The Fate of Complex Languages: Classical Arabic and Old Norse in the Age of Globalisation

I discuss the effects of globalisation on verbal inflection in two language groups, Arabic and Scandinavian. With the term ‘globalisation’ I do not only refer to most recent world history, but also to earlier expansions of empires, cultures and languages. I compare the social and cultural situation and the verbal inflection of Classical Arabic and Old Norse with those of modern Arabic and Scandinavian varieties. The hypothesis that factors of the historical social dimension influence variables of verbal inflection is confirmed for these cases. It was found that the more second language learning takes place, the more internal dialect contact and migrations occur, and the less prestige a language has, the more transparent and economic the verbal inflection becomes. On the other hand, tight small communities with strong language traditions and few second language learners are found to be the best environment for inflectional complexities. When such small communities expand, and when the earlier ‘ethnic’ language becomes a tool for smoother communication, restructuring takes place. In Arabic and Scandinavian this restructuring is sensitive to phonological changes, and appears to be almost ‘natural’. Other evidence from cases like Quechua and Swahili indicate that simplification is morphologically and semantically driven and needs favorable social circumstances to take place. This strongly suggests that simplification has some universal characteristics, like the tendency towards more economy and transparency, but is also dependent on language particular morphological structure

Two experiments in the perception of Fø timing in Danish

The perceptual relevance of rather finely timed differences in the occurrence of fundamental frequency (Fø) rises as observed in natural speech is established in listening experiments with synthetic speech stimulus material. (1) When vowel and consonant duration cues are ambiguous between /ku•lə/ and /kulə/ an early Fø rise, relative to the vowel-consonant boundary, will tend to favour identification of stimuli as /ku•lə/, while a later Fø rise increases the number of /kulə/ judgments somewhat. (2) When vowel duration cues are ambiguous between /'bilisd/ and /bi'lisd/ an Fø rise before the intervocalic consonant will significantly increase the number of /'bilisd/ identifications, whereas an Fø rise after the consonant yields more judgments of /bi' lisd/. The latter result corroborates the acoustic observation that initial voiced consonants in stressed syllables dissociate tonally from the vowel and join up with the preceding material, if any, to the effect that tonally the stress seems to begin with the vowel

Papers published in ARIPUC 1-20, 1966-1986

No abstrac

Neutral stress, emphatic stress, and sentence intonation in Advanced Standard Copenhagen Danish

The relationship between stress and fundamental frequency in short declarative and syntactically unmarked interrogative sentences, both with emphasis for contrast in various positions, is investigated and compared to prosodically neutral statements and questions on the basis of recordings by four speakers. Emphasis for contrast has a radical influence on the course of fundamental frequency, to the extent that the stress group which contains the stressed syllable of the emphasized word and its neighbours tonally reduce to one stress group. The influence from emphasis seems to reach farther on marked (non-declarative) than on unmarked (declarative) contours. Durational differences between utterances with and without emphasis for contrast are small, consisting mainly in a slight lengthening of the emphasized stress group, a lengthening which is to some extent counterbalanced by a shortening of the preceding stress group, if any

Vowel change in English and German: a comparative analysis

English and German descend from the same parent language: West-Germanic, from which other languages, such as Dutch, Afrikaans, Flemish, or Frisian come as well. These would, therefore, be called “sister” languages, since they share a number of features in syntax, morphology or phonology, among others. The history of English and German as sister languages dates back to the Late antiquity, when they were dialects of a Proto-West-Germanic language. After their split, more than 1,400 years ago, they developed their own language systems, which were almost identical at their earlier stages. However, this is not the case anymore, as can be seen in their current vowel systems: the German vowel system is composed of 23 monophthongs and 8 diphthongs, while that of English has only 12 monophthongs and 8 diphthongs. The present paper analyses how the English and German vowels have gradually changed over time in an attempt to understand the differences and similarities found in their current vowel systems. In order to do so, I explain in detail the previous stages through which both English and German went, giving special attention to the vowel changes from a phonological perspective. Not only do I describe such processes, but I also contrast the paths both languages took, which is key to understand all the differences and similarities present in modern English and German. The analysis shows that one of the main reasons for the differences between modern German and English is to be found in all the languages English has come into contact with in the course of its history, which have exerted a significant influence on its vowel system, making it simpler than that of German

