Pharyngealization of french loanwords in dialectal moroccan arabic: an acoustic analysis of bilingual speakers

This paper quantitatively tests the prediction that loanword adaptation occurs in bilinguals who must resolve two competing requirements: an accurate mental representation of the word from the source language and the phonological requirements of the receiving language. The prediction is that this duel requirement would result in the phonetic quality of loanwords being categorically different for bilinguals from the phonetic quality of native words in the receiving language. French loanwords into Moroccan Arabic (MA) are often borrowed with pharyngeal secondary articulation (“emphasis”), a feature which affects the quality of adjacent vowels. To test these predictions, French-MA bilingual production of native and borrowed MA words and analyzed. The results of this study indicate evidence of this duel requirement for bilinguals

Similarity and Enhancement: Nasality from Moroccan Arabic Pharyngeals and Nasals

Experimental studies of the articulation, acoustics, and perception of nasal and pharyngeal consonants and adjacent vowels were conducted to investigate nasality in Moroccan Arabic (MA). The status of nasality in MA is described as coarticulatorily complex, where two phoneme types (pharyngeal segments and nasal segments) yield similar non-contrastive coarticulatory information (nasality) on adjacent vowels. The production and perception of the coarticulatory complexity of nasality in MA is the focus of this dissertation. An aerodynamic study demonstrated that nasal airflow is reliably present during the production of pharyngeal consonants, yet to a degree less than nasal consonants. This study also indicated this nasality is coarticulated on vowels adjacent to pharyngeal and nasal consonants. An acoustic study confirmed the patterns of coarticulatory nasality from nasals and pharyngeals and explored how nasality as a coarticulatory complex feature, a feature associated with two distinct segment types, affects its patterning in the language. This study reveals that vowel nasality is perceptually associated with pharyngeal, as well as nasal, consonants in MA, as evidenced by faster reaction times when vowel nasality was present in a lexical repetition task, compared to a condition where there was no vowel nasality, evidence that non-contrastive coarticulatory information is indeed perceptually informative not only in the context of phonologically nasal segments, but also in the context of pharyngeal consonants. Furthermore, there is evidence of perceptual compensation for nasality, wherein in the context of pharyngeal consonants listeners show patterns that suggest they do not \u22hear\u22 vowel nasality but rather attribute it to its source. Together, this is evidence of partial compensation since listeners retain sensitivity to and facilitation from vowel nasality, revealed by faster response times in the lexical repetition task. The results of the experiments outlined in this dissertation suggest 1) that nasality is a property of pharyngeal consonants and adjacent vowels that is highly controlled by speakers in order to maintain distinctiveness between pharyngeal and nasal consonant nasality and 2) that nasality is being utilized as a secondary, enhancement feature for pharyngeal consonants, potentially to maintain the distinctiveness of pharyngeal segments from the other guttural phonological class consonants in MA

Linguistic analysis of human-computer interaction

This article reviews recent literature investigating speech variation in production and comprehension during spoken language communication between humans and devices. Human speech patterns toward voice-AI presents a test to our scientific understanding about speech communication and language use. First, work exploring how human-AI interactions are similar to, or different from, human-human interactions in the realm of speech variation is reviewed. In particular, we focus on studies examining how users adapt their speech when resolving linguistic misunderstandings by computers and when accommodating their speech toward devices. Next, we consider work that investigates how top-down factors in the interaction can influence users’ linguistic interpretations of speech produced by technological agents and how the ways in which speech is generated (via text-to-speech synthesis, TTS) and recognized (using automatic speech recognition technology, ASR) has an effect on communication. Throughout this review, we aim to bridge both HCI frameworks and theoretical linguistic models accounting for variation in human speech. We also highlight findings in this growing area that can provide insight to the cognitive and social representations underlying linguistic communication more broadly. Additionally, we touch on the implications of this line of work for addressing major societal issues in speech technology

Children and adults produce distinct technology- and human-directed speech.

