Phonological Word Research Articles

Apatani phonology and lexicon, with a special focus on tone

Despite being one of the most extensively researched of Eastern Himalayan languages, the basic morphological and phonological-prosodic properties of Apatani (Tibeto-Burman > Tani > Western) have not yet been adequately described. This article attempts such a description, focusing especially on interactions between segmental-syllabic phonology and tone in Apatani. We highlight three features in particular – vowel length, nasality and a glottal stop – which contribute to contrastively-weighted syllables in Apatani, which are consistently under-represented in previous descriptions of Apatani, and in absence of which tone in Apatani cannot be effectively analysed. We conclude that Apatani has two “underlying”, lexically-specified tone categories H and L, whose interaction with word structure and syllable weight produce a maximum of three “surface” pitch contours – level, falling and rising – on disyllabic phonological words. Two appendices provide a set of diagnostic procedures for the discovery and description of Apatani tone categories, as well as an Apatani lexicon of approximately one thousand entries.

What is the Phonological Word in Dagbani? A Positional Faithfulness Account

This paper offers a phonological diagnostic for defining the word in Dagbani, a Gur language of Ghana. It shows that a morphological unit that constitutes a complete word blocks contrast-neutralising phonological processes from target segments within its boundaries when triggered across its boundary. In sub-word units, these processes (e.g. nasal place assimilation, vowel harmony, segmental deletion) apply to target sounds without restrictions. The result is the maintenance of contrast in words and neutralisation of contrast in sub-words. The paper further argues that the asymmetrical application of these rules is an indication of a morphological strength distinction between the word as a strong position where segments are fully specified for phonological features, and the sub-word domain as a non-privileged position where segments may be underspecified for features. A formal analysis of the asymmetry is presented using the theory of positional faithfulness within the framework of Optimality Theory.Keywords: Dagbani, nasal place assimilation, vowel harmony, underspecifiation, positional faithfulness

Phonological, grammatical, and written words in Wichi

This article aims at investigating the linguistic criteria to determine what a word is in Wichi (Matacoan), a polysynthetic and agglutinative language spoken in the Gran Chaco Region, in South America. The main phonological criteria proposed are phonological rules and stress. We also apply some grammatical criteria that have been proposed cross linguistically, some of which are useful to determine the boundaries of grammatical words in Wichi. Finally, we explore the relationship between the phonological and grammatical word with the written word. We base our analysis of written words on a textbook (Tsalanawu) used in many bilingual schools in Northeastern Argentina.

Erros de base fonológica na escrita: codificação de surdas e sonoras, segmentação e juntura vocabular

Objetivo O estudo investigou características do processamento da informação fonológica, manifestadas na escrita sob ditado de sintagmas, capazes de indicar possíveis correlações e algum impacto preditor entre os erros ortográficos analisados (codificação de fonemas surdos e sonoros, segmentação indevida, juntura vocabular), segundo a rede de ensino. Métodos Foram selecionados 80 escolares, meninos e meninas, na faixa etária entre 6 e 11 anos, regularmente matriculados do 2º ao 5º ano do Ensino Fundamental, em escolas da rede pública estadual e particular, do município de São Paulo. Os participantes escreveram, sob ditado, 34 sintagmas nominais, formados por palavras de alta frequência. Resultados Os três tipos de erros correlacionaram-se segundo padrões diferentes, em cada rede de ensino. Na rede pública, os erros de codificação surda sonora e segmentações indevidas correlacionaram-se positivamente. Características de percepção direcionada ao pé métrico e à sílaba, podem ter influenciado o desempenho dos escolares. Na rede particular, a percepção da palavra fonológica, da frase fonológica e da frase entonacional pode ter influenciado as correlações entre os erros do tipo surdo sonoro e as junturas. Conclusão Os erros de codificação surdos sonoros, juntura vocabular e separação indevida diferenciaram-se nas redes de ensino, quanto ao desempenho em escrita. Apenas na rede particular os erros de codificação surdos sonoros puderam predizer os de juntura vocabular e segmentação indevida.

