Phonetic Changes Research Articles

Stem-Affix based Uyghur Morphological Analyzer

Uyghur language is an agglutinative language in which words are derived from stems (or roots) by concatenating suffixes. This property makes a large number of combinations of morphemes, and greatly increases the word-vocabulary size, causing out-of-vocabulary (OOV) and data sparseness problems for statistical models. So words are split into certain sub-word units and applied to text and speech processing applications. Proper sub-word units not only provide high coverage and smaller lexicon size, but also provide semantic and syntactic information which is necessary for downstream applications. This paper discusses a general purpose morphological analyzer tool which can split a text of words into sequence of morphemes or syllables. Uyghur morpheme segmentation is a basic part of the comprehensive effort of the Uyghur language corpus compilation. As there are no delimiters for sub-word units, a supervised method, combined with certain rules and a statistical learning algorithm, is applied for morpheme segmentation. For phonetic units like syllable and phonemes, pure rule-based methods can extract with high accuracy. Most common and proper sub-words for various applications can be the linguistic morphemes for they provide linguistic information, high coverage, low lexicon size, and easily be restored to words. As the Uyghur language is written as pronounced, phonetic alterations of speech are openly expressed in text. This property makes many surface forms for a particular morpheme. A general purpose morphological analyzer must be able to analyze and export in both standard and surface forms. So the morphophonetic alterations like phonetic harmony, weakening, and morphological changes are summarized and learnt from training corpus. And a statistical model based morpheme segmentation tool is trained on the corpus of aligned word-morpheme sequences, and applied to predict possible morpheme sequences. For an open test set, with word coverage of 86.8% and morpheme coverage of 98.4%, the morpheme segmentation accuracy is 97.6%. This morpheme segmentation tool can output both on the standard forms and on the surface forms without costing segmentation accuracy. Furthermore, for various basic lexical units of word, morpheme, and syllable, the statistical properties are compared as a comprehensive effort of the Uyghur language corpus compilation.

Interpretación de algunos cambios fonéticos en las lenguas romances

In this article the author presents some ideas about the articulatory and perceptual mechanisms that may be involved in some major phonetic changes of the Romance languages, such as the evolution of Latino groups MB, ND and MN or the voicing of intervocalic voiceless stops comparing these ideas with those submitted by other Romance linguists in the past

Cortical speech and non-speech discrimination in relation to cognitive measures in preschool children.

Effective speech sound discrimination at preschool age is known to be a prerequisite for the development of language skills and later literacy acquisition. However, the speech specificity of cortical discrimination skills in small children is currently not known, as previous research has either studied speech functions without comparison with non-speech sounds, or used much simpler sounds such as harmonic or sinusoidal tones as control stimuli. We investigated the cortical discrimination of five syllable features (consonant, vowel, vowel duration, fundamental frequency, and intensity), covering both segmental and prosodic phonetic changes, and their acoustically matched non-speech counterparts in 63 6-year-old typically developed children, by using a multi-feature mismatch negativity (MMN) paradigm. Each of the five investigated features elicited a unique pattern of differentiating negativities: an early differentiating negativity, MMN, and a late differentiating negativity. All five studied features showed speech-related enhancement of at least one of these responses, suggesting experience-related neural commitment in both phonetic and prosodic speech processing. In addition, the cognitive performance and language skills of the children were tested extensively. The speech-related neural enhancement was positively associated with the level of performance in several neurocognitive tasks, indicating a relationship between successful establishment of cortical memory traces for speech and enhanced cognitive functioning. The results contribute to the understanding of typical developmental trajectories of linguistic vs. non-linguistic auditory skills, and provide a reference for future studies investigating deficits in language-related disorders at preschool age.

