Lexical Effects in Phonemic Neutralization in Taiwan Mandarin

BLS 38: General Session and Thematic Session on Language Contac

The Effect of Chinese Characters on the Speech Perception and Production of Retroflex Sibilants in Taiwan Mandarin

Evidence has shown that subtle implicit information of a speaker’s characteristics or social identity inferred by the listener can influence how language varieties are perceived, and can cause significant effects on the result of speech perception (e.g., Williams 1976; Beebe 1981; Thakerar and Giles 1981; Niedzielski 1999; Hay et al. 2006a; Hay and Drager 2010; Koops 2011). This dissertation aimed at studying the effects of Chinese orthography on the speech production and perception of retroflex sibilants in Mandarin Chinese. The two variants of written Chinese characters, traditional and simplified, served as subtle implicit information to index speaker’s identity of a Taiwan Mandarin speaker or Beijing Mandarin speaker respectively. The experiment designs were based on the hypotheses that Taiwan Mandarin speakers are aware of the differences between the Taiwan Mandarin dialect and the Beijing Mandarin dialect at both segmental and suprasegmental level. Furthermore, Taiwan Mandarin speakers can activate dialectal features of Beijing Mandarin with the presence of simplified Chinese characters. In the word-identification tasks of the perception study, a statistically significant relationship between the identification of retroflex phonemes and the variety of written Chinese characters was found for all participants with a Person’s chi-square test of association. With a 95% confidence interval, the odds ratio estimated that with the presence of simplified Chinese characters, participants were at least 1.83 times more likely to identify a retroflex audio stimulus with the actual retroflex phoneme instead of its corresponding alveolar sound than with the presence of traditional Chinese characters. The effect of character variation on speech production was not as straightforward as that in perception. From the data collected in this study, minimal effect was found; however, when taking the speaker’s attitude towards different varieties of characters into consideration, personal preferences toward the varieties of characters may lead to a stylistic and intentional variation in speech production of retroflex sibilants. It was found through the interview with participants of this study that Taiwan Mandarin speakers were fully aware of the variation in the production of retroflex sibilants. They were also aware of the association between simplified characters and the Beijing Mandarin dialect and this association was activated during the speech perception and production experiments of this dissertation. This study adds to the finding of research in sociophonetic variations that an asymmetry in speech production and speech perception may be a deliberate choice of the speaker instead of a result of unconscious perception and production of speech. In addition, this dissertation also shows that the abundant cultural and ideological values associated with the usage of Chinese written characters and spoken dialects are potential topics of future research

Zusammenhänge zwischen synchroner Variation und diachronem Lautwandel im Sibilantsystem des Polnischen

