Shared Vowels in English Loanwords in Arabic: Variation in Similarity-Based Adaptation

This paper investigates vowel adaptation in English-based loanwords by a group of Saudi Arabic speakers, concentrating exclusively on shared vowels between the two languages. It examines 5 long vowels shared by the two vowel systems in terms of vowel quality and vowel duration in loanword productions by 22 participants and checks them against the properties of the same vowels in native words. To this end, the study performs an acoustic analysis of 660 tokens (loan and native vowel sounds) through Praat to measure the first two formants (F1: vowel height and F2: vowel advancement) of each vowel sound at two temporal points of time (T1: the vowel onset and T2: the peak of the vowel) as well as a durational analysis to examine vowel length. It reports that measurements of the first two formants of vowels in native words appear to be stable during the two temporal points while values of the same vowel sounds occurring in loanwords are fluctuating from T1 to T2 and that durational differences exist between loanword vowels in comparison with vowels of native words in such a way that vowels in native words are longer in duration than the same vowels appearing in loanwords.

Does tvátpitāraḥ = εὐπάτωρ?

A standard comparison in Indo-European linguistics equates Vedic tvátpitāraḥ ‘having you as father’ and Ancient Greek compounds in -πατωρ, e.g., εὐπάτωρ ‘having a good father, lineage’. Many scholars describe this equation as resulting from “Internal Derivation”: the second-member of the compound would exhibit amphikinetic inflection, internally derived from a noun with hysterokinetic inflection. This paper reassesses the philological evidence for the long-vowel forms of Vedic -pitār-. Because the long-vowel forms are confined to one Vedic school (Taittirīyans), it is argued that the short-vowel forms such as -pitar- reflect the inherited Indic vowel length in these compounds. Following this reassessment, I question to what extent the second-members of possessive compounds (e.g., Gk. -πατωρ) reflect an “amphikinetic” paradigm. I argue that the forms are “amphikinetic” only to the extent that they show an o-grade suffix in Greek, and that defining such second-members as amphikinetic both overgenerates (predicts unattested forms) and undergenerates (fails to predict attested accents).

Syllable weight, vowel length and focus in Lebanese Arabic

Research on a variety of languages has shown that vowel duration is influenced by phonological vowel length as well as syllable structure (e.g., Maddieson, 1997). Further, the phonological concept of a mora has been shown to relate to phonetic measurements of duration (Cohn, 2003; Hubbard, 1993; Port, Dalby, & O'Dell, 1987). In Levantine Arabic, non-final closed syllables that contain a long vowel have been described as partaking in mora-sharing (Broselow, Chen, & Huffman, 1997; Khattab & Al-Tamimi, 2014). The current investigation examines the effect of vowel length and syllable structure on vowel duration, as well as how this interacts with durational effects of prosodic focus. Disyllabic words with initial, stressed syllables that were either open or closed and contained either a long or a short vowel wereexamined when non-focused and in contrastive focus. Contrastive focus was associated with longer words and syllables but not vowels. Short vowels were shorter when in a syllable closed by a singleton but not by a geminate consonant, while long vowels were not shortened before coda singletons. An analysis is proposed whereby long vowels followed by an intervocalic consonant cluster are parsed as open syllables, with the first consonant forming a semisyllable (Kiparsky, 2003), while long vowels followed by geminate consonants partake in mora-sharing (Broselow, Huffman, Chen, & Hsieh, 1995). The results also indicate compensatory shortening for short vowels followed by a singleton coda.

French proper nouns in the Czech press of the XVIIIth century

Václav Matěj Kramerius (1753-1808) was a Czech publisher, writer, playwright and journalist, founder of modern Czech journalism. His newspaper, named Krameriusovy c. k. vlastenecké noviny (Kramerius' ImperialRoyal Patriotic Newspaper), published since 1789, focused mainly on enlightenment of the common people, on national emancipation. Their main sections included official notices, announcements, foreign and domestic news, literature and theater news. One of the most important news were reports of revolutionary events in France at the end of the XVIIIth century (Great French Revolution). The subject of this article is an analysis of the transcription method of French proper nouns in this Czech newspaper published by Kramerius. In order to simplify the reading of foreign names and place names, Kramerius tried to approximate their pronunciation as much as possible using the spelling system of the Czech language of his time. He used different ways such as phonetic transcription using Czech letters, changing or omitting French diacritics, using Czech diacritics (e.g., vowel length), changing the order of letters, omitting letters. Some proper nouns remain indeclinable, others are declinated according to their classification into declination types. Kramer's transcription also informs us about the pronunciation of French at that time, e.g., soft l /λ/ is still in use, /wɛ/ is already pronounced as /wa/. Kramerius' newspaper is not only an important historical testimony of its time, but also provides valuable insights into the development of the Czech language.

Rapa Nui: A Case for Correspondence in Reduplication

This squib argues for the role of correspondence in reduplication by examining the vowel length alternations in Rapa Nui reduplication. The analysis shows that vowel shortening in the base after reduplication is due to the enforcement of vowel length identity through Base Reduplicant Correspondence, while the motivation of vowel shortening is problematic for theories without surface-to-surface correspondence. The findings suggest that reduplication-phonology interactions cannot be handled solely by serialism or cyclicity, and a parallel Optimality-Theoretic evaluation with BR-correspondence is supported.

Neurophysiology of non-native sound discrimination: Evidence from German vowels and consonants in successive French–German bilinguals using an MMN oddball paradigm

The present electroencephalographical multi-speaker MMN oddball experiment was designed to study the phonological processing of German native and non-native speech sounds. Precisely, we focused on the perception of German /ɪ-iː/, /ɛ-ɛː/, /a-aː/ and the fricatives [ʃ] and [ç] in German natives (GG) and French learners of German (FG). As expected, our results showed that GG were able to discriminate all the critical vowel contrasts. In contrast, FG, despite their high L2 proficiency level, were only marginally sensitive to vowel length variations. Finally, neither GG nor FG discriminated the opposition between [ʃ] and [ç], as revealed by the absence of MMN response. This latter finding was interpreted in terms of low perceptual salience. Taken together, the present findings lend partial support to the Perceptual Assimilation Model for late bilinguals (PAM-L2) for speech perception of non-native phonological contrasts.

Diminutive formation in Hungarian

We survey templatic diminutive formation in Hungarian. We conclude that there is an intricate system of endings that are added to bases which are truncated if they contain more than one vowel. Bases are also subject to vowel length changes in both directions, as well as the palatalization of the last consonant. The templatic diminutive forms are not subject to vowel harmony occurring in suffixes which prevails in the regular additive morphology of the language. Nevertheless, these forms conform to the vowel patterns found in disyllabic monomorphemic or disyllabic suffixed word forms.

Vowel Length Expands Perceptual and Emotional Evaluations in Written Japanese Sound-Symbolic Words

In this study, we examined whether vowel length affected the perceptual and emotional evaluations of Japanese sound-symbolic words. The perceptual and emotional features of Japanese sound-symbolic words, which included short and long vowels, were evaluated by 209 native Japanese speakers. The results showed that subjective evaluations of familiarity, visual imageability, auditory imageability, tactile imageability, emotional valence, arousal, and length were significantly higher for sound-symbolic words with long vowels compared to those with short vowels. Additionally, a subjective evaluation of speed was significantly higher for written Japanese sound-symbolic words with short vowels than for those with long vowels. The current findings suggest that vowel length in written Japanese sound-symbolic words increases the perceptually and emotionally subjective evaluations of Japanese sound-symbolic words.