Vowels and semivowels: Syllabification in Kamu

Orthographic representations are often derived from phonological analyses or representations, and can even lead to claims about phonological representations (Sproat 2000). In Armenian, many strings of orthographic consonants are broken up by schwas in pronunciation. As a grammatical process, this spelling-pronunciation mismatch is sensitive to a host of phonological, morphological, and morphophonological factors. I systematically catalog these factors, and this systematicity reinforces previous generative arguments that the orthographic form (without schwas) matches the underlying form (without schwas) (Vaux 1998). As for these factors, I argue that, phonologically, the epenthesis is triggered by directional syllabification and other syllabification-based constraints, including constraints on sibilant-stop contiguity (Itô 1989). Morphologically, epenthesis respects morpheme boundaries even when the boundary is semantically opaque, whether from prefixation, compounding, reduplication, or pseudo-reduplication. And from the morphophonology, there is evidence that epenthesis is simultaneously a phonological rule. It is an early lexical rule and it interacts opaquely with allomorphy and strata. Thus, this paper argues for a tight integration of orthographic, phonological, and morphological structures (cf. Boersma 2011; Hamann & Colombo 2017).

Introduction Phonetics and phonology Much recent work in phonetics aims to provide rules, in the framework of generative phonology, that will characterize aspects of speech previously thought to be outside the province of grammatical theory. These phonetic rules operate on a symbolic representation from the phonology to derive a physical representation which, like speech, exists in continuous time and space. The precise nature of phonological representations depends on the theory of phonology, but certain general distinctions between phonological and phonetic representations can be expected. Only in the phonology are there discrete and timeless segments characterized by static binary features, though phonological representations are not limited to such segments. Even in the phonology, segments may become less discrete as features spread from one segment to another, and less categorical if features assume non-binary values. However, only in the phonetics are temporal structure made explicit and features interpreted along physical dimensions; the relations between phonological features and physical dimensions may be somewhat complex. Thus phonological representations involve two idealizations. They idealize in time with segmentation , by positing individual segments which have no duration or internal temporal structure. Temporal information is limited to the linear order of segments and their component features. Phonological representations idealize in space with labeling , by categorizing segments according to the physically abstract features. These idealizations are motivated by the many phonological generalizations that make no reference to quantitative properties of segments, but do make reference to categorial properties. Such generalizations are best stated on representations without the quantitative information, from which more specific and detailed representations can then be derived.

In this paper I will consider the available evidence in favor of phonetic and phonological representations in speech processing, particularly as these representations are related to questions of word recognition and lexical access. Several experimental findings will be summarized. These empirical findings along with logical and theoretical considerations provide support for the assumption that phonetic and phonological representations are computed by the human speech processing mechanisms and serve an important function in word recognition and access to the mental lexicon. The arguments in favor of such phonological mediation will be outlined and compared to assumptions made in several contemporary models such as Logogen, Cohort and Lafs. [Work supported by NINCDS Research Grant NS‐12179‐05.]

