scholarly journals Vowel Elision in Ikhin, an Edoid Language in South-south Nigeria

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 352-361
Author(s):  
Opoola Bolanle T. ◽  
Olaide Oladimeji
Keyword(s):  
Syllable Structure ◽  
Word Boundary ◽  
Vowel Quality ◽  
African Languages ◽  
Its Analysis

In this paper, attention is on the basic factors that come into force in determining whether or not vowel will elide and which of the V1 and V2 in a sequence should disappear in any environment. This paper also examines the phonological, morphological and syntactic reasons behind vowel elision as a syllable structure process in Ikhin language. As in the case of related African languages that have been previously described by various scholars, this paper presents how vowel elision works in Ikhin and the problems arising from its analysis. In this study, the focus is on the explanation and analysis of factors such as boundary, morpheme structure and vowel quality which actually determine whether or not elision should take place in Ikhin. Apart from factors such as vowel quality and boundary, one other factor with respect to elision or glide formation is the syllable structure of the verbs and nouns in Ikhin. Ikhin nouns are either disyllabic i.e. V(C)V or trisyllabic, etc. It is argued that the operation of vowel elision is blocked in disyllabic nouns as /i/, /o/ and /u/ form glides when either of them occurs as V1 whereas vowel elision rather than glide formation takes place in trisyllabic nouns. The study concludes based on data not previously discussed in the language that elision is driven by syllable-based and syntactic-based analyses and that a major strategy of discouraging vowel cluster in Ikhin is vowel elision because the syllable structure of the language prohibits cluster of vowels within word or across word boundary.

scholarly journals EDGE features and French liaison

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse L. Tseng
Keyword(s):  
Word Boundary ◽  
Actual Behavior ◽  
Its Analysis ◽  
Syntactic Constraints ◽  
Edge Features

This paper presents a descriptive overview of liaison, giving an idea of the scope of the phenomenon and possible approaches to its analysis. As for the contextual conditions on liaison, in many cases, the traditional notions of obligatory and prohibited liaison do not reflect speakers' actual behavior. It turns out that general syntactic constraints cannot determine the systematic presence or absence of liaison at a given word boundary. At best, specific constraints can be formulated to target particular classes of constructions. To express such constraints, I propose a system of representation in the framework of HPSG. The use of EDGE features (introduced by Miller (1992) for a GPSG treatment of French) provides the necessary link between phrasal descriptions and the properties of phrase-peripheral elements.

scholarly journals The representation of syllable structure in HPSG

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse Tseng
Keyword(s):  
Syllable Structure ◽  
Word Boundary ◽  
Abstract Representation ◽  
The Core ◽  
Separate Part

This paper proposes a representation for syllable structure in HPSG, building on previous work by Bird and Klein (1994), Höhle (1999), and Crysmann (2002). Instead of mapping segments into a a separate part of the sign where syllables are represented structurally, information about syllabification is encoded directly in the list of segments, the core of the PHONOLOGY value. Higher level prosodic phenomena can operate on a more abstract representation of the sequence of syllables derived from the syllabified segments list. The approach is illustrated with analyses of some word-boundary phenomena conditioned by syllable structure in French.

scholarly journals Sonority and syllable structure: The case of Burmese tone

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 24
Author(s):  
Kate Mooney ◽  
Chiara Repetti-Ludlow
Keyword(s):  
Syllable Structure ◽  
Vowel Quality ◽  
Phonetic Study ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
General Preferences ◽  
Recurrent Theme ◽  
New View

The relationship between tone and sonority has been a recurrent theme in the literature over recent years, raising questions of how supraseg- mental features like tone interact with segmental or prosodic qualities, such as vowel quality, sonority, and duration (de Lacy 2006; Gordon 2001). In this paper, we present an original phonetic study that investigates the relationship between tone, vowel quality, and sonority in Burmese. These are not simple to disentangle in Burmese, since the language has a unique vowel alternation system where certain vowels can only combine with certain tones or codas. While some researchers have analyzed these alternations as directly stemming from tone itself (Kelly 2012), we argue that the vowel alternations are tone-independent. We propose that the Burmese vowel alternations follow from general preferences on sonority sequencing (cf. Clements 1990), and so there is no need for tone and segmental quality to interact directly. Not only does this explain the complex vowel system of Burmese, but this proposal casts a new view on recurrent issues in Burmese phonology, such as the representation of underlying tonal contrasts and minor syllables.

scholarly journals Degrees of Transparency in Word Formation

1981 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Cutler
Keyword(s):  
Word Formation ◽  
Word Boundary ◽  
Base Word ◽  
Vowel Quality ◽  
New Words

New words can be formed by adding suffixes to other words. Derived words formed in this way may be phonologically transparent with respect to their base word, or they may be opaque; monstrous is preserved in monstrous#ness but not in monstro+sity. The juncture between suffix and stem is either a word boundary (#) or a formative boundary (+), and while word boundary derivations are always transparent, formative boundary derivations usually result in stress shifting to a syllable other than the syllable which is stressed in the base word, vowel quality changing, etc.

Bulgarian Speech Rhythm: Stress-Timed or Syllable-Timed?

