F0 Peak Alignment, F0 Peak Location, and Focus Perception in Taif Arabic

The encoding of focus and its role in Taif Arabic has not been understood fully. A recent production study found significant acoustic differences between syntactically identical utterances with focus and without focus. The current study aims to investigate further F0 peak alignment, F0 peak location and (b) focus perception in Taif Arabic. The acoustic analyses of F0 peak alignment and F0 peak location show that only the F0 peak alignment of the post-focus words was realized earlier than that of their counterparts under neutral-focus condition, and the location of the F0 peak of the stressed syllable of the post-focus words was lower than that of their counterparts in neutral-focus utterances. In focus perception, correct focus identification was 85% for initial focus and 71% for penultimate focus. These findings have implications for both focus typology and language variations.

Udareniye: Diachronic and Lexicographic Description of the Linguistic Term and its Breaking Away from the Greek and Church Slavonic Tradition

The article is devoted to the study of the Russian linguistic term “udareniye” (“stress” / “accent”) from the historicolinguistic, etymological and lexicographic viewpoints. Currently, there are hardly any studies analyzing the term’s semantic development or attempts to present its semantic structure in a dictionary, based on textual and lexicographic sources ranging from the end of the 16th to the end of the 19th century, that would make it possible that would make it possible to trace the semantic changes of the term in the course of time. The existing studies mainly address the the issues of terminology developed in individual authors’ grammars, or describe the terminology of grammars related to a certain period of time or a specific epoch. The purpose of this article is to systematize etymological information about the term “udareniye”, to conduct an historico-linguistic analysis of its semantics, starting with the first Russian grammars and lexicons. The research uses comparative, definitional, etymological, semantic and lexicographic methods. The semantic structure of the term “udareniye”, when taking into account its two main meanings (emphasizing of some syllable in the word with voice and reflection of such an emphasis in writing by graphical means, e.g. diacritics), begins to take shape from its first written fixation in 1591 in Adelphotes and ends by 1830, when grammarians finally stopped associating the Russian accent, uniform by nature, with the sound length and modulations of the tone, and focused their attention on the study of intensity (pronouncing power), which can be regarded as the main acoustic feature of the stressed syllable in languages with dynamic stress. By this time, the type of the Russian stress stops being identified with the Greek and Church Slavonic patterns and the attempts to uncritically borrow the corresponding terminological nominations with their forms and meanings from Greek into Russian come to an end. The term “udareniye” got probably for the first time its lexicographic entry at the beginning of the 18th century due to Polikarpov-Orlov who described its meaning 1 in his dictionary. In its meaning 2 – based on the Greek-Church Slavonic tradition, – the term is found in almost all the text sources examined by the author, starting from Adelphotes, that is from the end of the 16th century. As for its first lexicographic fixation, it took place in 1763 in Poletika’s dictionary.

Rhythm in Life, Rhythm in Language

The present article deals with rhythm which is an essential phenomenon of our life. Being rhythmical means repetition of similar actions in the same period of time. The work gives analyses of the English language in oral connected speech in the relationship with rhythm. English is a rhythmical language. The English connected speech is divided into rhythmical groups and the division is based on alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables where unstressed syllables are attached to the stressed syllable thus forming a rhythmical group. Each rhythmic unit is pronounced in equal time. For the first time similarities are identified between the English rhythmical units and the musical bars in a piece of music.

The prosody of focus projection: word stress and F0 patterns in Georgian

Based on experimental evidence, this paper shows that focus projection/percolation – the phenomenon by way of which prosodic prominence on a sub-constituent signals focus on the whole constituent – has a consistent prosodic realization in Georgian. The novelty of these findings lies in two properties of Georgian that have not been explored from the perspective of focus projection: it is a language with a dedicated focus position (linearly immediately preverbal) and one that does not rely on pitch accents in the expression of phrasal prosody (Skopeteas & Féry 2010; 2016). According to focus projection accounts (Selkirk 1984; Cinque 1993; Ladd 1996; Zubizarreta 1998, a. o.), utterances with narrow focus on the direct object are realized in the same way as broad focus utterances, since in all three cases prosodic prominence is realized on the direct object. In contrast, in utterances with narrow focus on the subject, the subject is the most prosodically prominent element, which means that the whole utterance has a different prosodic realization from that of broad focus contexts. This paper shows that the distribution of prosodic prominence in object- and subject-focus contexts in Georgian fits with this generalization. Specifically, the realization of utterances with narrowly focused objects does not differ from broad focus contexts in their F0 patterns and prominence of the stressed syllable, while narrowly focused subjects differ from subjects in broad focus utterances in both of these parameters.

