Natural Phonology Research Articles

Phonological Conditioning Allomorphy in Sport Commentary

The study is focused on the hypothesis that the boundary between morphology and phonology is where a large portion of allomorphic diversity is located. The basic assumption is that phonology can affect the choice of allomorphs for reasons pertaining to phonological naturalness, preferences in language with regard to syllable patterns, stress location, or both. Additionally, Optimality Theory is expected to provide a more satisfactory explanation for the phenomenon compared to Distributed Morphology, as it permits phonology to surpass morphology in both theoretical and practical aspects. Since Saturday is the most action-packed day of the football season and hosts many English Premier League matches at once, six "Saturday Football" pages from the BBC were included in the corpus obtained for this research. Though there is a phonological conditioning allmorphy in the past form (-ed), which can be articulated as /t/, /d/, or /id/, it is only present in the six pages of "Saturday Football" sport commentary.

Phonological substitution patterns in Yemeni Ibbi Arabic child speech: a markedness and natural phonology perspective

Phonological substitution patterns in Yemeni Ibbi Arabic child speech: a markedness and natural phonology perspective

Adjective comparison in African varieties of English

Adjectives in English can express the comparative in two ways, either synthetically, with the addition of the suffix -er (e.g. nicer), or analytically, with the adverb more preceding the adjective (e.g. more outstanding). With some adjectives, the two forms coexist (e.g. cleverer and more clever). While traditional grammars state that length (measured in number of syllables) is the main determinant for comparative variation (Quirk et al. 1985; Biber et al. 1999; Huddleston and Pullum 2002), more recent and focused studies (Mondorf 2003, 2007, 2009; Hilpert 2008) show that the distribution of English comparative forms is conditioned by more than the number of syllables, establishing a more complex set of factors to account for this alternation. The aim of the current paper is to assess the main factors that underlie comparative alternation through an in-depth analysis of the presence of synthetic and analytic forms in a set of adjectives taken from five African varieties of English (South African, Nigerian, Ghanaian, Kenyan, and Tanzanian English). In line with contemporary studies (Mondorf 2003), the results ascertain that comparative alternation is primarily governed by intra-linguistic factors, predominantly of morphosyntactic, semantic and phonological nature. Additionally, the impact of other commonly-cited factors, such as learner effects and L1 influence, which are expected to reinforce the observed tendency towards analyticization, is also explored.

Natural Phonology: Natural Classes and Processes

Natural phonology is a linguistic theory developed by David Stampe and Patricia Donegan that seeks to explain the phonological patterns observed in human languages. The phonological processes are seen as natural and regular reactions to the limitations of the human vocal and auditory system. A natural class refers to a combination of segments which tend to behave similarly because they have features in common. The problem of this study is that NP heavily depends on theoretical arguments and introspection rather than empirical data. Only limited rules can categorize the natural classes and apply to features. This research aims at identifying the gist of the theory of natural phonology, clarifying its principles and processes. This study hypothesizes that there are no regular processes and there are phonological variation across languages. The model adopted of this study is Donegan and Stampe 1979. This study concludes that NP supposes that the samples of speech are governed by innate and universal set of phonological processes.

Analysis of Phonological Errors Made by Grade 4 Learners with Communication Difficulties in Kieni East Sub-County

Inclusive education in Kenyan primary schools brings together learners with special needs and their peers without special needs in the mainstream classroom. Some learners in inclusive classrooms have challenges that hinder the acquisition of literacy skills. Official instruction in ESL in primary schools begins in Grade 4. Learners who fail to acquire basic language skills in Grade 4 will struggle to master ESL in the upper classes. Against this backdrop, this study set out to analyze the phonological errors made by Grade 4 learners of ESL in Kieni East Sub-County. The study adopted a descriptive research design. Seven primary schools in Kieni-East were randomly sampled, and 11 students with communication difficulties purposively sampled for data collection. The 11 learners were observed during an ESL listening and speaking lesson. The researcher turned Sony ICD-UX570 Digital Voice Recorder on and left it on the learner’s desk for a 35-minute lesson. The study identified twenty-seven (27) words with phonological errors. The phonological errors were categorized into five classes such as cluster reduction (22%) followed by reduplication (19%), distortion (15%), deletion (15%), stopping (11%), backing (11%) and gliding (7%), respectively. The audio-recorded data was transcribed, and the correct forms provided in a table. Data was analyzed qualitatively using Error Analysis and Natural Phonology Theory to describe the phonological errors. The study found that Grade 4 learners with communication difficulties make phonological errors due to word complexities, biological disorders, and poor cognitive development. Further, the study established that inclusive schools do not have adequate assistive resources to instruct learners with communication difficulties. This study recommends that teachers should partner with speech therapists and language researchers to assist learners with communication needs. Further, EARC should equip all inclusive classrooms with assistive resources to address the needs of learners with communication needs.

