Teaching sound symbolism through japanese pop culture. A response to Kawahara (2018)

L’articolo esamina quantitativamente l’efficacia del metodo di insegnamento della fonetica di Shigeto Kawahara. Una classe quinta di un liceo scientifico a Scandicci (Firenze) è stata coinvolta in un breve programma di restituzione in seguito a un esperimento linguistico. Agli studenti sono stati insegnati concetti di base relativi al fonosimbolismo e al significato sociale durante due lezioni diverse per stile di presentazione, ovvero una lezione “standard” vs. una lezione con vari esempi presi dalla cultura pop giapponese (metodo Kawahara). Gli studenti che hanno assistito a quest’ultima hanno ottenuto risultati migliori in una successiva prova di valutazione; inoltre, le loro probabilità di rispondere correttamente sono state più alte qualora i concetti fossero stati spiegati con un numero consistente di esempi giapponesi pop. I risultati hanno anche messo in luce un’interazione statistica tra il metodo di insegnamento e l’atteggiamento dimostrato dagli studenti nei confronti della varietà linguistica fiorentina usata dall’insegnante durante le lezioni: il metodo di Kawahara è stato fruttuoso soprattutto per quegli studenti con atteggiamento positivo nei confronti della varietà dell’insegnante. In generale, l’articolo propone un protocollo sperimentale compatto per esaminare l’efficacia di metodi d’insegnamento in linguistica e oltre. Vengono inoltre suggerite varie strategie per ottenere controllo sperimentale nelle ricerche didattiche (quantificazione del coinvolgimento degli studenti nell’acquisizione di nuove conoscenze; comportamento e aspetto del docente; metodo di assegnazione di punteggi). L’articolo promuove infine future possibili intersezioni disciplinari tra la ricerca sulla didattica e la sociofonetica.This paper provides a quantitative assessment of Shigeto Kawahara’s phonetics teaching method. A senior high school class from a liceo scientifico in Scandicci (Florence) was involved in a small language awareness program. The students were taught about basic concepts concerning sound symbolism and social meaning through two lessons differing in modality of presentation, i.e., a “standard” lesson vs. a lesson containing multiple Japanese pop examples (Kawahara method). Students attending the latter performed better in an assessment test; moreover, their response accuracy grew along with the number of Japanese pop examples used to explain the related concepts. A statistical interaction between modality of presentation and student attitude towards the Florentine speech variety used to teach during the awareness program was also retrieved: students benefited from Kawahara’s method only when they manifested a positive attitude towards the teacher’s speech variety. Overall, this paper suggests a compact experimental procedure to test for the effectiveness of specific teaching methods in linguistics and beyond. Various strategies for achieving control in teaching experiments are advanced, concerning, among other factors, the evaluation of the individual student’s involvement in acquiring new knowledge, the teacher’s demeanor, and the scoring method. Lastly, future intersections between the scholarship of teaching and learning and sociophonetics are sketched out and promoted

Bilingual Frequency in a Favorable Context (BFFC) in the Italian dialectal area. Theoretical preliminaries to the analysis of geminate lateral retroflexion and voiceless plosives aspiration in Antona (MS)

The paper builds a theoretical framework for the application of the Bilingual Frequency in Favorable Context (BFFC) formula to the peculiar Italian linguistic setting. BFFC was first devised as a usage-based tool to weight the frequency effect of non-varying cognate words against the probability of variation phenomena in bilingual settings. Since Italian dialects are sister languages of the standard variety, speakers can be considered bilingual. However, no dialectal frequency corpora for the extraction of essential BFFC components are available. The paper suggests overcoming this hurdle using subjective frequency estimates and testing BFFC effectiveness through a picture-naming task and acceptability ratings. A critical overview of the phonetic features of interest is also presented, advancing proposals for future analyses

Sociophonetic factors of speakers’ sex differences in Voice Onset Time: a Florentine case study

The paper shows the results of a sociophonetic analysis of the so-called gorgia enfatica (Castellani, 1960), i.e. the allophonic presence of voiceless aspirated plosives in strong positions attested in the vernacular variety of the city of Florence. 24 native speakers were involved in a production test (read speech) followed by a perceptional counterpart (matched-guise and open-ended interview). A statistically significant relationship between male speakers and longer Voice Onset Times emerged from our quantitative analysis of production. This distribution was recognized by the speakers, that evaluated the trait using comments fit for a tentative reconstruction of an indexical field (Eckert, 2008). Our data corroborated the need for a sociophonetic shift in the research methods concerning the relation between speakers’ sex and VOT production (Oh, 2011

Voice Onset Time Enhanced User System (VOTEUS): a web graphic interface for the analysis of plosives’ release phases

The paper proposes an up-to-date literature review of the works using AutoVOT, a discriminative large-margin learning algorithm developed for the semi-automatic measurement of voice onset times. In order to expand the accessibility of the tool in linguistic research, we present VOTEUS, a user-friendly graphic interface written in Python. The interface is conceived to assist the researcher throughout the whole process of annotation, from the forced alignment of the corpora to the refinement of the AutoVOT tier and the extraction of the durations. The general aim is to speed up this phase of data analysis, providing a significant improvement on prevalent practice to date