The syntax and prosody of focus in Northern Amis (Formosan)

This article outlines the strategies for expressing focus in Northern Amis (Formosan). Three types of focus constructions are examined: cleft constructions, focus markers and emphatic lengthening. Focus by clefting is subject to the well-known nominative-only constraint on extraction and relativization found in Formosan and Philippine type languages (Keenan & Comrie 1977), such that a clefted constituent must be the syntactic pivot of the verb in the relative clause containing the presupposition, and its semantic role is co-indexed by the appropriate voice marker on the verb. The other strategies of focus marking do not involve any syntactic restructuring; the focus markers determine the focus domain by their placement on the right side of the focus, while emphatic lengthening is merely a prosodic device locally marking the focused entity. The prosodic examination of these constructions reveals that narrow focus is signaled by a sharp rise, that is aligned with the onset of the stressed syllable of the focus and is optionally accompanied by postfocal de-accenting. These prosodic properties apply to all focus constructions.

Sibilant harmony in Santiago Tz’utujil (Mayan)

We analyze sibilant harmony in the Santiago Atitlán dialect of Tz’utujil (Mayan), a phenomenon that was briefly described by Dayley (1985). Novel data show that the obligatory harmony process (i) is asymmetrical (triggered only by [+ant] sibilants), (ii) progressive, and (iii) applies long-distance. Furthermore, we argue that the process is not stem-controlled. In contextualizing the phenomenon within the typology of sibilant harmony (Hansson 2010), we conclude that it is unique. Finally, we suggest that Santiago Tz’utujil sibilant harmony has been stable diachronically because the target segment /ʃ/ is always in the stressed syllable, thus being salient in the input during acquisition.

Lenisering etter kort vokal: relikt-fenomen eller opphav?

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.

Intonation of the Altai language (simple one-component imperative utterances)

The paper presents the results of studying the Altai language intonation on the experimental material recorded from six speakers fluent in the Altai language from different regions of the Altai Republic. The recording program consisted of situational single-component imperative utterances. Twenty sentences were pronounced three times each in positive and negative versions, in singular and plural, having different degrees of imperativeness, but without any expressive emotional load. The single-compound motivational statements considered are expressed by imperative or desirable verb forms in the first-, second-, and third-person singular and plural in the affirmative and negative variants. The experimental phonetic study has revealed rising tone to be characteristic for positive and negative imperative one-component sentences, with fundamental tone frequency peaks at the last syllable and there being a possibility for intensity, presumably marking the stressed syllable, to shift within a word-form. The analysis showed the intonation marking of motivational statements to depend on their type: action stimulation, order or demand, are characterized by inclination, a request - by a combined ascending-descending tone, a ban - by a descending tone, advice - both by ascending-descending intonation and declination. In the negative version, in singular and plural, in three or more syllabic sentences on the negative particles -ba / -be, -pa / -pe, etc., there is an even tone or a decrease in the frequency of the fundamental tone. The peak of intensity in such sentences is realized on the last syllable of the verb. In addition, the vowel of the final syllable is usually prolonged.

SELECTIONAL PREFERENCES OF THE SUFFIX -IFY IN NAMES OF SOME MOBILE APPS IN ENGLISH

We are witnessing an increase in the number of formations with the verb-forming suffix -ify, the majority of which are names of websites, mobile apps or internet-based services, e.g. Androidify, Connectify or Fatify. The aim of this paper is to provide insight into the selectional behaviour of -ify in these new formations and determine whether there are any indications of some new trends. The suffix -ify typically occurs with Latinate bases to form causative or inchoative verbs such as intensify or mummify (Bauer, Huddleston 2002; Plag 1999). The rivalry with -ize is mainly resolved by phonological constraints: -ize occurs after one or more unstressed syllables, while -ify is always preceded by a stressed syllable. This means that -ify attaches to either monosyllabic bases or polysyllabic bases stressed on the ultimate (Plag 1999, 2003). It is uncommon for neologisms with -ify to show stress shift (Plag 2003: 93). While some of the new formations are clearly compliant with these rules and tendencies, some are not. For example, there are some formations with non-Latinate bases (Dollify), some that require a shift of stress (Androidify) and some that attach to verbal bases (Distractify). By combining corpus search results (Corpus of Contemporary American English (Davies 2008-), Corpus of Global Web-Based English (Davies 2013), iWeb Corpus (Davies 2018-)), Google Play Store data and other sources (in particular Johnson 2014a), we investigate a list of 442 new words with -ify in order to ascertain whether the suffix -ify is changing as regards its selectional preferences described above.