The Phonetic and Phonological Effects of Moribundity

Structural change in a language are considered nearly inevitable consequences of language death (Campbell and Muntzel 1989; Wolfram 2002). The literature on sound change in endangered languages has focused on whether the changes are internally or externally motivated, and, therefore, the difference between categorical sound shifts and gradient phonetic effects has been overlooked (cf. Campbell and Muntzel 1989; Woolard 1989; Dorian 1993). In addition, this research has been largely impressionistic in nature, leaving subtle variation that is beyond the scope of narrow transcription out of the discussion (Schmidt 1985; Goodfellow 2005) This paper discusses sound change in Mono Lake Northern Paiute – an American Indian language spoken in California – through two instrumental experiments that investigate the difference between categorical changes in the phonological inventory and subphonemic variation within a category. The first experiment examines the maintenance of a three-way oral stop contrast in laryngeal setting across three generations of speakers. The results suggest that while the youngest generation of speakers generally patterns like the elder generations, there is an increase in the amount of variability in consonant production. Static palatography was employed for the second experiment to investigate a shift in place of articulation for the sibilant across two generations of speakers. The findings illustrate that the traditional palatalized retroflexed sibilant has been replaced by a fricative identical to American English /s/, causing interesting changes to a phonetically motivated allophonic pattern in the traditional form of the language. After considering the sound changes described in languages experiencing attrition, this paper concludes by arguing that sound change in obsolescing languages takes one of two predictable paths: approximation or transfer (terms originally applied to patterns of vowel mergers in Trudgill and Foxcroft (1978). Approximation, a type of change being experienced by the sounds examined in the first experiment, involves the expansion of phonological categories within the moribund language. Transfer, a type of substitution (e.g. Weinreich 1953; Thomason and Kaufman 1988), is exemplified by the second experiment where a dominant language phoneme replaces a similar sound in the obsolescing language. These types of changes, at least in their current state in Mono Lake Northern Paiute, do not cause neutralizations in the phonological system. This contradicts claims made by Andersen (1982), who argues that ultimate speakers of moribund languages fail to make phonological distinctions in the endangered language that are not supported by identical distinctions in the dominant language

Dialect Identification Across a Nation-State Border: Perception of Dialectal Variants in Seattle, WA and Vancouver, BC

The Atlas of North America English distinguishes the West from Western Canada on the basis of /æ/ retraction and Canadian Raising (Labov, Ash, and Boberg 2006). Since the Atlas, scholars have provided a more detailed understanding of /æɡ/ raising, /æ/retraction, and Canadian Raising throughout the Western United States and Western Canada (Boberg 2008, Fridland et al. 2016, Presnyakova, Umbal, and Pappas 2017, Roeder, Onosson, and D\u27Arcy 2018). In a production study, Swan (2016) found that Seattle and Vancouver, BC are differentiated primarily by Canadian Raising and pre-nasal raising of /æ/ and show minimal difference with respect to /æɡ/ raising and /æ/ retraction. Seattle and Vancouver speakers also shared different ideologies about their speech: Seattle respondents felt more confident that they could identify a Vancouver talker based on speech than vice versa. The current study builds from these observations to ask how natives of Seattle and Vancouver perceive the similarities and distinctions documented in the production literature. Can listeners differentiate a talker as being from Seattle or Vancouver? What cues are listeners relying on to judge a talker as being from Seattle or Vancouver? Do these perceptual cues align with the production differences between the cities? What does this imply for a dialectology of the West? These questions are addressed using a forced-choice dialect identification task using the variables represented by FAN, PATH, TAG, and DEVOUT. Our analysis considers signal detection theoretic measures to elucidate sensitivity and bias (Macmillan and Creelman 2005). The results suggest that differentiating Seattle and Vancouver talkers is a challenging task for listeners native to these cities. Neither Seattle nor Vancouver listeners show very accurate performance for any of the single-word stimuli or short phrase blocks of the task and are generally not able classify a talker\u27s city of origin based on their speech. The most accurate performance emerges for Seattle listeners classifying talkers saying DEVOUT, which aligns with the production differences between the cities and is likely driven by stereotypes about Canadian English. Listeners from both cities show more own city bias for the phonetic features that are shown to be more similar across the cities (PATH and TAG) than for those shown to be more different in production (FAN and DEVOUT). A closer look at bias reveals that while Seattle listeners perform with slightly more accuracy, they also show more own-city bias. We discussion possible reasons for this pattern and implications for dialectology of the West and Western Canada

Sociophonetic Markers Facilitate Translation Priming: Maori English GOAT – A Different Kind of Animal