Italian Studies: Language and Linguistics

gaetano Berruto and Massimo cerruti, La linguistica: un corso introduttivo, Turin, UTET Universita, 2011, x + 340 pp., is an extensively revised and expanded version of the same authors’ Corso elementare di linguistica generale (1997 and 2006), an introduction to general Linguistics. Two new chapters have been added: language change and variation, both diachronically and synchronically (chapter 7), and history of linguistics (chapter 8). The chapters on phonetics and phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics contain special boxes with more details on specific issues, or with summaries, a set of exercises and a commented bibliography. Andreas Michel, Einfuhrung in die italienische Sprachwissenschaft, Berlin, de gruyter, 2011, xx + 216 pp., is an introduction to Italian linguistics with a strong focus on the historical dimension of Italian and Italo-Romance varieties. The first chapter sketches the historical development of language philosophy and linguistics, followed by a chapter on historical linguistics, including a short history of the Italian language, and diachronic processes like phonetic and semantic change, which somewhat strangely precedes the chapter giving an introduction to phonetics and phonology. The order of other chapters is surprising (no motivation for this choice is given by the author): after phonetics and phonology we find an introduction to grammar theory and grammar writing and only then the other fields of what usually would be called grammar (morphology, syntax, in part also semantics) follow. The remaining chapters concern pragmatics, text analysis, dialectology, sociolinguistics and lexicography (in this order). While the coverage is wide, the subjects are not always treated in great depth. Anja Platz-Schliebs et al., Einfuhrung in die Romanische Sprachwissenschaft: Franzosisch, Italienisch, Spanisch, Tubingen, Narr, 2012, 334 pp., is a textbook on Romance linguistics which focuses, in the examples used for illustration, on French, Spanish and Italian, and on language acquisition data. It is first of all a useful and systematic introduction to general linguistics, illustrated by Romance examples, with only one chapter concerning specifically Romance, namely the sketch of the Romance languages and varieties presented in chapter 4 (strangely enough after the chapters on phonology and morphology but before semantics, syntax and pragmatics — the authors justify this order by the need for progression in terminological knowledge). An interesting addition consists in a further chapter on commonalities in linguistics and literary studies as well as a methodological chapter on working techniques for linguists. Andrea Monaldi, Saggi di linguistica italiana, Rome, Aracne, 188 pp., consists of three essays on three distinct topics. The first is devoted to a linguistic analysis of Benito Mussolini’s rhetoric in his public speeches, and in particular in the so-called ‘adunate oceaniche’. The second essay deals with a specific morphosyntactic phenomenon, namely, prepositional accusative; while the third and last essay is a concise description of the main phonetic, morphosyntactic, and

Der ägyptische Lautwandel zwischen “Ꜣ” und “ḥ”


 
 
 This contribution studies the Egyptian phonetic change between “Ꜣ” and “ḥ,” a question so far dealt with only marginally. Therefore, the phonetic change is considered here for the first time from a broader perspective. An important role has likely been played by the fact that both sounds belong to the laryngals. This phonetic change is also known from other Hamito–Semitic (Afro–Asiatic) languages—particularly Akkadian and Punic. Furthermore, the phenomenon continued in Coptic.
 The investigation adduces two different types of material. First, the phonetic change is documented in eleven examples of writings of single words. In this way, a solid foundation is laid for the following procedure. Second, seventeen examples of plays on words are examined which confirm the influence of the phonetic change. These examples demonstrate that the phonetic change occurred in both directions.
 
 

The early influence of phonology on a phonetic change

The conventional wisdom regarding the diachronic process whereby phonetic phenomena become phonologized appears to be the ‘error accumulation’ model, so called by Baker, Archangeli, and Mielke (2011). Under this model, biases in the phonetic context result in production or perception errors, which are misapprehended by listeners as target productions, and over time accumulate into new target productions. In this article, I explore the predictions of the hypocorrection model for one phonetic change (prevoiceless /ay/-raising) in detail. I argue that properties of the phonetic context underpredict and mischaracterize the contextual conditioning on this phonetic change. Rather, it appears that categorical, phonological conditioning is present from the very onset of this change.

Der ägyptische Lautwandel zwischen ‘ und m

In this article, the Egyptian phonetic change between a and m is considered once again. Research so far has discussed the writing […] for the ’m’’ - drug as the only evidence for the phenomenon. Here, the number of examples is successively increased, to which end the work is separated into two parts. In the first one, five new writings are introduced, which have been influenced by the phonetic change. In the second part, a number of plays on words is presented, including this phonetic change.

Linguistic Features of the Earliest Copy of the Didactic Gospel by Constantine the Presbyteros: From the East Slavic Manuscript to the South Slavic Archetype

