Communication with diminutives to young children vs. pets in German, Italian, Lithuanian, Russian, and English

This contribution is dedicated to Steven Gillis with whom we have collaborated since the nineties within the “Crosslinguistic Project on Pre- and Protomorphology in Language Acquisition” on both child speech (CS) and child-directed speech (CDS) and also about the development of diminutives (DIMs). We investigate parallels in the use of DIMs and of hypocoristics (HYPs) between CDS and pet-directed speech (PDS), whereas CS is only marginally dealt with. When relevant, also adult-directed speech (ADS), written or oral (especially from electronic corpora, wherever available) will be compared. The presuppositions of this investigation will be stated at the beginning of the Introduction (§ 1). This involves several innovations (beyond descriptions of new data), when compared with existing literature, relevant to theoretical and typological problem areas. We will show that also in DIMs and HYPs used in CDS and PDS semantics only plays a partial or even marginal role when using more DIMs to communicate with young children and young and/or small pets, because it is more relevant that both younger and smaller pets are emotionally closer to us, which is again a pragmatic factor. In regard to language typology, we will apply our concepts of morphological richness and productivity, as argued for and supported in our previous publications, to CDS and PDS and show that richer and more productive patterns of DIM formation of a language also have a typological impact on more frequent and more productive use both in CDS and PDS. We will also apply our concepts of grading morphosemantic transparency/opacity, as argued for and supported in our previous publications, and we start to show, as al- ready shown for CS, that also in CDS towards young children (and similarly in PDS) more morphosemantically transparent DIMs are used than in ADS. This is also connected to their predominantly pragmatic meanings in CDS and PDS (obviously not exclusively pragmatic as in early CS). The languages and authors were selected according to who among the participants in the Crosslinguistic Project on Pre- and Protomorphology in Language Acquisition had CDS and PDS available, plus Elisa Mattiello who has collected English and Italian PDS data.Dit artikel gaat over het gebruik van verkleinwoorden en koosnamen (hypocoristics) in twee taalregisters: taal gericht tot kinderen (child-directed speech, CDS) en taal gericht tot huisdieren (pet-directed speech, PDS). De semantiek van verkleinwoorden blijkt een minder grote rol te spelen dan de pragmatiek: de emotionele nabijheid van kinderen en huisdieren. De studie, waarin vijf talen worden vergeleken, verkent ook de typolo- gie: de morfologische rijkdom van verkleinwoorden in een taal beïnvloedt de produc- tie.Daarnaast speelt de semantische transparantie van verkleinwoorden crosslinguïs- tisch een rol. In CDS en PDS worden meer transparante verkleinwoorden gebruikt

