Perspectives on the motivations for phonetic convergence

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. e12268 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evan Hugh Coles-Harris
Keyword(s):  
2012 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 190-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer S. Pardo ◽  
Rachel Gibbons ◽  
Alexandra Suppes ◽  
Robert M. Krauss

2015 ◽  
pp. 97-113
Author(s):  
Irena Sawicka

Continuity or Discontinuity – the Case of Macedonian PhoneticsThe article presents its principal topic of the continuity of linguistic phenomena based on the material of Macedonian phonetics, treated as a constituent of south-east European phonetics, and not as an element of the Slavic world. It provides, firstly, a static perspective, produced by enumerating typologically relevant features. Seen from this perspective, Macedonian phonetics is a component of the Central Balkanic area. Secondly, emphasis has been put on processes of phonetic convergence and their differences from those of grammatical convergence. These difference account for the instability of phonetic features, or in any case their generally lesser stability compared to morphosyntactic features, but on the other hand also for the possibility for some phenomena to survive in small areas, in a few dialects, and the possibility for linguistic features to reappear, which stems from alternating cross-dialectal interference. The Macedonian language territory abounds in such situations due to its multi-ethnicity, which is greater here than anywhere else in the Balkans. Particular in this respect is the area of Aegean Macedonia, where Slavic dialects are “protected” from the influence of the literary norm – albeit in the case of Macedonian even the realisation of the literary norm is not entirely stable in terms of phonetics.Ciągłość czy jej brak – casus macedońskiej fonetykiNadrzędny temat dotyczący ciągłości zjawisk przedstawiony został na materiale macedońskiej fonetyki. Fonetyka macedońska została rozpatrzona jako składnik fonetyki Europy południowo-wschodniej, a nie jako element świata słowiańskiego. Przedstawiono, po pierwsze, obraz statyczny, wynikający z wyliczania relewantnych typologicznie cech. Ten obraz klasyfikuje fonetykę macedońską jako składnik centralnego obszaru bałkańskiego. Po drugie, położono akcent na przebieg procesów konwergencyjnych w zakresie fonetyki i na różnice w stosunku do takich procesów w zakresie gramatyki. Wynika z nich: nietrwałość cech fonetycznych, a w każdym razie ogólnie mniejsza trwałość cech fonetycznych niż cech morfo-składniowych, ale też możliwość przetrwania pewnych zjawisk na małych obszarach, w paru gwarach, możliwość powracania cech fonetycznych, co wynika z naprzemiennej interferencji międzydialektalnej. Terytorium języka macedońskiego obfituje w takie sytuacje ze względu na większą multietniczność niż gdziekolwiek indziej na Bałkanach. Szczególny pod tym względem jest obszar Macedonii Egejskiej, gdzie dialekty słowiańskie są „zabezpieczone” przed działaniem normy literackiej. Chociaż w wypadku języka macedońskiego nawet realizacja normy literackiej pod względem fonetycznym nie jest całkiem stabilna.


2010 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 437-456 ◽  
Author(s):  
Molly Babel

AbstractRecent research has been concerned with whether speech accommodation is an automatic process or determined by social factors (e.g. Trudgill 2008). This paper investigates phonetic accommodation in New Zealand English when speakers of NZE are responding to an Australian talker in a speech production task. NZ participants were randomly assigned to either a Positive or Negative group, where they were either flattered or insulted by the Australian. Overall, the NZE speakers accommodated to the speech of the AuE speaker. The flattery/insult manipulation did not influence degree of accommodation, but accommodation was predicted by participants' scores on an Implicit Association Task that measured Australia and New Zealand biases. Participants who scored with a pro-Australia bias were more likely to accommodate to the speech of the AuE speaker. Social biases about how a participant feels about a speaker predicted the extent of accommodation. These biases are, crucially, simultaneously automatic and social. (Speech accommodation, phonetic convergence, New Zealand English, dialect contact)*


2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 208-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miquel Simonet ◽  
Mark Amengual