Complex Natural Systems for Language

In this paper we want to show how complex systems theory can inform the theoretical development in natural phonology. This development leads us to propose complex natural systems modelling for language. We explain how complex systems help us understand both theoretical concepts from natural phonology, for example the concept of preference, as well as variation in language data, for example in English vowel realizations and Polish consonant clusters. We select from our respective research areas those exemplifications which clearly demonstrate substantial variation in language use.

Learning biases in proper nouns

AbstractIt has been proposed that there are cognitive biases in language learning that favour certain patterns over others. This study examines the effects of such bias factors on the learning of the phonology of proper nouns. I take up the phenomenon of compound voicing in Japanese surnames. The results of two judgment experiments show that, while Japanese speakers replicate various kinds of statistical regularities in existing names, they tend to extend only phonologically motivated patterns to novel names. This suggests that phonological naturalness plays a role even in the learning of a highly faithful category of words, namely proper nouns, and provides evidence for the relevance of learning biases in synchronic grammar.

Substitution phonological patterns in the English speech of Ghanaian children

When children find the production of a speech sound difficult, they tend to substitute it with another easier one, a phenomenon described as Substitution Phonological Pattern (SPP). This study investigated SPP in Ghanaian preschoolers, who spoke their individual Ghanaian languages like Akan and Ga as their first languages (L1) but were learning to speak English as a second language, to understand and document how these children pronounced English speech sounds. Thirty preschoolers in a privately-owned basic school in Kumasi were selected and voice recorded as they mentioned twenty English lexical items from their textbooks after their teacher. Both the participants' and their teacher's productions of the stimulus words were transcribed according to the International Phonetic Alphabet. The data was analysed using both qualitative and quantitative research approaches and within the framework of Natural Phonology Theory. Findings indicated that the children exhibited Fronting, Backing, and Stopping. The participants' L1 and age among other factors were observed to be responsible for the processes identified: English sounds that were absent in the L1 of the children were difficult to produce for some of the children, while older children exhibited fewer cases of substitution. This study might serve as a documented material and a reference point for future researchers and Ministry of Education of the Republic of Ghana on Ghanaian children phonological experiences as regards the speaking of English.

Final Lengthening and vowel length in 25 languages

Lengthening of segments at the end of prosodic domains is commonly considered a universal phenomenon, but language-specific variation has also been reported, specifically in languages with a phonological vowel length contrast. This cross-linguistic study uses spontaneous speech data from the DoReCo corpus as a testbed to investigate Final Lengthening (FL) in a diverse sample of 25 mostly understudied languages, thirteen of which have a phonological vowel length contrast. The duration of vowels was labeled using an automatic aligner, with additional manual corrections of word boundaries upon which refined segment alignments were created. The study reveals that (i) FL is a widespread process across languages; (ii) FL shows a wide variety of manifestations with respect to the degree and scope of lengthening; (iii) there are several significant interactions between phonological length and positional lengthening. These results lend support to theories assuming a phonological nature of Final Lengthening.

The Sequence Recall Task and Lexicality of Tone: Exploring Tone "Deafness".