Fonetisk reduktion i dansk

Med udgangspunkt i det danske talesprogskorpus DanPASS undersøges tilbøjeligheden til fonetisk reduktion i dansk talesprog i forhold til en række intralingvistiske faktorer. I undersøgelsen udføres en kortlægning mellem 300.000 fonemer og foner. På baggrund af denne kortlægning er det muligt at danne et meget detaljeret billede af både hvor i sproget den fonetiske realisering afviger fra den fonologisk forudsagte form, og naturen af denne afvigelse. I afhandlingen fokuseres der på den type afvigelser der kan karakteriseres som reduktioner, dvs. svækkelse og bortfald af de enkelte lydsegmenter. De reducerede forekomster sammenlignes med de øvrige annoterede lag i korpusset, herunder grammatiske, informationsstrukturelle og prosodiske forhold. Det demonstreres at tilbøjeligheden til reduktion, såvel som reduktionernes fonetisk resultat, i høj grad er knyttet til lingvistisk faktorer, såsom ordklasse, grammatisk funktion, ny vs. kendt information, fokus, emfase mm. foruden en række fonologiske faktorer. Reduktioner bliver ofte betragtet som sprogligt ukrudt, men på baggrund af den systematiske sammenhæng med informationsbærende elementer i sproget, virker det rimeligt at betragte reduktioner som funktionelle elementer, der er understøttende for kommunikationen snarere end forstyrrende. I afhandlingen udforskes og dokumenteres en række tilbøjeligheder som ikke tidligere er undersøgt i dansk, og kun sparsomt i internationale sammenhænge. Herigennem opnås et dybere indblik i dansk lydstruktur og de mønstre som reduktioner generelt ser ud til at følge

Vowel Inventory Size and the Use of Temporal Cues in Non-Native Vowel Perception by Catalan and Danish EFL Learners

Abstract This paper sought to determine whether L1 vowel inventory size could be a contributing factor to the use of temporal cues in L2 vowel perception. The participants were L1 Catalan (n=20) and L1 Danish (n=20) EFL learners and L1 English control group (n=7). We hypothesized that the smaller vowel inventory of Catalan could result in difficulties in discerning spectral differences and would lead to the over-use of temporal cues Identification accuracy scores indicate that Catalans over-used duration and failed to discern /i-/ through spectral cues, whereas Danes resorted to duration as a primary cue to a lesser extent. We suggest that this might be due to differences in L1 vowel inventory size and, as a result, experience with smallscale spectral differences.) The acquisition of second language (L2) vowels is a complex task. According to the current influential L2 speech learning model

The Invariant in Phonology. The role of salience and predictability

This aim of this thesis is to give a phonological account of acoustic variation and reduction. It is argued that phonological representations are uneven and include information about the relative strength of the segmental and subsegmental units composing them. This unevenness implies a distinction between the invariant – the “phonetic essence” of a word, which is practically undeletable – and other units which can be dispensed with under certain circumstances. In the first chapter I compare different theoretical approaches to the problem of acoustic variation, in particular with reference to generative phonology and exemplar-based theories. In the second chapter I propose a model which combines aspects of Optimality Theory, Element Theory and usage-based linguistics. Additionally, I discuss the role of acoustic salience in the formation of the invariant. In chapter three, typological and experimental data are examined in order to establish a salience scale for consonants. In chapter four, the results of the acoustic analysis of four dialogues extracted from a corpus of spoken Italian are presented. As expected, highly salient consonants are preserved to a greater extent than less salient ones. In chapter five I attempt to identify the phonological correlates of acoustic salience and discuss other factors which may favor reduction and deletion, among which predictability. In chapter six I draw some conclusions, deal with some pending issues and suggest future directions for research