Purpose: This study investigates the effects of bilingual language modes (or settings) on the speech production patterns of a group of early Catalan/Spanish bilinguals from Majorca, Spain. Our main research question was as follows: are bilingual speech patterns modulated by the level of (co-)activation of a bilingual’s two languages? Design: Bilingual participants were classified as a function of their linguistic experience (or dominance), from Catalan- to Spanish-dominant. Subsequently, we recorded their speech in two experimental settings: a unilingual setting in which only Catalan words were uttered, and a bilingual setting in which both Catalan and Spanish words (cognates) were produced in random order. Data and analysis: The study examined the acoustic realization of Spanish and Catalan unstressed /a/, which surfaces as [a] in Spanish but is reduced to schwa, [ə], in Catalan. The acoustic characteristics of unstressed /a/ were explored across the two languages and the two experimental settings. Findings: Catalan unstressed /a/, which was similarly reduced to schwa in the speech of all participants, became slightly more similar to Spanish unstressed /a/ (i.e., it had a higher first formant) when produced alongside Spanish words (bilingual setting) than when produced in a Catalan unilingual setting. There were no effects of linguistic experience, and the effects of setting did not interact with experience. Originality: Very few studies have reported the effects of dynamic cross-linguistic interference in phonetic production, and even fewer have reported them with a phonetic variable resulting from a language-specific phonological process (unstressed vowel reduction) rather than a phonemic contrast. Implications: These findings suggest that cross-linguistic interaction is dynamic and modulated by language activation, and that an absence of dominance effects does not necessarily entail an absence of online cross-linguistic phonetic influence.


2017 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 244-274
Author(s):  
Claire Cowie ◽  
Anna Pande

Abstract In outsourced voice-based services (call centres are a typical example), an agent providing a service is likely to accommodate their speech to that of the customer. In services outsourced to India, as in other postcolonial settings, the customer accent typically does not have a place in that agent’s repertoire. This presents an opportunity to test whether exposure to the customer accent through telephone work promotes phonetic convergence, and/or whether social factors are implicated in convergence. In this map task experiment, 16 IT workers from Pune (half of whom regularly spoke to American colleagues on the telephone) gave directions to American followers. There was evidence of imitation of the bath vowel with an American addressee. However, imitation did not depend on exposure alone. Attitudes to American English, social networks and individuals’ sense of themselves as performers affected their behaviour in the experiment.


2020 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 7-17
Author(s):  
Karolina Jankowska ◽  
Tomasz Kuczmarski ◽  
Grażyna Demenko

Abstract The matter of shadowing natural speech has been discussed in many studies and papers. However, there is very little knowledge of human phonetical convergence to synthesized speech. To find out more about this issue an experiment in the Polish language was conducted. Two types of stimuli were used – natural speech and synthesised speech. Five sets of sentences with various phonetic phenomena in Polish were prepared. A group of twenty persons were recorded which gave the total number of 100 samples for each phenomenon. The summary of results shows convergence in both natural and synthesised speech in set number 1, 2, 4 while in group 3 and 5 the convergence was not observed. The baseline production shown that the great majority of participants prefer ɛn/ɛm version of phonetic feature which was reflected in 83 out of 100 sentences. In the shadowing natural speech participants changed ɛn/ɛm to ɛw/ɛ̃ in 26 cases and in 4 ɛw/ɛ̃ to ɛn/ɛm. When shadowing synthesised speech shift from ɛn/ɛm to ɛw/ɛ̃ in 18 sentences and 4 from ɛw/ɛ̃ to ɛn/ɛm. The intonation convergence was also observed in the perceptual analysis, however the analysis of F0 statistics did not show statistically significant differences.


2021 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-114
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Kusal

This article deals with the issue of structural and semantic relationships in the area of Russian-Polish interlingual homonymy, such as exclusion, inclusion, and hybridization. The analysis of Russian-Polish homonymous doublets made it possible to specify two basic reasons for the differences in meaning of the lexemes in both languages: semantic divergence of the words with a common etymon (disintegration of polysemy) and phonetic convergence. The study revealed that interlanguage Russian-Polish correspondences with a partial coincidence of lexical meanings make up the largest group of interlanguage homo-pairs. The types of semantic relations described at the word level do not exhaust the variety of semantic relations between Russian-Polish interlanguage homonyms. The depth of meaning development is another theoretical problem of modern lexicology and lexicography. In addition to the semantic differences between Russian-Polish homo-pairs, there may be more complex relationships. They are observed in cases where stylistic and functional discrepancies are layered on semantic inconsistencies. The differences in pragmatic significance are the most significant and can form the subject of independent study.


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