Vowel Devoicing in Contemporary French

2003 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
CAROLINE L. SMITH
Keyword(s):  
Contextual Factors ◽  
Reading Test ◽  
Final Position ◽  
Vowel Reduction ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Physical Mechanisms ◽  
Sentence Level ◽  
High Vowels ◽  
Vowel Devoicing

Fagyal and Moisset (1999) suggested that vowel devoicing in standard French occurs most often in phrase-final high vowels. An experiment testing the effect of both immediate segmental context and sentence-level contextual factors was conducted to further identify the linguistic features involved. Six French speakers were recorded reading test sentences. Devoicing only occurred in sentence-final vowels, but in more contexts than expected. From a cross-linguistic perspective the distribution of devoicing in French is unusual. Final position is prosodically prominent in French, whereas in many languages devoicing is a form of vowel reduction associated with lack of prominence. Different physical mechanisms may therefore be responsible.

scholarly journals Assessing the Representation of Phonological Rules by a Production Study of Non-Words in Coratino

Phonetica ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 77 (6) ◽  
pp. 405-428
Author(s):  
Jonathan Bucci ◽  
Paolo Lorusso ◽  
Silvain Gerber ◽  
Mirko Grimaldi ◽  
Jean-Luc Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
Southern Italy ◽  
Production Data ◽  
Data Display ◽  
Vowel Reduction ◽  
Distributional Properties ◽  
Complex Process ◽  
Production Study ◽  
Production Experiment ◽  
High Vowels ◽  
Formal Rules

Phonological regularities in a given language can be described as a set of formal rules applied to logical expressions (e.g., the value of a distinctive feature) or alternatively as distributional properties emerging from the phonetic substance. An indirect way to assess how phonology is represented in a speaker’s mind consists in testing how phonological regularities are transferred to non-words. This is the objective of this study, focusing on Coratino, a dialect from southern Italy spoken in the Apulia region. In Coratino, a complex process of vowel reduction operates, transforming the /i e ɛ u o ɔ a/ system for stressed vowels into a system with a smaller number of vowels for unstressed configurations, characterized by four major properties: (1) all word-initial vowels are maintained, even unstressed; (2) /a/ is never reduced, even unstressed; (3) unstressed vowels /i e ɛ u o ɔ/ are protected against reduction when they are adjacent to a consonant that shares articulation (labiality and velarity for /u o ɔ/ and palatality for /i e ɛ/); (4) when they are reduced, high vowels are reduced to /ɨ/ and mid vowels to /ə/. A production experiment was carried out on 19 speakers of Coratino to test whether these properties were displayed with non-words. The production data display a complex pattern which seems to imply both explicit/formal rules and distributional properties transferred statistically to non-words. Furthermore, the speakers appear to vary considerably in how they perform this task. Altogether, this suggests that both formal rules and distributional principles contribute to the encoding of Coratino phonology in the speaker’s mind.

‘Die’ and its different situation-bound utterances in Persian

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 408-431
Author(s):  
Mostafa Morady Moghaddam ◽  
Soodeh Babaee
Keyword(s):  
Contextual Factors ◽  
Social Needs ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Cultural Understanding ◽  
Prior Context ◽  
Situational Characteristics ◽  
Ways Of Thinking ◽  
Primary Focus ◽  
Nonstandard Situation

Abstract In this paper, using the tenets of Situation-Bound Utterances (SBUs) (Kecskes 2000, 2010) and referring to Pragmatic Act Theory (PAT) (Mey 2001), the verb mordan (‘to die’ in English), and its different realisations are analysed among Persian speakers. Through the analysis of authentic talk in interaction, this study aims to ponder nonstandard (situation-derived) meanings of the term mordan and its different SBUs. The primary focus of the study is on strings of linguistic events as well as the “conventions of usage” (Morgan 1978) or cultural understanding that may lead to standard and nonstandard meanings considering mordan and its different SBUs. The findings suggest that the SBUs regarding mordan, a neglected sociolinguistic context, not only is affected by its actual situational characteristics but also by prior context encoded in utterances used, which manifests culture-specific ways of thinking (Capone 2018; Wong 2010). Overall, 19 SBUs and 7 generic categories were identified with regard to the verb mordan in Persian. This paper exhibits that mordan is a versatile verb, which, when combined with situational/contextual factors, conveys different nonstandard functions that fulfil social needs. This study will also refer to linguistic features underlying SBUs that are influential in assigning various distinct meanings to the verb mordan in Persian.