Many perception and processing effects of the lexical status of tone have been found in behavioral, psycholinguistic, and neuroscientific research, often pitting varieties of tonal Chinese against non-tonal Germanic languages. While the linguistic and cognitive evidence for lexical tone is therefore beyond dispute, the word prosodic systems of many languages continue to escape the categorizations of typologists. One controversy concerns the existence of a typological class of “pitch accent languages,” another the underlying phonological nature of surface tone contrasts, which in some cases have been claimed to be metrical rather than tonal. We address the question whether the Sequence Recall Task (SRT), which has been shown to discriminate between languages with and without word stress, can distinguish languages with and without lexical tone. Using participants from non-tonal Indonesian, semi-tonal Swedish, and two varieties of tonal Mandarin, we ran SRTs with monosyllabic tonal contrasts to test the hypothesis that high performance in a tonal SRT indicates the lexical status of tone. An additional question concerned the extent to which accuracy scores depended on phonological and phonetic properties of a language’s tone system, like its complexity, the existence of an experimental contrast in a language’s phonology, and the phonetic salience of a contrast. The results suggest that a tonal SRT is not likely to discriminate between tonal and non-tonal languages within a typologically varied group, because of the effects of specific properties of their tone systems. Future research should therefore address the first hypothesis with participants from otherwise similar tonal and non-tonal varieties of the same language, where results from a tonal SRT may make a useful contribution to the typological debate on word prosody.

Child second language development of English tense and aspect: The role of narrative organization

AbstractMuch research has documented that second language (L2) development of tense and aspect markers is influenced by a range of factors that include cross-linguistic influences, phonological nature of forms, inherent semantics of predicates, and discourse structure. Nonetheless, relatively little research has examined the role of discourse organization in the development of tense and aspect marking. To expand our understanding of L2 tense and aspect, this study examined child L2 development of English tense and aspect in oral narratives in relation to the foregrounding and backgrounding of narrative discourse. Thirty-eight learners’ oral narratives were elicited, usingFrog, Where Are You?(Mayer, 1969) three points in time: kindergarten, Grade 1, and Grade 2. The foreground in oral narratives was associated with more frequent use of the simple past than the background across the grade levels. While the occurrence of the simple past did not necessarily mark the foreground, the simple past emerged as the dominant form in the foreground in Grade 1. In the background, on the other hand, it took longer for the past forms to catch up with the non-past forms. The simple past became dominant in the background in Grade 2.

Nasal Preinitials in Tangut Phonology

Gong Hwang-cherng proposed that the Tangut language has a distinction between short and long vowels. To date, however, no reliable correlates have been found regarding the actual phonological nature of the distinction. A careful examination of Chinese loanwords in Tangut and Sino-Tangut pronunciation reveals that the “vowel length” distinction should be revised to that of the presence vs. absence of a nasal preinitial. The pair “weed” vs. “tomb,” borrowed respectively from Chinese 蒲 bu and 墓 muH (the latter from a Northwest-type reflex with *mb-), hitherto reconstructed as buʶÅ {buÅ} vs. buʶ¹ {bu¹}, should be revised to buʶ¹ vs. mbuʶ². The reconstructed nasal preinitial not only has a close typological parallel in Modern West Rgyalrongic, but is equally reflected in other sources of evidence, most strikingly Sanskrit transcription and fǎnqiè. The revision solves a large number of problems in the historical phonology of Tangut, though not without raising some new ones, especially in connection with the treatment of Proto-Rgyalrongic preinitials before nasals.

A phonetically-based phoneme analysis of the Danish consonant system

ABSTRACT The traditional phoneme analysis of the Danish consonant inventory links onset and coda consonants on the basis of historical alternations and morphologically conditioned alternations within a small subset of the Danish lexicon. This traditional analysis proposes a system resulting in a large number of neutralizations that cannot be dissolved, and in which allophones of the same phoneme lack shared phonetic content. We argue that the system proposed by the traditional analysis is impossible to learn from the language input, which renders the analysis an implausible description of the Danish consonant system. On the basis of theoretical discussions, we offer an alternative phoneme analysis, which we believe to be learnable from the data available in the language input. Our analysis is based on insights from Natural Phonology and Bidirectional Phonetics and Phonology. We propose a system without undissolvable neutralizations, with shared phonetic content between allophones of the same phoneme, and without the need to rely on alternations that children are unlikely to learn in early childhood.

