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Full-Text Articles in Anthropological Linguistics and Sociolinguistics

Phonetic Contrast In New York Hasidic Yiddish Vowels: Language Contact, Variation, And Change, Chaya R. Nove Sep 2021

Phonetic Contrast In New York Hasidic Yiddish Vowels: Language Contact, Variation, And Change, Chaya R. Nove

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study analyzes the acoustic correlates of the length contrast in New York Hasidic Yiddish (HY) peripheral vowels /i/, /u/, and /a/, and compares them across four generations of native speakers for evidence of change over time. HY vowel tokens are also compared to English vowels produced by the New York-born speakers to investigate the influence of language contact on observed changes. Additionally, the degree to which individual speakers orient towards or away from the Hasidic community is quantified via an ethnographically informed survey to examine its correlation with /u/-fronting, a sound change that is widespread in the non-Hasidic English-speaking …


Altered Speech: A Case-Study Of Identity-Driven Speech In A Dissociative Identity Disorder System, Sarah Domin Jan 2020

Altered Speech: A Case-Study Of Identity-Driven Speech In A Dissociative Identity Disorder System, Sarah Domin

Scripps Senior Theses

The field of sociolinguistics has long been interested in how speech differs across groups. These studies have been focused on how demographic factors like class, race, and geographical region alter speech patterns. However, more recently, the agency of individuals to use language as a tool to construct a certain identity or persona has been highlighted (e.g., Podesva 2007; Eckert 1989; Eckert 2008). These studies are limited due to the nature of their methods, relying on either one individual with a limited scope of characteristics or on a larger group of people with many different variables at play other than identity. …


Cuasi Nomás Inglés: Prosody At The Crossroads Of Spanish And English In 20th Century New Mexico, Jackelyn Van Buren Nov 2017

Cuasi Nomás Inglés: Prosody At The Crossroads Of Spanish And English In 20th Century New Mexico, Jackelyn Van Buren

Linguistics ETDs

This dissertation investigates prosodic change in the long-term language contact setting of Traditional New Mexican Spanish (NMS). NMS prosody is perceptually distinct from other contemporary varieties of Spanish (Hills 1906, Bowen 1952, Lipski 2011), yet the features which make it unique have not been acoustically examined. This study hypothesizes that bilingualism with English has affected NMS prosody and analyzes three features which are known to differ between Spanish and English and therefore provide a quantitative point of comparison: pitch peak alignment, pitch variability, and rhythmic timing. These variables have been demonstrated to be susceptible to transfer in contact situations, including …


Consonantal Variation Of Spanish In Northern Morocco, Ruth Scipione, Lotfi Sayahi Jan 2005

Consonantal Variation Of Spanish In Northern Morocco, Ruth Scipione, Lotfi Sayahi

Languages, Literatures and Cultures Faculty Scholarship

In former Spanish Morocco, many educated speakers are able to draw upon various phonological systems such as French, Moroccan Arabic, and Modern Standard Arabic in order to pronounce Spanish sounds. However, although the speakers of this study are highly proficient in Spanish, there are still some segmental features that set them apart from a native Spanish speaker. These features include the failure to produce the fricative allophones of bilabial, dental, and velar stops the failure to distinguish between the simple and multiple vibrant trill, and difficulties in producing the palatal nasal. While the Spanish of these Northern Moroccans seems to …