This study investigates whether socio-indexical labelling operates under a shared or a separate system across the two languages of a bilingual talker-listener. We argue for a shared system, showing that L1 indexical labels interact with L2 indexical labels during speech perception. In particular, we investigate the effect of ethnic dialect on bilingual speech processing by using a novel cross-language/cross-dialect auditory priming paradigm in the New Zealand context, where Maori (TR) and English are both official languages, and English has two main ethnic varieties: Maori English (ME) and Pakeha English (PE). Fifty-four English-Maori bilinguals participated in a short-term auditory primed lexical decision task, where bilingual prime and target pairs were made up of English-to-Maori and Maori-to-English translation equivalents. Half of the English words were pronounced by a PE speaker, and half by a ME speaker, creating four test conditions: TR-ME, TR-PE, ME-TR, PE-TR. The results reveal a significantly larger priming effect between ME and TR than between PE and TR. We argue for a direct activation link between the Maori indexical labels within the English language set of representations and the Maori indexical labels within the Maori language set of representations. The results suggest that socio-indexical labels can facilitate translation priming. In particular, recent, more innovative variants appear to be processed as special in short-term memory

Diverse perspectives on interdisciplinarity from Members of the College of the Royal Society of Canada

Various multiple-disciplinary terms and concepts (although most commonly interdisciplinarity, which is used herein) are used to frame education, scholarship, research, and interactions within and outside academia. In principle, the premise of interdisciplinarity may appear to have many strengths; yet, the extent to which interdisciplinarity is embraced by the current generation of academics, the benefits and risks for doing so, and the barriers and facilitators to achieving interdisciplinarity, represent inherent challenges. Much has been written on the topic of interdisciplinarity, but to our knowledge there have been few attempts to consider and present diverse perspectives from scholars, artists, and scientists in a cohesive manner. As a team of 57 members from the Canadian College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists of the Royal Society of Canada (the College) who self-identify as being engaged or interested in interdisciplinarity, we provide diverse intellectual, cultural, and social perspectives. The goal of this paper is to share our collective wisdom on this topic with the broader community and to stimulate discourse and debate on the merits and challenges associated with interdisciplinarity. Perhaps the clearest message emerging from this exercise is that working across established boundaries of scholarly communities is rewarding, necessary, and is more likely to result in impact. However, there are barriers that limit the ease with which this can occur (e.g., lack of institutional structures and funding to facilitate cross-disciplinary exploration). Occasionally, there can be significant risk associated with doing interdisciplinary work (e.g., lack of adequate measurement or recognition of work by disciplinary peers). Solving many of the world\u27s complex and pressing problems (e.g., climate change, sustainable agriculture, the burden of chronic disease, and aging populations) demands thinking and working across long-standing, but in some ways restrictive, academic boundaries. Academic institutions and key support structures, especially funding bodies, will play an important role in helping to realize what is readily apparent to all who contributed to this paper-that interdisciplinarity is essential for solving complex problems; it is the new norm. Failure to empower and encourage those doing this research will serve as a great impediment to training, knowledge, and addressing societal issues

Diverse perspectives on interdisciplinarity from the Members of the College of the Royal Society of Canada

Various multiple-disciplinary terms and concepts (although most commonly “interdisciplinarity”, which is used herein) are used to frame education, scholarship, research, and interactions within and outside academia. In principle, the premise of interdisciplinarity may appear to have many strengths; yet, the extent to which interdisciplinarity is embraced by the current generation of academics, the benefits and risks for doing so, and the barriers and facilitators to achieving interdisciplinarity represent inherent challenges. Much has been written on the topic of interdisciplinarity, but to our knowledge there have been few attempts to consider and present diverse perspectives from scholars, artists, and scientists in a cohesive manner. As a team of 57 members from the Canadian College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists of the Royal Society of Canada (the College) who self-identify as being engaged or interested in interdisciplinarity, we provide diverse intellectual, cultural, and social perspectives. The goal of this paper is to share our collective wisdom on this topic with the broader community and to stimulate discourse and debate on the merits and challenges associated with interdisciplinarity. Perhaps the clearest message emerging from this exercise is that working across established boundaries of scholarly communities is rewarding, necessary, and is more likely to result in impact. However, there are barriers that limit the ease with which this can occur (e.g., lack of institutional structures and funding to facilitate cross-disciplinary exploration). Occasionally, there can be significant risk associated with doing interdisciplinary work (e.g., lack of adequate measurement or recognition of work by disciplinary peers). Solving many of the world’s complex and pressing problems (e.g., climate change, sustainable agriculture, the burden of chronic disease, and aging populations) demand thinking and working across long-standing, but in some ways restrictive, academic boundaries. Academic institutions and key support structures, especially funding bodies, will play an important role in helping to realize what is readily apparent to all who contributed to this paper—that interdisciplinarity is essential for solving complex problems; it is the new norm. Failure to empower and encourage those doing this research will serve as a great impediment to training, knowledge, and addressing societal issues

Dialect Divergence and Convergence in New Zealand English

As people learn to speak, they acquire the language and dialect spoken around them. The exact forms of every level of linguistic representation – from syntax to lexical choice to pronunciation – are all determined by the patterns of the ambient language. This is done with great ease as young language learners. It has been documented