Diachronically stable, lexically specific variation: The phonological representation of secondary /æ/-lengthening

PosterSecondary /æ/-lengthening, also known as the bad-lad split (bad as [bæːd] and lad as [læd]), is noted in several 20th century impressionistic descriptions of Southern Standard British English (SSBE) [4, 8, 12]. This paper reports results from an acoustic phonetic analysis of the duration of monosyllabic /æ/ (trap) words in SSBE. The apparent stability of this lengthening over the past century indicates that such sub-phonemic lexical variation is not necessarily indicative of a change still in progress. While its sub-phonemic nature is best accounted for with a usage-based phonological framework in which detailed phonetic properties are stored in lexical representations, the appearance of lengthening in higher-frequency words otherwise predicted to undergo reduction points to a more complex interaction of vowel duration and frequency than previously reported [7, 10]. Twenty-one native SSBE-speaking students at the University of Cambridge, aged 18–24, were recorded reading sentences embedded with 73 monosyllabic words containing the stressed vowel /æ/ (token n=1,777). Duration and F1/F2 were measured in Praat [1], with modal, breathy, and preaspirated sections coded separately and vowel duration defined as the modal plus breathy portions. A linear mixed effects model predicting duration with voicing and manner and place of articulation of coda consonants as well as word frequency entered as fixed effects along with by-word and by-speaker random intercepts and their interactions was run. Effects of phonological environment on length were observed as expected; results also indicated significant lengthening of higher-frequency words (p=0.009). The coefficients of the by-word random intercepts offer a window into how ‘unexpectedly’ long or short individual /æ/ words are once the phonological features of the post-tonic consonant(s) are accounted for; words singled out a century ago as being ‘long’ (e.g. bag, that, bad, jam, sad) still top the ranking (Figure 1). The secondary /æ/-lengthening reported here bears a striking resemblance to the reconstructed initial stages of primary /æ/-lengthening (also known as the trap-bath split), a diachronic process that began in Southern England around the 17th century as allophonic length variation in reflexes of the Middle English /æ/ vowel [12]. While Lexical Phonology has been used to analyze primary /æ/-lengthening, such a model predicts that allophonic contrasts, processed post-lexically, should never be involved in lexically selective change [6, 9]. On the other hand, usage-based theories in which people store detailed phonetic properties of individual words allow persistent biases in pronunciation to accumulate into small but consistent sub-phonemic differences [2, 11]. However, while Exemplar Theory has been used to account for vowel reduction in higher-frequency words, the present data indicates that the opposing process of lengthening has in fact occurred some high-frequency words [3, 5]. It appears that just as primary /æ/-lengthening represents an ossified, half completed sound change, secondary /æ/-lengthening seems to have undergone the same lengthening process but lexically ossified at the sub-phonemic level. Phonemic contrastiveness does not seem to be a prerequisite for the stable maintenance of a lexically specified split, even when this directly counteracts an overarching articulatory process. Given this active resistance to the process of phonetic reduction, it is proposed that this in fact represents stable transmission and storage of lexically specified sub-phonemic allophony. In a usage-based framework, it would be predicted that such variation should affect more frequent rather than less frequent words, since a learner would have to encounter such words often enough to consistently store the duration differences in the word memories accessed in speech production. Figure 1. Words investigated, plotted by amount of lengthening unaccounted for by fixed effects. [1] Boersma, P. & D. Weenink. 2015. Praat: doing phonetics by computer [Computer program]. Version 5.4.07. http://www.praat.org/. [2] Bybee, J. 2000. The phonology of the lexicon: Evidence from lexical diffusion. In M. Barlow & S. Kemmer (Eds.), Usage-based models of language. Stanford: CSLI, pp. 65–85. [3] Bybee, J. 2001. Phonology and language use. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [4] Cruttenden, A. 2001. Gimson’s Pronunciation of English, Sixth Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [5] Gahl, S. 2007. “Thyme” and “Time” are not homophones. Word durations in spontaneous speech. Language 84(3): 474–496. [6] Harris, J. 1989. Towards a lexical analysis of sound change in progress. Journal of Linguistics 25(1): 35–56. [7] Hay, J., J. Pierrehumbert, A. Walker, & P. LaShell. 2015. Tracking word frequency effects through 130 years of sound change. Cognition 139: 83–91. [8] Jones, D. J. 1918. An outline of English phonetics. Leipzig: Teubner. [9] Kiparsky, P. 1988. Phonological change, in F. J. Newmeyer (Ed.), Linguistics: The Cambridge Survey. Volume I, Linguistic Theory: Foundations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 363–415. [10] Phillips, B. 2006. Word frequency and lexical diffusion. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. [11] Pierrehumbert, J. 2001. Exemplar dynamics: Word frequency, lenition, and contrast. In J. Bybee & P. Hopper (Eds.), Frequency effects and the emergence of lexical structure. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 137–157. [12] Wells, J. C. 1982. Accents of English (Vols. 1-3). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

A sociological study of part time employment in the senior high schools of Louisville, Kentucky.

