Phrase-final Lengthening of Phonemically Short and Long Vowels in Hungarian Spontaneous Speech Across Ages

Phrase-final lengthening may concern the vowels or the consonants of the phrase-final syllable, or the whole syllable. Vowel quantity as a phonemic distinction was also shown to interact with phrase-final lengthening. In this study we sought to explore temporal patterns of phrase-initial, phrase-medial and phrase-final, phonemically short and long vowels ([ɔ], [aː]) in words with diverse numbers of syllables focusing on possible differences between Hungarian-speaking young and old subjects. Spontaneous narratives of 10 young and 10 old speakers were randomly selected from the BEA database. Both phonemically short and long vowels were significantly longer in phrase-final positions than in phrase-medial positions in both age groups. Durations of vowels in phrase-medial positions were significantly shorter than those occurring in phrase-initial positions in young speakers’ speech while there were no differences in their durations between the two positions in old speakers’ speech. All speakers preserved the durational differences in all positions to avoid violating the phonemic patterns of the vowel system. Word length had a significant effect on vowel durations

Challenges in analysis and processing of spontaneous speech

Selected and peer-reviewed papers of the workshop entitled Challenges in Analysis and Processing of Spontaneous Speech (Budapest, 2017

Exploring The Facilitating Effect Of Diminutives On The Acquisition of Serbian Noun Morphology

Studies of Russian, Polish, and Lithuanian language learners converge on the finding that morphological features of nouns are first generalized to word clusters of high morpho-phonological similarities such as diminutives, that grammatical categorisation is are more easily applied to novel words that fall into these clusters. The present thesis explores whether the facilitating effect of diminutives on the acquisition of complex noun morphology can be extended to Serbian, a south Slavic language, morphologically similar to Russian and Polish. Specifically, the thesis explores the role of parameters responsible for the obtained diminutive advantage: high frequency of a particular cluster of words in child-directed speech (CDS) and morpho-phonological homogeneity within this cluster. A corpus analysis of the distribution of diminutives in Serbian CDS indicated a rather unexpected difference in frequency relative to Russian and Polish CDS, despite the high similarity of the diminutive derivation across these three Slavic languages. Out of the total number of nouns in Serbian CDS only 7% were diminutives, compared to 20-30% in Polish and 45% in Russian. Two experimental studies explored whether the low frequency of diminutives in Serbian CDS attenuates the diminutive advantage in morphology learning compared to Russian and Polish. In the first two experiments, Serbian children exhibited a strong diminutive advantage for both gender agreement and case marking in the same range as Russian children, indicating that morpho-phonological homogeneity within the cluster of diminutives may play as important a role as their frequency for grammatical categorisation of novel nouns. A third study investigated in more detail the effects of morpho-phonological homogeneity on the emergence of the diminutive advantage using a gender-agreement task with novel nouns in simplex and pseudo-diminutive form over four sessions with Serbian children. The results showed a pseudo-diminutive advantage for gender agreement by Session 2, suggesting that the categorisation of nouns into grammatical categories is based on morpho-phonological homogeneity of the word cluster, emerges relatively fast, and can occur despite the much lower frequency of diminutives in Serbian CDS. Finally, a series of neural network simulations designed to capture the pattern of results from the third experimental study was used to examine to what extent a simple associative learning mechanism, relying on morpho-phonological similarity of the noun endings, can explain the findings. The performance of three models, a whole-word feed-forward network, a Simple Recurrent Network (SRN) and a last-syllable feed-forward network, was compared to the experimental data. The superior fit of the SRN suggests that gender learning is based on a very fast sequential build-up of representations of the entire word, allowing the system to exploit the predictive power of word stems to anticipate regularised endings. Overall, the findings of this thesis contribute to our general understanding of mechanisms responsible for the acquisition of complex inflectional noun morphology in two ways. First, by extending experimental studies and neural network simulations to Serbian, the results underline the universality of the idea that noun morphology is learned and processed through a single-route associative mechanism based on the frequency and morpho-phonological structure of nouns. More specifically, the results from experimental studies and neural network simulations demonstrate that for diminutives, the low-level grammatical categorisation is based mainly on the morpho-phonological similarity of word endings, and can emerge after just a few exposures. And second, the neural network simulations suggest that during the process of categorisation of nouns into gender categories, learners rely not only on predictable information from the noun endings, but also on phonological regularities in the stems of nouns. Taken together, these findings contribute also to a better understanding of the facilitating role of CDS in morphology acquisition

