1 Vowel Systems: Reduction and Change 1.1 Introduction: Themes of the Dissertation 1.2 Vowel Redu... more 1 Vowel Systems: Reduction and Change 1.1 Introduction: Themes of the Dissertation 1.2 Vowel Reduction 1.2.1 Change in Vowel Features and Opacity 1.3 Correlates of Stress 1.4 Language Change 1.5 Goals of the Dissertation 1.6 Issues in Optimality Theory 1.6.1 What is in UG 1.6.2 Markedness Constraints 1.6.3 Faithfulness and Positional Faithfulness Constraints 1.6.4 Lexicon Optimization 1.6.5 Typological Considerations 1.7 Theoretical Achievements of the Dissertation 1.7.1 Unification of Vowel Reduction Phenomena and Typological Findings 1.7.2 Local Conjunction as a Way to Model Opacity in OT 1.7.3 The Great Vowel Shift and Models of Language Change in OT 1.8 Overview 2 Mantuan Vowel Deletion 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Data on Syllable Structure 2.3 Stress 2.4 Alternations between V ~ O in Syllables Preceding Stress 2.5 An OT Account of Mantuan Syllable and Word Structure 2.5.1 Basic Syllable Structure Constraints and Their Ranking 2.5.2 Importance of NoCoda 2.5.3 Interaction with Faithfulness: No insertion (Dep-V) and No Deletion (Max V) 2.5.4. Prevention of Apocope 2.5.5 Deletion of Consonants in Mn: Max-C 2.6 Mn Alternations Explained as Deletion of Pretonic Vowels 2.6.1 *STRU(o) drives deletion 2.6.2 Consequences for Other Derived-Alternating forms 2.6.3 Consequences for Disallowed Clusters in Alternating Forms 2.6.4 A Different Syllabification Problem 2.6.5 Summary 2.7 An Alternative with Alignment and DEP-V Driving Deletion 2.8. Epenthesis in (C)C# Environments 2.8.1 Introduction of Sonority constraint 2.8.2 Dealing with Disallowed Clusters 2.9 Assessment of Deletion and Epenthesis 2.10 Appendix to Chapter II: A Digression on Italian Syllable Structure 3 Romance Vowel Reduction Phenomena 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Vowel Reductions 3.3 Vowel Features 3.3.1 Status of Reduced Segments: An Argument from Catalan 3.4 Data 3.4.1 Western Catalan ("Tensing") 3.4.2 Brazilian Portuguese ("Tensing" and "Raising") 3.4.2.1 Brazilian Portuguese Non-Final System 3.4.2.2 Brazilian Final System 3.4.3 Eastern Catalan ("Centralization"- "Raising") 3.5 Basic Theoretical Considerations (OT) 3.5.1 Markedness, Faithfulness, and Positional Faithfulness 3.5.2 Constraints needed for the model 3.5.2.1 Markedness 3.5.2.2 Faithfulness 3.6 Analyses 3.6.1 Western Catalan: Tensing 3.6.2 Brazilian Portuguese Unstressed Final System 3.6.3 Brazilian Portuguese Unstressed Non-Final System 3.6.4 Eastern Catalan ("Centralizing") 3.7 Reduction to [ ]: English, French and European Portuguese 3.7.1 European Portuguese 3.8 Typological Considerations 3.9 Conclusions 4 Mantuan Chain Shifts 4.1 Introduction: Vowel Raising in Unstressed Environments 4.2 Mantuan Vowel System: Data 4.3 Alternations 4.4 Front Vowel Raising in Unstressed Environments 4.5 Constraints Needed for the Model 4.6 Southern Mantuan (Quistello) 4.7 Northern Mantuan (Commessaggio) 4.8 Mantuan Back Vowel Raising 4.8.1 Southern Mantuan 4.8.2 Northern Mantuan 4.9 Markedness of Mid Vowels: Typological Considerations 4.9.1 Universal Markedness 4.9.2 Vowel Spacing 4.9.3 Vowel Frequency 4.9.4 Context-conditioned variables 4.10 Conclusion 4.11 Appendix: An Acoustic Study of Northern Mantuan Stressless Vowels 4.11.1 Introduction 4.11.2 Correlates of stress 4.11.3 Method 4.11.4 Duration 4.11.5 Vowel Quality 4.11.6 Discussion Appendix I: Duration I Appendix II: Perceptual Vowel Changes as a Function of Stress Appendix III: Second Session (in carrier sentence) 5 Diachronic Chain Shifts: the Great Vowel Shift 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Historical Change in OT 5.2.1 An Example of Language Change in OT 5.3 The Great Vowel Shift (GVS) 5.4 Analysis: OT Constraints 5.4.1 Faithfulness 5.4.2 Faithfulness and Diphthongs 5.4.3 Markedness Constraints 5.5 Middle English Grammar 5.6 STAGE II: Markedness, cooccurrence constraints and the GVS 5.6.1 Front Vowels 5.6.1.1 Mantuan Front Vowel Raising: a reminder 5.6.2 Local Conjunction in the GVS 5.6.3 Back Vowels 5.6.4 Diphthongs 5.6.5 [a:] Problem 5.7 STAGE III: A later stage of the GVS 5.8 Summary of the Three Stages proposed for the GVS 5.8.1 Stage I 5.8.2 Stage II 5.8.3 Stage III 5.8.4 Two Previous Approaches to the GVS: Lass's Approach (1987) 5.8.5 Minkova and Stockwell's approach (1988, 1990) 5.8.6 A Possible Explanation 5.9 Language Change in OT Appendix I: Final Ranking at stage II Appendix II: Grammar at Stage III 6. Conclusions 6.1 Achievements Bibliography Index