Today with the advent of an ever increasing industrialization, the importance of developing the skill, strength, and knowledge of the young people to meet the new age is recognized as never before. Not only must the fundamentalism of traditional education be revised in terms of a more progressive education, but also the practical, non-academic courses should be given more consideration. In this thesis I have attempted to analyze one particularly important aspect of the problem of youth and employment. I have presented here a sociological analysis of part-time employment in the Louisville, Kentucky Senior High schools. It was my intention to inquire into the relationships between the time spent in employment and the effects on the students\u27 scholastic and social lives. Throughout the thesis I have endeavored to show the effects on the community of a school work program. The main body of the thesis is divided into three chapters: an introduction, a report of the analysis of the data, and a summary of trends and proposals. The particular questions posed by the investigation, the methodology, and the analysis of local and national data will be presented in chapter two

The BAD-LAD split: Secondary /æ/-lengthening in Southern Standard British English

Descriptions of the Received Pronunciation (RP) and Southern Standard British English (SSBE) have previously commented on vowel lengthening in certain words such as bad and glad as opposed to shorter lad and pad. This paper comprises the first thorough description of the conditioning of /æ/ duration in twenty-one young native SSBE speakers, finding inconclusive evidence for a lexically specified split but significant general lengthening effects of postvocalic /g/ and /d/; this secondary /æ/-lengthening is discussed in reference to phonological analyses of the TRAP-BATH split (primary /æ/-lengthening) and previously established descriptions of co-articulatory segmental effects on vowel length

The Canadian Shift: Its Acoustic Trajectory and Consequences for Vowel Categorization

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Producing and Perceiving the Canadian Vowel Shift::Evidence from a Montreal Community

AbstractThis paper investigates interspeaker variation in the mid and low short vowels of Jewish Montreal English, analyzing the Canadian Shift in both production and perception. In production, we find that young women are leading in the retraction of /æ/ and the lowering and retraction of /ε/. We furthermore find that across speakers, the retraction of /æ/ is correlated with the lowering and retraction of /ε/, providing quantitative evidence that the movements of these two vowels are linked. The trajectory implied by our production data differs from what was reported in Montreal approximately one generation earlier. In contrast to reliable age differences in production, a vowel categorization task shows widespread intergenerational agreement in perception, highlighting a mismatch: in this speech community, there is evidently more systematic variation in production than in perception. We suggest that this is because all individuals are exposed to both innovative and conservative variants and must perceptually accommodate accordingly.</jats:p

Multidimensional signals and analytic flexibility: Estimating degrees of freedom in human speech analyses

Recent empirical studies have highlighted the large degree of analytic flexibility in data analysis which can lead to substantially different conclusions based on the same data set. Thus, researchers have expressed their concerns that these researcher degrees of freedom might facilitate bias and can lead to claims that do not stand the test of time. Even greater flexibility is to be expected in fields in which the primary data lend themselves to a variety of possible operationalizations. The multidimensional, temporally extended nature of speech constitutes an ideal testing ground for assessing the variability in analytic approaches, which derives not only from aspects of statistical modeling, but also from decisions regarding the quantification of the measured behavior. In the present study, we gave the same speech production data set to 46 teams of researchers and asked them to answer the same research question, resulting insubstantial variability in reported effect sizes and their interpretation. Using Bayesian meta-analytic tools, we further find little to no evidence that the observed variability can be explained by analysts’ prior beliefs, expertise or the perceived quality of their analyses. In light of this idiosyncratic variability, we recommend that researchers more transparently share details of their analysis, strengthen the link between theoretical construct and quantitative system and calibrate their (un)certainty in their conclusions

TK1-001

Explanatory file "About this collection"Hawaiʻ

Nānā i ke kumu: Acoustic phonetic research on archival recordings of ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi

Archival recordings play a key role in ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi revitalization. Learners are encouraged to use the voices of kūpuna as pronunciation models. Through analyzing these voices from the past, this project illustrates how linguistic research can support community-based revitalization efforts by looking to the source – nānā i ke kumu

Haʻina ʻia mai ana ka puana: The vowels of ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi

Ph.D