Acquiring Consonant Phonemes by Kurdish Children

Natural phonology and the theory of Roman Jacobson are crucial in acquiring language phonemes. In this paper which is entitled "acquiring consonant phonemes by Kurds children", we will endeavor based on the above theories, to focus on acquiring consonant phonemes in Kurdish language from age two years and a month to the age of six years and 5 months. We will also review the studies and methods that deal with acquiring language phonemes. The importance of this study is to find out at what age do the Kurds children obtains all consonant phonemes, or what are the difficult phonemes for Kurds children which acquire them at a later time. Is there a gender difference in acquiring phonemes among children? The present paper beside these objectives also aims at catching the interests of those who investigate Kurdish language, in order to conduct more research’s on this matter especially children phonology to determine the natural development of children language.

A Flute, Musical Bows and Bamboo Clarinets that "Speak" in the Amazon Rainforest; Speech and Music in the Gavião Language of Rondônia.

The Gavião, a native Amazonian group in Rondônia, Brazil, use three different traditional musical instruments that they identify as “speaking” ones and that are characterized by a very tight music-lyric relation through similar pitch patterns: a flute (called kotiráp), a pair of mouth bows (iridináp), and three large bamboo clarinets (totoráp), played by three different players, each one playing a single-note clarinet. They show in different ways the relation of acoustic iconicity which exists between the words of the songs’ lyrics and the music played on such instruments to “sing” the songs. Linguistic analysis makes it possible to understand the phonetic and phonological nature of the iconicity. The sung speech form, being intermediate between the spoken and the instrumental forms, is useful for both learning and explaining the musical notes. In a language with distinctive tone and length, such as Gavião of Rondônia, the first question about speech that is played by musical instruments is the relation between the melodies and the supersegmental phonology of the corresponding words in sung speech and in modal spoken speech. It is influenced by the phonological possibilities of the spoken form and by the musical possibilities of the instrumental form. The description and analysis of Gavião instrumental speech and song practices are found to be a noteworthy contribution to the typology of instrumental language surrogates associated with a tone language, one that calls for a reexamination of hypotheses about which aspects of the phonological/phonetic structure can be transposed in instrumental speech and how this can be done. The role of this kind of instrumental sung speech is artistic and also practical as it contributes to maintain the oral heritage. Such practice represents a little-studied and threatened cultural heritage of the traditional substratum of the cultures of Amazonia.

Resting-State Functional Connectivity following Phonological Component Analysis: The Combined Action of Phonology and Visual Orthographic Cues.

Anomia is the most frequent and pervasive symptom for people with aphasia (PWA). Phonological component analysis (PCA) is a therapy incorporating phonological cues to treat anomia. Investigations of neural correlates supporting improvements following PCA remain scarce. Resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) as a marker of therapy-induced neuroplasticity has been reported by our team. The present study explores the efficacy of PCA in French and associated therapy-induced neuroplasticity using whole-brain rsFC analysis. Ten PWA participated in a pre-/post-PCA fMRI study with cognitive linguistic assessments. PCA was delivered in French following the standard procedure. PCA led to significant improvement with trained and untrained items. PCA also led to changes in rsFC between distributed ROIs in the semantic network, visual network, and sub-cortical areas. Changes in rsFC can be interpreted within the frame of the visual and phonological nature of PCA. Behavioral and rsFC data changes associated with PCA in French highlight its efficacy and point to the importance of phonological and orthographic cues to consolidate the word-retrieval strategy, contributing to generalization to untrained words.

