Phonetics and Phonology Commons^™

The Effect Of Learning On Sentence Prosody In Japanese, Joanna Baldwin Clark

Linguistics Honors Projects

This study investigates the effect of learning on prosodic production competence in native English L2 speakers of Japanese. Intonation contour and speech rate as indicators of competency were examined. It was hypothesized that more experience with Japanese would lead to more native-like prosody. The study tested the production of fourteen L2 learners, ten non-learners and six native speakers. Participants recorded twenty-three sentences of Japanese. Acoustic data was analyzed for speech rate and fundamental frequency (F0). Results showed that experience is positively correlated with speech rate and not correlated with deviation from the Japanese mean intonation contour.

Measuring Variations Of Mimicry By Means Of Prosodic Cues In Task-Based Scenarios And Conversational Speech, Brian Vaughan, Celine De Looze

Other resources

Here, we address the measurement of mimicry, that is when speakers’ speech variations look like parallel patterns.

As a definition of mimicry, we often read in the literature description such as mimicry is “The situation where the observed behaviours of two inter-actants although dissimilar at the start of the interaction are moving towards behavioral matching”. These types of descriptions imply that mimicry is a linear phenomenon and that speakers tend to imitate over time. However, it can be assumed, especially when studying spontaneous speech, that there are rather phases of mimicry and non-mimicry and that mimicry should be rather …

On The Perceptual Robustness Of Preaspirated Stops [Poster], Ian D. Clayton

Ian D. Clayton

Some phonological patterns are rare crosslinguistically, others commonplace. Rare patterns must be (a) seldom innovated or (b) diachronically unstable. For instance, preaspirated stops occur in < 1% of languages, while postaspirated stops occur in almost 29% (Maddieson 1984). Prevailing explanations have considered only (b), attributing preaspiration’s scarcity to a presumed but unverified perceptual inferiority to postaspiration. Preaspirated stops are hard to hear, it is claimed, thus diachronically unstable (Silverman 2003, Bladon 1986). This study concludes from both experimental and typological evidence that preaspirated stops are better characterized as infrequently innovated but diachronically stable, consistent with Greenberg’s (1978) State-Process model.

Copying Prosodic Constituents, John J. Mccarthy, Wendell Kimper, Kevin Mullin

John J. McCarthy

The weight of a syllable-sized reduplicant is never dependent on the syllabification of the base -- that is, no language has a reduplicative morpheme that copies a coda in [pat-pat.ka] but no coda in [pa-pa.ta]. Yet this behavior is attested in the second syllable of foot-sized reduplicants: [pa.ta-pa.ta.ka], [pa.tak-pa.tak.ta]. Why is dependence on base syllabification possible in foot-sized reduplicants, but not in syllable-sized ones?

This article provides an answer to that question in the form of a novel theory of reduplication called Serial Template Satisfaction (STS), which is situated within Harmonic Serialism (a derivational variant of Optimality Theory). In STS, …

Studying Gen, John J. Mccarthy

John J. McCarthy

In Optimality Theory, phonological patterns are accounted for with output constraints ranked in a hierarchy. There is little explanatory role for a theory of operations, and hence little has been said about the Gen component. This situation has changed with the emergence of a derivational version of Optimality Theory called Harmonic Serialism.

One of the principal differences between Harmonic Serialism and standard Optimality Theory is that Harmonic Serialism's Gen is limited to doing one thing at a time. Harmonic Serialism's analyses and explanations depend on knowing what it means to “do one thing at a time”, and that requires a …

Agreement By Correspondence Without Corr Constraints, John J. Mccarthy

John J. McCarthy

Agreement by correspondence (ABC) is a theory of long-distance assimilation processes proposed in recent work by Hansson and Rose & Walker. This paper presents a refinement of the ABC framework, eliminating the need for Corr constraints, which require correspondence between similar segments.

An Introduction To Harmonic Serialism, John J. Mccarthy

John J. McCarthy

No abstract provided.

Harmonic Serialism Supplement To Doing Optimality Theory, John J. Mccarthy

John J. McCarthy

This document consists of about 30 pages of text to supplement Doing Optimality Theory (Blackwell, 2008).

How Spanish Phonotactics Informs Psycholinguistic Models Of Speech Production, Michael Shelton

Michael Shelton

No abstract provided.