UNIFORMITY IN PHONETIC REALIZATION: EVIDENCE FROM SIBILANT PLACE OF ARTICULATION IN AMERICAN ENGLISH ELEANOR CHODROFF COLIN WILSON University of York Johns Hopkins University Phonetic realization is highly variable and highly structured within and across talkers. We examine three constraints that could structure the phonetic space of related speech sounds: target, contrast, and pattern uniformity. Target uniformity requires a uniform mapping from distinctive features to their corresponding phonetic targets within a talker, contrast uniformity requires a consistent difference in the phonetic targets that realize featural contrasts across talkers, and pattern uniformity requires a uniform template of phonetic targets across talkers. Focusing on American English sibilant fricatives, we measure and compare each constraint’s influence on the phonetic targets corresponding to place of articulation. We find that target uniformity is the strongest constraint : each talker realizes a given distinctive feature value in highly similar ways across related sounds. Together with similar findings for other sound classes, this result reveals fine-grained systematicity in the mapping from phonology to phonetics and has implications for theories of speech production and speech perception.* Keywords: phonetic realization, sibilant fricatives, uniformity, talker variability, Bayesian models 1. Introduction. No one-to-one mapping exists between linguistic units and their phonetic instantiations (Liberman et al. 1967, Massaro 1975, Pisoni & Sawusch 1975). This lack of invariance is a fundamental issue for both the perception and production of language. From the perspective of perception, how do perceivers adapt to extensive variation in the physical signal (whether spoken or signed)? From the perspective of production, how do producers know the limits of acceptable variation for their particular language variety, or even just for intelligibility? It is well established that variation in phonetic realization is extensive yet structured in many ways (Labov 1972, Miller 1994, Foulkes et al. 2001, Kleinschmidt & Jaeger 2015, Guy & Hinskens 2016, Sonderegger et al. 2020). In the present article, we explore potential constraints on the mapping from phonological representations, such as segments and their distinctive features, to targets of phonetic realization. We begin by considering a subinventory of two or more related sounds (e.g. [i] and [u], or [s] and [z]) and their corresponding phonetic targets (i.e. perceptuomotor representations ). A given talker could structure the phonetic realization of these sounds by copying a pattern or template of targets that exists in the speech community and adapting it to their anatomy. This scenario allows for talker variation—one speaker’s realization of the template may be overall higher or lower on a given phonetic dimension—but otherwise it can be construed as ‘maximal phonetic structure’. Provided that the hypothetical template can be adapted to each speaker’s anatomy, this system would be fully general across the speaker population. Moreover, clear motivation for such a system exists in speech perception : if each talker has the same template of phonetic targets, perceptual adaptation would involve a simple translation of the pattern for each new talker. This is in fact assumed by many approaches to talker normalization and adaptation, especially for vowel systems (e.g. Lobanov 1971, Nearey 1978, Nearey & Assmann 2007). 1 * The authors would like to thank Shravan Vasishth for hosting the 2020 Potsdam Summer School on Statistical Methods in Linguistics and Psychology, Lisa Davidson for sharing the laboratory data, and Ryan Cotterell , Matthew Faytak, Josef Fruehwald, and Jane Stuart-Smith for helpful discussion. All data and analyses are available at https://osf.io/bysfa/. Printed with the permission of Eleanor Chodroff & Colin Wilson. © 2022. In opposition to maximal phonetic structure in the speech inventory, we can consider ‘maximal phonetic bricolage’. Bricolage reflects the constellation of linguistic variables that a talker can exploit for expressing social identity (Eckert 2008, Zimman 2017); taken to the extreme, it would allow talkers to pick and choose phonetic targets independently for each sound. In this scenario, the phonetic space may be structured by overarching social variables, but it would be entirely unstructured within the subinventory and across speakers. For example, the relationship among the phonetic targets of sibilant fricatives like [s], [z], [ʃ], and [ʒ] could be different for each speaker, depending on how each target is chosen to express some aspect of social identity. Existing evidence points to an intermediate scenario between these two endpoints...

Kukatj is a language of north Queensland, Australia. Unusual (for Australia) phonetic features include a brief schwa‐like vowel, very common and nearly always predictable, and gemination of consonants after a short stressed vowel. The phonological analysis is influenced by a handful of forms which block a number of simplifications. Its features: (1) three rhotics, two of which are marginal in that they contrast with the third (and with one another) only in a few environments; (2) a featureless underlying vowel, realised as a surface vowel (usually schwa) or sometimes as syllabicity in a consonant when required by phonotactic rules prohibiting certain consonant clusters but also ‐rarely ‐ separating consonants which could have formed a permissible cluster; (3) phonemic vowel length (rather than phonemic consonant gemination; and (4) a minimal underlying word of two syllables (although surface monosyllables are common). Phonetically retroflexed consonants (other than the glide) are analysed as apical tap plus apico‐alveolar consonant. This has been proposed before for other Australian languages, but with little justification, and is relevant to theories of the history of retroflexes in Australia.

As children learn language, they spontaneously imitate the speech of those around them. This article investigates the new words that five children imitated between 1 and 2 years of age. Children were more likely to imitate new words as they aged and as their productive language developed. After controlling for age, children also were more likely to imitate new words that were shorter and with high neighborhood densities, and that contained sounds the children had previously produced accurately. Together, the findings demonstrate that both the patterns of the target words and children's productive abilities are predictors of children's imitative speech. This supports models of language development where there are influences stemming not only from phonological and lexical representations, but also from phonetic representations.

Phonological encoding is the process by which speakers retrieve phonemic segments for morphemes from memory and use the segments to assemble phonological representations of words to be spoken. When conversing in one language, bilingual speakers have to resist the temptation of encoding word forms using the phonological rules and representations of the other language. We argue that the activation of phonological representations is not restricted to the target language and that the phonological representations of languages are not separate. We advance a view of bilingual control in which condition-action rules determine what is done with the activated phonological information depending on the target language. This view is computationally implemented in the WEAVER++ model. We present WEAVER++ simulations of the cognate facilitation effect (Costa, Caramazza and Sebastián-Gallés, 2000) and the between-language phonological facilitation effect of spoken distractor words in object naming (Hermans, Bongaerts, de Bot and Schreuder, 1998).

