Role Of Sonority Research Articles

THE SOUND DIMENSION IN THE UPPER BASIN OF THE MIÑO RIVER (GALICIA, NW IBERIAN PENINSULA)

The sound spectrum of water configures representative marks of various environments, which define a sound heritage with scientific, cultural, emotional, sensorial and educational value. From this perspective, river environments comprise a wide spectrum of sonic resonances. This study, contextualized within the field of geo-sonority research, considers the recording and analysis of water through several samples from the upper basin of the Miño River. The objectives are to advocate for the role of sonority as part of the intangible heritage, to explore its character in the fluvial environment of inland Galicia, and to contribute to the preservation of the sonic marks of water as sounds inherent to the identity of an area. The methodology applied consists of phases of field recording, the creation of databases and of phonic analysis. Water in its sound form, from the drop rhythmically repeating to the roar of a waterfall, fills an audible sound spectrum that characterizes soundscapes. By registering, documenting, and analyzing the sounds of the water, we advance in the knowledge of the diversity of the sound environments in the river basin of the Miño River.

Past tense –ed omissions by children with specific language impairment: The role of sonority and phonotactics

Children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) frequently omit past tense –ed. Omission rates are subject to phonological context. Two phonological characteristics were manipulated; the sonority profile of the stem-final phoneme plus affix, and the phonotactic probability of the word-final phonemes (/i:pt/ in beeped). Seventeen children with SLI (mean age 6;7) and 21 language-matched children (mean age 4;8) repeated sentences containing regularly inflected verbs according to a 2 (sonority) by 2 (phonotactic legality) design. Affix omissions were analysed. There was a significant effect of sonority only, characterised by a difficulty with level-sonority clusters, and no interaction. Syllabic affixes, e.g. head-ed, were produced relatively accurately. It is argued that –ed omissions in SLI may reflect a low-level speech or articulation difficulty which surfaces in uniquely challenging clusters. This is not an alternative to morphosyntactic accounts; rather past tense omissions are best explained according to complexity in multiple domains; syntactic, morpho-syntactic and phonological.

Vowel reduction in Russian: No phonetics in phonology

Much recent work in phonology concentrates on the role of sonority in the phenomenon of vowel reduction, capitalizing on two facts: that reduction involves raising and/or shortening and that higher vowels and schwa are normally interpreted as having low sonority. This paper presents a different approach to vowel reduction in Standard Russian. It is proposed that the apparent sonority-driven effects in Russian are epiphenomenal. In particular, reduction to schwa is outside the domain of phonological computation in Russian, being an artifact of reduced duration. Other types of neutralization arising in vowel reduction are potentially amenable to a sonority-based analysis, but I argue that current approaches to sonority-driven reduction suffer from representational shortcomings. When these shortcomings are rectified, however, sonority is unnecessary as an explicit factor in vowel reduction: standard markedness mechanisms suffice to explain the data.

On the acquisition of Hebrew #sC onsets

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of sonority in the acquisition of initial /s/-clusters in Hebrew. Data were collected from forty typically developing Hebrew-speaking children between the ages of 1;10 and 3;0. The data were elicited by means of a picture-naming task combined with a sentence completion task. Target words consisted of complex onsets, including #sC clusters. Results revealed that no significant differences were found between the correct productions of different sub-groups among the /s/-clusters. There were no differences in the correct productions of #sC in relation to different C2's or between the productions of SSP-violating clusters and the SSP-following clusters. The only distinction that did emerge was the separate distribution of ‘/s/ + [−continuant]’ versus ‘/s/ + [+continuant]’, a result that supports previous findings for the role of continuity and sonority in the deletion patterns of clusters.

Realization of complex onsets by pediatric users of cochlear implants

This study examined variations in English complex onset realizations by children who use cochlear implants. Data consisted of 227 productions of two‐segment onset clusters from 12 children. In general, onset cluster realizations of children with cochlear implants did not differ markedly from those reported for children with normal hearing: null realizations were rare or nonexistent, there were few epenthetic realizations, one‐segment realizations generally respected sonority principles, and two‐segment realizations reflected singleton constraints. Further examination also revealed that the basis for variation among the children with cochlear implants could be attributed to differences in constraint rankings within Optimality Theory. Differences in constraint rankings could thus account for variations in the number of output segments, in the role of sonority in reduction, and in relationships between segmental and featural faithfulness.

Role of sonority in developing phonologies

It has long been noted that sonority indices of sounds play a key role in the sound sequencing in languages. In this overview, it is argued that in addition to being a forceful factor in determining permissible syllable shapes in languages, sonority plays an important role in developing phonologies. By examining a wide variety of research that investigates typical and atypical phonological patterns from first language and from interlanguage phonology, the paper aims to bring to the attention of professionals who work with phonological assessment and remediation the relevance of sonority.

Sonority as a constraint on word identification processes

ABSTRACTThis study was undertaken as a sequel to DePaolis (1991) to explore the role of sonority in constraining the word identification errors of normal listeners. The data from 9 subjects from DePaolis's study were used to examine the phonological relationships, defined by the Sonority Sequencing Principle (Jespersen, 1904), between response errors and stimulus targets - a methodology previously employed in the analysis of target-related neologisms (Christman, 1992b, 1994). The present study found that, although sonority may constrain onset-driven word-search processes, sonority and lexical phonostatistics may constrain coda-driven word-search processes. These findings are consistent with those obtained from the productive errors of aphasic subjects (Christman, 1994). Taken together, the results of these studies support a role for sonority in phonologically based aspects of word identification and word production.

Uncovering phonological regularity in neologisms: Contributions of sonority theory

The sonority sequencing principle suggests that the relative sonority rank among sounds can explain intrasyllabic phoneme ordering patterns in words produced by normal speakers. Some investigators have incorporated sonority into explanations of the phonemic paraphasias and syllable structure deficits often seen in aphasic language. However, little is known about the role of sonority in constructing the bizarre words characteristic of neologistic jargonaphasia. This study examined the syllabic structure of the neologistic (and legitimate) utterances produced by three English-speaking jargonaphasics in order to determine if sonority constraints governed construction of neologisms at the level of core phonology. Results revealed that the demisyllable shapes and intrasyllabic sonority profiles of the subjects' target-related neologisms, abstruse neologisms and English words were similar to those produced by normal English speakers, as described by the theory. Results suggest that (1) sonority may be a well-distributed and 'hard-wired' component of normal phonological processing, (2) sonority analyses may capture the 'hidden' phonological regularity in neologisms, (3) sonority may constrain the operation of mechanisms that create neologisms.