Velar palatalization, phonologization, and sound change – A comparative acoustic study of /k/-fronting in Majorcan Catalan

The analysis of Old Romance geographical names in early South Slavic confirms that the majority of late Proto-Slavic sound changes were still operative in the period of the earliest Old Romance-Slavic language contacts in the Balkan Peninsula and eastern Alps from the second half of the 6th century and the beginning of the 7th century onwards. Phonetic substitutions of the type Rom. *kE, *gE → Sl. *c, *ʒ (Balk. Rom. *Kersu → Sl. *Cersъ, Balk. Rom. *Gīla → Sl. *Ʒiĺa) and Rom. *auC → Sl. *ovC (Balk. Rom. *Laurentiu > *Laurenču → Sl. *Lovręčь) point to the fact that the first palatalization of velars as well as the monophthongization of the inherited diphthongs were no longer among the ongoing processes. All other late Proto-Slavic sound changes were either still operative or only took place after the borrowing. This is confirmed by the relative chronology of the following set of Romance-Slavic correspondences: simplification of consonant clusters: Rom. *ps → Sl. *s (Balk. Rom. *Apsaru → Sl. *Osorъ), development of prothetic consonants: Rom. *ū- → Sl. *uū- > *vy- (Alp. Rom. *Ūdẹnu → Sl. *(V)ydьnъ), simplification of j-clusters: Rom. *Ci → Sl. *Cʹ (Balk. Rom. *Arsia → Sl. *Orša), delabialization of *o after *r: Rom. *ro → Sl. *ry > *ri (Rom. *Roma → Sl. *Rymъ > *Rimъ), second regressive palatalization of velars (see above Sl. *Cersъ, *Ʒiĺa), rise of nasal vowels: Rom. *ENC, *ONC → Sl. *ęC, *ǫC (Balk. Rom. *Parentiu > *Parenču → Sl. *Poręčь, Balk. Rom. *Karantānu → Sl. *Korǫtanъ), progressive palatalization of velars: Rom. *Ek, *Eg → Sl. *c, *ʒ (Balk. Rom. *Longātẹku → Sl. *Lǫgatьcь), delabialization of *ū1 > *y: Rom. *ū/*o → Sl. *y (Balk. Rom. *Allūviu → Sl. *Olybъ), labialization of *a > *o: Rom. *a → Sl. *o (Balk. Rom. *Kapra → Sl. *Koprъ), vowel reduction of *i, *u > *ь, *ъ: Rom. *ẹ, *ọ → Sl. *ь, *ъ (Balk. Rom. *Kọrẹku → Sl. *Kъrьkъ, Balk. Rom. *Tọrre → Sl. *Tъrъ).

Voiceless velar stops may become palatoalveolar affricates before front vowels. This sound change is not only one of the most common types of palatalization, but is a very common sound change in the world’s languages. Nevertheless, we do not have an adequate understanding of how this sound change takes place. Three experiments reported here test the hypothesis that velar palatalization is the result of listeners’ on-line perceptual reanalysis of fast rate speech. It is shown that velars before front vowels are both acoustically and perceptually similar to palatoalveolars. This supports the proposal that velar palatalization is perceptually conditioned.

The major sound changes in Dravidian are classified into Historical and Typological. The historical changes are classified into (a) those internal to Proto-Dravidian, and (b) innovations confined to major branches, sub-branches, and individual languages, e.g. palatalization of velars, c > s > h > 0, umlaut, apical displacement, etc.

Whereas the palatalization of velar consonants before front high and mid vowels is a common property of the Romance languages (Latin [k]ivitatem ‘city’ resulting in Frenchcite or Italiancitta), French is unique in displaying velar palatalization before the low back vowela (Latin [k]antare‘to sing’ giving Frenchchanter). This change has always remained puzzling, as there is no clear phonetic motivation for palatalization. Whereas perception studies have shown that [ki] is likely to be perceived as [tsi], no perceptual confusion is reported between [ka] and [tsa]. Also, in production, the release of a velar or coronal plosive before a high vowel leads to high turbulency, which is not the case when a plosive is released in a low vowel. In this chapter, we review traditional and more recent accounts of the second French velar palatalization and propose a phonological account framed in a constraint-based OT perspective. Furthermore, we explore to what extent OT with Candidate Chains offers a more restricted way of modeling sound change than classical OT.

