The prosodic licensing of coda consonants in early speech: interactions with vowel length

2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
KELLY MILES ◽  
IVAN YUEN ◽  
FELICITY COX ◽  
KATHERINE DEMUTH
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Acoustic Analysis ◽  
Short Vowel ◽  
Elicited Imitation ◽  
Vowel Length ◽  
Short Vowels ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Australian English ◽  
Open Class ◽  
Lexical Constraints

AbstractEnglish has a word-minimality requirement that all open-class lexical items must contain at least two moras of structure, forming a bimoraic foot (Hayes, 1995).Thus, a word with either a long vowel, or a short vowel and a coda consonant, satisfies this requirement. This raises the question of when and how young children might learn this language-specific constraint, and if they would use coda consonants earlier and more reliably after short vowels compared to long vowels. To evaluate this possibility we conducted an elicited imitation experiment with 15 two-year-old Australian English-speaking children, using both perceptual and acoustic analysis. As predicted, the children produced codas more often when preceded by short vowels. The findings suggest that English-speaking two-year-olds are sensitive to language-specific lexical constraints, and are more likely to use coda consonants when prosodically required.

The acquisition of coda consonants by Mandarin early child L2 learners of English

2013 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 646-659 ◽  
Author(s):  
NAN XU RATTANASONE ◽  
KATHERINE DEMUTH
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Acoustic Analysis ◽  
Poor Performance ◽  
Early Learning ◽  
Elicited Imitation ◽  
Early Child ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
Australian English

Little is known about the acquisition of phonology in children learning a second language before the age of four. The study of Mandarin children's early learning of English coda consonants is of particular interest because of the different syllable structures permitted in the two languages. Using an elicited imitation task, this study explored the acquisition of coda consonants and related phrase-final lengthening in twelve three-year-old Mandarin-speaking children exposed to Australian English at preschool. Performance was good on /t/ and /s/ codas, but worse on the phonologically and morphologically more complex /ts/ coda. Although /n/ is one of the few codas permitted in Mandarin, both perceptual and acoustic analysis revealed surprisingly poor performance, suggesting possible L1 Mandarin effects. As expected, longer exposure to English resulted in better coda production. The results are discussed in terms of possible mechanisms underlying L2 phonological and morphological acquisition in early child second language learners (ECL2).

scholarly journals Lenisering etter kort vokal: relikt-fenomen eller opphav?

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-241
Author(s):  
Gjert Kristoffersen
Keyword(s):  
Small Group ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Short Vowel ◽  
Final Position ◽  
Vowel Length ◽  
Two Stage ◽  
Stressed Syllable ◽  
Limited Distribution ◽  
Short Vowels ◽  
Stage Process

The topic of the paper is a small group of Norwegian dialects where lenition of p, t, k into b, d, g in intervocalic and word-final position is limited to words characterized by a monomoraic, stressed syllable in Old Norse. These dialects are spoken in the easternmost local communities in Agder county, at the eastern margin of the South-Norwegian lenition areas where lenition hit all short oral stops irrespective of preceding vowel length. After the quantity shift had made all stressed vowels bimoraic, with rimes being either VV or VC, the distribution of the lenited plosives are after both long and short vowels (the main area) or after short vowels only (the eastern marginal area). Haslum (2004) argues that the limited distribution in the east ist the result of a reversal after long vowels only. While this cannot be refuted as a possibility, I argue below that it may also be the result of a two-stage process, whereby lenition after a short vowel has spread further than the generalized process.

scholarly journals Accuracy and acceptability of second-dialect performance on American television

2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-252
Author(s):  
REMCO KNOOIHUIZEN
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Acoustic Analysis ◽  
American English ◽  
Short Vowel ◽  
Mitigating Factors ◽  
Dialect Acquisition ◽  
Vowel Systems ◽  
Second Dialect Acquisition ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Australian English

This article analyses a case of second-dialect performance as an idealised instance of second-dialect acquisition, without mitigating factors such as access, analytical ability and motivation. It focuses on the Australian English and American English speech of three young Australian actors. An acoustic analysis of their short-vowel systems shows that they can successfully adapt to perform in an American English accent, but that their second-dialect system is less stable and more variable than their native system.A foreign-accent rating experiment on the actors’ American English with American English judges shows that the actors on average are thought to sound slightly less American than the native American English-speaker controls. The discrepancy between the acoustic accuracy and listener acceptability may be explained by judges attending to different features from those included in the acoustic study.This study of second-dialect performance shows what is maximally possible in second-dialect acquisition. Given the difference between the two measures of success, studies of second-dialect acquisition would benefit from including subjective measures in addition to acoustic accuracy.

scholarly journals Excrescent vowels in Lamkang prefix sequences

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-213
Author(s):  
Mary Burke ◽  
Shobhana Chelliah ◽  
Melissa Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Short Duration ◽  
Acoustic Analysis ◽  
Syllable Structure ◽  
Short Vowel ◽  
Vowel Epenthesis ◽  
Short Vowels ◽  
Epenthetic Vowel