Gaming variables in linguistic research. Italian scale validation and a Minecraft pilot study

This paper deals with the concept of gamified science and its recent applications to the linguistic field. We argue that, albeit promising, this paradigm still lacks analytical tools to model the effects of the peculiar experimental setting on the results obtained. After a theoretical introduction to the User Engagement and Gaming Literacy constructs, we present two validated Italian translations of scales representing them. Lastly, we test these two gaming variables in a pilot study on the postvocalic realizations of /k t/ in the Florentine variety. Results show that both variables positively condition the production of non-continuants (i.e., emphasized words) but through different underlying mechanisms

Quantifying folk perceptions of dialect boundaries. A case study from Tuscany (Italy)

This paper aims to understand the contribution of geographical information in the perception of linguistic variation. A total of 813 mental maps collected among young speakers from different cities in Tuscany have been analyzed via an open-access web dialectometric tool (Gabmap). In particular, the study seeks to verify the role of geographic distance and the place of residence of the respondents in modeling perceived variation. The relationship between dialect grouping as made by linguists and perceived taxonomies of sublinguistic areas is also investigated. Results show that geographical proximity between mapped areas significantly predicts the perception of dialect similarity. Our participants made their decisions looking at (1) a keen sense of spatial contiguity, and (2) the synchronic presence of linguistic differences between the Tuscan subregions. Moreover, classification uncertainty grows when the mapped areas are very close to, or very distant from, the participants’ places of residence. Methodological and linguistic perspectives of mental maps in folk linguistics are finally discussed

Not just paper: enhancement of archive cultural heritage

Oral archives and digital technologies have gone hand-in-hand for a very long time. Both sides benefit from this interdisciplinary junction: technology enhances the preservation and diffusion of oral materials, while exploiting them to develop cutting-edge tools for their treatment. This chapter deals with an Italian instantiation of this mutual relationship: the Archivio Vi.Vo. project. Offering innovative solutions concerning metadata, audio restoration, description , and access, Archivio Vi.Vo. aims to build an online platform to host the oral archives from Tuscany. The project is powered by CLARIN-IT, which guarantees its compliance with standards and offers resources for data access and discov-erability. Archivio Vi.Vo. has not been built from scratch: it is instead a cross-fertilization of previous initiatives and research projects (e.g., the Gra.fo project). Moreover, the chapter presents the related, contemporary work of a multidisciplinary group striving to synthesize a Vademecum for future generations of oral archive researchers. Lastly, a brief list of tentative ideas for future developments of the Archivio Vi.Vo. platform will be presented

Sul farsi (e il disfarsi) de Il farsi e il disfarsi del linguaggio

L'articolo compara l'edizione italiana con traduzione del Kindersprache, Aphasie und Allgemeine Lautgesetze (1941) di Roman Jakobson con progetti editoriali analoghi provenienti da altre parti del mondo. Vengono inoltre riportate e commentate criticamente alcune soluzioni di citazione bibliografica di quest'opera.This paper compares the Italian translation and edition of Roman Jakobson's Kindersprache, Aphasie und Allgemeine Lautgesetze (1941) with analogous editorial projects from all around the world. Bibliographical references to this work are also reported and critically discussed

Altre considerazioni sulla cosiddetta "gorgia enfatica". Un'indagine sociofonetica a Firenze

Il presente lavoro si prefigge di portare un contributo all'analisi di un fenomeno di dialettologia toscana che riceve il nome di “gorgia enfatica” dal suo primo esegeta, Arrigo Castellani. Dopo una breve storia della terminologia e degli studi sulla gorgia stricto sensu, si proverà a ripercorrere le poche tracce bibliografiche sulla nostra tematica, alla ricerca di un filo rosso che giustifichi il sostanziale prematuro “abbandono” degli studi su di essa. Si riporteranno poi dei dati d'inchiesta mirati a esaminare il comportamento in posizione forte delle tre consonanti occlusive sorde [k], [t], [p] nel parlato di Firenze, analizzato in prospettiva sociolinguistica. Si tenterà dunque di valutare, alla luce delle nuove acquisizioni, le posizioni esegetiche già esistenti a riguardo, non senza un confronto con un altro dibattuto fenomeno di dialettologia italiana a cui è stato accostato, la realizzazione aspirata delle occlusive sorde in alcune varietà calabresi

[Recensione a] Dialogo vince violenza. La questione del Trentino Alto Adige/Südtirol nel contesto internazionale (con contributi di vari autori), a cura di Giovanni Bernardini e Günther Pallaver, Bologna, il Mulino 2015

Recensione del volume Dialogo vince violenza. La questione del Trentino Alto Adige/Südtirol nel contesto internazionale (con contributi di vari autori), a cura di Giovanni Bernardini e Günther Pallaver, Bologna, il Mulino 2015