Franklin D. Roosevelt and the American Theatre Standard: The low vowels

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s accent is often used as an illustration of the elite pronunciation heard among the north-eastern US upper classes until roughly the mid 20th century. Known under several names and often considered a mixture of British and American features, this variety is frequently identified with the American Theatre Standard, a norm popularized by acting schools in the early 20th century. Working on the assumption that Roosevelt is an exemplar of the north-eastern standard, the aim of the current study is a preliminary acoustic exploration of his accent with the aim of assessing the plausibility of such comparisons, focusing on the dress, trap, bath, start and lot vowels. Density plots created based on F1 and F2 measured in eight radio speeches were used to examine the relative position of these vowels in the vowel space. Linear mixed-effects regression was then used to model F1 and F2 in selected pairs of vowels to determine whether the differences along the two formant dimensions are significant. The results confirm a conclusion reached in an earlier auditory study (Brandenburg, Braden 1952) according to which Roosevelt’s bath was variable between [æ] and a lower and retracted [a], a vowel quality found in Eastern New England and in American Theatre Pronunciation. At the same time, a merged start/lot vowel in Roosevelt’s speech makes it unjustified to fully identify his accent with the latter variety.

An experimental study on deictic verbs and the coding patterns of deixis in Ilami Kurdish: A comparative study

Conducting a video-based experiment in English, Japanese and Thai, Matsumoto et al. (2017) report that deictic verbs are more frequently used when the motion is not just toward the speaker but also into his/her functional space (i.e. functional HERE of the speaker) defined by limits of interaction and visibility as well as when the motion is accompanied by an interactional behaviour of the Figure such as greeting the speaker. They claim that directional venitive prepositional phrases (henceforth PPs) like toward me do not exhibit this feature, though. This paper aims to reevaluate these proposals (Matsumoto et al. 2017) in Ilami Kurdish (henceforth IK), thereby figuring out whether the functional nature of deictic verbs observed in the three studied languages is also attested in this dialect. In line with the findings reported by Matsumoto et al. (2017), results of this research reveal that the semantics of venitive verbs of motion in IK is spatial and functional at the same time. In other words, these verbs are more often used in the verbal descriptions of the IK participants, when the Figure shares a functional space with the speaker induced by limits of interaction and visibility, and also when he/she smiles at or greets the speaker. Importantly, results show that venitive PPs in IK can be functional in nature or add some functional meaning (in addition to their spatial meaning) to the verb, so that participants utilize venitive adpositions along with the venitive verb to add emphasis on the kind of motion (to be a venitive one) and express that the Figure would be “very close” to the speaker at the end of motion.

Сашко-lect: The translanguaged grammar of a hyper multilingual global nomad. Part 3 – Contact languages and translanguaging

This study examines the idiolect of Сашко – a hyper-multilingual global nomad whose language repertoire draws on forty languages, ten of which he speaks with native or native-like proficiency. By analyzing grammatical and lexical features typifying Сашко’s translanguaging practices (code-switches, code-borrowings, and code-mixes), as documented in the corpus of reflexive notes that span the last twenty-five years, the author designs Сашко’s translanguaged grammar. Instead of being a passive additive pluralization of separated, autonomous, and static monolects, Сашко’s grammar emerges as a deeply orchestrated, unitary, and dynamic strategy. From Сашко’s perspective, this grammar constitutes a tool to express his rebellious and defiant identity; a tool that – while aiming to combat Western mono-culturalisms, compartmented multilingualisms, and nationalisms – ultimately leads to Сашко’s linguistic and cultural homelessness. This paper – the last in a series of three articles – is dedicated to Сашко’s mixed languages and translanguaged grammar typifying Сашко-lect in its integrity.

Detecting Persian mediation in Arabisms in Turkish

There is a sizeable group of words in Turkish whose ultimate origin is known to be Arabic but whose direct donor language is unclear. The paper analyses 69 such words, and compares the phonetic adaptations present in them, to those attested in Arabisms as well as to those found in Farsisms, in order to determine the probability of them belonging to one group or the other. The results are compared to the opinions of the main etymological dictionaries of Turkish, splitting them into two camps.

