Prosodic realization of tonal target and F0 peak alignment in Mandarin neutral tone

Neutral tone in Mandarin is generally believed to lack tonal identity and exhibit more variability in its phonetic realization. We examined the tonal target of neutral tone in a prosodic word consisting of a full syllable (S) and one, two, or three neutral-tone syllables. In the experiment, the test words, presented in isolation and embedded in a carrier sentence, were read in two intonation patterns: declarative and interrogative. The results showed: (1) the tonal target of neutral tone is L(ow) at the end of the intonation phrase in declarative intonation and M(id) in question intonation; (2) its phonetic realization is influenced by intonation patterns, the tone of S and the number of neutral-tone syllables in the prosodic word; (3) the influence of the tone of S is more robust in shorter sequences than in longer ones with three neutral-tone syllables; (4) placement of the F0 peak in T2 (LH) and the neutral tone immediately following T3 (L) is susceptible to the number of neutral-tone syllables. It seems clear from our study that while the tonal target of neutral tone is related to prosodic structure, its actual F0 scaling is sensitive to prosodic manipulations such as intonation patterns and prosodic word length. In addition, tonelessness of neutral tone allows for more freedom in the alignment of the F0 peak, whose temporal coordination with its segmental host is, nevertheless, subject to both phonological and phonetic constraints.

Syllable isochrony and the prosodic features of stop syllables in Cantonese

Cantonese is a syllable-timed language: that is, the syllable is the isochronous unit of speech. However, in Cantonese, there is a type of closed syllable with the stop codas [-p], [-t], or [-k] (i.e. syllables with the so called “entering-tones”) which sound much shorter than other syllables. On the surface, the shorter duration of stop syllables and the general prosodic feature of syllable-isochrony seem to conflict. This study conducted acoustic investigations of stop syllables in Cantonese in different contexts (i.e. in isolated form, in disyllabic words, and in disyllabic words located at the beginning, middle, and final positions of sentences). The results showed that stop syllables alone are shorter than non-stop syllables in various contexts. However, in disyllabic words or in sentences, there is a supplementary lengthening effect immediately after the stop syllables: there is more acoustic blank, and in some circumstances the initial of the following syllable is lengthened. Therefore, we propose that the phonetic realization of syllable isochrony is beyond the syllable itself in Cantonese. The results and discussions of this study may also shed light on the problem of the disappearance of “entering tones” from various Chinese dialects.

Perspectival factors and pro-drop: A corpus study of speaker/addressee pronouns with creer ‘think/ believe’ and saber ‘know’ in spoken Spanish

This paper examines overt and covert speaker/addressee pronouns with the cognitive verbs creer ‘think/believe’ and saber ‘know’ in a corpus of spoken peninsular Spanish – the Madrid and Alcalá samples of PRESEEA (2014– ) – with a focus on 1st person singular (yo) creo que ‘(I) think that’. Departing from the observation made in the literature that overt pronouns are highly frequent with creer and that topic shift cannot account for all of them, it will be argued that perspectival factors related to evidentiality/epistemicity and subjectivity influence overt pronoun realization. A corpus study was conducted to investigate whether (i) [person] and [polarity] and (ii) the type of complement affect overt pronoun realization with the cognitive verbs creer and saber. The results indicate that the type of belief expressed in the embedded clause should be taken into account, as well as person and polarity. The ultimate trigger for phonetic realization of speaker/addressee pronouns will be argued to be the notion of contrast: cognitive verbs whose embedded complement encodes evaluations and non-visual, abstract information have high frequencies of overt pronoun realization because these contexts favor the evoking of alternative perspective holders. Overt pronouns will be analyzed as the result of a [+contrast] feature which is assigned to the specifier of a functional category encoding perspective in the split IP.