Linguistic Features Observed in Hausa Spoken by Karai-Karai in Kukar Gadu and Its Environs

The purpose of the paper is to examine the linguistic features in Hausaspoken by Karai-Karailiving in Kukar-Gadu and its environs. The study presents 4 features which are so peculiar. They are insertion of velar ejective voiceless /q/ consonant sound such as qaayaa as in ayaa ‘tiger nut’, qaauree as in aureeetc.ii. De-bilabialisation of the bilabial, nasal, plosive, voiced /m/ sound with alveolar nasal voiced /ŋ/ phoneme as in atamfaa becomes atanfaa‘wrapper’,damshi becomes danshi ‘moisture etc.iii. Deletion of velar, ejective, voiceless /q/ consonant sound as in qaaragoo becomes?’ araagoo ‘groundnut cake’ andqafa becomes ‘?afaa. iv. Substitution of alveolar lateral voiced /l/ sound with labio velar, approximant voiced /w/ sound as in lokaci becomes wokaci ‘time’ and low vowel /a/ substituted high back vowel /u/ respectively. The paper adopted Donegen, S.S. (1979) theory of natural phonology. Unstructured interview and native speaker intuition was employed in making inferences in the study. The findings reveal that not only the Karai-Karai, Fulani but also the Ngamos among others that lives in the area that the said features can be observed in their speeches while pronouncing some names in respective of age or gender and the meaning of the word remains unchanged.Lastly, the paper discovered some sounds which appeared neither in word initial, medial nor word-final position but are not incorporated into Karai-Karai alphabets. They are /mb/ as in mbủxu ‘mold’, mbandi ‘things’, /kw/ as in talakwa ‘tuesday’ bunkwu ‘hide’, /o/ as in ỏyum ‘money’, oci ‘goat’ etc.

On segmental representations in second language phonology: A perceptual account

The extent to which exposure to new phonemic contrasts (i.e. contrasts that are present in the L2 but not in the L1) will lead to the creation of a new phonemic category in L2 speakers, as well as the phonological nature of these categories, remains an open question insofar as there is no consensus on whether acquiring a new contrast would result in abstract, phoneme-like categories, or if they belong to a less abstract level of representation. This work explores the perception of the /ɑ/–/ʌ/ contrast ( cop – cup) in American English by Spanish speakers of L2 English through a discrimination task. The results show that while the interlanguage state of less experienced learners is best described as a case of single-category assimilation, the interlanguage state achieved by advanced learners is not a full phonemic split, despite the increased sensitivity to otherwise within-category perceptual cues; rather, it seems that while the ability to perceive differences is not affected, the ability to create a new phonemic representation is impaired.

Synchronic Account of Substitution among Educated Ohaozara Speakers of English

Substitution is a natural experience among second language speakers because it occurs in a situation where the target language presents segments that do not exist in the native language of speakers. Native speakers, therefore, unavoidably try to overcome the linguistic problem of having to articulate sounds that are present in the foreign language but unavailable in their mother tongue. It is against this linguistic pedigree that this study explored the synchronic account of substitution among educated Ohaozara speakers of English using the Natural Phonology Hypotheses (NPH) as its analytical tool. The study aimed to identify and account for the particular cases of phonological substitution as it affects Ohaozara educated speakers of the English language and thereafter, recommend workable and sustainable remedies that would mitigate the problem. Data for the study were collected through the use of audio recorder and a reading comprehension passage. One hundred (100) educated Ohaozara speakers of English, who were drawn at random, using the stratified random sampling technique, participated in the study. The data were analyzed quantitatively in accordance with the tenets of NPH. The results showed that the speakers exhibited acts of phoneme substitution in most of their spoken discourses in English as evidenced by both data. The study offered a good number of recommendations and suggestions to mitigate the problem.

On the nature of metrical phonology of Iraqi Arabic: A non-linear approach

The paper is an in-depth study of how the principles and rules of the metrical theory of phonology have found their way to apply to Iraqi Arabic words and expressions. Iraqi lexical items have amassed evidence illustrating that both foot and stress are the hub of phonological designs of parametric prominence entailed in mapping and building up word syllables. Nevertheless, this is not a free-for-all which is far beyond restrictions or exceptions. Some constraints are not imposed to deviate from the metrical norms of Iraqi words nor some exceptions are made to distort their lexical frames, but rather they are adopted to emphasize that any theory's premises are generally the same but its applicable ends are definitely different in so far as the language or the dialect in question is concerned. The paper also digs deep certain metrical phenomena taking place in Iraqi word stress patterns like the extra metrical behavior of some word syllables and segments, and cyclic and non-cyclic parameters of some morphological operations of words.