This is a socio-phonetic study that employs an acoustic analysis and a speech accommodation analysis following a variationist sociolinguistic framework. The acoustic analysis provides a phonetic characterization of the variation of /x/ in Chilean Spanish using spectrographic support, which fills a gap in current literature on this specific sound change. The linear regression analysis and speech accommodation analysis work together to identify the motivators for velar palatalization in this variety of Spanish and its acquisition of overt prestige. The results of this study update previous literature on Chilean palatalization regarding internal and external motivators, while adding variant usage patterns based on interlocutor age effects and speech style differences. Public speech data is used in this study to show the extension of velar palatalization into the most formal registers of Chilean Spanish.

Vowel change across three age groups of speakers in three regional varieties of American English

The aim of the study was to establish whether /u/-fronting, a sound change in progress in standard southern British, could be linked synchronically to the fronting effects of a preceding anterior consonant both in speech production and speech perception. For the production study, which consisted of acoustic analyses of isolated monosyllables produced by two different age groups, it was shown for younger speakers that /u/ was phonetically fronted and that the coarticulatory influence of consonants on /u/ was less than in older speakers. For the perception study, responses were elicited from the same subjects to two minimal word-pair continua that differed in the direction of the consonants' coarticulatory fronting effects on /u/. Consistent with their speech production, young listeners' /u/ category boundary was shifted toward /i/ and they compensated perceptually less for the fronting effects of the consonants on /u/ than older listeners. The findings support Ohala's model in which certain sound changes can be linked to the listener's failure to compensate for coarticulation. The results are also shown to be consistent with episodic models of speech perception in which phonological frequency effects bring about a realignment of the variants of a phonological category in speech production and perception.

UC Berkeley Phonology Lab Annual Report (2007) Convergence and Divergence in Obsolescence On Sound Change in Southeastern Pomo Charles B. Chang University of California, Berkeley Previous research on language attrition has distinguished between internally and externally motivated change and between convergent and divergent change, with most literature focusing on speech communities that have undergone either one or the other type of change. In this paper, I argue that these types of change may coexist within the same community or even the same speaker with the result that the obsolescing language becomes simultaneously more similar to and more different from the contact language. The results of a cross-generational acoustic study of Southeastern Pomo (Northern Hokan, Pomoan) indicate that in the domain of phonetics and phonology, the speech of the last fluent generation has converged with English in some ways and diverged from it in other ways. Keywords: language contact, obsolescence, sound change, convergence, divergence, transfer, approximation Introduction The study of language attrition has generally focused on characterizing how and why changes come about in an obsolescing language vis-a-vis earlier, more robust stages of the language. On the one hand, change may occur as a result of external influence from a dominant language in the community; on the other hand, change may arise due to language-internal dynamics having nothing to do with the dominant language. When change is externally motivated by the influence of a dominant language, the obsolescing language may come to approximate features of the dominant language; conversely, external influence may cause salient features of the obsolescing language not found in the dominant language to be enhanced, thus further differentiating the obsolescing language from the dominant language. In other words, externally motivated change may result in either convergence with or divergence from the dominant language. In a similar way, internally motivated change, by virtue of its independence from the influence of an outside language, introduces features into the obsolescing language that may happen to converge with the dominant language or to diverge from it. Whether or

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 language

The lenition of intervocalic consonants is typically phonologized in sound change only within word domains. At first blush, this morphological restriction might seem to contradict the Neogrammarian hypothesis of exclusively phonetic conditioning in sound change. In this paper I examine the weakening of intervocalic voiced stops/affricates in Istanbul Judeo-Spanish. Comparison with Old Spanish shows that in the native lexicon intervocalic lenition has affected only word-internal consonants. Even consonants following a prefix boundary remain unaffected. I argue that, at the time of the expulsion of the Spanish Jews, the language already had the spirantization process, at least in incipient form. This process, which continues to operate across the board in Mainstream Spanish, became restricted at the word level in Judeo-Spanish. This interpretation, consistent with the Neogrammarian hypothesis, is the only one that offers an explanatory account and is supported by the evidence from other similar developments in the history of the Romance languages and with results from recent acoustic studies on incipient or optional lenition processes.

The word lists published in 1903 by C.-E. Bonin for several languages of East Asia are highly rudimentary; the transcription is based on French spelling conventions. These lists nonetheless provide hints about the pronunciation of these languages at the end of the 19 century. We examine two of Bonin's lists in light of more recent and more systematic descriptions of the same languages, looking for evidence about phonetic evolutions. The Naxi word list offers hints about the pronunciation of vowels /i/, /y/ and /o/ and the degree of palatalization of velars before high front vowels. The list for Pumi shows that the initial cluster /st-/ was still present at the time in the dialect recorded.

