Acoustic correlates of the advanced vs. retracted tongue root feature in Igbo

Vowel harmony based on the advanced tongue root (±ATR) feature is a well-known attribute of the languages of the Macro-Sudan belt. Igbo (< Benue-Congo), one of these languages, on basis of which first instrumental studies of ±ATR articulation were conducted, has an asymmetric vowel system /i, ɪ, e, a, ɔ, o, ʊ, u/, so that root ±ATR harmony exists within three pairs and a single vowel /e/. This paper describes an acoustic realization of ±ATR in Igbo. According to the hypothesis that the value of the first formant in combination with the distribution of energy over the spectrum combine into a single perceptual cue that allows to distinguish vowels opposed by ±ATR we investigate (along with the description of the formant space) three spectral parameters that were shown to be acoustic correlates of ±ATR in other Macro-Sudan languages. The results of the instrumental analysis indicate that acoustic correlates of ±ATR harmony in Igbo are the value of the first formant, its bandwidth and normalized center of gravity. In addition, all parameters relevant for the ±ATR contrast in our data divided /ɔ/ utterances in different roots into two groups with contrasting values of the feature.

Noun Class System in Ikhin, an Edoid Language

This paper examines the noun class system in Ikhin, an Edoid language in South-South, Nigeria. Unlike other related Edoid languages examined and investigated by various scholars, nothing has been said on the noun class system in Ikhin. The paper establishes noun prefixes and concord prefixes in modifiers such as demonstrative and possessive pronouns. Although inherited, this paper confirms that majority of the nouns are inflected for number by means of prefix vowel alternation. The study also confirms that the language maintains most of the noun class distinctions in Edoid languages. The paper examines morphological alternations and their implications for phonology. It is argued that vestiges of vowel harmony appear in the patterning of vowels in nouns and in the way vowels alternate in prefixes. Vestigial evidence of concord which is normally the hallmark of a noun class system in Edoid languages was discovered in modifiers such as demonstrative and possessive pronouns.

Penerapan Pendekatan Word and Paradigm pada Proses Morfofonemik Verba Bahasa Turki

The Turkish language is one of the languages which people nowadays learn. The Turkish language belongs to agglutinative language with a slight border between words and their morpheme, yet it has a clear border amongst the morphemes. There is a vowel harmony in the Turkish language where the sound of the last vowel of the stem affects the vowel’s sound of the attached suffixes. The existence of the vowel harmony triggers the change of the sound of the attached morphemes which their function is as suffixes. This study analyzes the morphophonemic process of Turkish verbs using the Word and Paradigm approach. The data of this study are the oral data of Turkish verbs got from the social media of YouTube. The data are collected by observing and noting. The morphophonemic process affected by the change of the sound is later analyzed using the padan method and Word and Paradigm or WP approach from the data collection. Through the approach, the word-formation rules are made for later, the effectiveness of the Word and Paradigm approach is studied in the morphophonemic analysis of Turkish verbs. The results show that there are different kinds of word-formation, and the WP approach effectively analyses Turkish verbs.

Variation awaiting bias: Substantively biased learning of vowel harmony variation

This article examines whether children alter a variable phonological pattern in an artificial language towards a phonetically-natural form. We address acquisition of a variable rounding harmony pattern through the use of two artificial languages; one with dominant harmony pattern, and another with dominant non-harmony pattern. Overall, children favor harmony pattern in their production of the languages. In the language where harmony is non-dominant, children's subsequent production entirely reverses the pattern so that harmony predominates. This differs starkly from adults. Our results compare to the regularization found in child learning of morphosyntactic variation, suggesting a role for naturalness in variable phonological learning.

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.

Infants exploit vowels to label objects and actions from continuous audiovisual stimuli

Before the 6-months of age, infants succeed to learn words associated with objects and actions when the words are presented isolated or embedded in short utterances. It remains unclear whether such type of learning occurs from fluent audiovisual stimuli, although in natural environments the fluent audiovisual contexts are the default. In 4 experiments, we evaluated if 8-month-old infants could learn word-action and word-object associations from fluent audiovisual streams when the words conveyed either vowel or consonant harmony, two phonological cues that benefit word learning near 6 and 12 months of age, respectively. We found that infants learned both types of words, but only when the words contained vowel harmony. Because object- and action-words have been conceived as rudimentary representations of nouns and verbs, our results suggest that vowels contribute to shape the initial steps of the learning of lexical categories in preverbal infants.

Erzya stem-internal vowel-consonant harmony: A new approach

Although Erzya harmony is discussed as a kind of vowel harmony traditionally, suffix alternations show that there is a close interaction between consonants and vowels, therefore we should speak about a consonant-vowel harmony. This paper demonstrates that the palatalizedness of the consonants and the frontness of the vowels are also strongly connected inside stems: first syllable front vowels are quite rare after word-initial non-palatalized dentals but are dominant after palatalized ones; first syllable back vowels are dominantly followed by non-palatalized dentals, while the latter are very rare after front vowels.