Tonal placement in Tashlhiyt: How an intonation system accommodates to adverse phonological environments

In most languages, words contain vowels, elements of high intensity with rich harmonic structure, enabling the  perceptual retrieval of pitch. By contrast, in Tashlhiyt, a Berber language, words can be composed entirely of voiceless segments. When an utterance consists of such words, the phonetic opportunity for the execution of intonational pitch movements is exceptionally limited. This book explores in a series of production and perception experiments how these typologically rare phonotactic patterns interact with intonational aspects of linguistic structure. It turns out that Tashlhiyt allows for a tremendously flexible placement of tonal events. Observed intonational structures can be conceived of as different solutions to a functional dilemma: The requirement to realise meaningful pitch movements in certain positions and the extent to which segments lend themselves to a clear manifestation of these pitch movements

Tonal placement in Tashlhiyt: How an intonation system accommodates to adverse phonological environments

In most languages, words contain vowels, elements of high intensity with rich harmonic structure, enabling the  perceptual retrieval of pitch. By contrast, in Tashlhiyt, a Berber language, words can be composed entirely of voiceless segments. When an utterance consists of such words, the phonetic opportunity for the execution of intonational pitch movements is exceptionally limited. This book explores in a series of production and perception experiments how these typologically rare phonotactic patterns interact with intonational aspects of linguistic structure. It turns out that Tashlhiyt allows for a tremendously flexible placement of tonal events. Observed intonational structures can be conceived of as different solutions to a functional dilemma: The requirement to realise meaningful pitch movements in certain positions and the extent to which segments lend themselves to a clear manifestation of these pitch movements

Tonal placement in Tashlhiyt: How an intonation system accommodates to adverse phonological environments

In most languages, words contain vowels, elements of high intensity with rich harmonic structure, enabling the  perceptual retrieval of pitch. By contrast, in Tashlhiyt, a Berber language, words can be composed entirely of voiceless segments. When an utterance consists of such words, the phonetic opportunity for the execution of intonational pitch movements is exceptionally limited. This book explores in a series of production and perception experiments how these typologically rare phonotactic patterns interact with intonational aspects of linguistic structure. It turns out that Tashlhiyt allows for a tremendously flexible placement of tonal events. Observed intonational structures can be conceived of as different solutions to a functional dilemma: The requirement to realise meaningful pitch movements in certain positions and the extent to which segments lend themselves to a clear manifestation of these pitch movements

Tonal placement in Tashlhiyt

In most languages, words contain vowels, elements of high intensity with rich harmonic structure, enabling the perceptual retrieval of pitch. By contrast, in Tashlhiyt, a Berber language, words can be composed entirely of voiceless segments. When an utterance consists of such words, the phonetic opportunity for the execution of intonational pitch movements is exceptionally limited. This book explores in a series of production and perception experiments how these typologically rare phonotactic patterns interact with intonational aspects of linguistic structure. It turns out that Tashlhiyt allows for a tremendously flexible placement of tonal events. Observed intonational structures can be conceived of as different solutions to a functional dilemma: The requirement to realise meaningful pitch movements in certain positions and the extent to which segments lend themselves to a clear manifestation of these pitch movements

Understanding the phonetics of neutralisation: a variability-field account of vowel/zero alternations in a Hijazi dialect of Arabic

This thesis throws new light on issues debated in the experimental literature on neutralisation. They concern the extent of phonetic merger (the completeness question) and the empirical validity of the phonetic effect (the genuineness question). Regarding the completeness question, I present acoustic and perceptual analyses of vowel/zero alternations in Bedouin Hijazi Arabic (BHA) that appear to result in neutralisation. The phonology of these alternations exemplifies two neutralisation scenarios bearing on the completeness question. Until now, these scenarios have been investigated separately within small-scale studies. Here I look more closely at both, testing hypotheses involving the acoustics-perception relation and the phonetics-phonology relation. I then discuss the genuineness question from an experimental and statistical perspective. Experimentally, I devise a paradigm that manipulates important variables claimed to influence the phonetics of neutralisation. Statistically, I reanalyse neutralisation data reported in the literature from Turkish and Polish. I apply different pre-analysis procedures which, I argue, can partly explain the mixed results in the literature. My inquiry into these issues leads me to challenge some of the discipline’s accepted standards for characterising the phonetics of neutralisation. My assessment draws on insights from different research fields including statistics, cognition, neurology, and psychophysics. I suggest alternative measures that are both cognitively and phonetically more plausible. I implement these within a new model of lexical representation and phonetic processing, the Variability Field Model (VFM). According to VFM, phonetic data are examined as jnd-based intervals rather than as single data points. This allows for a deeper understanding of phonetic variability. The model combines prototypical and episodic schemes and integrates linguistic, paralinguistic, and extra-linguistic effects. The thesis also offers a VFM-based analysis of a set of neutralisation data from BHA. In striving for a better understanding of the phonetics of neutralisation, the thesis raises important issues pertaining to the way we approach phonetic questions, generate and analyse data, and interpret and evaluate findings

Phonetics and Phonology Interplay in Loanword Adaptation: English Alveolar Fricative into Korean.

