Phonological Restructuring Research Articles

Neural processing of Mandarin and Cantonese lexical tone alternations: implications for the nature of phonological representations

This study provides neurocognitive evidence to shed further insight into the architecture of phonological representations. We tap into these representations by focusing on the neural processing of phonological alternations. Traditional generative accounts postulate abstract representations which are transformed by phonological processes into different alternants. Recent psycholinguistically-based frameworks posit that different alternants are listed in parallel in the abstract representation. Exemplar-based theories posit that alternation is a manifestation of frequency effects among concrete phonetic forms stored in memory. However, it is unclear the extent to which phonological representations of different levels of abstractedness are neurocognitive realities, beyond formal entities for linguistic analysis. This study tests the hypothesis that phonological representations are neurocognitive primitives that modulate speech processing and lexical access. We examined the processing of two surface-similar, but distributionally distinct lexical tone alternation patterns in Mandarin and Cantonese. With a cross-modal priming paradigm, differential neurophysiological components (LPC vs. N400) associated with the processing of alternation violations were identified cross-linguistically. Results support our hypothesis, suggesting that cross-linguistically distinct abstract phonological representations differentially modulate phonotactic detection, lexical access, and phonological restructuring processes. Results also lend theoretical insight into the multiform nature of the phonological representation, which encompasses both abstract and concrete levels of representations.

Word frequency modulates the selection of semantic access pathways of spoken words in the second language

ABSTRACT: Most second language (L2) learners comprehend words more difficult in its spoken form than the written form (Bekleyen 2009). Based on the findings of previous studies, we assumed that word frequency and language proficiency may be two critical factors in spoken word identification. To investigate how these two factors modulate L2 spoken word identification, we recruited Chinese-English bilinguals with different English proficiency levels, and manipulated words' orthographic consistency, and word frequency. Our results supported the phonological restructuring account, it suggested that only high frequency L2 spoken words can achieve phonological restructuring and rely on orthographic information to access meaning. The less frequently used word has a weak spelling-sound connection, leaving the primitive sound-meaning route the only choice. This effect may be unrelated to language proficiency, the order that orthographic and phonological information is acquired, or the language system. Altogether, these results revealed that Chinese-English bilinguals rely on both the direct route and the orthography-mediation route to process L2 spoken words. The choice of which route is modulated by word frequency. 摘要: 大多数第二语言学习者理解单词的口语形式比书面形式更困难。基于 以往的研究结果，我们认为词频和语言熟练度可能是口语词汇识别的 两个关键因素。为了研究这两个因素是如何调节第二语言口语单词识 别的，我们招募了具有不同英语熟练度的汉-英双语者为被试，并操纵 了单词的正字法一致性和词频这两个因素。我们的研究结果支持语音 重构理论，表明只有高频的二语口语词汇才能实现语音重构，并依赖 正字法信息获取意义。而低频单词的拼写与其发音之间的联系较弱， 这使得原始的音-义直接通路成为唯一的选择。这种出现的词频效应可 能与语言熟练度、正字法信息和语音信息获得的顺序或语言系统无关。 以上结果表明，汉-英双语者在加工二语口语时，既依赖于直接通路， 也依赖于正字法中介通路。且通路的选择是由词频调节的。

The development of phonological patterns in an urban dialect contact setting: Evidence from Seoul Korean

Abstract: This study investigates the linguistic outcome of migration-induced dialect contact in contemporary urban settings by tracking the development of the variable deletion of /w/ in Seoul Korean. The results from apparent-time and real-time analyses reveal that the rate of postconsonantal /w/-deletion, which previously had been rising, has begun to fall. In addition, the strong effect of the preceding consonant on this deletion has weakened significantly. Meanwhile, the rate of non-postconsonantal /w/-deletion has continued to rise, and, for younger speakers, non-postconsonantal /w/-deletion now patterns similarly with postconsonantal /w/-deletion. I argue that the dilution of the original pattern of the deletion rule is the result of the interplay between linguistic diffusion induced by a massive influx of migrants into Seoul and phonological restructuring by subsequent generations.