AbstractLamkang is a Trans-Himalayan language spoken in the Chandel District of Manipur, India by under 10,000 ethnically Naga people. Due to a complex person indexation system in Lamkang clauses, multiple prefixes with the shape C- are attached to a verb stem creating lexemes with the shape CCCCVC. To make such forms pronounceable, speakers insert super-short vowel-like segments between the C- prefixes. Combining acoustic analysis with speakers’ intuitions about syllable structure, we examine the nature of these segments, arguing that an accurate phonetic description of Lamkang vowels must include these super-short vowels, as well as long and short vowels, which are phonemically distinct. We call these super-short vowels excrescent, following the terminology discussed in Hall (2011. Vowel epenthesis. In Marc van Oostendorp, Colin J. Ewen, Elizabeth V. Hume & Keren Rice (eds.), The blackwell companion to phonology, 1576–1596. Oxford: Blackwell. doi: 10.1002/9781444335262.wbctp0067: 1584). The excrescent vowel is a type of epenthetic vowel, sometimes also called “intrusive”, and is typified by its short duration and centralized quality distinct from lexical vowels. It is unstressed and has the phonetic effect of helping to transition between consonants. We show that the excrescent vowels in Lamkang have formant structures that barely resemble the characteristic formant profiles of the short and long vowels. While excrescent vowels are not contrastive, they are phonologically relevant because they have just enough sonority to form nuclei of CiVCii syllables where Cii is often ambisyllabic with the following syllable. The Lamkang data show that while any language-specific phonotactic constraints must reference the syllable, what constitutes a syllable must include the possibility of excrescent vowels as nuclei.

scholarly journals Syllable weight, vowel length and focus in Lebanese Arabic

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niamh Kelly
Keyword(s):  
Syllable Structure ◽  
Short Vowel ◽  
Vowel Duration ◽  
Consonant Cluster ◽  
Vowel Length ◽  
Syllable Weight ◽  
Contrastive Focus ◽  
Short Vowels ◽  
Levantine Arabic ◽  
Lebanese Arabic

Research on a variety of languages has shown that vowel duration is influenced by phonological vowel length as well as syllable structure (e.g., Maddieson, 1997). Further, the phonological concept of a mora has been shown to relate to phonetic measurements of duration (Cohn, 2003; Hubbard, 1993; Port, Dalby, & O'Dell, 1987). In Levantine Arabic, non-final closed syllables that contain a long vowel have been described as partaking in mora-sharing (Broselow, Chen, & Huffman, 1997; Khattab & Al-Tamimi, 2014). The current investigation examines the effect of vowel length and syllable structure on vowel duration, as well as how this interacts with durational effects of prosodic focus. Disyllabic words with initial, stressed syllables that were either open or closed and contained either a long or a short vowel wereexamined when non-focused and in contrastive focus. Contrastive focus was associated with longer words and syllables but not vowels. Short vowels were shorter when in a syllable closed by a singleton but not by a geminate consonant, while long vowels were not shortened before coda singletons. An analysis is proposed whereby long vowels followed by an intervocalic consonant cluster are parsed as open syllables, with the first consonant forming a semisyllable (Kiparsky, 2003), while long vowels followed by geminate consonants partake in mora-sharing (Broselow, Huffman, Chen, & Hsieh, 1995). The results also indicate compensatory shortening for short vowels followed by a singleton coda.

scholarly journals Alternation of upper and non-upper vowels in personal-possessive noun affixes in the Surgut dialect of the Khanty language

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (9) ◽  
pp. 78-101
Author(s):  
Natalya B. Koshkareva ◽  
Timofey V. Timkin ◽  
Polina I. Li
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Analysis ◽  
Acoustic Analysis ◽  
Short Vowel ◽  
Person Plural ◽  
R Language ◽  
Plural Noun ◽  
Short Vowels ◽  
Singular Noun ◽  
Khanty Mansi Autonomous

Personal-possessive 1st and 2nd person singular noun affixes in the Surgut dialect of the Khanty language, as well as 1st person plural noun affixes (irregular in various dialects) with singular objects are represented by several allomorphs: 1SG.SG ‒ =əм / =эм / =ам; 2SG.SG ‒ =əн / =э (=эн) / =а; 1PL.SG ‒ (?)=əв / =эв / =ив / =ув / =ав. When the personal-possessive affixes are attached, vowel alternation occurs in several roots. The choice of specific allomorphs and the presence or absence of alternation depends on the root vowels. In roots with short vowels, there is no alternation, and affixes with lower vowels are used: =ам (1SG.SG) and =а (1SG.SG). When the personal-possessive affixes are attached to roots with long vowels, lower vowels are replaced by corresponding upper vowels. After roots with long upper vowels, =эм (1SG.SG) and =э (2SG.SG) affix variants are used, and no alternation occurs, because vowels can no longer be ‘moved’ upwards. After stems with long non-upper vowels, the =əм (1SG.SG) and =əн (2SG.SG) affixes are used, and alternation takes place in the root. This is not true for some specific cases: in roots with long middle vowels, these processes may occur according to the upper vowel model, or the lower vowel model; for example, the lexeme вӧӈ ‘son-in-law’, which contains a short vowel, can be followed by affixes with the vowel э, typical for roots with long upper vowels. Our research is based on field materials collected in the Surgut District, Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, or Yugra, in 2017‒2019. The audio records were segmented and annotated in the Praat software. Acoustic analysis and further statistical analysis of our data was performed on the basis of Emu-SDMS corpus system and R language.

