In search of a new perspective: Cross-linguistic influence in the acquisition of third language phonology

The books explores the phenomenon of cross-linguistic influence (CLI) in phonological acquisition from a multilingual perspective. A distinction is made between second vs. third language acquisition and the complexity of the latter process as well as its conditioning factors are elaborated on. The contribution aims to test the tenets of the current theoretical models of multilingual acquisition including the L2 Status Model, the Cumulative Enhancement Model and the Typological Primacy Model. To this end, three studies were conducted in parallel on four groups of participants with varying language combinations (i.e. mirrored L2 and L3 sets). The studies involved (1) accentedness, comprehensibility and accuracy ratings assessing the perceived phonetic performance in the L3, (2) acoustic measurements of voice onset time (VOT) in the L1, L2 and L3 as a correlate of foreign accentedness, and (3) the degree of metaphonological awareness generated from oral protocols. The results were analysed separately for each study as well as globally by means of across groups and across studies comparisons. The findings indicate that CLI in the L3 phonological acquisition may have multiple sources including both the native and non-native languages, that it's gradual and structure dependent and that the proposed models can account only partially for its specificity

The production and perception of peripheral geminate/singleton coronal stop contrasts in Arabic

Gemination is typologically common word-medially but is rare at the periphery of the word (word-initially and -finally). In line with this observation, prior research on production and perception of gemination has focused primarily on medial gemination. Much less is known about the production and perception of peripheral gemination. This PhD thesis reports on comprehensive articulatory, acoustic and perceptual investigations of geminate-singleton contrasts according to the position of the contrast in the word and in the utterance. The production component of the project investigated the articulatory and acoustic features of medial and peripheral gemination of voiced and voiceless coronal stops in Modern standard Arabic and regional Arabic vernacular dialects, as produced by speakers from two disparate and geographically distant countries, Morocco and Lebanon. The perceptual experiment investigated how standard and dialectal Arabic gemination contrasts in each word position were categorised and discriminated by three groups of non-native listeners, each differing in their native language experience with gemination at different word positions. The first experiment used ultrasound and acoustic recordings to address the extent to which word-initial gemination in Moroccan and Lebanese dialectal Arabic is maintained, as well as the articulatory and acoustic variability of the contrast according to the position of the gemination contrast in the utterance (initial vs. medial) and between the two dialects. The second experiment compared the production of word-medial and -final gemination in Modern Standard Arabic as produced by Moroccan and Lebanese speakers. The aim of the perceptual experiment was to disentangle the contribution of phonological and phonetic effects of the listeners’ native languages on the categorisation and discrimination of non-lexical Moroccan gemination by three groups of non-native listeners varying in their phonological (native Lebanese group and heritage Lebanese group, for whom Moroccan is unintelligible, i.e., non-native language) and phonetic-only (native English group) experience with gemination across the three word positions. The findings in this thesis constitute important contributions about positional and dialectal effects on the production and perception of gemination contrasts, going beyond medial gemination (which was mainly included as control) and illuminating in particular the typologically rare peripheral gemination

Unity and diversity in grammaticalization scenarios

The volume contains a selection of papers originally presented at the symposium on “Areal patterns of grammaticalization and cross-linguistic variation in grammaticalization scenarios” held on 12-14 March 2015 at Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz. The papers, written by leading scholars combining expertise in historical linguistics and grammaticalization research, study variation in grammaticalization scenarios in a variety of language families (Slavic, Indo-Aryan, Tibeto-Burman, Bantu, Mande, "Khoisan", Siouan, and Mayan). The volume stands out in the vast literature on grammaticalization by focusing on variation in grammaticalization scenarios and areal patterns in grammaticalization. Apart from documenting new grammaticalization paths, the volume makes a methodological contribution as it addresses an important question of how to reconcile universal outcomes of grammaticalization processes with the fact that the input to these processes is language-specific and construction-specific

Grammatical gender and linguistic complexity : Volume I: General issues and specific studies

Peer reviewe

Reconstructing Syntax

Contributing to the vigorous discussion of the viability of syntactic reconstruction, this volume offers methods for identifying i) cognates in syntax, and ii) the directionality of syntactic change, thus providing historical syntacticians with evidence that syntactic reconstruction is indeed both theoretically and practically feasible.; Readership: This volume is of interest to all historical syntacticians and historial linguists, as well as to specialists within Indo-European, Semitic, Austronesian and native American languages

Grammatical gender and linguistic complexity, Volume 1

The many facets of grammatical gender remain one of the most fruitful areas of linguistic research, and pose fascinating questions about the origins and development of complexity in language. The present work is a two-volume collection of 13 chapters on the topic of grammatical gender seen through the prism of linguistic complexity. The contributions discuss what counts as complex and/or simple in grammatical gender systems, whether the distribution of gender systems across the world’s languages relates to the language ecology and social history of speech communities. This volume is complemented by volume two, which consists of three chapters providing diachronic and typological case studies, followed by a final chapter discussing old and new theoretical and empirical challenges in the study of the dynamics of gender complexity