Exploration of phonological jokes in Maryam Apaokagi's selected comedy skits

The majority of studies on Nigerian comedy are discourse- and pragmatics-related, despite the impact of phonology on humour creation as seminal studies have shown. These seminal studies describe phonological jokes to mean ambiguous utterances whose humour lies in their multiple phonological interpretations. However, comedy skits from Nigeria show that there are more dimensions to phonological jokes. Therefore, this study investigated the phonological jokes in comedy skits from Maryam Apaokagi, using Chomsky and Halle’s Distinctive Features and McGraw and Warren’s Benign Violation Theory. Twenty skits were purposively selected from the artist’s YouTube channel. Four strategies were identified in the data: minimal pairs, phonological restructuring, phonological ambiguity, and phonological extension. Four instances each of minimal pairs and phonological restructuring were identified; the former replaced phonemes in words, thus, changing their meanings, while the latter re-arranged phoneme sets and syllables to achieve new structures. There were two instances of phonological ambiguity where strings of sounds had multiple meanings; homophony was engaged to achieve rhythm and humour. Phonological extension had twenty-eight instances; it occurred when one character produced a syllable, and another extended it by providing a longer but partially similar word. Four types of phonological extensions were identified, and these were extension into regular words, popular names, concepts and other languages. The jokes portrayed socio-cultural and economic situations in Nigeria like poverty, promiscuity, high living costs, and burglary. Apaokagi used comedy to teach patience and tolerance. The comprehension of these jokes thrived on shared background knowledge between the artist and the audience.

Khmer onset voicing at the end of the 13th century

Abstract Khmer displays extensive diachronic phonological restructuring (Huffman, 1976), especially in the realization of initial stops. These changes include (i) devoicing and merger of voiced and voiceless stops, and (ii) the emergence of implosives from pre-vocalic voiceless stops. However, the details and the chronology of these changes remain unclear in many respects. This paper proposes a chronology of the two changes based on philological evidence: Chinese transcriptions of Khmer words in the Zhēnlà Fēngtǔ Jì (ZFTJ), a travel account from the late 13th century. Previous research on ZFTJ by Pelliot (1951) suggested that implosives had already emerged at the time of transcription, while the merger of voiced and voiceless stops had at least started. This is at odds with the general view of Khmer language history. I motivate a revised analysis of the Khmer transcriptions in the ZFTJ and show that the devoicing and merger of voiced and voiceless stops in fact had not yet occurred at the end of the 13th century. There is, however, not enough evidence from ZFTJ to confirm whether implosives had already emerged.

Phonological network fluency identifies phonological restructuring through mental search

We investigated network principles underlying mental search through a novel phonological verbal fluency task. Post exclusion, 95 native-language Mandarin speakers produced as many items that differed by a single segment or lexical tone as possible within one minute. Their verbal productions were assessed according to several novel graded fluency measures, and network science measures that accounted for the structure, cohesion and interconnectedness of lexical items. A multivariate regression analysis of our participants’ language backgrounds included their mono- or multi-lingual status, English proficiency, and fluency in other Chinese languages/dialects. Higher English proficiency predicted lower error rates and greater interconnectedness, while higher fluency in other Chinese languages/dialects revealed lower successive similarity and lower network coherence. This inverse relationship between English and other Chinese languages/dialects provides evidence of the restructuring of the phonological mental lexicon.

Non-native or native vocabulary in Mexican Sign Language

This paper discusses lexicalized fingerspelling and initialization in Mexican Sign Language (LSM). It analyzes various phonological restructuring processes that take place when fingerspelled words become lexicalized and it argues that these lexicalized signs are part of the foreign/non-native lexicon of LSM, based on a model by Brentari and Padden (2001). As far as initialization, which is extremely common in LSM, is concerned, this article describes variation in the use of initialization by different signers of LSM, and the various lexical families based on initialization that exist in LSM. It also argues that, unlike lexicalized fingerspelling and unlike initialized signs in ASL, initialized signs are part of the core vocabulary of LSM, because they behave like native signs both phonologically and morphologically. To conclude, the morphological structure of initialized signs is discussed.

Creole phonological restructuring

This article examines the influence of perception on creole phonological restructuring, drawing comparisons to loanword adaptation and second language learning and outlining a formal framework within which change can be described and explained. The three scenarios of contact-induced modification are compared and contrasted, focusing on the nature of contact, the role of different source and target languages, and the means by which participants access source tokens. Data from Haitian, showing diachronic modification to lexifier rhotics, is used to illustrate the position that perception may be the primary causal factor in phonological modification in some instances. It is argued that source ambiguity and substrate (L1) perceptual knowledge underlie restructuring. Perceptual competence is formalized in a broadly Optimality Theoretic grammar using level-specific constraints referring to the parsing and categorization of experiential input. Putative substrate data are used to establish a perceptual grammar which, when applied to experiential input, predict attested outcomes in Haitian.

Orthographic effects in spoken language: On-line activation or phonological restructuring?

Previous research has shown that literacy (i.e., learning to read and spell) affects spoken language processing. However, there is an on-going debate about the nature of this influence. Some argued that orthography is co-activated on-line whenever we hear a spoken word. Others suggested that orthography is not activated on-line but has changed the nature of the phonological representations. Finally, both effects might occur simultaneously, that is, orthography might be activated on-line in addition to having changed the nature of the phonological representations. Previous studies have not been able to tease apart these hypotheses. The present study started by replicating the finding of an orthographic consistency effect in spoken word recognition using event-related brain potentials (ERPs): words with multiple spellings (i.e., inconsistent words) differed from words with unique spellings (i.e., consistent words) as early as 330 ms after the onset of the target. We then employed standardized low resolution electromagnetic tomography (sLORETA) to determine the possible underlying cortical generators of this effect. The results showed that the orthographic consistency effect was clearly localized in a classic phonological area (left BA40). No evidence was found for activation in the posterior cortical areas coding orthographic information, such as the visual word form area in the left fusiform gyrus (BA37). This finding is consistent with the restructuring hypothesis according to which phonological representations are “contaminated” by orthographic knowledge.