Vendština: gramatický popis a sociolingvistická situace tzv. vendských dialektů romštiny

Disertační práce je podrobná gramatická a lexikální deskripce maďarské vendštiny, dosud málo popsaného dialektu romštiny zadunajské oblasti Maďarska, a základní popis její současné sociolingvistické situace. Jazyková data vychází jak z nahrávek spontánních narativů a polostandardizovaných rozhovorů, tak z elicitace za použití standardních dialektologických dotazníků pořízených v rámci terénního lingvistického výzkumu. Práce je rozdělena na šest částí. První část se zabývá zdrojem dat a metodologií. Druhá část zkoumá faktory, které ovlivňují sociolingvistickou vitalitu vendštiny. Následující tři části jsou věnovány gramatickému popisu. Šestá část analyzuje vrstvy přejímek ve vendštině. Součástí práce je také základní slovník vendštiny v překladu do angličtiny.The thesis provides a detailed grammatical and lexical description of Vend Romani, an under- described dialect of Romani spoken in the Transdanubian region of Hungary, and describes its current sociolinguistic situation. The linguistic data are based on recordings of spontaneous narratives, semi-structured interviews, and linguistic elicitation by means of standardized dialectological questionnaires acquired during linguistic field research. The thesis is structured into six main chapters: The first chapter deals with the sources of data and methods. The second chapter examines the factors that influence the sociolinguistic vitality of the dialect. The following three chapters are devoted to the grammatical description. The sixth chapter analyses the layers of borrowings in Vend Romani. The thesis also includes the basic vocabulary of Vend Romani translated to English.Institute of LinguisticsÚstav obecné lingvistikyFilozofická fakultaFaculty of Art

Methods in Contemporary Linguistics

The present volume is a broad overview of methods and methodologies in linguistics, illustrated with examples from concrete research. It collects insights gained from a broad range of linguistic sub-disciplines, ranging from core disciplines to topics in cross-linguistic and language-internal diversity or to contributions towards language, space and society. Given its critical and innovative nature, the volume is a valuable source for students and researchers of a broad range of linguistic interests

Consonant cluster phonotactics : a perceptual approach

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 2000.Includes bibliographical references (p. [309]-345).This dissertation deals with deletion and epenthesis processes conditioned or constrained by the consonantal environment, essentially consonant deletion, vowel epenthesis and vowel deletion. It is argued that the standard generative approach to these processes, which relies on the syllable and the principle of prosodic licensing, is empirically inadequate, and an alternative sequential approach based on perceptual factors is developed. It is proposed that the likelihood that a consonant deletes, triggers epenthesis or blocks vowel deletion correlates with the quality and quantity of the auditory cues associated to it in a given context. The approach is implemented in Optimality Theory and adopts more specifically the 'Licensing by cue' framework developed by Steriade (1997, 1999). New empirical generalizations concerning deletion and epenthesis processes are uncovered, in particular 1) the fact that stops are more likely than other consonants to delete, trigger epenthesis or block deletion; 2) the role of syntagmatic contrast in deletion and epenthesis processes; 3) the role of the audibility of stop release bursts; 4) the existence of cumulative edge effects, whereby more and more phonotactic combinations are licensed at the edges of prosodic domains as we go up the prosodic hierarchy. These generalizations are elucidated in terms of internal and contextual cues, modulation in the acoustic signal, and cue enhancement processes at edges of prosodic domains. The proposed perceptual approach achieves a substantial simplification and unification of the conceptual apparatus necessary to analyze deletion and epenthesis processes. It subsumes under the more general notion of perceptual salience principles of syllable well-formedness and the Obligatory Contour Principle. Furthermore, it eliminates the need for exceptional mechanisms such as extra syllabicity at domain edges. The analysis is based on the study of deletion and epenthesis processes in a variety of languages. Detailed investigations of schwa in Parisian French, cluster simplification in Quebec French and stop deletion and vowel epenthesis in Ondarroa Basque are provided.by Marie-Hélène Côté.Ph.D

Methods in Contemporary Linguistics

The present volume is a broad overview of methods and methodologies in linguistics, illustrated with examples from concrete research. It collects insights gained from a broad range of linguistic sub-disciplines, ranging from core disciplines to topics in cross-linguistic and language-internal diversity or to contributions towards language, space and society. Given its critical and innovative nature, the volume is a valuable source for students and researchers of a broad range of linguistic interests