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Oct 1, 2019
This is a case study of how alcohol intoxication and emotions affect the speech of a male Mexican... more This is a case study of how alcohol intoxication and emotions affect the speech of a male Mexican Spanish speaker arrested on suspicion of vehicular manslaughter, and how his dialectal variety may have influenced the assumption of the arresting officers that alcohol intoxication was revealed by his altered speech patterns. There are still few standards in Forensic Linguistics and Voice Recognition/Identification (cf. the survey by Hollien et al., 2014). We do know, however, that listeners often overestimate the amount of alcohol speakers ingested, sober speakers can successfully mimic drunken speech, and conversely it is possible for a speaker under the influence to sound more sober than s/he actually is by modifying certain parameters (ibid., p. 180). It has also been demonstrated that dialectal differences can impair intelligibility and speaker recognition (Bahr et al. 2002, Betancourt and Bahr, 2010): the present case study analyses the acoustic segmental and suprasegmental aspects of the existing recordings of the arrest, and shows that while the speaker may have been physiologically drunk, he was rather “linguistically sober.” Further correlations are also drawn between dialectal characteristics and “slurred speech,” as well as the influence of emotions and possibly deception on speech rhythm and variations in vocal parameters.
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2019
The present study explores the vowel and intonation systems of heritage Spanish speakers in Calif... more The present study explores the vowel and intonation systems of heritage Spanish speakers in California based on a corpus of semi-directed interviews, to establish whether one language influences the other, or whether their English and for Spanish are closer to the monolingual speakers’ system of either language. There is some limited evidence that the vowel systems of Spanish in Spanish heritage speakers of Mexican descent in California is indeed very similar to the system of monolingual Mexican Spanish speakers (in pitch, duration, F1 and F2 values)—their English vowel system, however, and especially the front vowels, is not completely comparable to the published values for monolingual American English speakers’ vowels (Miglio, 2011). Intonation in bilingual Spanish has been shown to be influenced by English pitch movement, as well as signalling information structure (Gries and Miglio, 2015). This study widens the scope of the previous ones using data from natural speech as opposed...
This chapter argues for the importance of the study of Galician topics (such as migration, diaspo... more This chapter argues for the importance of the study of Galician topics (such as migration, diaspora, or linguistic identity) within the US curricula as bridges between US students and European cultures. Galician culture and history naturally encourage an interdisciplinary view of the humanities: Galicia’s vital relation to its maritime environment brought about an early understanding of sustainable fisheries and ecological concerns seen in the ecocritical discourse of Galician literature and film. Moreover, the Galician sociolinguistic situation deeply resonates with US students who are heritage speakers of Spanish, since it shows the difference between language competence and actual use, which depends on prestige, and has ramifications for attitudes toward immigration, ideology, power, and education rights. This chapter contends that Galician Studies contribute to enhancing our critical thinking in terms of promoting cultural and linguistic diversity.