Formalizing creole sound change

This article examines sound change in French Lexifier Creoles and the neutralization of contrast involving the feature [round]; secondary concerns include the nature of diachronically related inputs, base richness and decreolization. Phonological restructuring is described in an Optimality Theoretic grammar distinguishing between perceptual, declarative and procedural strata. Base richness holds only at the declarative stratum, as input to the perceptual and procedural strata are constrained by experience and feature licensing, respectively. Explanation of phonological restructuring centers on the perception grammar, where constraints refer to the parsing of experiential input. In the incipient creole, neutralization of contrast predicated by [round] is initially attributed to substrate grammatical transfer, reflecting first language attenuation. The possibility of creole-specific learning or attenuation to second language contrasts is also addressed and shown to lead to distinct output scenarios, depending upon the reranking of constraints under each stratum. Crucially, reranking at either the declarative or procedural strata is dependent upon learning at the perceptual stratum; rankings that do not mirror those of either the lexifier or substrate lead to output variability, the frequency of which is hypothesized to frame the eventual stabilization of representations.

Toward a Progression Theory of the Old High German Consonant Shift

The preference for bimoraic stressed syllables in pre-Old High German necessitated the phonological restructuring of syllables with stressed, short vowels either by early implementation of open syllable lengthening (non-shifting dialects north of the Benrath line) or by triggering an autochthonous phonological shift of+t,+p,+kafter short vowels (shifting dialects). From there, the OHG dialects “progressed” though the rest of the shift in a largely parallel fashion. Asymmetry of the shift of+-pand+-kand geminate+-ppand+-kkwas caused by place bias, however, especially in the Rhenish dialects where tone accents could sometimes delay or block the shift of these segments. The greater susceptibility of the more marked labial and velar affricates (-pf- and −kx-) to weakening limited their later occurrence to dialects outside the Rhineland. The reanalysis of aspirated+t- [th],+p-[ph],+k-[kh] as affricates in initial position was possible only when the corresponding geminate had already shifted, exemplifying both the effects of place bias as well as a kind of phonological reanalysis Blevins (2004) calls “choice.”

From Ancient Cham to Modern Dialects: Two Thousand Years of Language Contact and Change (review)

Reviewed by: From ancient Cham to modern dialects: Two thousand years of language contact and change by Graham Thurgood Edward J. Vajda From ancient Cham to modern dialects: Two thousand years of language contact and change. By Graham Thurgood. (Oceanic linguistics special publication 28.) Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1999. Pp. xvii, 407. ISBN 0824821319. $48. Austronesian is one of the world’s most geographically dispersed families, with an internal diversification that has provided a showcase for the application of traditional historical-comparative methodology. This is because many branches of Austronesian came to occupy previously uninhabited islands or areas only sparsely populated by bands of hunter-gatherers, thereby developing in situations where contact-induced change was of minimal significance. The Chamic subgroup that established itself about two millennia ago on the southern coast of present-day Vietnam, by contrast, entered into a long-term interaction with significant numbers of Mon-Khmer-speaking farmers. This eventually yielded radical phonological changes in every modern Chamic language vis-à-vis its more distant Malayo-Polynesian relatives. In this pioneering book, Graham Thurgood produces the first thorough diachronic analysis of these developments by exploring the complex historical interplay between processes of internal drift and externally induced language change. T links each linguistic development to historical events, such as the Vietnamese sacking of Champa’s northern capital in 982 and southern capital in 1471. These disasters, along with the inexorable push southward along the coast by Vietnamese wet rice farmers, led directly to the overseas dispersal of Chamic speakers to northern Sumatra (Acehnese) and Hainan (Tsat) and to the marginalization of those remaining on the mainland, who retreated to the inland portions of southern Vietnam and Cambodia where most Chamic languages are spoken today. Along the way, each language developed new contacts with different Mon-Khmer subgroups that produced a unique set of phonological effects. T’s success in chronologizing these historical and linguistic changes allows an unprecedented opportunity to document an intense, long-term series of contact-induced changes involving two language families with radically different phonological typologies (Malayo-Polynesian and Mon-Khmer). The book consists of ten chapters, two appendices, a bibliography (379–94), an author index (395–98), and a topic index (399–407). Appendix 1 (261–75) provides a thumbnail sketch of the phonemic inventory of each modern Chamic language accompanied by the transliteration devices used by major researchers; exhaustive commentary on competing language names is also included. Appendix 2 is a lengthy Chamic-English lexicon with concomitant discussion of loanwords and their probable origins (277–378) followed by a general English-Chamic index (365–78). The book’s main discussion begins with an introduction (Ch. 1), an overview of the relevant geography and history (Ch. 2) including maps showing the modern distribution of Chamic languages (23, 28), and an overview of Chamic internal classification (Ch. 3). T demonstrates beyond all doubt that Acehnese, despite its modern dialectal complexity, is simply another Chamic language without any special genetic closeness to the geographically contiguous Malayic languages. The next five chapters examine specific facets of phonological change, with careful attention to the individual variations that arose within each of the modern Chamic languages: The development of basic monosyllabicity from an original disyllabic word type (Ch. 4), changes in Chamic consonants (Ch. 5), vowel quality (Ch. 6), nasality in vowels (Ch. 7), and the origin of registers and tones from an originally nontonal Proto-Chamic (Ch. 8). Ch. 9 describes select aspects of Proto-Chamic morphology, and Ch. 10 returns to the role played by multilingualism in the linguistic accommodation of a Malayo-Polynesian language to mainland Southeast Asia. The most salient feature of all of these developments seems to be that, in addition to the expected role of loanwords in introducing new phonotactic combinations, much of the phonological restructuring of Chamic represents a case in which familiarity with a significantly different phonological and morphological language type has radically affected the outcome of language-internal drift. Under the influence of neighboring Mon-Khmer languages, the evenly-stressed disyllabic form of Proto-Chamic shifted to a strongly end-stressed ‘iambic’ word type. This led to the steady erosion of phonemic contrasts in the unstressed syllable and...