Wordhood and the interplay of linguistic levels in synthetic languages. An empirical study on Wichi (Mataguayan, Gran Chaco)

On the basis of data from the synthetic and agglutinative South American language Wichi (Mataguayan, Argentina/Bolivia), I argue in favor of regarding interface phenomena as typological variables. In particular, in this paper I discuss what type of interactions these are, arguing that they do not affect wordhood but do contribute to its formation. I will defend the hypothesis that linguistic level interactions within the word are of two types and different in nature: overlapping on the one hand and conditioning and alteration on the other. Conditioning only takes place in morphophonological and morphosemantic interactions and it follows the wordhood requirements of the language. Conversely, the interaction of morphology with all linguistic levels shows overlapping of units: the phonological word and the grammatical word in the morphophonological relation; the word and the simple clause or nominal phrase in the morphosyntactic relation; and the word and the semantic unit in the morphosemantic relation. This explains why the word is generally defined by phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic criteria. It is to be hoped that the conclusions arrived at in this paper would contribute to deepen our knowledge of the notion of wordhood in synthetic languages in South America as well as our understanding of language structure and functioning.

Prosodic and Grammatical Domains in Limbu

This paper shows that patterns of application for several phonological processes and constraints in Limbu (Kiranti, Tibeto-Burman) reveals the relevance of hierarchical prosodic domains, including the syllable, foot, phonological word, and phonological phrase. In particular, an appeal to the phonological word uniformly accounts for the distribution of otherwise idiosyncratic alternations between the lateral approximant /l/ and the trill /r/. A prosodic domains account also reveals a mis-match between nominal compounds and verbal bipartite stems, with compounds consistently parsed as a single phonological word, and bipartite stems as hybrid in their prosodic organization. Limbu is of particular interest from a theoretical perspective, as the different morphological information referenced by the multiple phonological words in Limbu stands as a challenge to specific assumptions within the Prosodic Hierarchy Hypothesis (e.g. “Clustering” and “Proper Bracketing”) . Typologically (within the Tibeto-Burman family), the prosodic alignments evidenced in Limbu are in some ways similar to those proposed for other related languages (e.g. the exclusion of prefixes from most prosodic domains), but also different in other ways (e.g. the organization of compounds).

The Impact of Orthographic Consistency on German Spoken Word Identification

An auditory lexical decision experiment was conducted to find out whether sound-to-spelling consistency has an impact on German spoken word processing, and whether such an impact is different at different stages of reading development. Four groups of readers (school children in the second, third and fifth grades, and university students) participated in a lexical decision experiment. They were presented with spoken monosyllabic words that had either orthographically consistent rimes (i.e., there is only one spelling for the phonological rime) or orthographically inconsistent rimes (i.e., there are words with the same phonological rime but a different rime spelling). Results reveal that sound-to-spelling consistency influences spoken word processing in early and advanced stages of reading development in German. This finding indicates that word spelling knowledge gets intertwined with knowledge about phonological word forms early during reading acquisition.

Levels of Phonology Related to Reading and Writing in Middle Childhood.

The relationships of different levels of phonological processing (sounds in heard and spoken words for whole words, syllables, phonemes, and rimes) to multi-leveled functional reading or writing systems were studied. Participants in this cross-sectional study were students in fourth- grade (n=119, mean age 116.5 months) and sixth- grade (n=105, mean age 139.7 months). Multiple Indicators and Multiple Causes (MIMIC) modeling was used to analyze whether different levels of sound processing in heard and spoken words were correlated with each other and with multi-leveled reading or writing systems, and if so, which phonological skills explained unique variance in the reading or writing system. The models fit well at both grade levels for both reading and writing. All four phonological skills studied correlated significantly with each other and the latent factor for reading or writing. For reading, phonology for whole words and phonemes explained unique variance in fourth and sixth graders. For writing, at the fourth grade, only phonemes explained unique variance, but at the sixth grade level, syllables, phonemes, and rimes explained unique variance. Thus, the relationships between levels of phonology and reading were stable across grades 4 and 6, but developmental differences were observed in the relationships between levels of phonology and the leveled writing construct.