The article is dedicated to the linguistic features of the Didactic Gospel by Constantine the Presbyteros, who is also known as Constantine of Preslav or Constantine of Bregalnica. The earliest witness of the original text, which Constantine wrote down at the end of the 9th century in the First Bulgarian Kingdom, is the Old East Slavonic manuscript dating to the end of the 11th–beginning of the 12th centuries (this manuscript is sometimes dated to a later period). The manuscript is remarkable for its graphic and orthographic features characteristic only for the earliest Church Slavonic sources of East Slavonic provenance; these sources are dated to the 11th century or to the beginning of the 12th century. At the same time, the manuscript attests phonetic innovations caused by the initial stage of the loss of the jer-vowels, such as “new jat’” and the change of e into o. On the basis of the earliest manifestations of the change of e into o in the written sources, the author argues that this phonetic change took place in the southern part of the East Slavonic area and first of all in the prefinal syllable before the final jer in the absolute weak position. Phonetic and orthographic peculiarities of the East Slavonic witness of the Didactic Gospel testify to the southwest Balkan provenance of its South Slavonic protograph, which must have been a Cyrillic one. (On the basis of lexical data, the southwest Balkan origin of Constantine’s archetype was argued by the author elsewhere.) From the point of view of verbal morphology, the earliest witness of the Didactic Gospel seems to be one of the most archaic East Slavonic manuscripts, which is particularly testified by a number of forms of the root aorist. Special attention is devoted to the construction called “relativer Attributivkonnex” (Ch. Koch). It was discovered by scholars in a number of South Slavonic sources or in East Slavonic manuscripts which go back to the South Slavonic tradition, and is to be observed in the Didactic Gospel, too.

THE BORROWINGS AND THE PROCESS OF GLOBALIZATION (FRENCH-ENGLISH LANGUAGE CONTACT)

The desire for economic unity of the world, for the globalization, leads to the tendency of is its linguistic unity. In recent years, the experts notice that such objective factor as the prevalence of the Internet has led to the oversimplification of some world’s languages and to the baseless clogging of them with English Term. It is certain, that borrowing within reason is fully justified. However, when such borrowing leads to severe morphological, syntactic or phonetic changes and causes harm to linguistic system of the language that borrows such borrowing is baseless and harmful. The analysis of English borrowings reveals the following four types of lexical borrowing: integrated, hybrid, false loan and tracing. Integral borrowing is reduced to unchanged borrowing of the form and content of a word or phrase, without any graphic adaptation (or adaptation). A hybrid borrowed includes borrowed meaning with partial borrowing of structure of foreign words. False borrowings are reduced to formal borrowing of components that allow to create a new word when neither form nor value are not fixed in the language from which this term is borrowed. Therefore, the French often has words which combining English components do not comply with the lexical meaning of English terms. There are a lots of such terms in the French vocabulary. Tracing involves semantic, morphological and idioms tracing. In fact, morphological tracing integrates a borrowed English meaning of a word by literal translation: supermarché–supermarket. Used as synonyms such borrowings allow the user to highlight his views, approaches and enrich his own vocabulary. Phraseological tracing is often called idiomatic tracing. In this case English phraseological units meet their French equivalents. Semantic tracing consists of imposition of borrowed meaning on the words which already exist in the language that borrows. Syntactic tracing reduced to borrowing of syntactical structure of English language. Phonetic tracing reduced to preserving of English pronunciation. The internationalization of many English terms makes the communication in sphere of science, technology and production easier. That is, borrowing from other languages is absolutely justified if it doesn’t lead to clogging of a language and doesn’t disrupt the structural integrity of a language, that borrows and doesn’t do harm to its evolutionary development. Key words : globalization; borrowing; tracing; analysis.

System samogłoskowy gwary luzińskiej

The paper gives a phonological and acoustic description of the Luzino vowel system. The analysis showed evident phonetic changes in the last 50–60 years which are, however, not so numerous and striking as in many other Kashubian dialects. The most important of them are: heightening of stressed *[ɛ] into [ɘ], phonetic reduction and identification of unstressed *[ɛ] and [ə], splitting of *[ɑ, o] into [VN], and disappearance of fronted allophones of /u/. The paper enabled also to describe some vowel sounds of the dialect much more precisely than it was done in the past which apply especially to *[ə] and *[ɑː]. As to the phonology, contrasts between all 9 oral phonemes established in older descriptions were retained. The original nasal vowels were, conversely, lost as phonemes and developed into sequences /Vŋ/ with various phonetic realizations of /ŋ/.