The phonetic nature of “voiceless” nasals in Pokomo: Implications for sound change

Several of the diachronic seriations proposed for Bantu languages assume a relatively early process of nasal devoicing which preceded, and set the stage for, development of stop aspiration (e.g., Kerremans 1980; Hinnebusch, Nurse and Mould 1981). Maddieson (1991) has argued convincingly that one synchronic reflex, an aspirated nasal in Sukuma, may have developed without an intervening stage involving a voiceless nasal. However, reflexes reportedly involving voiceless nasals or nasal loss might still be thought to motivate a seriation that posits a stage with voiceless nasals. We will argue that even these reflexes need not have developed from an intervening stage in which the nasal was phonologically voiceless. For one thing, developments in feature theory argue against representations which posit a phonologically voiceless nasal and following aspirated stop. Furthermore, our phonetic data on Pokomo suggest that nasal voicelessness can result from a phonetic effect - temporal overlap between the nasal and the aspiration gesture for the following stop. We propose that changes in phonetic detail such as the magnitude and timing of gestures produced nasal voicelessness or partial voicelessness, phonetic conditions which led to phonological restructuring in many of the Bantu languages.

Language Contact and the Directionality of Internal Drift: The Development of Tones and Registers in Chamic

The Chamic languages of Vietnam have undergone phonological restructuring in the last two thousand years. In contact with the Mon-Khmer languages, all have developed final stress with consequent phonotactic restructuring. Since then, some languages have remained essentially unchanged (Roglai, Rade, and Jarai), but others have undergone radical restructuring: in contact with register languages, Western Cham has become a register language; in contact with the phonology of Bahnar, Haroi has become a restructured register language; in contact with the tonal Vietnamese, Phan Rang Cham has become incipiently tonal; and, in contact with the fully tonal languages of Hainan, Tsat has become fully tonal. The internal paths of change are relatively clear, because of their shallow time depth combined with the richness of the comparative data. However, despite the existence of phonetically plausible internal paths of development, the available evidence makes it clear that external contact set the changes in motion and determined their direction.*

Phonological convergence in dialect contact: Evidence from citation forms

ABSTRACTThis article addresses the question: In dialect contact, is there a difference in degree of convergence at different phonological levels? Data are taken from three experimental studies on British English. The first, a comparison of alveolar assimilation and l-vocalization, tests the hypothesis that the phonologization of connected speech processes involves increasing phonetic discreteness. The second provides evidence of the phonological restructuring of final /1/ in speakers who consistenly vocalize it and who, hypercorrectly, occasionally use “clear” /1/. This anomalous behavior, which may be due to underlying phonological differences, is explained in terms of a clash between nonstandard and standard speech. The third experiment looks at the “clarification” of /1/ before vowels in environments such as peel it, as well as the glottaling of /t/. Data are collected from the speech of two teenagers, native to Reading. It is argued that the phonetically subtle differences between them are due to quite different underlying processes. These data are interpreted in light of Labov's speech community model; it seems necessary to differentiate between levels of analysis and to explain convergence in terms of salience.