This study compares how English-speaking adults and children from the United States adapt their speech when talking to a real person and a smart speaker (Amazon Alexa) in a psycholinguistic experiment. Overall, participants produced more effortful speech when talking to a device (longer duration and higher pitch). These differences also varied by age: children produced even higher pitch in device-directed speech, suggesting a stronger expectation to be misunderstood by the system. In support of this, we see that after a staged recognition error by the device, children increased pitch even more. Furthermore, both adults and children displayed the same degree of variation in their responses for whether Alexa seems like a real person or not, further indicating that childrens conceptualization of the systems competence shaped their register adjustments, rather than an increased anthropomorphism response. This work speaks to models on the mechanisms underlying speech production, and human-computer interaction frameworks, providing support for routinized theories of spoken interaction with technology

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

data and code for The perception of vowelless words in Tashlhiyt

data and code for The perception of vowelless words in Tashlhiy

Moroccan Arabic Consonant Harmony:A Multiple Causation Hypothesis

Contemporary Moroccan Arabic has an innovative long-distance consonant harmony process. There are several possibilities of how this feature arose in Moroccan Arabic. First, the same consonant harmony process can be seen in the neighboring Berber languages, which have been in intense contact with this dialectal variety of Arabic for hundreds of years. Thus, Moroccan Arabic consonant harmony can be analyzed as a product of language contact. On the other hand, this type of regressive assimilation of palatal consonants is the most common type of consonant harmony to arise independently cross-linguistically. Thus, the Moroccan Arabic consonant harmony can be analyzed as arising language-internally. This investigation provides an analysis of the consonant harmony process in Moroccan Arabic as arising through a combination of language internal and language contact origins.

Berberski cirkumfiks v maroški arabščini: raziskovanje morfoloških kategorij na primeru jezikov v stiku

Moroccan Arabic (MA) has a derivational noun circumfix /ta-...-t/ that is borrowed from the neighboring Berber languages. This circumfix is highly productive on native MA noun stems but not productive on borrowed Berber stems (which are rare in MA). This pattern of productivity is taken to be evidence in support of direct borrowing of morphology (c.f. Steinkruger and Seifart 2009) and against a theory where borrowed morphology enters a language as part of unanalyzed complex forms which later spread to native stems (c.f. Thomason and Kaufman 1988; Thomason 2001); furthermore, it challenges the principle of a "borrowability hierarchy" (c.f. Haugen 1950) where lexical morphemes are borrowed before grammatical morphemes. Additionally, the prefixal portion of the MA circumfix, ta-, is a complex (presumably unanalyzed) form from the Berber /t-/ feminine + /a-/ absolute state. Moreover, the morpheme in MA has been borrowed as a derivational morpheme while the primary functions of the donor morphemes in Berber are inflectional. This case of a borrowed circumfix is examined as an instance which does not conform to traditional typologies of language change through contact patterns and how the boundaries between morphological categories (i.e. inflectional/derivational) are transformed in a language contact situation.Maroška arabščina (MA) pozna besedotvorni cirkumfiks /ta-...-t/, ki je izposojen iz sosednjih berberskih govorov. Ta cirkumfiks je zelo produktiven na maroškoarabskih samostalniških podstavah, a neproduktiven na izposojenih berberskih podstavah, ki so sicer v MA redke. Ta produkcijski vzorec je služil kot dokaz za teorijo neposrednega izposojanja morfologije (cf. Steinkruger in Seifart 2009) in za zavrnitev teorije, po kateri izposojena morfologija v jezik vstopa kot del nemotiviranih tvorjenih oblik, ki lahko sicer kasneje predstavljajo podstave za domače besedotvorne procese (cf. Thomason in Kaufman 1988; Thomason 2001). Ta vzorec nadalje postavlja pod vprašaj načelo "izposojevalne hierarhije" (cf. Haugen 1950), v skladu s katerim se leksikalni morfemi izposojajo pred gramatikalnimi. Poleg tega je predponski del cirkumfiksa v MA, ta-, tvorjena (najverjetneje nemotivirana) oblika iz berberskih morfemov /t-/ za ženski spol in /a-/ za absolutno stanje. Še več, morfem je bil v MA izposojen kot besedotvorni morfem, medtem ko je glavna funkcija obeh izvirnih morfemov v berberščini oblikoslovna. Omenjeni izposojeni cirkumfiks v članku analiziramo kot primer, ki se ne ujema s tradicionalnimi tipologijami jezikovnih sprememb preko različnih vrst stikov, in primer, kako se lahko zaradi stikov med jeziki premaknejo meje med morfološkimi kategorijami (v našem primeru med oblikoslovjem in besedotvorjem)