Initial geminates in Leti: Consequences for moraic theory

published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe

The Role of the Syllable Contact Law-Semisyllable (SCL-SEMI) in the Coda Clusters of Najdi Arabic and Other Languages

Final consonants in Arabic are semisyllables; that is, moraic unsyllabified segments that are attached to the prosodic word (Kiparsky, 2003). If this is the case, optional vowel epenthesis in Najdi Arabic final clusters cannot be attributed to violations of the Sonority Sequencing Principle, because sonority restrictions apply within syllables only. In a new perspective, this dissertation argues that the existence of vowel epenthesis in Najdi coda clusters that have rising sonority, and its absence in clusters that have a falling sonority, are instead due to violations of the Syllable Contact Law (SCL), where sonority must drop between syllable codas and the following onset. It specifically argues that SCL is further divided into two sub-constraints where it not only applies across two syllables (SCL-SYLL), but also across syllables and the following unsyllabified semisyllable (SCL-SEMI). The new constraint SCL-SEMI is shown to be operative in other languages and dialects of Arabic, as well, including German, Slovak, English and Jordanian Arabic. Optionality of vowel epenthesis when words are produced in isolation vs. followed by a vowel-initial suffix is accounted for by adopting the Reversible Ranking Strategy introduced by Lee (2001) where the two constraints DEP-IO and SCL-SEMI are reversed following this ranking: *CCC, MAX-IO, ONSET \u3e\u3e ALIGNR\u3e\u3e DEP-IO, SCL-SEMI \u3e\u3e SCL-SYLL, *CXCOD. In addition, a psycholinguistic study is conducted to test the perception and production of ten Najdi speakers to observe whether they epenthesized a vowel into nonsense words with final rising-sonority clusters. It also investigates the generalizability of the semisyllable consistutent, by asking whether Najdi listeners will assign semisyllable status to any unsyllabifiable consonant, even those occurring in nonsense words. Results show that most participants apply their preferred vowel epenthesis pattern to nonesense words, which reflects their implicit knowledge of this pattern. Results also show a harmony effect where inserted vowels copy stem vowels

Nonmoraic Geminates in Leti

Descriptieve taalkunde: de regiotale

Multiple acoustic cues for Korean stops and automatic speech recognition

The purpose of this thesis is to analyse acoustic characteristics of Korean stops by way of multivariate statistical tests, and to apply the results of the analysis in Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) of Korean. Three acoustic cues that differentiate three types of Ko¬ rean oral stops are closure duration, Voice Onset Time (VOT) and fundamental frequency (FO) of a vowel after a stop. We review the characteristics of these parameters previously reported in various phonetic studies and test their usefulness for differentiating the three types of stops on two databases, one with controlled contexts, as in other phonetic stud¬ ies, and the other a continuous speech database designed for ASR. Statistical tests on both databases confirm that the three types of stops can be differentiated by the three acoustic parameters. In order to exploit these parameters for ASR, a context dependent Hidden Markov Model (HMM) based baseline system with a short pause model is built, which results in great improvement of performance compared to other systems. For mod¬ elling of the three acoustic parameters, an automatic segmentation technique for closure and VOT is developed. Samples of each acoustic parameter are modelled with univariate and multivariate probability distribution functions. Stop probability from these models is integrated by a post-processing technique. Our results show that integration of stop prob¬ ability does not make much improvement over the results of a baseline system. However, the results suggest that stop probabilities will be useful in determining the correct hy¬ pothesis with a larger lexicon containing more minimal pairs of words that differ by the identity of just one stop

The rephonologization of Hausa loanwords from English: an optimality theory analysis

Faculty of Humanities School of Literature, Language and Media University of the Witwatersrand A Master’s DissertationThis study investigates how Hausa, a West Chadic language (Afro Asiatic phyla) remodells loanwords from English (Indo – European) to suit its pre-existing phonology. Loanword adaptation is quite inevitable due to the fact that languages of the world differ, one from another in many ways: phonological, syntactical, morphological and so on (Inkelas & Zoll, 2003, p. 1). Based on this claim, receptor languages therefore employ ways to rephonologize new words borrowed into their vocabularies to fit, and to conform to native structure demands. Hausa disallows complex onsets, preferably operates open syllables and avoids consonant clustering in word-medial positions as at its best can tolerate no more than a single consonant at a syllable edge (Clements, 2000; Han, 2009). On the contrary, English permits complex onsets as well as closed syllables (Skandera & Burleigh, 2005). Such distinctions in both phonologies motivate for loanword adaptation. Hausa therefore employs repair strategies such as vowel epenthesis, consonant deletions and segmental substitutions and/or replacements (Newman, 2000; Abubakre, 2008; Alqhatani & Musa, 2014) to remodell loanwords. For analytical purposes, this research adopts theoretical tools of Feature Geometry (FG) (Clements & Hume, 1995) and Optimality Theory (OT) (Prince & Smolensky, 2004) to clearly illustrate how loanwords are modified to satisfy Hausa native demands (Kadenge, 2012). Vowel epenthesis in Hausa involves two main strategies: consonantal assimilation and default insertions. During consonantal assimilation, coronal and labial segments spread place features unto the epenthetic segment in the process determining the vowel type and/or quality, while in the case of default insertions, fresh segments are introduced context independently. Concerning segmental substitutions, most notably are English consonants /p/ and /v/ maximally replaced with similar ones, [f] and [b] that exist in Hausa on the basis that former and latter segments share same phonation feature

Papers from the Austronesian Formal Linguistics Association 24

This is a collection of 6 articles from the AFLA 24 conference held in 2017. The papers cover a full range synchronic descriptions of Austronesian languages

日本語の語レベルの韻律構造 : 通方言的な視点から

学位の種別: 課程博士審査委員会委員 : (主査)東京大学准教授 田中 伸一, 東京大学教授 伊藤 たかね, 東京大学教授 矢田部 修一, 国立国語研究所教授 バンス ティモシー, 神戸大学准教授 田中 真一University of Tokyo(東京大学