Readability assessment for text simplification

2014 ◽  
Vol 165 (2) ◽  
pp. 194-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sowmya Vajjala ◽  
Detmar Meurers
Keyword(s):  
Standard Test ◽  
Reading Level ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Text Simplification ◽  
Sentence Level ◽  
Test Corpus ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Readability Assessment ◽  
Document Level ◽  
Readability Formulas

Readability assessment can play a role in the evaluation of a simplification algorithm as well as in the identification of what to simplify. While some previous research used traditional readability formulas to evaluate text simplification, there is little research into the utility of readability assessment for identifying and analyzing sentence level targets for text simplification. We explore this aspect in our paper by first constructing a readability model that is generalizable across corpora and across genres and later adapting this model to make sentence-level readability judgments. First, we report on experiments establishing that the readability model integrating a broad range of linguistic features works well at a document level, performing on par with the best systems on a standard test corpus. Next, the model is confirmed to be transferable to different text genres. Moving from documents to sentences, we investigate the model’s ability to correctly identify the difference in reading level between a sentence and its human simplified version. We conclude that readability models can be useful for identifying simplification targets for human writers and for evaluating machine generated simplifications.

scholarly journals Reconstructing phonological change: duration and syllable structure in Latin vowel reduction

Phonology ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 465-504 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ranjan Sen
Keyword(s):  
Initial Stress ◽  
Syllable Structure ◽  
The Other ◽  
Vowel Reduction ◽  
Secondary Stress ◽  
Early Archaic ◽  
Quantitative Changes ◽  
High Vowels ◽  
Phonological Change

During the fixed initial-stress period of Latin (sixth to fifth centuries BC), internal open syllable vowels were totally neutralised, usually raising to /i/ (*per.fa.ki.oː>perficiō ‘I complete’), whereas in closed syllables /a/ was raised to /e/, but the other vowels remained distinct (*per.fak.tos>perfectus ‘completed’). Miller (1972) explains closed syllable resistance by positing internal secondary stress on closed syllables. However, evidence from vowel reduction and syncope suggest that internal syllables never bore stress in early archaic times. A typologically unusual alternative is proposed: contrary to the pattern normally found (Maddieson 1985), vowels had longer duration in closed syllables than in open syllables, as in Turkish and Finnish, thus permitting speakers to attain the targets for non-high vowels in closed syllables. This durational pattern is manifested not only in vowel reduction, but also in the quantitative changes seen in ‘classical’ and ‘inverse’ compensatory lengthenings, the development CVːCV > CVC and ‘superheavy’ degemination (VːCCV > VːCV).

scholarly journals Linguistic Feature Analyses of Chinese Learners of English and Contributions of Discrete Features to Perceptual Judgment

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 22
Author(s):  
Hsueh Chu Chen
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Discourse Markers ◽  
Perceptual Judgment ◽  
Final Position ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Linguistic Feature ◽  
Mainland Chinese ◽  
Perceptual Judgments ◽  
Chinese Learners ◽  
Positive Correlations

This study (a) conducted a feature analysis of the spoken data of Chinese university students in pronunciation, grammar, and discourse, (b) investigated the contributions of the discrete linguistic features to the perceptual ratings on foreign accent, comprehensibility, delivery, and general language use. Ten university learners were selected from the Spoken Corpus of the English of Hong Kong and Mainland Chinese learners (http://corpus.ied.edu.hk/phonetics/), in which two speakers were paired up to conduct a five minutes interview. Three-level analyses were done to investigate Chinese learners’ linguistic features. Forty listeners from four L1 language backgrounds were recruited to rate the speech samples. The results show that strongly negative correlations were found between the production and perceptual rating scores for “omission of consonant(s) in final position” “redundant article ‘the’”, “silent pauses” and “discourse markers,” suggesting that the four features can be perceived and exert strong negative influences on perceptual judgments. Pronunciation rating had the strongest positive correlations with “foreign accentedness”; grammar rating had the strongest positive correlations with “general language use”; discourse rating had the strongest positive correlations with “general delivery”, and “general language use.” Regarding the rating of comprehensibility, “misuse of conjunctions” “redundant article ‘the’”, “silent pauses”, “lengthening”, and “stressing” showed strong negative correlations whereas “filled pauses” had strong positive correlations with it. Regarding the rating of foreign accentedness, strong negative correlations were found between “omission of consonant(s) in final position”, “lengthening”, “discourse markers”, and “stressing” and the rating of “foreign accentedness”.