1997 ◽  
Vol 27 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 27-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Snezhina Dimitrova
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Work ◽  
Syllable Structure ◽  
Intermediate Position ◽  
Vowel Duration ◽  
Vowel Quality ◽  
Speech Rhythm ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
And Function

Experimental work on Bulgarian speech rhythm has failed to determine which of the two “traditional” rhythmic categories the language belongs to. Using the model put forward by Dauer (1987), the present paper attempts to characterise the rhythm of Bulgarian in scalar rather than in dichotomous terms. For such an assessment, six of the components proposed by Dauer are relevant. Bulgarian is assigned two pluses (for intonation and function of accent), two zeros (for vowel duration and vowel quality) and two minuses (for syllable structure and consonant quality). According to the model, the more pluses a language has, the more likely it is that this language is “stress-timed”. From the relative rhythm “score” obtained for Bulgarian one can predict that, on a scale of rhythm, the language will occupy an intermediate position. This accounts for the contradictory conclusions reached in earlier studies. Dauer's model thus provides a useful starting point for a study of the rhythm of a given language, but it can be further improved, for example by adding zero marks for some of the components.

scholarly journals Elision in Esahie

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 22-43
Author(s):  
Victoria Owusu Ansah
Keyword(s):  
Syllable Structure ◽  
Word Boundary ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Phonological Process ◽  
Structure Changes

One of the syllable structure changes that occur in rapid speech because of sounds influencing each other is elision. This paper provides an account of elision in Esahie, also known as Sehwi, a Kwa language spoken in the Western North region of Ghana. The paper discusses the processes involved in elision, and the context within which elision occurs in the language. The paper shows that sound segments, syllables and tones are affected by the elision process. It demonstrates that elision, though purely a phonological process, is influenced by morphological factors such as vowel juxtapositioning during compounding, and at word boundary. The evidence in this paper show that there is an interface between phonology and morphology when accounting for elision in Esahie. Data for this study were gathered from primary sources using ethnographic and stimuli methods.

scholarly journals The timing of pre-nuclear pitch accents in Persian

2017 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 305-329
Author(s):  
Vahid Sadeghi
Keyword(s):  
Syllable Structure ◽  
Stress Conditions ◽  
Word Boundary ◽  
Phonological Representations ◽  
Growing Body ◽  
Phonetic Realization ◽  
Pitch Accents

This paper examines the phonetic realization of rising pre-nuclear pitch accents in Persian. In a first experiment, the alignment of f0 valleys and peaks in pre-nuclear pitch accents was analyzed in controlled speech materials as a function of the syllable structure (open vs. closed) and vowel type (short vs. long) of the accented syllable. The results revealed that in words with antepenultimate stress, both the L and the H tones are anchored to specific segmental landmarks irrespective of syllable structure or vowel type. In particular, the L is consistently aligned with the onset of the accented syllable, and the H is placed with similar consistency in the vicinity of the first post-accentual vowel. In a second experiment, the variability in the timing and scaling of L valleys and H peaks was examined as a function of the proximity of the word boundary and of the following accent. The results revealed that while the alignment of the L was unaffected by changes in stress conditions, H peaks were significantly retracted as the syllable approached the end of the word. However, the proximity of the following accent did not produce a significant effect on H alignment. In addition, no significant differences were found on L and H scaling in different stress or tonal crowding conditions. Overall, the results contribute to a growing body of evidence that in the absence of upcoming prosodic pressure, the alignment of pitch targets is specified relative to segmental positions. A comparison between these findings and empirical findings from other languages reveals fine phonetic differences of segmental anchoring that are less likely to be interpreted in terms of distinct association-based phonological representations, and suggests that some aspects of segmental anchoring need to be explained in terms of continuous language-specific alignment rules.

scholarly journals Markedness, Faithfulness, Vowel Quality and Syllable Structure in French

2003 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-280 ◽  
Author(s):  
CAROLINE FÉRY
Keyword(s):  
Optimality Theory ◽  
Syllable Structure ◽  
Vowel Quality ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Phonetic Representation

The quality of vowels in French depends to a large extent on the kind of syllables they are in. Tense vowels are often in open syllables and lax vowels in closed ones. This generalisation, which has been called loi de position in the literature, is often overridden by special vowel-consonant co-occurrence restrictions obscuring this law. The article shows first that the admission of semisyllables in the phonology of French explains a large number of counterexamples. Many final closing consonants on the phonetic representation can be understood as onsets of following rime-less syllables, opening in this way the last full syllable. Arguments coming from phonotactic regularities support this analysis. The second insight of the article is that Optimality Theory is a perfect framework to account for the intricate data bearing on the relationship between vowels and syllable structure. The loi de position is an effect dubbed Emergence of the Unmarked, instantiated only in case no higher-ranking constraint renders it inactive.

Light Optical Diffraction Studies of Macromolecular Ultrastructure

1970 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 258-259
Author(s):  
Glen B. Haydon
Keyword(s):  
High Resolution ◽  
Diffraction Analysis ◽  
Diffraction Pattern ◽  
Electron Micrographs ◽  
Optical Diffraction ◽  
Electron Micrograph ◽  
Its Analysis ◽  
Resolution Electron ◽  
Diffraction Patterns

Analysis of light optical diffraction patterns produced by electron micrographs can easily lead to much nonsense. Such diffraction patterns are referred to as optical transforms and are compared with transforms produced by a variety of mathematical manipulations. In the use of light optical diffraction patterns to study periodicities in macromolecular ultrastructures, a number of potential pitfalls have been rediscovered. The limitations apply to the formation of the electron micrograph as well as its analysis.(1) The high resolution electron micrograph is itself a complex diffraction pattern resulting from the specimen, its stain, and its supporting substrate. Cowley and Moodie (Proc. Phys. Soc. B, LXX 497, 1957) demonstrated changing image patterns with changes in focus. Similar defocus images have been subjected to further light optical diffraction analysis.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document