Possessive Constructions in the Yakut Language

This article investigates the system of possessive affixes in the Yakut language differentiated in persons and subject relations; the target feature is typical of all Turkic languages. Grammatical forms of the category of possessiveness are examined, the main phonetic changes in the use of possessive affixes are described, and its role in a word-form among other formal indicators and modifiers is described. More detailed research is dedicated to the main morphological method formed by the means of special forms, so-called affixes of possessiveness regarded as a form of inflection, as well as a word-formation. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n6s5p141

Diachronic effects of rhinoglottophilia, symmetries in sound change, and the curious case of Basque

The particular affinity linking glottality and nasality to each other, a connection which is grounded both on articulatory and acoustic bases, seems to be responsible for various phonetic phenomena in different languages. In sound changes associated to what has been termed rhinoglottophilia (Matisoff 1975), the two logically possible diachronic pathways show up: from glottality to secondary nasalization, on the one hand, and from nasality to secondary laryngealization, on the other. The innovations concerned can thus be considered symmetrical, a feature that is rarely found in sound change. This paper first reviews the evidence at our disposal for positing a class of replacive phonetic changes caused by rhinoglottophilia, and then argues for an explanation of the diachronic correspondence n > h in the history of the Basque language based on the (primarily acoustic) effects of this specific connection between glottality (more specifically, aspiration) and nasality.

On a Phonetic Change in Southern Tati

The article is devoted to a historical change in the phonetical system of the Southern Tati dialects, belonging to Āturpātakān-South Caspian group of North–West Iranian.

Reconstrucción morfológica y fonológica de los pronombres personales independientes del protoatzinca

En este artículo presento la reconstrucción morfológica y fonológica de los pronombres personales independientes del protoatzinca, con base en datos del matlatzinca y ocuilteco actuales, y de documentos coloniales. En todas las lenguas atzincas encontramos once pronombres independientes que distinguen primera, segunda y tercera persona, singular, dual y plural para cada persona y exclusividad en los pronombres de primera persona dual y plural. Cada una de estas categorías se expresa con un morfema distinto en las palabras pronominales. Uno de los principales resultados de la comparación y reconstrucción que aquí presento es que no hay cambios morfológicos diacrónicos, pero sí los hay en los niveles fonológico y fonético. Original recibido: 2014/05/05Dictamen enviado al autor: 2014/09/24Aceptado: 2014/10/20

Functionally integrated neural processing of linguistic and talker information: An event-related fMRI and ERP study

Speech signals contain information of both linguistic content and a talker's voice. Conventionally, linguistic and talker processing are thought to be mediated by distinct neural systems in the left and right hemispheres respectively, but there is growing evidence that linguistic and talker processing interact in many ways. Previous studies suggest that talker-related vocal tract changes are processed integrally with phonetic changes in the bilateral posterior superior temporal gyrus/superior temporal sulcus (STG/STS), because the vocal tract parameter influences the perception of phonetic information. It is yet unclear whether the bilateral STG is also activated by the integral processing of another parameter — pitch, which influences the perception of lexical tone information and is related to talker differences in tone languages. In this study, we conducted separate functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and event-related potential (ERP) experiments to examine the spatial and temporal loci of interactions of lexical tone and talker-related pitch processing in Cantonese. We found that the STG was activated bilaterally during the processing of talker changes when listeners attended to lexical tone changes in the stimuli and during the processing of lexical tone changes when listeners attended to talker changes, suggesting that lexical tone and talker processing are functionally integrated in the bilateral STG. It extends the previous study, providing evidence for a general neural mechanism of integral phonetic and talker processing in the bilateral STG. The ERP results show interactions of lexical tone and talker processing 500–800ms after auditory word onset (a simultaneous posterior P3b and a frontal negativity). Moreover, there is some asymmetry in the interaction, such that unattended talker changes affect linguistic processing more than vice versa, which may be related to the ambiguity that talker changes cause in speech perception and/or attention bias to talker changes. Our findings have implications for understanding the neural encoding of linguistic and talker information.

Quantitative and qualitative characteristics of the diphthongs in Middle High German

The article deals with the transition from the Old High German diphthongs into Middle High German, there are established causes and trends of vowel combinations and the quantitative and qualitative characteristics of diphthongs of this period. There was held a statistic analysis of diphthongs which was based on the material of texts of Middle High period and there was established the frequency of the use of diphthongs as a percentage. Middle High German period is a transitional period in the history of the language.This phase covers the monuments of XII-XIII centuries and represents variety of dialects, which are characterized by diversity in the implementation of phonemes. However, the socio-historical and cultural-historical changes were the spur for the formation of common language. Therefore, on the basis of the functioning of the written fixation of sounds in the literature is presented the rather monotonous sound system, in particular diphthongs.The most important phonetic change in this period is the process of confluence of phonemes, which had led to a reduction in the future. The process of separating of phonemes led to the appearance of new phonemes - umlauts. The process of monoftongization and diphthongization has given the opportunity to analyse the transition of phonemes and diphthongs of Old High German into Middle High German . The study of the functioning of diphthongs which was based on material of texts from Middle High period prompted to determine the number and frequency of implementation of diphthongs in three positions of a word as a percentage.