Phonological Word is not a Prosodic Unit in Korean

Phonological Word is not a Prosodic Unit in Korean

The exception does not rule: attention constrains form preparation in word production.

Form preparation in word production, the benefit of exploiting a useful common sound (such as the first phoneme) of iteratively spoken small groups of words, is notoriously fastidious, exhibiting a seemingly categorical, all-or-none character and a corresponding susceptibility to "killers" of preparation. In particular, the presence of a single exception item in a group of otherwise phonologically consistent words has been found to eliminate the benefit of knowing a majority characteristic. This has been interpreted to mean that form preparation amounts to partial production and thus provides a window on fundamental processes of phonological word encoding (e.g., Levelt, Roelofs, & Meyer, 1999). However, preparation of only fully distributed properties appears to be nonoptimal and is difficult to reconcile with the sensitivity of cognitive responses to probabilities in other domains. We show here that the all-or-none characteristic of form preparation is specific to task format. Preparation for sets that included an exception item occurred in ecologically valid production tasks, picture naming (Experiment 1), and word naming (Experiment 2). Preparation failed only in the commonly used, but indirect and resource-intensive, associative cuing task (Experiment 3). We outline an account of form preparation in which anticipation of word-initial phonological fragments uses a limited-capacity, sustained attentional capability that points to rather than enacts possibilities for imminent speech.

Morphosyntactic Structure of Phonological Words

<p>Many theories of phonology use some notion of ``word'' as a unit of representation or as a domain for application of phonological processes. However, the determination of when a phonological unit counts as a word is not tied to any outside structure or definition, it is simply assumed as a primitive unit of the calculation. The assumption that the word is a primitive unit, however, is questioned by the theory of Distributed Morphology (Halle & Marantz 1993, et seq.). If the word is not a unit on the syntactic side of the derivation, however, then there is the question of where the unit of the phonological word comes from.</p><p>The goal of this paper is to present an overview of a theory which calculates the correspondences between the information from the morphosyntax and the phonological domain of the word. This paper highlights a number of correspondences between morphosyntactic structures and phonological words and posits some possible operations on the PF derivation for creating phonological words from these structures.</p>

Temporal characteristics of online syntactic sentence planning: an event-related potential study.

During sentence production, linguistic information (semantics, syntax, phonology) of words is retrieved and assembled into a meaningful utterance. There is still debate on how we assemble single words into more complex syntactic structures such as noun phrases or sentences. In the present study, event-related potentials (ERPs) were used to investigate the time course of syntactic planning. Thirty-three volunteers described visually animated scenes using naming formats varying in syntactic complexity: from simple words (‘W’, e.g., “triangle”, “red”, “square”, “green”, “to fly towards”), to noun phrases (‘NP’, e.g., “the red triangle”, “the green square”, “to fly towards”), to a sentence (‘S’, e.g., “The red triangle flies towards the green square.”). Behaviourally, we observed an increase in errors and corrections with increasing syntactic complexity, indicating a successful experimental manipulation. In the ERPs following scene onset, syntactic complexity variations were found in a P300-like component (‘S’/‘NP’>‘W’) and a fronto-central negativity (linear increase with syntactic complexity). In addition, the scene could display two actions - unpredictable for the participant, as the disambiguation occurred only later in the animation. Time-locked to the moment of visual disambiguation of the action and thus the verb, we observed another P300 component (‘S’>‘NP’/‘W’). The data show for the first time evidence of sensitivity to syntactic planning within the P300 time window, time-locked to visual events critical of syntactic planning. We discuss the findings in the light of current syntactic planning views.