The phonetics of Modern (Israeli) Hebrew

It is the purpose of the present work to provide a description of the phonetics of Modern (Israeli) Hebrew. This it proceeds to do in five parts, leading (after an introduction) from the syllable and its segments, through the foot and the syntagm to connected discourse.The first part, an introduction, consists of two chapters; of these, the first gives a historical account of the revival of Hebrew and traces some of the socio-linguistic aspects connected with the * pronunciation of M.I.H. — more particularly outlining the major points distinguishing the two main dialectal varieties, Sabra Hebrew and Oriental Hebrew, and their various styles (of which this work will deal in particular with the Colloquial Style of Sabra Hebrew). The second chapter outlines the basic theory behind the description, as well as the methods by which it is to be conductedPart Two is in three chapters. The first of these attempts a phonological formulation of the M.I.H. syllable-structure, the second lists and describes the vowels, and the third does the same for the consonants and their phono-tactic patterning. The diagrams are based on palatograms and kymograms of M.I.H. citation-form speech, for which the author served as informant (the photographs of these materials are contained in Appendix iii). Statistical frequency-figures are also listed for the segments, and reference is made to their acoustic features.The third part deals with the foot, and is in two chapters, the first of which describes word-accent (an abstract potentiality) and the second rhythmical stress (a concrete realisation). A theoretical model is here developed — and continued in parts four and five — for the description of M.I.H. intonation-patterns.Part Four, describing the features of the syntagm, contains tluo chapters, the first of which lists and describes the intonationpatterns of [fl.I.H. according to a system of binary features, and the second of u/hich deals with segmental sound-changes in connected speech. The corpus of materials for this part (as well as for the one preceding and the one following it) consists of continuous Hebrew speech and -I'Z ii a * readings of The North Wind and the Sun, as well as modern Hebrew poetry, totalling some 90 minutes, as recorded by various native speakers of ffl.I.H. This material is transcribed (with tonetic notation) in Appendix ii. to this work, and a standardised phonemic transcription '' ii , , of the I.P.A piece, The North Wind and the Sun (with tonetic marks), followed by notes on the phonetic realisation of the phonemic segments, is contained in Appendix i, the tapes themselves being attached to the thesis.The final section — Part Five — also consists of two chapters, of which the first deals with tone-groups and the second contains notes on such para-linguistic features as kinesics and proxemics, vocalisations, articulatory set, phonation types and phonaesthesia. The work concludes with some general remarks to sum up the status of Modern (Israeli) Hebrew as a successfully revived national language. ihroughout this and the preceding two parts, reference is continually made to spectrographic materials connected with the corpus (the photographs of the actual materials being contained in Appendix iii), and to synthesis of ffl.I.H. speech with the aid of the Edinburgh University's Parametric Artificial Talker (PAT), evidence for which is likewise contained in Appendix iii.Footnotes are given on the pages of the text to which they refer, and there is therefore no separate footnote section at the end of the work, which concludes with a Bibliography in two sections, the first of which lists works of a general phonetic and linguistic nature, the second comprising only works referring to Hebrew specifically

First verbs : On the way to mini-paradigms

This 18th issue of ZAS-Papers in Linguistics consists of papers on the development of verb acquisition in 9 languages from the very early stages up to the onset of paradigm construction. Each of the 10 papers deals with first-Ianguage developmental processes in one or two children studied via longitudinal data. The languages involved are French, Spanish, Russian, Croatian, Lithuanien, Finnish, English and German. For German two different varieties are examined, one from Berlin and one from Vienna. All papers are based on presentations at the workshop 'Early verbs: On the way to mini-paradigms' held at the ZAS (Berlin) on the 30./31. of September 2000. This workshop brought to a close the first phase of cooperation between two projects on language acquisition which has started in October 1999: a) the project on "Syntaktische Konsequenzen des Morphologieerwerbs" at the ZAS (Berlin) headed by Juergen Weissenborn and Ewald Lang, and financially supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, and b) the international "Crosslinguistic Project on Pre- and Protomorphology in Language Acquisition" coordinated by Wolfgang U. Dressler in behalf of the Austrian Academy of Sciences

