Phonetics and Phonology Commons^™

Incomplete Neutralization In Articulatory Phonology, Sejin Oh

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Previous studies have found small but significant phonetic traces of underlying distinctions for phonologically “neutralized” contrasts. This phenomenon, often called incomplete neutralization, has been found for final devoicing in many languages, (e.g., German; Port, Robert F. & O’Dell, 1985), but has also been reported for other neutralizing phenomena, including flapping in American English (Herd et al., 2010), monomoraic lengthening in Japanese (Braver & Kawahara, 2016), vowel deletion in French (Fougeron & Steriade, 1997), vowel epenthesis in Levantine Arabic (Gouskova & Hall, 2009), among others.

In my dissertation, I explore the (in)completeness of Russian palatalization in the Articulatory Phonology framework, implementing …

English Influence On L2 Speakers’ Production Of Palatalization And Velarization, Jennifer C. Gabriele

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Irish is a Celtic language spoken in Ireland. It is currently endangered with only 73,803 people using the language on a daily basis as of 2016 (Official Office of Statistics, 2016). The reason for the decline is that English is the dominate language, pushing Irish to the periphery. Revitalization efforts have been put into place in an attempt to revitalize the language. There has been a growth in L2 speakers of Irish. The position of English as the dominate language, and high amounts of L2 speakers creates an environment where English is likely to influence the Irish language. The purpose …

On The Incompatibility Of Trilling And Palatalization: A Single-Subject Study Of Sustained Apical And Uvular Trills, Alexei Kochetov, Phil Howson

Alexei Kochetov

The production of trills requires precise articulatory and aerodynamic settings, which appear to be hardly compatible with secondary palatalization – the raising and fronting of the tongue body. Yet, the precise reasons for this incompatibility are still poorly understood, largely given the paucity of articulatory work on trills. Moreover, previous investigations of palatalized trills have been limited to apicals (alveolars/dentals), raising the question of whether the suggested factors are general to all lingual trills, including uvulars, or are specific to apical trills. This paper presents an exploratory investigation of sustained palatalized and non-palatalized apical (phonemic) and uvular trills (idiolectal) produced …

Scales And Patterns Of Expressive Palatalization: Experimental Evidence From Japanese, Alexei Kochetov, John Alderete

Alexei Kochetov

This paper argues for the existence of expressive palatalization (E-Pal) – a phonologically unmotivated process that applies in sound symbolism, diminutive constructions, and babytalk registers. E-Pal is proposed to be grounded in iconic sound-meaning associations exploiting acoustic properties of palatalized consonants, and thus is inherently different from regular phonological palatalization (P-Pal). A cross-linguistic survey of patterns of E-Pal in 37 languages shows that it exhibits a set of properties different from P-Pal. As a case study, the paper focuses on patterns of palatalization in Japanese mimetic vocabulary and babytalk. Two experiments tested native speaker intuitions of these patterns and revealed …

Palatalisation, Alexei Kochetov

Alexei Kochetov

No abstract provided.

Japanese Mimetic Palatalization Revisited: Implications For Conflicting Directionality, John Alderete, Alexei Kochetov

Alexei Kochetov

This article re-examines ‘conflicting directionality ’ in Japanese mimetic words, a distributional pattern in which palatalisation is preferentially realised on the rightmost of two coronal consonants, but on the leftmost consonant in a word without coronals. Analysis of the original dictionary evidence given in support of this generalisation and an exhaustive search of the Japanese mimetic stratum reveal both several counterexamples to conflicting directionality and the fact that the datasets are far too small to support linguistic generalisation. The theoretical assumptions employed to account for Japanese mimetic palatalisation are thus re-examined, with a focus on clarifying the predictions for future …

Testing Licensing By Cue: A Case Of Russian Palatalized Coronals, Alexei Kochetov

Alexei Kochetov

The hypothesis ‘licensing by cue’ by Steriade holds that phonological contrasts are maintained in environments that provide better acoustic cues to the contrasts and are neutralized in environments that provide poorer acoustic cues or no cues. This paper tests the hypothesis by examining the distribution of a phonological contrast – the Russian plain/palatalized coronal stops /t/ and /tj/ in various syllable- final contexts. The results of a series of acoustic and perceptual experiments presented in this paper provide some support for the hypothesis: the relative salience of releases in different word boundary contexts (_#k > _#n, _#s) correlates strongly with the …

Perception Of Place And Secondary Articulation Contrasts In Different Syllable Positions: Language-Particular And Language-Independent Asymmetries, Alexei Kochetov

Alexei Kochetov

This study investigated the perception of place and secondary articulation contrasts in different syllable positions by Russian and Japanese listeners. The consonants involved in the study were the Russian plain (velarized) and palatalized labial and coronal voiceless stops in syllable-initial and syllable-final positions at word boundaries. The findings revealed substantial asymmetries in the perception of the contrasts by both groups of listeners: With respect to positions, consonants in syllable-final position were characterized by lower correct identification rates and (less consistently) longer reaction time than the same consonants in syllable-initial position. Positional differences were accompanied by differences in segment-specific contexts. With …

Production, Perception, And Emergent Phonotactic Patterns: A Case Of Contrastive Palatalization, Alexei Kochetov

Alexei Kochetov

No abstract provided.