Roadblocks in the Grammaticalization Highway: When Phonology Gets in the Way

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt:In light of recent proposals that question the unidirectionality of grammaticalization and the necessity of phonetic erosion (or more broadly autonomy), the third person pronominal suffix -nye in Besemah, a little-known Malay language of southwest Sumatra, presents an interesting puzzle. In the majority of constructions -nye attaches directly to the root and has undergone phonetic erosion (i.e., -nye > -e): anak-nye > anak-e ‘their child’. In deverbal noun constructions suffixed with -an, or circumfixed with peN- -an, however, the -nye is separated from the root and surfaces as a separate phonological word (i.e., -nye > anye): langkah-an-nye > langkah-an anye ‘his stride’ (from the root langkah ‘to step’). One might expect that the most phonetically robust and prosodically independent form (anye) is the oldest, but there is strong evidence going back to Proto-Austronesian that it is not. Therefore, what do we make of a case where a suffix by all other accounts is grammaticalizing, but in some constructions is phonetically strengthened and phonologically less bound (i.e., suffix > word)? Arguably, such a case should be added to the growing list of examples of degrammaticalization because -nye is apparently climbing up the cline. However, what is more interesting than this taxonomy is determining the conditions, pressures, and/or motivations by which this change emerged. It turns out that this unexpected alternation between –e, –nye, and anye can be attributed to a morphophonological (or more specifically morpho-prosodic) preference in Besemah for no more than one suffix per word. This preference alongside restrictions on phonological words and routinization has resulted in a number of unusual patterns, most importantly the alternations resulting from the suffix -nye attaching to other suffixes.

Integrating psycholinguistic and motor control approaches to speech production: where do they meet?

To integrate psycholinguistic and motor control approaches to speech production, Hickok proposes the hierarchical state feedback control (HSFC) model. Here, I contest the direct mapping between lemmas and syllable motor programmes proposed by Hickok, and argue that this mapping proceeds indirectly via morphemic and phonological word representations. The results of computer simulations suggest that phoneme-based mapping is a viable alternative to the lemma-based mapping of the HSFC model.

Predictors of Orthographic Learning of Regular and Irregular Words

The aim of this study was to explore the reading and language skills that are associated with orthographic learning and to examine whether the effects of these factors are influenced by word regularity. Grade 2 and 3 children learned the phonology and meaning of novel words and were subsequently exposed to their orthography, with either regular or irregular mappings. At the participant level, phonological decoding skill, orthographic knowledge, and vocabulary knowledge were associated with orthographic learning for both word types. However, at an item level, reading novel words correctly did not directly relate to the successful acquisition of the representations of those novel words. In addition, item-specific vocabulary knowledge was a predictor of success in orthographic learning, but only for irregular words. The findings are discussed in relation to the self-teaching hypothesis (Share, 1995).

Effective Look-up Techniques to Approach a Monolingual Dictionary

A dictionary is (a) learning tool that can help the language learner in acquiring great knowledge of and about a foreign language. Almost all language learners buy or at least possess, at one time, a monolingual or bilingual dictionary, to which the learner may refer to look up the meaning of words. Unfortunately, using dictionary to look up the meaning of words seems to be the most important service, which a dictionary is expected to provide to language learners. In fact, a dictionary provides much data about language to its readers such as telling them about: the word spelling, phonology, phonetics, etymology, stylistics and definitions among other aspects. This paper sheds light on how the dictionary can teach its readers with special focus on monolingual dictionary. Hence, the discussion of this paper will centre on how dictionaries can teach students rather than on how students can learn from them.

Tamambo, a language of Malo, Vanuatu by Dorothy G. Jauncey (review)