1 Vowel Systems: Reduction and Change 1.1 Introduction: Themes of the Dissertation 1.2 Vowel Redu... more 1 Vowel Systems: Reduction and Change 1.1 Introduction: Themes of the Dissertation 1.2 Vowel Reduction 1.2.1 Change in Vowel Features and Opacity 1.3 Correlates of Stress 1.4 Language Change 1.5 Goals of the Dissertation 1.6 Issues in Optimality Theory 1.6.1 What is in UG 1.6.2 Markedness Constraints 1.6.3 Faithfulness and Positional Faithfulness Constraints 1.6.4 Lexicon Optimization 1.6.5 Typological Considerations 1.7 Theoretical Achievements of the Dissertation 1.7.1 Unification of Vowel Reduction Phenomena and Typological Findings 1.7.2 Local Conjunction as a Way to Model Opacity in OT 1.7.3 The Great Vowel Shift and Models of Language Change in OT 1.8 Overview 2 Mantuan Vowel Deletion 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Data on Syllable Structure 2.3 Stress 2.4 Alternations between V ~ O in Syllables Preceding Stress 2.5 An OT Account of Mantuan Syllable and Word Structure 2.5.1 Basic Syllable Structure Constraints and Their Ranking 2.5.2 Importance of NoCoda 2.5.3 Interaction with Faithfulness: No insertion (Dep-V) and No Deletion (Max V) 2.5.4. Prevention of Apocope 2.5.5 Deletion of Consonants in Mn: Max-C 2.6 Mn Alternations Explained as Deletion of Pretonic Vowels 2.6.1 *STRU(o) drives deletion 2.6.2 Consequences for Other Derived-Alternating forms 2.6.3 Consequences for Disallowed Clusters in Alternating Forms 2.6.4 A Different Syllabification Problem 2.6.5 Summary 2.7 An Alternative with Alignment and DEP-V Driving Deletion 2.8. Epenthesis in (C)C# Environments 2.8.1 Introduction of Sonority constraint 2.8.2 Dealing with Disallowed Clusters 2.9 Assessment of Deletion and Epenthesis 2.10 Appendix to Chapter II: A Digression on Italian Syllable Structure 3 Romance Vowel Reduction Phenomena 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Vowel Reductions 3.3 Vowel Features 3.3.1 Status of Reduced Segments: An Argument from Catalan 3.4 Data 3.4.1 Western Catalan ("Tensing") 3.4.2 Brazilian Portuguese ("Tensing" and "Raising") 3.4.2.1 Brazilian Portuguese Non-Final System 3.4.2.2 Brazilian Final System 3.4.3 Eastern Catalan ("Centralization"- "Raising") 3.5 Basic Theoretical Considerations (OT) 3.5.1 Markedness, Faithfulness, and Positional Faithfulness 3.5.2 Constraints needed for the model 3.5.2.1 Markedness 3.5.2.2 Faithfulness 3.6 Analyses 3.6.1 Western Catalan: Tensing 3.6.2 Brazilian Portuguese Unstressed Final System 3.6.3 Brazilian Portuguese Unstressed Non-Final System 3.6.4 Eastern Catalan ("Centralizing") 3.7 Reduction to [ ]: English, French and European Portuguese 3.7.1 European Portuguese 3.8 Typological Considerations 3.9 Conclusions 4 Mantuan Chain Shifts 4.1 Introduction: Vowel Raising in Unstressed Environments 4.2 Mantuan Vowel System: Data 4.3 Alternations 4.4 Front Vowel Raising in Unstressed Environments 4.5 Constraints Needed for the Model 4.6 Southern Mantuan (Quistello) 4.7 Northern Mantuan (Commessaggio) 4.8 Mantuan Back Vowel Raising 4.8.1 Southern Mantuan 4.8.2 Northern Mantuan 4.9 Markedness of Mid Vowels: Typological Considerations 4.9.1 Universal Markedness 4.9.2 Vowel Spacing 4.9.3 Vowel Frequency 4.9.4 Context-conditioned variables 4.10 Conclusion 4.11 Appendix: An Acoustic Study of Northern Mantuan Stressless Vowels 4.11.1 Introduction 4.11.2 Correlates of stress 4.11.3 Method 4.11.4 Duration 4.11.5 Vowel Quality 4.11.6 Discussion Appendix I: Duration I Appendix II: Perceptual Vowel Changes as a Function of Stress Appendix III: Second Session (in carrier sentence) 5 Diachronic Chain Shifts: the Great Vowel Shift 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Historical Change in OT 5.2.1 An Example of Language Change in OT 5.3 The Great Vowel Shift (GVS) 5.4 Analysis: OT Constraints 5.4.1 Faithfulness 5.4.2 Faithfulness and Diphthongs 5.4.3 Markedness Constraints 5.5 Middle English Grammar 5.6 STAGE II: Markedness, cooccurrence constraints and the GVS 5.6.1 Front Vowels 5.6.1.1 Mantuan Front Vowel Raising: a reminder 5.6.2 Local Conjunction in the GVS 5.6.3 Back Vowels 5.6.4 Diphthongs 5.6.5 [a:] Problem 5.7 STAGE III: A later stage of the GVS 5.8 Summary of the Three Stages proposed for the GVS 5.8.1 Stage I 5.8.2 Stage II 5.8.3 Stage III 5.8.4 Two Previous Approaches to the GVS: Lass's Approach (1987) 5.8.5 Minkova and Stockwell's approach (1988, 1990) 5.8.6 A Possible Explanation 5.9 Language Change in OT Appendix I: Final Ranking at stage II Appendix II: Grammar at Stage III 6. Conclusions 6.1 Achievements Bibliography Index