scholarly journals A NEUTRALIZAÇÃO DAS ÁTONAS

2004 ◽  
Vol 61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leda Bisol
Keyword(s):  
Brazilian Portuguese ◽  
Final Position ◽  
High Vowels ◽  
The One ◽  
Minimum System ◽  
Phonological System

O sistema fonológico do português brasileiro possui duas regras de neutralização em favor da vogal alta, e não três, como se vinha postulando. O subsistema assimétrico de quatro vogais da postônica não-final é apenas um efeito de freqüência, pois ambas as vogais médias /e,o/ mostram-se sensíveis ao alçamento. Parece que se trata de expansão do sistema mínimo de três vogais que, em busca da regularização das átonas postônicas, cria variação entre dois subsistemas, o de cinco e o de três vogais. Abstract The phonological system of Brazilian Portuguese has two rules of neutralization in favor of high vowels, and not three, as it has been postulated. The subsystem of four post-tonic vowels in non-final position is only an effect of frequency, for both middle vowels /e,o/ are shown to be sensitive to raising. It seems to be a case of expansion of the minimum system of three vowels which, in search of regularization of post-tonic vowels, causes variation between two subsystems, the one with five and the one with three.

scholarly journals Vowel reduction in word-final position by early and late Spanish-English bilinguals

PLoS ONE ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. e0175226 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Byers ◽  
Mehmet Yavas
Keyword(s):  
Final Position ◽  
Vowel Reduction

scholarly journals On the Hierarchical Information in a Single Contextualised Word Representation (Student Abstract)

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (10) ◽  
pp. 13917-13918
Author(s):  
Dean L. Slack ◽  
Mariann Hardey ◽  
Noura Al Moubayed
Keyword(s):  
Language Processing ◽  
Fine Tuning ◽  
Language Models ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Widespread Application ◽  
Linear Classifiers ◽  
Sentence Level ◽  
Level Information ◽  
Word Representation ◽  
And Performance

Contextual word embeddings produced by neural language models, such as BERT or ELMo, have seen widespread application and performance gains across many Natural Language Processing tasks, suggesting rich linguistic features encoded in their representations. This work aims to investigate to what extent any linguistic hierarchical information is encoded into a single contextual embedding. Using labelled constituency trees, we train simple linear classifiers on top of single contextualised word representations for ancestor sentiment analysis tasks at multiple constituency levels of a sentence. To assess the presence of hierarchical information throughout the networks, the linear classifiers are trained using representations produced by each intermediate layer of BERT and ELMo variants. We show that with no fine-tuning, a single contextualised representation encodes enough syntactic and semantic sentence-level information to significantly outperform a non-contextual baseline for classifying 5-class sentiment of its ancestor constituents at multiple levels of the constituency tree. Additionally, we show that both LSTM and transformer architectures trained on similarly sized datasets achieve similar levels of performance on these tasks. Future work looks to expand the analysis to a wider range of NLP tasks and contextualisers.

scholarly journals Metrical conditioning of word-final devoicing in Polish

2019 ◽  
pp. 43-57
Author(s):  
Tomasz Ciszewski
Keyword(s):  
Information Loss ◽  
Final Position ◽  
Vowel Reduction ◽  
Contextual Conditioning ◽  
The Absolute

The present paper investigates a segmental phenomenon traditionally referred to as word-final obstruent devoicing in Polish. It is generally assumed that the context in which it applies is solely related to the absolute word-final position before silence. By inference, full voicing of a wordfinal obstruent is retained only when (i) it is followed by a voiced segment (a vowel or a consonant) in an utterance or when (ii) it is appended with a suffix which begins with a vowel. In this research a different group of factors which trigger the process is explored, namely the position of the obstruent within the metrical foot. If, as argued by Harris (2009), noninitial position within the foot is a typical lenition site (contrary to Iverson and Salmons 2007) and if devoicing is regarded as a special manifestation of lenition (through information loss, similarly to vowel reduction), a purely segmental (contextual) conditioning for voicing retention in obstruents word-finally cannot be maintained.

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