Reviewed by: Tamambo, a language of Malo, Vanuatu by Dorothy G. Jauncey Daniel Kaufman Dorothy G. Jauncey. 2011. Tamambo, a language of Malo, Vanuatu. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics 622. 449 pp. ISBN 978-0-858-83633-4. $Aust. 110.00 (Australia), $Aust. 100.00 (elsewhere), paper. Tamambo is a conservative Oceanic language of the Northern Vanuatu subgroup (Lynch, Ross, and Crowley 2002) spoken on Malo, a small island just south of the country’s largest: Santo. Tamambo is currently the only language of the island, another dialect (Tamapo) being almost extinct. Use of Tamambo is still strong, particularly on the western side of the island where it originated, and it is also spoken by sizable “off-island” communities in Vanuatu’s main towns of Luganville and Port Vila. Jauncey estimates that there are currently approximately 3,600 speakers (a rising number). Like many Vanuatu languages, however, Tamambo is being impacted by widespread use of the country’s lingua franca and national language Bislama (an English lexifier-creole). Jauncey’s grammar marks the first substantial documentation of Tamambo. Previously, only a few short wordlists and brief grammatical sketches (for example, Macdonald 1891, Tryon 1976), as well as religious materials (for example, Landels 1897, Sykes 1955), were available. Jauncey’s grammar, as well as her online Tamambo dictionary, are the product of almost 20 years of research, multiple fieldtrips, and data-collection with a vast range of speakers in Malo as well as elsewhere in Vanuatu and abroad. Jauncey’s extensive knowledge of the language, the place, and the people give this grammar a unique value. She is not only able to provide a rich grammatical description but also to offer insight on change within the linguistic community over these years, differences across age groups and populations (on and off island), and Tamambo’s evolving relationship with Bislama. The grammar is well written, with clear descriptions of grammatical features. Even those who may take issue with some of her proposals will no doubt find a great deal of value. The book is organized into fourteen chapters and also includes several glossed texts in an appendix. Chapter 1 provides a thorough overview of the language and linguistic community, past and present, as well as discussion of previous scholarship on Tamambo, Malo Island, and other languages of the area. This is followed by the presentation of grammatical features in chapters 2–14. Chapter 2 provides an overview of the phonology.1 Jauncey posits a phonemic inventory of 16 consonants and five simple vowels. Providing correspondences between Proto-Oceanic (POc) and Tamambo, she illustrates a “strong correspondence” (24) between the two. Her proposed inventory of consonants is arguably too conservative and probably best represents the speech of only the oldest speakers. Based upon Riehl’s (2008) research as well as Jauncey’s discussion in the chapter, the bilabial fricatives /β, βʷ / are, for the [End Page 277] majority of speakers, [w, v] in all contexts; the palatal stop /ɟ/ is consistently an affricate with variable voicing [ⁿʤ] or [tʃ]. Tamambo, like a number of other Oceanic languages, has a contrast between plain and additionally labialized bilabials (mb vs. mbʷ, m vs. mʷ, β vs. βʷ). The latter sounds (also referred to as “labiovelar”) have clear lip rounding in Tamambo, whereas in other Oceanic languages the contrast may primarily manifest in quality of the following vowel without apparent rounding (see Lynch 2002 for discussion). This contrast is, however, being lost for speakers below the age of 40 (as it is in other Vanuatu languages, such as those of southwest Malakula). The segment /x/ is notable for considerable variation in its phonetic realization [ɣ, h, g, kʰ], both due to phonological conditioning and sociophonetic factors. Regarding vowels, the five simple segments /i, u, e, o, a/ can occur in sequences of up to four. Jauncey provides a nice description of vowel phenomena, including restrictions on sequences, contexts for vowel deletion, and phonetic realization in the context of stress. With clear explanations and plentiful examples, there is a great deal of useful data. In addition to the segmental descriptions, discussions of consonant cooccurrence, syllable structure ([C]V[N]), and stress, Jauncey includes sections on the structure of grammatical and phonological words and intonation...