In dieser Dissertation wurden die Sibilanten /s ʂ ɕ/ des Standard-Polnischen untersucht. Genauer gesagt standen im Fokus dieser Arbeit mögliche Zusammenhänge zwischen synchroner Variation und der potentiellen diachronen Instabilität dieses Kontrasts. Für einige regionale Varietäten des Polnischen, sowie auch für die drei, den polnischen Lauten ähnlichen, Sibilanten des Mandarin-Chinesischen, wurde eine Neutralisierung des Dreier-Kontrasts hin zu einem Zweier-Kontrast beschrieben. Dabei wird für beide Sprachen davon ausgegangen, dass der Kontrast zwischen dem retroflexen Frikativ /ʂ/ und dem dentalen Laut /s/ von der Neutralisierung betroffen ist, sodass neben dem alveolopalatalen Frikativ /ɕ/ nur der dentale Laut bestehen bleibt. Während für die Kontrastneutralisierung im Mandarin-Chinesischen Studien zeigten, dass interne und extralinguistische Faktoren den Grad der Neutralisierung der Sibilanten /s ʂ/ beeinflussen, ist für das polnische Sibilantsystem bisher nicht bekannt, welche Wirkung interne und externe Faktoren, auf die Stabilität des Standard-Polnischen Dreier-Kontrasts haben. Diese Arbeit war ein erster Versuch den Einfluss verschiedener interner und externer Faktoren auf die Stabilität der drei Sibilanten in der Produktion und Perzeption der Standardsprache des Polnischen zu testen, um mögliche Erklärungen für eine größere Wahrscheinlichkeit eines /s ʂ/ Zusammenfalls zum Vorteil des dentalen Sibilanten zu liefern. In einer physiologischen Studie wurde die relative synchrone Stabilität der Sibilanten, produziert von L1-Polnisch sprechenden Erwachsenen, getestet. Hierfür wurden akustische und Zungenbewegungsdaten von Sibilantproduktionen in Logatomen und in polnischen Echt-Wörtern in zwei verschiedenen Sprechgeschwindigkeiten erhoben. Die Analyse der artikulatorischen Daten brachte eine nahezu komplette Separierung der drei Sibilanten hervor. Jedoch zeigte die Analyse der akustischen Daten keine so deutliche Trennung der untersuchten Laute auf. Während die Informationen im Friktionsgeräusch der Sibilanten den dentalen Laut /s/ durch seinen hohen Frequenzschwerpunkt von den beiden anderen Frikativen trennt, werden für /ʂ ɕ/ Ähnlichkeiten im Friktionsanteil der Sibilanten gefunden. Zu Beginn des nachfolgenden Vokals finden sich Informationen, welche den alveolopalatalen Laut klar von den Sibilanten /s ʂ/ trennen, wobei letztere in ihren F2-Transitionswerten stark miteinander überlappen. Für die Kategorisierung des dentalen und des alveolopalatalen Sibilanten reicht damit jeweils ein Parameter – Friktionsgeräusch für /s/ und F2-Wert für /ɕ/ – aus, während für den retroflexen Sibilanten die Merkmale im Sibilanten selbst, wie auch die Information im Onset des nachfolgenden Vokals zur Kategorisierung benötigt werden. In einem Perzeptionsexperiment wurde der Einfluss des prosodischen Kontexts auf die Kategorisierung eines Kontinuums zwischen dem scheinbar instabilen /s ʂ/-Kontrast und einem Kontinuum zwischen dem vermutlich stabilen /s ɕ/-Kontrast getestet. Die Hypothese hierzu lautete, dass eine weniger kategoriale Perzeption des scheinbar instabilen /s ʂ/-Kontrasts in deakzentuierter Position, im Vergleich zum stabilen /s ʂ/-Kontrast, gefunden werden kann. Die Auswertung der Daten deutete, sowohl einen Effekt des prosodischen Kontexts als auch einen Einfluss des Geschlechts der Hörer auf die Wahrnehmung der Kontinua an. Eine Untersuchung der Produktion der Sibilanten von kindlichen und erwachsenen L1-Polnisch sprechenden Versuchspersonen brachte Hinweise dafür hervor, dass die F2 und F3-Werte der Sibilanten bei den kindlichen und den männlichen erwachsenen Sprechern nicht zur Kategorisierung des /s ʂ/-Kontrasts beitragen. Genauer gesagt konnte für diese beiden Sprechergruppen keine Unterscheidung in den besagten Merkmalen gefunden werden. Dem gegenüber stehen die weiblichen Probanden, welche alle drei sibilantischen Kategorien in den spektralen Merkmalen des Friktionsgeräusches, den F2 und in den F3-Werten zu Beginn des nachfolgenden Vokals voneinander trennten. Diese Dissertation liefert in allen experimentellen Kapiteln Hinweise auf eine Instabilität des retroflexen Sibilanten und Erklärungsansätze für die größere Wahrscheinlichkeit einer Neutralisierung des /s ɕ/-Kontrasts

A phonological study on English loanwords in Mandarin Chinese

The general opinion about the way English borrowings enter Mandarin is that English words are preferably integrated into Mandarin via calquing, which includes a special case called Phonetic-Semantic Matching (PSM) (Zuckermann 2004), meaning words being phonetically assimilated and semantically transferred at the same time. The reason for that is that Mandarin is written in Chinese characters, which each has a single-syllable pronunciation and a self-contained meaning, and the meaning achieved by the selection of characters may match the original English words. There are some cases which are agreed by many scholars to be PSM. However, as this study demonstrates, the semantics of the borrowing and the original word do not really match, the relation considered to be “artificial” by Novotná (1967). This study analyses a corpus of 600 established English loanwords in Mandarin to test the hypothesis that semantic matching is not a significant factor in the loanword adaptation process because there is no semantic relation between the borrowed words and the characters used to record them. To measure the phonological similarity between the English input and the Mandarin output, one of the models in adult second language perception, the Perceptual Assimilation Model (Best 1995a), is used as the framework to judge the phonemic matching between the English word and the adapted Mandarin outcome. The meanings of the characters used in recording the loanwords are referred in The Dictionary of Modern Chinese to see whether there are cases of semantic matching. The phonotactic adaptation of illicit sound sequences is also analysed in Optimality Theory (McCarthy 2002) to give an account of phonetic-phonological analysis of the adaptation process. Thus, the percentage of Phono-Semantic Matching is obtained in the corpus. As the corpus investigation shows, the loanwords that can match up both the phonological and the semantic quality of the original words are very few. The most commonly acknowledged phono-semantic matching cases are only phonetic loanwords. In conclusion, this paper argues that the semantic resource of Chinese writing system is not used as a major factor in the integration of loanwords. Borrowing between languages with different writing systems is not much different than borrowing between languages with same writing system or without a writing system. Though Chinese writing system interferes with the borrowing, it is the linguistic factors that determine the borrowing process and results. Chinese characters are, by a large proportion, conventional graphic signs with a phonetic value being the more significant factor in loanword integration process

