Pre-aspiration in Bethesda Welsh: a sociophonetic analysis

Previous research has shown that pre-aspiration can be either a phonemic or variable linguistic feature susceptible to linguistic and extra-linguistic influences. In the case of Welsh, previous exploratory work has found the presence of pre-aspiration (Ball 1984; Morris 2010; Iosad Forthcoming; Spooner 2016), but the phonetic and phonological properties of this feature and its sociophonetic patterning in the language are not known. This paper presents analyses of the variety of Welsh spoken in Bethesda (Gwynedd). It reports the frequency of occurrence of pre-aspiration, its duration, and noisiness. As well as describing pre-aspiration, it attempts to ascertain the extent to which this feature is influenced by linguistic and extra-linguistic factors. Wordlist data were analysed from 16 Welsh–English bilinguals from Bethesda (Gwynedd, north Wales). Speakers were aged between 16 and 18 years old and the sample was stratified by speaker sex and home language (either Welsh or English). The results indicate that pre-aspiration is frequent in both fortis and lenis plosives (the latter of which are typically devoiced in Welsh). In addition to a number of linguistic influences on its production, both speaker sex and home language were found to be significant predictors of variation for some measures. The results are discussed with reference to previous studies of pre-aspiration in other languages and work on phonetic variation in Welsh-English bilingual speech

The phonologization of redundancy:Length and quality in Welsh vowels

‘Phonologization’ is a process whereby a phonetic phenomenon enters the phonological grammar and becomes conceptualized as the result of categorical manipulation of phonological symbols. I analyse the phonologization of a predictable phonological pattern in Welsh, with particular attention to identifying criteria for whether phonologization has occurred. I argue for a model where phonologization experiences bottom-up and top-down biases. From the bottom up, there is pressure to phonologize phenomena with a categorical distribution; from the top down, there exist formal constraints on featural specification. I focus on the requirement for featural specifications to obey the Contrastivist Hypothesis, which denies that redundant features can be involved in phonological computation, in the context of a framework with emergent features. I suggest that the Contrastivist Hypothesis acts as a useful check for emergent-feature theories, whilst independent phonologization criteria provide contrastivist approaches with a more solid conceptual underpinning

Reconstructing Indo-European Syllabification

The chief concern of this dissertation is to investigate a fundamental, yet unsolved problem within the phonology of Proto-Indo-European (PIE): the process of syllabification. I show that by analyzing the much more easily reconstructable word-edge clusters we may predict which types of consonant clusters can occur word-medially, provided that we assume a special status for certain consonants at word’s edge. Having thus analyzed the entire PIE phonological system, I believe I have developed the first working hypothesis of Indo-European syllabification, which we may now use to pre- dict which types of syllable-driven rules of consonant deletion and vowel epenthesis occurred within PIE. My dissertation argues that there existed at least five phonologi- cal processes of this type. The second half of the dissertation focuses on the problem of Sievers’ Law, through which I argue for the tendency in PIE to keep morphemes syllabically distinct, in accordance with a high-ranking constraint ALIGN. I conclude by proposing that the assumption of morphological relevance in the syllabic derivation provides us with a mechanism to reconcile the well-established principle of ONSET MAXIMIZATION with the reconstructable parsing of VCCV sequences as VC.CV

Consonant colour and vocalism in the history of Irish

Wydział AnglistykiNiniejsza praca poświęcona jest związanym ze sobą kwestiom barwienia spółgłosek i wokalizmu w historii języka Irlandzkiego, ze szczególną uwagą na okres staro-irlandzki. Głównym twierdzeniem pracy jest to, że język staro-irlandzki miał trzy odrębne serie spółgłosek, polegających na barwieniu, oraz minimalny (wertykalny) system samogłosek składający się z dwóch tylko komponentów. Obrona głównego twierdzenia ma podwójny charakter: empiryczny i typologiczny. Część typologiczna bazuje na kompleksowym przeglądzie minimalnych systemów samogłosek w językach świata. Część empiryczna oparta jest na opisie morfologii czasownika staro-irlandzkiego, w którym występują trzy barwy spółgłoskowe, ale tylko dwie samogłoski.This dissertation deals with the related questions of consonant colour and vocalism in the history of Irish, focusing particularly on the Old Irish period. It argues that Old Irish had three distinct series of consonant colour, and a vertical vowel system of only two members. This position is defended typologically, by means of a comprehensive survey of minimal and vertical vowel systems in the cross-linguistic literature, and also empirically, through a detailed description of Old Irish verbal morphology in terms of a phonological system with three consonant colours and only two vowels

