110 research outputs found
Studies in the dialect and palaeographical materials of the medieval West Country
The aim of this thesis is to provide a comprehensive phonological and morphosyntactic overview of the dialect materials found in Devon, Dorset and Somerset during the Middle Ages. Building on methodology developed during the creation of the Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English, the present study involves the resurveying of sources mapped in the Atlas and, from the data gathered, an in-depth look at medieval West-Country dialect areas and diachronic dialectal changes. In particular, this study aims to develop new ways of analysing and profiling both historical dialectal and palaeographical material using computer-assisted methods.
The relationship between speech and writing during the medieval period is complex. This is especially the case in a conservative and, in many ways, geographically isolated area like the West Country. A survey of spellings found in the medieval texts localised to the West Country in the Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English affords valuable insights into the, often archaic, phonology of the area and also the rapidly standardising graphetic practices of scribes during this period.
Proceeding from the initial collection of graphemic, phonological and morphosyntactic information, it is possible thereafter, using modern and traditional dialectological techniques, to determine dialect areas as well as areas of varying graphermic usage. A new approach to the comparison of scribal hands will also be detailed in this study and submitted on a CD-RO
The role of gesture delay in coda /r/ weakening: an articulatory, auditory and acoustic study
The cross-linguistic tendency of coda consonants to weaken, vocalize, or be deleted is shown to
have a phonetic basis, resulting from gesture reduction, or variation in gesture timing. This study
investigates the effects of the timing of the anterior tongue gesture for coda /r/ on acoustics and
perceived strength of rhoticity, making use of two sociolects of Central Scotland (working- and
middle-class) where coda /r/ is weakening and strengthening, respectively. Previous articulatory
analysis revealed a strong tendency for these sociolects to use different coda /r/ tongue configurations—working-
and middle-class speakers tend to use tip/front raised and bunched variants,
respectively; however, this finding does not explain working-class /r/ weakening. A correlational
analysis in the current study showed a robust relationship between anterior lingual gesture timing,
F3, and percept of rhoticity. A linear mixed effects regression analysis showed that both speaker
social class and linguistic factors (word structure and the checked/unchecked status of the prerhotic
vowel) had significant effects on tongue gesture timing and formant values. This study provides further
evidence that gesture delay can be a phonetic mechanism for coda rhotic weakening and apparent
loss, but social class emerges as the dominant factor driving lingual gesture timing variation
The Effects of Syllable and Sentential Position on the Timing of Lingual Gestures in /l/ and /r/
This paper is an ultrasound-based articulatory study of the impact of syllable-position and utterance position on gesture timing in liquid consonants in American, Irish and Scottish English. Mixed effects modelling was used to analyse variation in the relative timing of the anterior and posterior lingual gestures for /l/ and /r/ in syllable-onset and coda position and in utterance-initial, medial and final position. Results showed that the component lingual gestures for /l/ and /r/ are coordinated differently in onsets and codas, across the three varieties studied; the anterior lingual gesture tends to precede the posterior gesture in syllable-onset liquids, while this gesture order is reversed for syllable-coda liquids. For /l/, but not /r/, being in utterance-initial and final position results in a significantly increased temporal distance between the two lingual gestures. For coda /r/, prerhotic vowels were found to have a significant impact on the relative timing of lingual gestures
The effects of syllable and sentential position on the timing of lingual gestures in /l/ and /r/
Eleanor Lawson - ORCID: 0000-0003-1812-387X
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1812-387XItem deposited in University of Glasgow (Enlighten) repository on 11 April 2019, available at: http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/183809/Paper number: 0161This paper is an ultrasound-based articulatory study of the impact of syllable-position and utterance position on gesture timing in liquid consonants in American, Irish and Scottish English. Mixed effects modelling was used to analyse variation in the relative timing of the anterior and posterior lingual gestures for /l/ and /r/ in syllable-onset and coda position and in utterance-initial, medial and final position. Results showed that the component lingual gestures for /l/ and /r/ are coordinated differently in onsets and codas, across the three varieties studied; the anterior lingual gesture tends to precede the posterior gesture in syllable-onset liquids, while this gesture order is reversed for syllable-coda liquids. For /l/, but not /r/, being in utterance-initial and final position results in a significantly increased temporal distance between the two lingual gestures. For coda /r/, prerhotic vowels were found to have a significant impact on the relative timing of lingual gestures.https://www.internationalphoneticassociation.org/content/icphspubpu
The Effects of Syllable and Utterance Position on Tongue Shape and Gestural Magnitude in /l/ and /r/
This paper is an ultrasound-based articulatory study
of the impact of syllable-position and utterance
position on tongue shape and tongue-gesture
magnitude in liquid consonants in American, Irish
and Scottish English. Mixed effects modelling was
used to analyse variation in normalised tonguegesture magnitude for /r/ and /l/ in syllable-onset and
coda position and in utterance-initial, medial and final
position. Variation between onset and coda mean
midsagittal tongue surfaces was also quantified using
normalised root-mean-square distances, and patterns
of articulatory onset-coda allophony were identified.
