principles, they do display complex accentual (tonal) behavior. This paper attempts to provide an account of these accentual phenomena.  

The history of /-n/ loss in English: Phonotactic change with lexical and grammatical specificity

2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 203-230
Author(s):  
Donka Minkova ◽  
Michael Lefkowitz
Keyword(s):  
Data Base ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Empirical Data ◽  
N Loss ◽  
Morphological Marker ◽  
Statistical Comparison ◽  
Rates Of Change ◽  
Word Level ◽  
History Of ◽  
Word Classes

Abstract In Old English, /-n/ loss started in early Northumbrian and spread to the southern dialects after about 1050. An important diagnostic of the transition to Middle English, the loss is commonly assumed to be morphologically driven. However, /-n/ loss in atonic syllables could also be phonologically-conditioned: aweġ ‘away’<onweġ, abūtan ‘about’<onbūtan. In Middle English, the loss proceeded rapidly, but the triggers behind the different rates of change and the different results for the various categories have not been fully explored. Using LAEME, we survey all attestations of /-n/ loss, enriching the empirical data-base on the change. The findings show significant differences within word-classes, and differences between inflectional and derivational suffixes. This raises a set of theoretical questions: why did only /-n/ inflections lose their codas, why was the productivity of verbal derivational /-n/ phonotactically restricted, what justifies the loss or retention of /-n/ in stems? We look into the interplay of phonological and morphological factors, isolate the sets in which the results appear to be phonotactically driven, and address the phonotactic dimension in relation to other factors, both within and above the word level. In noun plurals, /-n/ loss emerges as the clearest case of avoidance of phonotactically suboptimal sequences at the word level. A statistical comparison of the end-points of the change reveals that overall frequency has stayed constant and has no obvious direct bearing on the process, while the presence of /-n/ as a morphological marker has changed significantly. The paper ends by identifying aspects of the history of /-n/ that remain uncharted.

scholarly journals Derivational processes in Rangi

2002 ◽  
pp. 129-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver Stegen
Keyword(s):  
Root Activity ◽  
Main Body ◽  
Bantu Language ◽  
Related Language ◽  
Noun Class ◽  
Vowel Height

The main object of research described in this paper is Rangi, a scarcely investigated Bantu language of Northern Central Tanzania. Rangi phonology and morphonology are briefly sketched, including a classification with regard to both Vowel Height Harmony and Advanced Tongue Root activity. The main body of the paper consists of a detailed description of Rangi derivational processes, which follows the pattern established in Maganga and Schadeberg's description of Nyamwezi, a closely related language. Both verbal derivation, which exclusively uses the extensional slot of the verb structure, and nominal derivation, which employs noun class prefixes and a few suffixes, are covered.

scholarly journals Linguistic Factors Affecting Moraic Duration in Spontaneous Japanese

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giuseppe Pappalardo
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Data ◽  
Compensation Effect ◽  
Average Duration ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Natural Speech ◽  
Vowel Duration ◽  
Factors Affecting ◽  
Traditional Poetry ◽  
Read Speech

Japanese is often referred to as a mora-timed language (Ladefoged 1975): the mora has been described as the psychological prosodic unit in the spoken language, and it is the metric unit of traditional poetry (Bloch 1950). However, it is clear that morae are not strictly isochronous units (Beckman 1982). Thus, experimental studies have focused on detecting compensation effects that make average mora durations more equal through the modulation of the inherent duration of the segments involved (Han 1962; Port, Al-Ani, Maeda 1980; Homma 1981; Hoequist 1983a; 1983b; Warner, Arai 2001). Kawahara (2017) used the Corpus of Spontaneous Japanese to verify whether the durational compensation effect within a /CV/ mora occurs in natural speech, in addition to read speech in the lab. He observed a statistically significant compensation effect of /CV/ morae, in which vowel duration tends to vary in response to the duration of the preceding consonant. However, as the same author has pointed out, the compensation is not absolute because there are several linguistic factors that potentially affect segments’ duration profiles. This study will support the idea that moraic isochrony does not occur in spontaneous Japanese by presenting empirical data on how linguistic factors can considerably affect variation in the average duration of morae.

scholarly journals Phonological phrases in Xhosa (southern Bantu)

2004 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 71-99
Author(s):  
Sabine Zerbian
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Syntactic Analysis ◽  
Phrase Boundary ◽  
Bantu Language ◽  
Phonological Phrase

This paper investigates how syntax and focus interact in deriving the phonological phrasing of utterances in Xhosa, a Bantu language spoken in South Africa. Although the influence of syntax on phrasing is uncontroversial, a purely syntactic analysis cannot account for all the data reported for Xhosa by Jokweni (1995). Focus influences the phrasing in that it inserts a phonological phrase-boundary after the focused constituent. This generalization can account for the variation found in the phrasing of adverbials. The findings are dealt with in an OT-based framework following Truckenbrodt's work on Chichewa (1995, 1999) which is extended to the phrasing of adjuncts.  

Does instruction about phonological correspondences contribute to the intelligibility of a related language?

2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fenna Bergsma ◽  
Femke Swarte ◽  
Charlotte Gooskens
Keyword(s):  
Time Span ◽  
Word Level ◽  
Related Language ◽  
Intelligibility Test

This paper investigates whether instruction about phonological correspondences between the native and a closely related language contributes to the intelligibility of this closely related language. Previous research has shown that closely related languages can be mutually intelligible to a certain degree (cf. Gooskens, 2007). Little is known about methods for improving the intelligibility of a closely related language. In this paper we focus on improving the intelligibility of spoken Frisian for Dutch speakers. In a 50-minute instruction session, participants got information about the most frequent sound correspondences between Dutch and Frisian, e.g. /sk/ in Frisian is often /sx/ in Dutch. The results of the intelligibility test show no significant improvement, neither at the text level, nor at the word level. Further research could focus on other language combinations, but also on a longer time span of intervention and other linguistic factors, such as unknown vowels.

scholarly journals Uncovering Tonal and Temporal Correlates of Phrasal Prominence in Medʉmba

2019 ◽  
pp. 002383091988799 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn Franich
Keyword(s):  
Acoustic Cues ◽  
Relative Timing ◽  
African Languages ◽  
Temporal Alignment ◽  
Tone Languages ◽  
Bantu Language ◽  
Grassfields Bantu ◽  
Tonal Patterns ◽  
Prosodic Boundaries ◽  
Phonological Phrase

Characterizing prosodic prominence relations in African tone languages is notoriously difficult, as typical acoustic cues to prominence (changes in F0, increases in intensity, etc.) can be difficult to distinguish from those which mark tonal contrasts. The task of establishing prominence is further complicated by the fact that tone, an important cue to syllable prominence and prosodic boundaries cross-linguistically, plays many roles in African languages: tones often signal lexical contrasts, can themselves be morphemes, and can also interact in key ways with prosody. The present study builds on phonological generalizations about tonal patterns in Medʉmba, a Grassfields Bantu language, and uses the speech cycling paradigm to investigate relative timing of syllables varying in phrase-level prominence. Specifically, we investigate timing asymmetries between syllables hypothesized to occur at the edge of a phonological phrase, which carry a high phrase accent, and those in phrase-medial position, which do not. Results indicate significant differences in the temporal alignment of accented versus non-accented syllables, with accented syllables occurring significantly closer to positions established as prominence-attracting in previous speech cycling research. We show that these findings cannot be attributed to differences in tone alone. Findings demonstrate the importance of relative temporal alignment as a correlate of prosodic prominence. Findings also point to increased duration as a phonetic property which distinguishes between syllables bearing phrasal prominence from those which do not.

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