Snapshots of tellings in interactions between adults and children aged two, three and three and a half in an Australian context

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 119-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Filipi
Keyword(s):  
Social Activity ◽  
Second Child ◽  
Object A ◽  
Birthday Party ◽  
Final Sample ◽  
The Social ◽  
Two Samples ◽  
Adults And Children ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Australian English

This paper examines how and by whom tellings with two young children are triggered at ages 23, 36 and 42 months. The data for the investigation is derived from a larger Australian English corpus of over 50 hours of interactions in the home, although one of the children is a bilingual Italian/ English-speaking child. The data is derived from two parent/child dyads, and in the case of the child aged 42 months, a triadic interaction between a mother, her own child and a second child. Using the micro-analytic methods of conversation analysis, the study analyses five samples of tellings. The first two describe how a child, Cassandra, aged 23 months, is invited to recount events of her day by her parents. The trigger for these tellings is the social activity of sharing everyday routine events. The next two samples focus on Rosie at 36 months who is also invited to share a telling by her parent about a birthday party celebration and one about a neighbourhood cat, Claude. The first telling is triggered by an object, a balloon from a birthday party from the day before, while the second is triggered by play involving the character of a cat, initially derived from a favourite story, Hairy Maclary. In the final sample, Cassandra, aged 42 months, initiates a telling about an experience at her grandmother’s which is trigged by a picture in a book. The analyses in each case reveal the interactional issues that arise in the action of telling and how these are dealt with by all participants. By focusing on the three ages, key features in the children’s participation in storytelling are uncovered.

Articulation of Vowel Length Contrasts in Australian English

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise Ratko ◽  
Michael Proctor ◽  
Felicity Cox
Keyword(s):  
Vowel Length ◽  
Australian English

Acoustic cues to coda stop voicing contrasts in Australian English-speaking children

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Julien MILLASSEAU ◽  
Ivan YUEN ◽  
Laurence BRUGGEMAN ◽  
Katherine DEMUTH
Keyword(s):  
Hearing Loss ◽  
Vowel Duration ◽  
Acoustic Cues ◽  
Word Onset ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Australian English ◽  
Children With Hearing Loss ◽  
Phonological Contrasts

Abstract While voicing contrasts in word-onset position are acquired relatively early, much less is known about how and when they are acquired in word-coda position, where accurate production of these contrasts is also critical for distinguishing words (e.g., do g vs. do ck ). This study examined how the acoustic cues to coda voicing contrasts are realized in the speech of 4-year-old Australian English-speaking children. The results showed that children used similar acoustic cues to those of adults, including longer vowel duration and more frequent voice bar for voiced stops, and longer closure and burst durations for voiceless stops along with more frequent irregular pitch periods. This suggests that 4-year-olds have acquired productive use of the acoustic cues to coda voicing contrasts, though implementations are not yet fully adult-like. The findings have implications for understanding the development of phonological contrasts in populations for whom these may be challenging, such as children with hearing loss.

Grammar of Skolt Saami

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Feist
Keyword(s):  
Acoustic Analysis ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Vowel Length ◽  
Descriptive Grammar ◽  
Case Marking ◽  
Endangered Language ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Auxiliary Verb ◽  
Northeast Finland

Skolt Saami is a Finno-Ugric language spoken primarily in northeast Finland by less than 300 people. The aim of this descriptive grammar is to provide an overview of all the major grammatical aspects of the language. It comprises descriptions of Skolt Saami phonology, morphophonology, morphology, morphosyntax and syntax. A compilation of interlinearised texts is provided in Chapter 11. Skolt Saami is a phonologically complex language, displaying contrastive vowel length, consonant gradation, suprasegmental palatalisation and vowel height alternations. It is also well known for being one of the few languages to display three distinctive degrees of quantity; indeed, this very topic has already been the subject of an acoustic analysis (McRobbie-Utasi 1999). Skolt Saami is also a morphologically complex language. Nominals in Skolt Saami belong to twelve different inflectional classes. They inflect for number and nine grammatical cases and may also mark possession, giving rise to over seventy distinct forms. Verbs belong to four different inflectional classes and inflect for person, number, tense and mood. Inflection is marked by suffixes, many of which are fused morphemes. Other typologically interesting features of the language, which are covered in this grammar, include (i) the existence of distinct predicative and attributive forms of adjectives, (ii) the case-marking of subject and object nominals which have cardinal numerals as determiners, and (iii) the marking of negation with a negative auxiliary verb. Skolt Saami is a seriously endangered language and it is thus hoped that this grammar will serve both as a tool to linguistic researchers and as an impetus to the speech community in any future revitalisation efforts.

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