Despite the fact that some speakers in all varieties
used tip-up /r/ in syllable-onset position and bunched
/r/ in coda position, RMS distance results show
greater degrees of similarity between onset and coda
/r/ than between onset and coda /l/. Gesture
magnitude was significantly reduced for both /l/ and
/r/ in coda position. Utterance position had a
significant effect on /l/ only
Derhoticisation in Scottish English: a sociophonetic journey
Item deposited in University of Glasgow (Enlighten) repository on 10 April 2014, available at: http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/87460/Sociophonetic variation presents us with challenges and opportunities. This paper focuses on an area of phonetic variation which is particularly rich and informative about the social exploitation of the complexities of the acoustics-articulatory relationship - namely fine-grained variation and change in Scottish English coda /r/. Scottish English is typically thought to be 'rhotic' (e.g. Wells 1982), such that postvocalic /r/ in words such as car, card, and better are realized with some kind of articulated rhotic consonant (approximant, tap, and exceptionally a trill). This paper presents historical and more recent sociophonetic data from the Central Belt of Scotland (from Edinburgh to Glasgow), which show auditory/impressionistic, acoustic, and articulatory evidence of derhoticisation (e.g. Stuart-Smith 2003; Stuart-Smith et al 2007; Lawson et al 2011a; Lawson et al 2011). Derhoticisation is especially evident in working-class speakers, whilst middle-class speakers are developing auditorily 'stronger' rhotics and merging vowels before /r/. We consider the geographical and social distribution of the rhotic-derhotic continuum in these varieties and the linguistic and sociolinguistic factors involved, and the evidence to date that exists from speech perception and social evaluation of speech. We conclude by considering how sociophonological detail and abstraction are encoded in mental representations (cf e.g. Johnson 2006).The research presented here was supported by awards to Jane Stuart-Smith from the Leverhulme Trust (F/179/AX), the AHRC, and the ESRC (R000239757), and to James M. Scobbie and Jane Stuart-Smith, from the ESRC,RES-000-22-2032 and RES-062-23-3246.caslpub3084pu
The role of anterior lingual gesture delay in coda /r/ lenition: An ultrasound tongue imaging study
We investigate the contribution that lingual gesture delay makes to lenition of postvocalic /r/. This study uses a socially-stratified, audio-ultrasound corpus of Scottish English containing recordings from two sociolects; one with postvocalic /r/ weakening and the other with strengthening. We quantify auditory strength of rhoticity and the timing of the anterior lingual gesture relative to the offset of voicing in CVr words: bar, bore, fur, or onset of a following consonant in CVrC words: farm, herb, burp, in order to show that there is a statistically significant correlation between weak rhoticity and a late articulatory gesture. Our ultrasound data also show that during the process of final consonant vocalization/deletion, underlying articulatory gestures may persist.https://www.internationalphoneticassociation.org/icphs/icphs2015caslpub3941pub33
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