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Oct 1, 2019
This is a case study of how alcohol intoxication and emotions affect the speech of a male Mexican... more This is a case study of how alcohol intoxication and emotions affect the speech of a male Mexican Spanish speaker arrested on suspicion of vehicular manslaughter, and how his dialectal variety may have influenced the assumption of the arresting officers that alcohol intoxication was revealed by his altered speech patterns. There are still few standards in Forensic Linguistics and Voice Recognition/Identification (cf. the survey by Hollien et al., 2014). We do know, however, that listeners often overestimate the amount of alcohol speakers ingested, sober speakers can successfully mimic drunken speech, and conversely it is possible for a speaker under the influence to sound more sober than s/he actually is by modifying certain parameters (ibid., p. 180). It has also been demonstrated that dialectal differences can impair intelligibility and speaker recognition (Bahr et al. 2002, Betancourt and Bahr, 2010): the present case study analyses the acoustic segmental and suprasegmental aspects of the existing recordings of the arrest, and shows that while the speaker may have been physiologically drunk, he was rather “linguistically sober.” Further correlations are also drawn between dialectal characteristics and “slurred speech,” as well as the influence of emotions and possibly deception on speech rhythm and variations in vocal parameters.
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2019
The present study explores the vowel and intonation systems of heritage Spanish speakers in Calif... more The present study explores the vowel and intonation systems of heritage Spanish speakers in California based on a corpus of semi-directed interviews, to establish whether one language influences the other, or whether their English and for Spanish are closer to the monolingual speakers’ system of either language. There is some limited evidence that the vowel systems of Spanish in Spanish heritage speakers of Mexican descent in California is indeed very similar to the system of monolingual Mexican Spanish speakers (in pitch, duration, F1 and F2 values)—their English vowel system, however, and especially the front vowels, is not completely comparable to the published values for monolingual American English speakers’ vowels (Miglio, 2011). Intonation in bilingual Spanish has been shown to be influenced by English pitch movement, as well as signalling information structure (Gries and Miglio, 2015). This study widens the scope of the previous ones using data from natural speech as opposed...
This chapter argues for the importance of the study of Galician topics (such as migration, diaspo... more This chapter argues for the importance of the study of Galician topics (such as migration, diaspora, or linguistic identity) within the US curricula as bridges between US students and European cultures. Galician culture and history naturally encourage an interdisciplinary view of the humanities: Galicia’s vital relation to its maritime environment brought about an early understanding of sustainable fisheries and ecological concerns seen in the ecocritical discourse of Galician literature and film. Moreover, the Galician sociolinguistic situation deeply resonates with US students who are heritage speakers of Spanish, since it shows the difference between language competence and actual use, which depends on prestige, and has ramifications for attitudes toward immigration, ideology, power, and education rights. This chapter contends that Galician Studies contribute to enhancing our critical thinking in terms of promoting cultural and linguistic diversity.
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