A critical assessment of the construct of attitude in sociolinguistics: A socio-psychological insight (Part 2)

The present article constitutes the second part of a brief critical analysis of the research on attitude and attitude-(speech) behaviour relations. Its major aim is to show that the contribution from the socio-psychological paradigm can prove relevant and valuable when applied to sociolinguistic research on attitude and attitude-behaviour relations. The author argues that attitudinal investigations in sociolinguistics, despite their popularity and rich history, frequently suffer from a number of methodological and theoretical flaws. The author advances an argument that a reconceptualization of the construct of attitude and some additional methodological principles can help refine the whole paradigm of language attitude research. Specifically, it is pointed out that a cognitive/information-processing approach to attitude formation, the theory of planned behaviour and other theoretical and methodological insights discussed in this paper can prove immensely rewarding and can give a new impetus for further research.

Spit or sbit? ST-type consonant clusters in the speech of Polish learners of English

This paper presents two small-scale acoustic phonetic studies investigating the pronunciation of sibilant-stop (ST) consonant clusters in Polish, and in the L2 speech of L1 Polish learners of English. In English, aspiration of fortis stops is not attested in the post-/s/ context. Rather, short-lag voice onset time (VOT) measures are observed in L1 English in post-/s/ stop consonants, a phonetic weakening that renders them phonetically similar in terms of VOT to lenis stops in initial position. In Polish, both voiced and voiceless stops may appear after sibilant fricatives. The acoustic results suggest that (1) L1 Polish does not weaken its stops in ST clusters, and (2) that more L1 Polish speakers exhibit some weakening in their L2 English clusters as a function of proficiency, but do not produce native-like VOTs in ST sequences. Implications of these findings for L2 speech research and the phonological status of ST clusters are discussed.

Influence of sensorineural hearing loss on familiar speaker recognition: A forensic perspective on ageing

The main goal of this research was to discover the influence of high frequency sensorineural hearing loss on familiar speaker recognition during earwitnessing line-ups. The secondary objectives were to estimate the influence of familiarity with voices of the suspects on performance in the auditory speaker recognition test, and to correlate the results with forensically important factors such as a confidence scale from the line-up markings. The recordings from the line-up sessions were low-pass filtered to ensure an equal degree of signal distortion for all subjects and imitate the moderate, severe and profound hearing loss conditions. The results show that the correlation between mimicked hearing impairment and ability to identify a familiar speaker is statistically significant. It was observed that higher degree of signal distortion caused lower accuracy of recognition. Interestingly, it was reported that higher levels of familiarity and exposure to speakers’ voices had a negative effect on speaker identification.

Further remarks on Chinese Āhōng 阿訇

In the article the author once again deals with the title/address for Hui Muslim imāms, Āhōng (阿訇), – a topic about which he already gave some information in a miscella published in Knüppel (2020). To this some further details on historical attempts of etymology are given in the text presented here.

Perceptual etymology, or three Turkish culinary terms in Croatian and Slovene, and a Polish social term inteligencja ‘intelligentsia’

This paper has been inspired by Roberto Dapit’s study of 2021. My aim is to show the sense of using what can be called “perceptual etymology” (analogically to “perceptual dialectology”) along with and in contrast to the “scholarly etymology”.

Panthers in Russian and Old Russian

This paper discusses the etymology of the Russian word пантера ‘panther’ and its other variants in Old Russian and Russian. The Greek word πάνθηρis a direct or indirect source of all of the investigated forms, but several other languages (Old Church Slavonic, German, French) are involved in the borrowing process as media. The solutions proposed in the article are based on extended method inventory, which includes both traditional methods of historical linguistics and some new proposals connected with extralinguistic factors (Wörter und Sachen method).