Sinophone Southeast Asia

This volume explores the diverse linguistic landscape of Southeast Asia’s Chinese communities. Based on archival research and previously unpublished linguistic fieldwork, it unearths a wide variety of language histories, linguistic practices, and trajectories of words. The localized and often marginalized voices we bring to the spotlight are quickly disappearing in the wake of standardization and homogenization, yet they tell a story that is uniquely Southeast Asian in its rich hybridity. Our comparative scope and focus on language, analysed in tandem with history and culture, adds a refreshing dimension to the broader field of Sino-Southeast Asian Studies. . Readership: Students, scholars, (academic) libraries, community organizations, heritage organizations; linguistics, Southeast Asia Studies, East Asia Studies, Overseas Chines

Labial-dorsal interactions : a phonologically based approach

Głównym celem monografii jest wyjaśnienie bliskich fonologicznych relacji między dwiema artykulacyjnie odległymi klasami: spółgłoskami wargowymi (labialnymi) i grzbietowymi (dorsalnymi). Zaproponowane rozwiązanie sprowadza się do postulowania wspólnego dla tych grup elementu, reprezentującego miejsce artykulacji rzeczonych klas, co pozwala wyjaśnić ich częste interakcje przejawiające się w wielu procesach fonologicznych. Ponadto element ten charakteryzuje grupę samogłosek labialnych i półsamogłoskę [w], tłumacząc w ten sposób ich bliskie pokrewieństwo zarówno ze spółgłoskami labialnymi, jak i dorsalnymi. Zagadnienia poruszane w pracy wpisują ją w szeroki nurt badań nad wewnętrzną strukturą fonologicznych segmentów i wzajemnymi relacjami pomiędzy klasami (fonologia segmentalna), a bardziej szczegółowo, w badania nad właściwościami cech odpowiedzialnych za miejsce artykulacji spółgłosek oraz nad bliskimi relacjami tych ostatnich z samogłoskami. Wartościowym elementem podjętego tematu badań jest niewątpliwie złożoność zagadnienia i bogactwo procesów, w których ujawniają się wzajemne relacje spółgłosek labialnych i dorsalnych. Przykładem może być wokalizacja, epenteza czy dyftongizacja, które to procesy po bliższej analizie mogą przyczynić się do ujawnienia wewnętrznej struktury badanych klas

New Advances in Formosan Linguistics

The present volume is a festschrift in honour of Lillian M. Huang, who, in a very few years, became a leading figure in Formosan linguistics after she obtained her PhD degree in 1987. Over the past twenty-eight years, she has been involved in important groundwork, in both academia and indigenous language policies in Taiwan, as we will show below (sections 3 and 4). She has been engaged in the development of both through her pre-eminent role in projects relating to typological studies on Formosan languages in the early 1990s, and on language teaching materials and proficiency tests since the late 1990s and early 2000s. Lillian may retire in a few years. Before she does, we thought it would be most appropriate to honour her by putting together papers by a number of scholars and students who have benefitted from or have been in contact with her in one way or another (e.g. through collaborative work, teaching, supervising, advising etc.). The idea of such a volume was conceived by Elizabeth Zeitoun in the autumn of 2009. Further plans were initially worked out with Stacy F. Teng, soon joined by Joy J. Wu. The three editors have been close to Lillian since the early and mid 1990s. Of the three, Zeitoun, who has been working with her on diverse projects for over twenty years, is her closest collaborator on the academic level. Both Wu and Teng were Lillian’s MA supervisees. Through her fieldwork courses, she introduced Wu to Amis and Teng to Puyuma, languages on which they are still working. The title of the present volume, New advances in Formosan linguistics, reflects our pursuit of publishing cutting-edge, provocative, and thoughtful papers that explore new directions and perspectives on Formosan languages and linguistics. It is worth noticing that this is the first collected volume on Formosan languages that has not issued from a workshop or a conference—the papers included in this volume are thus varied in terms of topic coverage—and the first that specifically deals with (and covers nearly all) the Formosan languages, a grouping understood in its broader context, that is, including Yami, a Batanic (Philippine) language spoken on Orchid Island under the political jurisdiction of Taiwan. (Note: first three paragraphs of foreward)