Estonian: typological studies. II

Kopeerimine ja printimine lubatudhttp://tartu.ester.ee/record=b1614207~S1*es

On the Natural Phonology of Vowels

Dissertation presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

Liivi sõnaprosoodia

Väitekirja elektrooniline versioon ei sisalda publikatsioone.Liivi sõnaprosoodia on maailma keelte hulgas tähelepanuväärsel kohal, kuna ilmnevad sarnased jooned nii teiste soome-ugri keeltega kui ka balti ja skandinaavia keeltega. Liivi astmevaheldust iseloomustab nõrga- ja tugevaastmeliste rõhusilpide vaheldumine rõhtutute silpidega kahesilbilises kõnetaktis. Eriliseks teeb liivi keele pikkades rõhusilpides vastanduvad tõusev püsitoon ja tõusev-langev katketoon. Väitekiri keskendub kolmele peamisele aspektile: liivi kahesilbiliste nõrga- ja tugevaastmelise struktuuriga sõnade silpide kestuste, kestussuhete ja põhitooni omavahelisele seosele kõnetaktis, liivi pikematele sõnastruktuuridele ja liivi katketooni akustilistele tunnustele. Akustiline analüüs näitas, et kahesilbilistes nõrga- ja tugevaastmelise struktuuriga sõnades ilmneb rõhutu silbi kestuse erinevus ja sellest tulenevalt rõhulise ja rõhutu silbi kestussuhete erinevus. Põhitooni analüüs näitas, et püsitooniga nõrgaastmeliste sõnade põhitoon on küll tõusev, kuid tugevaastmeliste sõnade puhul põhitooni kontuur varieerub. Põhitooni tipp nendes sõnades võib olla nii pearõhulise esisilbi alguses kui ka lõpus. Liivi pikemates sõnades on silpide suhted kaasrõhulises kõnetaktis enamasti sarnased rõhulise ja rõhuta silbi suhtega pearõhulises taktis. Uurimistulemused kinnitavad, et kõige iseloomulikum katketooni akustiline tunnus nii loetud kui ka spontaanses kõnes on põhitooni tipu asukoht pearõhulise silbi alguses. Põhitooni varajane langus rõhulises silbis tingib ka selle, et põhitoon rõhutus silbis on katketooniga sõnades madalam. Pikad helilised silbituumad katketooniga sõnades võivad häälduda larüngalisatsiooniga, mis esineb järjekindlamalt loetud kõnes kui spontaanses kõnes. Intensiivsuse puhul on kõige iseloomulikum selle ebaregulaarne kontuur pearõhulises silbis. Väitekirja uurimistulemused kinnitavad ka, et katketooni kirjeldamisel tuleks kindlasti rohkem tähelepanu pöörata sõna rõhutule silbile, kuna katketooni akustilised tunnused peegelduvad ka seal.The Livonian language shares similar prosodic features with Finno-Ugric languages but also Baltic and Scandinavian languages. Gradation in Livonian is a regular alternation of the weak-grade and strong-grade stressed syllables and unstressed syllables. A significant phenomenon in Livonian word prosody is the opposition of the plain tone and broken tone or stød. The current thesis focuses on three main research aspects: the role of quantity and fundamental frequency in the Livonian prosodic system, the temporal patterns in Livonian words of more than two syllables, and acoustic features of Livonian broken tone or stød. The acoustic analysis showed the duration of the first stressed syllable might not differ in weak- and strong-grade words, but the difference becomes evident in the second unstressed syllable duration. Words without stød (i.e. with the plain tone) can have a late pitch peak in weak-grade words, while in strong-grade words the F0 peak can vary in the first stressed syllable. The structures of primary-stressed and secondary-stressed feet are in principle alike. The analysis revealed that the most stable and characteristic feature of words with stød is an early location of the F0 turning point and the irregular shape of the intensity contour. The F0 values in S2 are considerably smaller in words with stød. Characteristic laryngealization is realized more often in read speech than in spontaneous speech. In spontaneous speech, this feature tends to weaken or disappear. The results of this thesis suggest that not only the syllable carrying stød but also the following syllable might cue the difference between words with and without stød

Stress and rhythm in modern Greek

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:D35991/81 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

SPEECH RECOGNITION FOR CONNECTED WORD USING CEPSTRAL AND DYNAMIC TIME WARPING ALGORITHMS

Speech Recognition or Speech Recognizer (SR) has become an important tool for people with physical disabilities when handling Home Automation (HA) appliances. This technology is expected to improve the daily life of the elderly and the disabled so that they are always in control over their lives, and continue to live independently, to learn and stay involved in social life. The goal of the research is to solve the constraints of current Malay SR that is still in its infancy stage where there is limited research in Malay words, especially for HA applications. Since, most of the previous works were confined to wired microphone; this limitation of using wireless microphone type makes it an important area of the research. Research was carried out to develop SR word model for five (5) Malay words and five (5) English words as commands to activate and deactivate home appliances