Inflection Classes in Verbs in the Romance Languages

The Romance languages inherited from Latin a system of four inflection classes in verbs featuring a dedicated theme vowel (or its absence). The presence of the theme vowel in inflectional forms differs from language to language and from inflection class to inflection class. In Latin, the theme vowels are found in most forms; in Romance, their presence has declined but they are still featured at least in the infinitive of most inflection classes. Most Romance languages simplified the Latin system by reducing the number of inflection classes while retaining the class distinction by theme vowels. In many Romance languages, new inflection classes have evolved. The existence of verbs with a stem-forming augment is often described as a subclass in traditional grammars. But the augment appears in a well-defined set of paradigm cells warranting the introduction of a new class. In a synchronic analysis, French and Oïl varieties show mostly a distinction based on length of the stem or, from another perspective, pattern of syncretism as many forms are homophonous. This is partly due to the fact that some very frequent forms do not feature any longer inflectional suffixes in their phonetic realization (although these are retained in spelling). New irregularities in the stem found in all Romance languages suggest the emergence of an additional class distinction based on the form, number, and distribution of the stems. Morphomic patterns arose which may be interpreted as inflection classes. The most radical change took place in French: Some analyses claim that none of the traditional classes distinguished by theme vowels survives; only stem distinctions may be used to establish inflection classes. Other studies still assume theme vowels in French, at least with verbs ending in -ir in the infinitive. Suppletion or other processes may lead to heteroclisis (i.e., forms of the same verb pertaining to different inflection classes).

Uh and euh signal novelty for monolinguals and bilinguals: Evidence from children and adults (PREPRINT)

Previous research suggests that English monolingual children and adults can use speech disfluencies (e.g., uh) to predict that a speaker will name a novel object. To understand the origins of this ability, we tested 48 32-month-old children (monolingual English, monolingual French, bilingual English-French; Study 1) and 16 adults (bilingual English-French; Study 2). Our design leveraged the distinct realizations of English (uh) versus French (euh) disfluencies. In a preferential-looking paradigm, participants saw familiar-novel object pairs (e.g., doll-rel), labeled in either Fluent (“Look at the doll/rel!”), Disfluent Language-consistent (“Look at thee uh doll/rel!”), or Disfluent Language-inconsistent (“Look at thee euh doll/rel!”) sentences. All participants looked more at the novel object when hearing disfluencies, irrespective of their phonetic realization. These results suggest that listeners from different language backgrounds harness disfluencies to comprehend day-to-day speech, possibly by attending to their lengthening as a signal of speaker uncertainty. Stimuli and data are available at https://osf.io/qn6px/.

The tone system of Poko-Rawo (Skou)

This paper describes the tone system of Poko-Rawo, a Skou language spoken in northwestern Papua New Guinea. The system displays a number of points of interest to tonal typology, including: a distinction between underlying specified Mid tones and M tones filled in by default; a dispreference for single-toned melodies; a preference for rising tones rather than falling tones; and strict alignment of Low and High tones, with L always initial and H always final in a melody. These alignment principles extend to floating tones, as floating L is always to the left of a stem and floating H always to the right. We provide a detailed description of underlying melodies, postlexical processes, and phonetic realization of tone in Poko in an effort to bring more Papuan data to bear on questions of tonal typology.

Cognate similarity and intervocalic /d/ production in Riverense Spanish

Aims and objectives: While previous research has shown that phonetic variation in language contact situations is affected by whether a word has a cognate in the contact language, this paper aims to show that such an effect is not monotonic. According to the usage-based model, items in memory are organized according to similarity, thus we anticipated that formally more similar cognates would show a stronger cognate effect. Methodology: This variationist sociophonetic study investigates the relationship between cognate similarity and phonetic realization. We examined this relationship in the bilingual community of Rivera, Uruguay, in which both Portuguese and Spanish are spoken with regularity. Specifically, we focused on intervocalic /d/, which in monolingual Spanish is realized as an approximant [ð̞] or phonetic zero, but in monolingual Brazilian Portuguese is produced as a stop [d] or, in most varieties, an affricate [ʤ] before [i]. Data and analysis: We analyzed a corpus of sociolinguistic interviews of the Spanish spoken in Rivera. Acoustic measurements were taken from approximately 60 tokens each from 40 different speakers. Using a linear mixed-effects model, we examined the relationship between several predictors and the degree of constriction of intervocalic /d/. Findings/conclusions: While there is an overall frequency effect whereby more frequent words exhibit less constriction of intervocalic /d/, as both frequency and cognate similarity increase, less constriction of intervocalic /d/ obtains. Therefore, frequent cognates in Portuguese that have very similar forms affect the production of intervocalic /d/ more so than other cognates. Originality: No previous study has demonstrated that the cognate effect on phonetic variation in a situation of language contact is regulated by form similarity between cognate pairs. Significance/implications: The data support the usage-based model in that similar cognates have more lexical connections and can therefore show greater influence on phonetic realization than can cognates that share less phonetic material.