Phonological representations are considered the source of speech sound information that forms the basis of spoken words. Phonological awareness tasks, as well as other expressive tasks, are used to infer phonological representations. However, receptive tasks are increasingly used to assess phonological representations in preschool children. Since the phonological structures vary in each language, there is an increasing need to examine the underlying representations in various languages. The present study evaluated articulation error identification for vowels and consonants in Malayalam speaking preschool children aged 3.6 to 5 years. An articulation error identification and correction test for vowels and consonants developed by the investigators was administered to all the participants. Thirty words with clusters within the vocabulary of children aged 3.6 to 5 years were used as target items for the test. The results revealed that age had a significant effect on the scores obtained in the tasks, with children in the older age group scoring higher than the younger age group. Better scores were obtained for consonants than for vowels, signifying a developmental trend in the ability to detect subtle articulatory modifications. From the results it is evident that preschool children have developed adequate phonological representations to distinguish errors in a single phoneme. The results also support the pivotal role of articulation error identification tasks for the assessment of underlying phonological representations in preschool children. Data of Phonological representations in Malayalam speaking preschool children is less. This study aimed at understanding the phonological representations in Malayalam speaking preschool children in the age range of 3.6-5.0 years.

A number of languages in the Northern Territory are unusual amongst Australian Aboriginal languages in showing contrasts between two types of stops, the most salient feature of which is apparently duration of constriction. After placing the present work in context through discussion of analyses of neighbouring languages, this paper reconsiders the contrast in Jawoyn. Examination of the phonetic features that are correlated with the contrast indicate that not only duration of constriction, but also voicing through the closed phase and voice onset time play a role in its realization. Consideration is then given to the possible phonological analyses of this contrast. Three types of analysis, prosodic, segmental and geminate, are discussed, and while a prosodic interpretation of the Jawoyn data appears untenable, there is no clear evidence to indicate that either a segmental or geminate phonological analysis is more appropriate. Rather, it is argued that the evidence is 'indeterminate' at the phonological level.

The article investigates the phonetic and phonological property of focal accents conveyed by disyllabic focused words with various tonal combinations in Standard Chinese. Phonetically, the effect of focal accents upon f0 resides in two aspects: the manner and the condition of focal accents. Phonologically, the distribution of focal accents is mainly concerned. Acoustic and perceptual experiments and the underlying tonal target of focused constituents are employed in both phonetic realization and phonological analysis. Major findings are that: f0 ranges of focused words are expanded as the H tones of both focused syllables are raised; the f0 of the post-focus syllables are compressed obviously in the way the H tones of Tone1 and Tone2 are lowered; the realization of accents is closely related to the tonal target of the focused words; specifically, accents influence the acoustic performances of tones; furthermore, the combination of H/L determines the distribution of accents.

This article investigates the morphophonological processes in Korean and Uzbek, focusing on their phonetic realization, phonological patterns, and orthographic representations. Through comparative analysis, the study explores assimilation, dissimilation, elision, and metathesis, illustrating the interplay between morphemes and phonemes. The paper also highlights how these processes are graphically encoded in two typologically distinct writing systems, revealing implications for linguistic theory and language pedagogy.

In this article we will analyse a number of phonological processes occurring in three Australian Aboriginal languages, all of which involve changes of vowels or sequences of vowels under the influence of neighbouring vowels or consonants. The rules which we will propose will be referred to as UMLAUT rules. Our goal is to investigate how these rules and the forms to which they apply can best be described in an autosegmental model.

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Children hear new words from many different talkers; to learn words most efficiently, they should be able to represent them independently of talker-specific pronunciation detail. However, do children know what the component sounds of words should be, and can they use that knowledge to deal with different talkers' phonetic realizations? Experiment 1 replicated prior studies on lexically guided retuning of speech perception in adults, with a picture-verification methodology suitable for children. One participant group heard an ambiguous fricative ([s/f]) replacing /f/ (e.g., in words like giraffe); another group heard [s/f] replacing /s/ (e.g., in platypus). The first group subsequently identified more tokens on a Simpie-[s/f]impie-Fimpie toy-name continuum as Fimpie. Experiments 2 and 3 found equivalent lexically guided retuning effects in 12- and 6-year-olds. Children aged 6 have all that is needed for adjusting to talker variation in speech: detailed and abstract phonological representations and the ability to apply them during spoken-word recognition.

We now come to the question of what conceptual motivation for the random-generator position taken in the MP could be provided. Recall that the random-generator position entails the random generation of sentences. In minimalist terms this means that syntax is regarded as a random generator of sentential structures, each consisting of a pair (SA,PR) in such a way that SA (semantic analysis) and PR (phonological representation) are instructions to “external” systems of semantic interpretation and phonetic realization, respectively. (For a flowchart representation of this model of grammatical description, see fig. 6.3 later in this chapter.)