Phonological facilitation of object naming in agrammatic and logopenic primary progressive aphasia (PPA)

Phonological processing deficits are characteristic of both the agrammatic and logopenic subtypes of primary progressive aphasia (PPA-G and PPA-L). However, it is an open question which substages of phonological processing (i.e., phonological word form retrieval, phonological encoding) are impaired in these subtypes of PPA, as well as how phonological processing deficits contribute to anomia. In the present study, participants with PPA-G (n = 7), participants with PPA-L (n = 7), and unimpaired controls (n = 17) named objects as interfering written words (phonologically related/unrelated) were presented at different stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) of 0, +100, +300, and +500 ms. Phonological facilitation (PF) effects (faster naming times with phonologically related interfering words) were found for the controls and PPA-L group only at SOA = 0 and +100 ms. However, the PPA-G group exhibited protracted PF effects (PF at SOA = 0, +100, and +300 ms). These results may reflect deficits in phonological encoding in PPA-G, but not in PPA-L, supporting the neuropsychological reality of this substage of phonological processing and the distinction between these two PPA subtypes.

Age of Acquisition Effects in Deaf College Students

Age of Acquisition(AoA) refers to the age at which a word is first learnt,which is an important variable that has recently drawn considerable attention as a determinant of lexical processing.A large number of studies have found that words acquired earlier in life are processed more efficiently than words acquired late in life.Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain the origin of the AoA effects.One of these hypotheses is the Semantic Hypothesis,which assumes that at least parts of the AoA effect originate from the semantic system.According to this hypothesis,the order of acquisition has a lasting effect on the time needed to activate the meanings of words.It was supported in some semantic tas0.ks(Van Loon-Vervoorn,1985,1989).Another hypothesis is the Phonological Completeness Hypothesis,which assumes that AoA effects arise at the level of phonological representation.The phonology of early-acquired words is stored wholly and completely,but as a child's vocabulary increases,the phonology is assumed to be represented in a more fragmented form.Although it could explain some AoA effects in word naming(Brown Watson,1987),it failed to do so in a phonological segment experiment(Monaghan Ellis,2002).In present study,three experiments were conducted to examine the locus of the age of acquisition effects in the processing of Chinese words and Sign words of deaf college students,with the focus on testing the Semantic Hypothesis of AoA effects.In Experiment 1,the deaf students were required to use sign language to name characters and pictures.The stimuli were 44 single characters and 44 pictures obtained from the Snodgrass and Vanderwart(1980).The 44 characters were 22 early-acquired and 22 late-acquired characters respectively.The aim was to compare the AoA effects between deaf students' performance in picture and character naming tasks.To reduce the influence of the phonological output on the deaf in the picture naming task of Experiment 1,semantic classification task was used in Experiment 2 and Experiment 3,in which deaf students had to judge whether one of 11 early-acquired and 11 late-acquired characters or pictures belongs to living things or non-living things.Reaction times for correct responses and error rates were analyzed by subject.In Experiment 1,there was an interaction between AoA and task,with substantial AoA effect in picture naming task,but no AoA effects in character naming task.In Experiment 2,the semantic classification task of character showed significant AoA effects.In Experiment 3,the significant AoA effects were also found in the task of picture classification of non-living things.However,error rates showed opposite trends in Experiment 2 and Experiment 3.It shows that deaf students had weaker awareness of semantic category.The results of the three experiments suggested that the AoA effects could be partially produced within semantic processing system effect because it can eliminates phonological factors in deaf to some extent.

A longitudinal study of basic auditory processing and phonological skills in children with low IQ

ABSTRACTHere we report a longitudinal follow-up of 103 children with low or typical IQ and good or poor word reading, first studied by Kuppen, Huss, Fosker, Mead, and Goswami (2011). Our current goal was to explore whether different basic auditory processing measures taken 14 months previously would predict development in word reading and phonology in this sample. We also assessed the stability over time for the associations among basic auditory processing, phonology, and reading reported by Kuppen et al. (2011) for low IQ readers. The auditory processing measures showed significant longitudinal relations with both reading and phonology, and associations between the measures were largely stable over time. The data suggest that basic auditory processing skills and phonological skills, rather than IQ, determine a child's progress in word reading, throwing light on the fundamental biological mechanisms that determine reading development. Children with low IQ and poor reading should thus be treated in the same way as children with an IQ-discrepancy defined reading disability, both in research studies and in terms of gaining access to targeted remediation.