/kwo/ and /y/ in Taiwan Mandarin: Social Factors and Phonetic Variation

AbstractThis viewpoint paper provides an overview of explicit and implicit methods in sociophonetic perception studies, illustrates how they can be used to measure the relationship between social factors and phonetic variation, and demonstrates how they can prove useful complements to more traditional sociolinguistic methods. The first section addresses explicit measures and gives an example of an explicit measures task exploring the relationships between phonetic variation and perceptions of speaker sexual orientation, height, age, and social class in Puerto Rican Spanish. Results show that an explicit measures task can provide a window into fine-grained phonetic variation associated with social factors that is not available through traditional impressionistic methods. The second part of the paper provides an overview of implicit measures, including an example of the use of implicit measures in a response time task that quantitatively assesses the relationship between /s/ variation and perceptions of sexual orientation in Puerto Rican Spanish. The paper concludes with a summary of how the results gathered from these types of experiments can further our understanding of theoretical issues in Hispanic Linguistics.

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Articulatory Evidence for the Syllable-final Nasal Merging in Taiwan Mandarin

Language and Speech ◽

10.1177/0023830920948084 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 002383092094808

Author(s):

Chenhao Chiu ◽

Yu-An Lu

Keyword(s):

Social Factors ◽

3D Model ◽

Model Simulations ◽

Context Sensitive ◽

Taiwan Mandarin ◽

Merging Process

Syllable-final nasals /n/ and /ŋ/ in Taiwan Mandarin have been reported to be undergoing merging. Perceptual studies have reported that the alleged merging is context-sensitive and the merging directions are vowel-dependent. These findings have been mostly attributed to dialectal and social factors. The current study uses ultrasonography to capture postures of the entire tongue during the production of syllable-final nasals. The results, though confirming previous findings that the merging directions of syllable-final nasals are vowel-dependent, are best accounted for by the biomechanics of the tongue, as supported by computational 3D model simulations. Furthermore, for some speakers, although nasals were merged in terms of tongue posture, the degrees of nasalization of the preceding vowel were contrastive, suggesting that the merging process may be incomplete.

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Domestic Integration and Suicide in the Provinces of Canada

Crisis ◽

10.1027//0227-5910.20.2.59 ◽

1999 ◽

Vol 20 (2) ◽

pp. 59-63 ◽

Cited By ~ 20

Author(s):

Antoon A. Leenaars ◽

David Lester

Keyword(s):

Social Factors ◽

Positive Association ◽

Negative Association ◽

Birth Rates ◽

Marriage Rates ◽

Suicide Rates ◽

The Social ◽

Divorce Rates ◽

Low Levels ◽

Over Time

Canada's rate of suicide varies from province to province. The classical theory of suicide, which attempts to explain the social suicide rate, stems from Durkheim, who argued that low levels of social integration and regulation are associated with high rates of suicide. The present study explored whether social factors (divorce, marriage, and birth rates) do in fact predict suicide rates over time for each province (period studied: 1950-1990). The results showed a positive association between divorce rates and suicide rates, and a negative association between birth rates and suicide rates. Marriage rates showed no consistent association, an anomaly as compared to research from other nations.

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Illness Perception and Its Changes During Six Months After Cardiac Rehabilitation

European Journal of Health Psychology ◽

10.1027/2512-8442/a000034 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 26 (3) ◽

pp. 90-100

Author(s):

Justė Lukoševičiūtė ◽

Kastytis Šmigelskas

Keyword(s):

New York ◽

Social Factors ◽

Nyha Class ◽

Illness Perception ◽

Heart Association ◽

Class Iii ◽

Cognitive Representations ◽

Coronary Syndrome ◽

Type D ◽

New York Heart Association

Abstract. Illness perception is a concept that reflects patients' emotional and cognitive representations of disease. This study assessed the illness perception change during 6 months in 195 patients (33% women and 67% men) with acute coronary syndrome, taking into account the biological, psychological, and social factors. At baseline, more threatening illness perception was observed in women, persons aged 65 years or more, with poorer functional capacity (New York Heart Association [NYHA] class III or IV) and comorbidities ( p < .05). Type D personality was the only independent factor related to more threatening illness perception (βs = 0.207, p = .006). At follow-up it was found that only self-reported cardiovascular impairment plays the role in illness perception change (βs = 0.544, p < .001): patients without impairment reported decreasing threats of illness, while the ones with it had a similar perception of threat like at baseline. Other biological, psychological, and social factors were partly associated with illness perception after an acute cardiac event but not with perception change after 6 months.

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