The purpose of this investigation is to determine the general principles that govern Korean-speaking listeners’ perceptual strategies regarding the adaptation of English alveolar fricatives into Korean. The English voiceless alveolar fricative is variously borrowed into Korean as /s*/ (as in ‘say’ [s*ei]) or /s/ (as in ‘stay’ [sɨtei]). The systematic pattern for English onset /s/ is that prevocalic /s/E are borrowed as /s*/K, and preconsonantal /sC/E is borrowed as /s/K. In investigating English /s/-initial loanwords in Korean, this dissertation postulated two hypothesis, Hypothesis 1, the consonantal information hypothesis, and Hypothesis 2, the vocalic information hypothesis. Hypothesis 1 predicted that /s/-internal properties (i.e., frication portion itself) play an important role in Korean listeners’ English /s/ perception; Hypothesis 2 states that Korean listeners predominantly rely on /s/- external properties, particularly properties of the following vowel. Hypothesis 2 was postulated to apply to vowels that are acoustically present as well as vowels that are perceptually epenthesized. Four production and three perception experiments were conducted to investigate aspects of these hypotheses. The experiments confirmed that Korean listeners were insensitive to consonantal information in their perception of the English fricative, in spite of temporal and spectral differences between English /s/s in prevocalic and preconsonantal positions. Korean listeners have difficulty discriminating /sC/from/sɨC̯/. This difficulty is interpreted as an indication of a perceptual illusion, which in turn leads to speculate that the illusory vowel influences fricative perception. Phonotactic resolution (i.e., vowel epenthesis) is selectively applied in order for the epenthetic vowel to be perceptually least salient in favor of minimal perceptual consequences of an illusory epenthetic vowel. These experimental results serve as information about listeners’ perceptual modification strategies in facing phonotactically illegal sequences. They also suggest that phonetic and phonological knowledge about Korean interact in loanword adaptation, and that listeners incorporate this knowledge when they perceive non-native speech sounds.Ph.D.LinguisticsUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/89691/1/myahn_1.pd

Phonotactic probability and phonotactic constraints :processing and lexical segmentation by Arabic learners of English as a foreign language

PhD ThesisA fundamental skill in listening comprehension is the ability to recognize words. The ability to accurately locate word boundaries(i . e. to lexically segment) is an important contributor to this skill. Research has shown that English native speakers use various cues in the signal in lexical segmentation. One such cue is phonotactic constraints; more specifically, the presence of illegal English consonant sequences such as AV and MY signals word boundaries. It has also been shown that phonotactic probability (i. e. the frequency of segments and sequences of segments in words) affects native speakers' processing of English. However, the role that phonotactic probability and phonotactic constraints play in the EFL classroom has hardly been studied, while much attention has been devoted to teaching listening comprehension in EFL. This thesis reports on an intervention study which investigated the effect of teaching English phonotactics upon Arabic speakers' lexical segmentation of running speech in English. The study involved a native English group (N= 12), a non-native speaking control group (N= 20); and a non-native speaking experimental group (N=20). Each of the groups took three tests, namely Non-word Rating, Lexical Decision and Word Spotting. These tests probed how sensitive the subjects were to English phonotactic probability and to the presence of illegal sequences of phonemes in English and investigated whether they used these sequences in the lexical segmentation of English. The non-native groups were post-tested with the -same tasks after only the experimental group had been given a treatment which consisted of explicit teaching of relevant English phonotactic constraints and related activities for 8 weeks. The gains made by the experimental group are discussed, with implications for teaching both pronunciation and listening comprehension in an EFL setting.Qassim University, Saudi Arabia

Tonal placement in Tashlhiyt: How an intonation system accommodates to adverse phonological environments

In most languages, words contain vowels, elements of high intensity with rich harmonic structure, enabling the  perceptual retrieval of pitch. By contrast, in Tashlhiyt, a Berber language, words can be composed entirely of voiceless segments. When an utterance consists of such words, the phonetic opportunity for the execution of intonational pitch movements is exceptionally limited. This book explores in a series of production and perception experiments how these typologically rare phonotactic patterns interact with intonational aspects of linguistic structure. It turns out that Tashlhiyt allows for a tremendously flexible placement of tonal events. Observed intonational structures can be conceived of as different solutions to a functional dilemma: The requirement to realise meaningful pitch movements in certain positions and the extent to which segments lend themselves to a clear manifestation of these pitch movements

Elements, Government, and Licensing: Developments in phonology

Elements, Government, and Licensing brings together new theoretical and empirical developments in phonology. It covers three principal domains of phonological representation: melody and segmental structure; tone, prosody and prosodic structure; and phonological relations, empty categories, and vowel-zero alternations. Theoretical topics covered include the formalisation of Element Theory, the hotly debated topic of structural recursion in phonology, and the empirical status of government. In addition, a wealth of new analyses and empirical evidence sheds new light on empty categories in phonology, the analysis of certain consonantal sequences, phonological and non-phonological alternation, the elemental composition of segments, and many more. Taking up long-standing empirical and theoretical issues informed by the Government Phonology and Element Theory, this book provides theoretical advances while also bringing to light new empirical evidence and analysis challenging previous generalisations. The insights offered here will be equally exciting for phonologists working on related issues inside and outside the Principles & Parameters programme, such as researchers working in Optimality Theory or classical rule-based phonology

How an intonation system accommodates to adverse phonological environments

In most languages, words contain vowels, elements of high intensity with rich harmonic structure, enabling the perceptual retrieval of pitch. By contrast, in Tashlhiyt, a Berber language, words can be composed entirely of voiceless segments. When an utterance consists of such words, the phonetic opportunity for the execution of intonational pitch movements is exceptionally limited. This book explores in a series of production and perception experiments how these typologically rare phonotactic patterns interact with intonational aspects of linguistic structure. It turns out that Tashlhiyt allows for a tremendously flexible placement of tonal events. Observed intonational structures can be conceived of as different solutions to a functional dilemma: The requirement to realise meaningful pitch movements in certain positions and the extent to which segments lend themselves to a clear manifestation of these pitch movements