Representation and variation in substance-free phonology:A case study in Celtic

This thesis presents a comprehensive analysis of the phonological patterns of two varieties of Brythonic Celtic in the framework of substance-free phonology. I argue that cross-linguistic variation in sound patterns does not derive solely from differences in grammars (implemented as Optimality Theoretic constraint rankings). Instead, I adopt the substance-free framework, based on the principle of modularity and autonomy of the phonological component, to account for cross-linguistic phonological and phonetic variation. Phonological representations in substance-free phonology are built up without regard to the physical implementation of phonological units, on the basis of the system of contrasts and patterns of alternation. Although this insight is not new when couched in terms of a language-specific assignment of a set of universal phonological features, I argue that the mapping between phonology and phonetics is also not universal and deterministic, and reject the universality of the feature set. Instead, I argue for a rich interface between phonology and phonetics. Based on this understanding of the nature of variation, I provide a holistic analysis of the sound systems of two closely related languages: Pembrokeshire Welsh and Bothoa Breton. I propose an account in terms of a rich representational theory. Among other proposals, I defend the need for surface ternary contrasts, which I propose to implement using feature geometry. I also show that the substance-free approach, which decouples phonological representation from phonetic realization, strikes the correct balance between innatist and emergentist approaches to phonological markedness; I demonstrate this by way of an extensive case study of laryngeal phonology, which leads to a reinterpetation of the approach known as 'laryngeal realism'. I also argue that the phonological component of grammar should allow constraints with prima facie undesirable factorial consequences, if such constraints are needed to account for functionally unmotivated sound patterns, and discuss the consequences of this approach for the substance-free nature of phonological computation

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

Metalinguistic awareness in literate and illiterate children and adults: a psycholinguistic study

One of the major goals of psycholinguistic research is to be able to account for those mental operations which enable native speakers not only to perform the basic linguistic capacities such as comprehending and producing an illimited number of utterances, but also to exercise such metalinguistic abilities as to judge utterances, segment words, identify sounds and detect ambiguities. The primary concern of this thesis was to elucidate the processes underlying certain aspects of metalinguistic awareness and to trace their relationship to advances in maturation and acquisition of literacy. The guiding principle has been to determine how much of what has been considered normal cognitive development is in fact an age-bound developmental phenomenon, or to what extent it reflects the result of experiences associated with the degree and extent of literacy. The need for this is apparent on examining previous research which, as we demonstrate, has confounded such theoretically important variables as Age, Literacy and peculiarities of the native language. The aim of the methodology employed here was to deconf ound such variables and add more insight as to the nature of metalinguistic abilities. First, by employing literate and illiterate children and adults, the design optimizes the likelihood of tapping a precise relationship between maturation, literacy and metalinguistic awareness. Second, by using native speakers of Arabic, the general design offers the opportunity to add insight from language yet another typologically different from English in which most previous research was conducted. Third, by employing more than one type of linguistic measure for the same population, the design also hopes to answer one empirical question, namely',, whether metalinguistic awareness can be conceptualised as either multidimensional or unitary in nature. The Subjects who participated in the study were 120 Moroccan Arabic speaking literate and illiterate children and adults drawn from a relatively homogeneous socio-economic background. A total of seven experiments -- some with subtasks -- were used. Six chapters make up the study. In Chapter 1 we have tried to provide an introduction to the theoretical issues which we think are of central importance to the topic under investigation. Because our approach is essentially psycholinguistic, Chapter 2 describes and discusses the methodology employed to gather the necessary data for the study. It is also concerned with the procedures used to evaluate these data. Chapters 3,4, and 5 form the main bulk of the research. Using various experiments, they examine the extent to which Ss deploy their metalinguistic knowledge in the process of attending to and manipulating the following linguistic units: (i) words (Chapter 3); (ii) syllables (Chapter 4); (iii) segments (Chapter 5). Typically, each one of these chapters considers various hypotheses and research questions which concern the specific linguistic unit. Finally, Chapter 6 draws general conclusions from the general study and addresses some implications for linguistic theory, psycholinguistic research and, although not extensively, education research

Early phonological acquisition by Kuwaiti Arabic children

PhD ThesisThis is the first exploration of typical phonological development in the speech of children acquiring Kuwaiti-Arabic (KA) before the age of 4;0. In many of the word’s languages, salient aspects of the ambient language have been shown to influence the child’s initial progress in language acquisition (Vihman, 1996, 2014); however, studies of phonological development of Arabic lack adequate information on the extent of the influence of factors such as frequency of occurrence of certain features and their phonological salience on the early stages of speech acquisition. A cross-sectional study design was adapted in this thesis to explore the speech of 70 typically developing children. The children were sampled from the Arabic-speaking Kuwaiti population; the children were aged 1;4 and 3;7 and gender-balanced. Spontaneous speech samples were obtained from audio and video recordings of the children while interacting with their parent for 30-minutes. The production accuracy of KA consonants was examined to explore the influence of type and token frequencies on order of consonant acquisition and the development of error patterns. The sonority index was also used to predict the order of consonant acquisition cross-linguistically. The findings were then compared with those of other dialects of Arabic to identify within-language variability and with studies on English to address cross-linguistic differences between Arabic and English early phonological development. The results are partially consistent with accounts that argue for a significant role of input frequency in determining rate and order of consonant acquisition within a language. The development of KA error patterns also shows relative sensitivity to consonant frequency. The sonority index does not always help in the prediction of all Arabic consonants, and the developmental error patterns and early word structures in Arabic and English are significantly distinct. The outcomes of this study provide essential knowledge about typical Arabic phonological development and the first step towards building a standardised phonological test for Arabic speaking children