The <em>calembour</em> in Rabbi Raphael Aharon Monsonego’s “Neot midbar”

Rabbi Raphael Aharon Monsonego was a Moroccan rabbi who lived in the 18th-19th centuries. His literary creation is extensive, and apart from halachic texts he wrote a series of poems that are characterized by abundant use of the calembour technique. The calembour (in English, pun ) is a specific type of allusion used by North African Jewish poets and writers. Like all allusions it is based on “a meeting of two texts, one implicit – i.e., in our consciousness and memory, and the other explicit – i.e., in the actual text in front of us.” A calembour differs from other types of allusions in that it consists of “phonetic and spelling changes in the words, idioms and fragmented verses in order to gain a humorous effect and other associative allusion.” Namely, in the calembour a word or phrase from a biblical or rabbinic text is presented “with a minimal change in letter or vowel etc. […] creating a witticism or a new meaning.” The author assumes, then, that the reader is able to intuitively identify the original text despite the changes made and even enjoy and appreciate the linguistic witticism since he is well-versed in the Jewish sources (especially the Hebrew Bible and halachic literature). The aim of this paper is to examine the use of the calembour in Monsonego’s poetry through several examples of its different forms and especially through the analysis of one of the poems that features a larger use of this technique: “Im omar avo ha-‘ir” (‘If I resolve to arouse lament’).

The Main Characteristic Features of the Bulgarian Orlitza Dialect (From the East Rhodopes)

This article describes the main characteristic features of the dialect spoken by Muslim Bulgarians inhabiting the East Rhodopian Bulgarian village of Orlitza. The dialect features phonetic changes © ∆ a, u ∆ a, ќ ∆ ’a, u ∆ ’a; the traces from the Old Bulgarian nasal vowels; the use of a definite article from the Old Bulgarian demonstrative pronoun ou “this” unlike most of the other Rhodopian dialects where a triple article derived from the demonstrative pronouns ou, nu, iiu is in use; as well as interesting lexemes, often from Turkish origin. Кeywords: Bulgarian language, Bulgarian dialectology, East Rhodopes

Permanent “foreign accent” after cyclosporine encephalopathy in a liver transplant patient

Foreign accent syndrome (FAS) is a speech disorder that leads listeners to perceive the patient as having a foreign accent. The cardinal feature of FAS is prosody change, with variation in accent, intonation, and rhythm. Less frequently, phonetic changes with normal prosody may be detected. The composite features of patients with FAS are not characteristic of dysarthria or aphasia and partially resemble patients who have speech apraxia. Patients with FAS are often unfamiliar with the foreign language and often seem unaware of the disturbance, even though their ability to discriminate foreign accents is spared.

System samogłoskowy współczesnej kaszubszczyzny północno-zachodniej

This article is dedicated to the vocalism of the contemporary Żarnowiec dialect (spoken in Wierzchucino and Nadole). On the one hand, an acoustic and phonetic analysis has identified certain phonetic archaisms (like the central or frontal and central pronunciation of /u/) and has aided in-depth descriptions of sounds previously referred to in a very imprecise way (*/aː/ pronounced as a near-close rounded vowel, central, [ɵ] type). On the other hand, the analysis has provided grounds for acknowledging the important phonetic changes which have occurred in the Kashubian dialect in the past few decades; some of these consist in completing specific phenomena. These include the general dissemination of the diphthongal pronunciation of stressed /e, o, ɛ, ɔ/, the highly back and rounded pronunciation of /ɒ/, the front and open pronunciation of /ae/ in Nadole and the extended scope of the phonological and phonetic reduction of non-stressed vowels (the phonemes /ɘ, ɛ, ae/ are always, /ɵ, e/ nearly always and /i/ is relatively rarely pronounced in the same way when not stressed). The result of this reduction is a distinctly centralized vowel or a central vowel of the [ɜ] type. From the phonological point of view, attention should be paid primarily to the ultimate loss of nasal vowel phonemes. Contrary to existing descriptions, the vocal continuant */a/ has not been merged phonologically with /e/ but a new oral phoneme /ɘ/ has been established. It is worth emphasizing that a majority of the identified changes do not bring the dialect closer to the Polish language, rather, they take it further away from it.