Contact-induced Phonological Mergers: Transfer or Approximation

Sound changes in a language are considered nearly inevitable consequences of language death. The literature on sound change in obsolescencing languages has focused on whether the changes are internally or externally motivated, between convergent and divergent change and, therefore, the difference between categorical sound shifts and gradient phonetic effects has been overlooked. This paper examines the acoustic correlates of voicing distinctions in the Kurmanji language that investigate the subphonemic variation within a category. The results of a cross-generational acoustic study of Kurmanji showed that unaspirated initial voiceless stops have undergone phonetic change convergent with Persian, the dominant language. This paper argues that sound change in obsolescing languages may manifest substitution or approximation/expansion of phonological categories in the moribund languag

Unveiling Consonant Harmony: Nonlexical reduplication in English

There is a lack of strong diachronic evidence in English phonology to demonstrate consonant harmony (hereafter CH) in reduplication (Fikkert et al. 2005; Goad & Buckley 2006; Hale & Reiss 2008; Pater & Werle 2003; Rose 2000; Wolfram & Johnson 1982). In the present study, we investigated CH in synchronic settings wherein native English speakers were asked to produce a euphonious pseudo reduplicant from a nonce base in uncontrolled and controlled experiments. The results of the experiments indicated that, in English, consonantal assimilations might have a hierarchical structure when CH is present in the synchronic formation of a rhyming reduplicant. Taken holistically, these findings suggest that the rate of coronal assimilation exceeds that of labial assimilation. The occurrence of dorsal assimilation may be restricted even further by the scarcity of word-initial dorsal onsets that meet the requirements for rhyming reduplication

English Unmarked Reduplicants in Optimality Theory: Ragtag, powwow and riff-raff

This paper addresses issues regarding the constraint ranking for the unmarked English rhyming and ablaut reduplicants in Optimality Theory or OT (Prince & Smolensky 1993/2004). By studying English reduplication in current use, we consider not only the formal rigor of OT in accounting for the most unmarked grammatical output, but also its weaknesses in accounting for the correct outputs with a varying degree of unmarkedness in terms of Place Markedness Hierarchy (PMH, hereafter) (Lombardi 2001). The constraint argument which we put forward is met with an expected success in accounting for the onset [t] in the rhyming reduplicant, but the grammatical outputs with the [p] and the [k] remain unaccounted for. The use of [w] for the rhyming reduplicative onset may be characterized as the unmarked form in terms of a composite notion of articulatory cost (Skaer 2005), which builds on Kirchner (1998; 2001)’s analysis of aperture. Additionally, Occam’s razor, coupled with the notion of articulatory cost, leads us to suggest an alternative constraint argument to Minkova (2002)’s approach to accounting for the use of [æ] in the most common English ablaut reduplicative words.This paper builds directly on Kobayashi (2015) and two independent presentations given by the first author at the 2015 Joint International Conference held at Chugnam National University in South Korea on October 24th and the 16th Annual Conference of the French Phonology Conference at Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris, France on June 27th, 2018

Epenthesis Positioning and Syllable Contact in English and French

This study addresses the positioning of an epenthetic element used as a marker of emphasis in English and French within Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky 1993/2004). The epentheses to be analyzed here are mostly considered “syllable structure optimization” (Sommerstein 1977: 227), which introduces a less than ideal syllable structure to the CV-structure. The source epentheses highlight an application of a Markedness constraint SYLLCON (Rose 2000), which requires that “the first segment of the onset of a syllable must be lower in sonority than the last segment in the immediately preceding syllable” (Rose 2000: 401). Following Rose (2000), we suggest that the generation of the grammatical output satisfying SYLLCON embodies the emergence of the unmarked (McCarthy & Prince 1994) in the source languages

Linguistics and the Law : An Introduction to the Forensic Applications of Phonetics and Phonology

The purpose of this paper is to introduce to the reader some of the ways in which one or more of the sub-fields of linguistics are used for legal purposes, such as helping to identify a viable suspect in a bombing attempt, how to determine whose voice actually made a violent threat and how to legally determine the appropriateness of a new product name. It is my hope that such an introduction will encourage readers, particularly the students among us, to see that there are many interesting applications of the principles of linguistics that extend beyond the usual areas of usage (such as for language education, speech therapy and voice training). In this paper, then, I conduct a brief survey of some of the ways in which linguistics has been used for forensic applications