Introduction, Deborah Arteaga .- A Diachronic View of Old French Genitive Constructions, Deborah Arteaga & Julia Herschensohn .- Grammaticalization in Progress in Old French: Indefinite Aarticles, Anne Carlier .- Null Objects in Old French, Bryan Donaldson .- Compensatory Lengthening in Historical French: The Role of the Speaker, Randall Gess .- Perception, Production and Markedness in Sound Change: French Velar Palatalization, Haike Jacobs & Janine Berns .- Evolution and Regrammation in the Mood System: Perspectives from Old, Middle, Renaissance and Modern French, Jan Lindschouw .- Analogy among French Sounds, Michael L. Mazzola .- The Development of the Declension System, Lene Schosler .- The Diasystem and its Role in Generating Meaning: Diachronic Evidence from Old French, Harald Volker .- Synchronic studies .- Crusaders' Old French, Cyril Aslanov .- The Use of the Future and Conditional in High Medieval Literature, Igor Dreer .- Old French Parataxis: Syntactic Variant or Stylistic Variation? Julie Glikman & Thomas Verjans .- A Derivational Approach to Negative Polarity Item Licensing in Old French, Richard Ingham .- Theoretical Issues in Old French Inflectional Morpho(phono)logy, Jurgen Klausenburger .- Forms and Functions of Reported Discourse in Medieval French, Sophie Marnette .- The Left-periphery in Old French, Eric Mathieu .- Grammatical Meaning and the Old French Subjunctive, Margaret E. Winters

This study examines the contextual and generational differences in consonantal palatalization of Tohoku Japanese compared to Tokyo Japanese. Typically, both Japanese dialects transform alveolar obstruents to alveo-palatals before /i/. Moreover, previous research has shown that Tohoku Japanese also exhibits palatalization of velar stops /k, ɡ/. However, this palatalization ceases to appear among the younger generations despite the scant acoustic evidence. This study aims to: (i) describe the occurrence of velar palatalization in Tohoku Japanese and (ii) analyze variations between Tohoku and Tokyo Japanese by socio-demographic factors including age and gender. Twenty-five speakers from Tohoku and twenty-one from Tokyo participated in a production task using target words containing /k/ in the /ki/ and /ka/ contexts, and /ʨ/ as the palatalization baseline. The results of Center of Gravity (CoG) revealed significant interactions between the target consonant, dialectal group, and age group in the palatalization patterns. Younger speakers of Tohoku Japanese show a similar CoG distribution that resembles those of Tokyo speakers, particularly in the pairwise comparison of /k/ in /ki/ and /ka/. This empirically suggests a converging shift among young Tohoku speakers toward the standard variation of Japanese, supporting a diminishing regional variation correlated with consonantal context and influenced by generational change.

The present study investigates the role of articulatory and perceptual factors in the change from pre- to post-aspiration in two varieties of Andalusian Spanish. In an acoustic study, the influence of stop type, speaker age, and variety on the production of pre- and post-aspiration was analyzed in isolated words produced by 24 speakers of a Western and 24 of an Eastern variety, both divided into two age groups. The results confirmed previous findings of a sound change from pre- to post-aspiration in both varieties. Velar stops showed the longest, bilabials the shortest, and dental stops intermediate pre- and post-aspiration durations. The observed universal VOT-pattern was not found for younger Western Andalusian speakers who showed a particularly long VOT in /st/-sequences. A perception experiment with the same subjects as listeners showed that post-aspiration was used as a cue for distinguishing the minimal pair /pata/-/pasta/ by almost all listeners. Production-perception comparisons suggested a relationship between production and perception: subjects who produced long post-aspiration were also more sensitive to this cue. In sum, the results suggest that the sound change has first been actuated in the dental context, possibly due to a higher perceptual prominence of post-aspiration in this context, and that post-aspirated stops in Andalusian Spanish are on their way to being phonologized.

This short paper maintains a discussion on the nature of rhotic consonants in two different but genetically related languages (Ukrainian and Russian). The main goal of the paper is carrying out a modern acoustic study about rhotic realizations in the two target languages, as well as putting forward some considerations about a possible sound change. Acoustic analysis is carried out using LPC and FFT measurements in order to capture the difference in rhotic realizations. The results allow for a description of the acoustic properties of the Ukrainian language, and suggest the existence of an ongoing simplification process of rhotic consonants in both languages.