Phonetics & Phonology

Postcolonial varieties of English, used in countries such as Nigeria, India and Singapore, are subject to both local ("endonormative") and external ("exonormative") forces, the latter often in the form of British/American English. This gives rise to a stylistic continuum, where informal speech is more endonormatively oriented than formal/educated speech, which, nevertheless, is clearly distinguishable from British/American English. The formal end of the continuum is often regarded as the incipient local standard. Nigerian English (NigE) is the most widely spoken African variety of English, but empirical/quantitative descriptions are rare. In this pilot study, we present an acoustic analysis of eight phonological diphthongs produced in formal contexts by nine educated speakers of NigE with L1 Yoruba and drawn from the ICE Nigeria corpus. Results show that the NigE speakers produced more monophthongal realisations of English phonological diphthongs than speakers of British English (BrE) do, as measured by trajectory length in F1-F2 space. Phonetically, most of these vowels can be considered monophthongs. The results can be explained through two factors at work during the foundation phase of NigE: (1) historical L1 influence and (2) the native English input present in the country, which involved more monophthongal realisations of some phonological diphthongs than in present-day BrE.

This chapter discusses past and present methods, theories and questions in the study of the phonology of English. The first section explores reasons why English phonology is relevant, on a practical and social level as well as on a theoretical level. After a brief review of historical developments in the study of English phonology, the main part of the chapter discusses current trends and approaches, especially the use of acoustic phonetics to address phonological questions. Key areas of debate and future developments that are addressed include how both phonological research and language teaching deal with variation in varieties of English. The final section explores future developments, specifically, how technological change might influence research practices in English phonology and the viability of intelligibility as a goal in language teaching.

Among the variety of intervention techniques for treating test anxiety that interferes with students' ability to demonstrate their real knowledge on examinations, cognitive-behavioral methods have been proposed to be effective. The current study aimed to investigate whether two cognitive-behavioral techniques (relaxation & hypnosis) would reduce test anxiety in female high school third year students. A randomized controlled trial was conducted through which 60 female high school third year students were randomly assigned to three groups of relaxation, hypnosis and control. A trained clinical psychologist delivered the relaxation and hypnosis sessions having assured hypnotizability. Each session lasted 40 minutes twice a week within two weeks. The relaxation and the hypnosis groups received progressive muscle relaxation and positive suggestions given to subconscious mind for managing exam anxiety, respectively; while, the control group received no treatment but the Test Anxiety Questionnaire as a pre-test. Matched t-tests run on pre-and post-test results showed that both treatments resulted in reduced test anxiety. Further ANCOVA and follow up Bonferoni test indicated a significant difference among the three groups, with hypnosis intervention as significantly the most successful one. Findings highlight the need to consider the role of psychology and cognitive-behavioral intervention techniques in reducing test anxiety.

With the application of the Contrastive Hierarchy Theory, the contrastive features of preliterary Scandinavian vowels are here inferred from the interaction between targets and triggers for metaphonic fronting, rounding and breaking. One Proto-Scandinavian feature hierarchy is reconstructed for prominent syllables and another for non-prominent ones. The former hierarchy sustained contrasts that differed from the latter, including contrast for rounding and a preserved distinction between Pre-Germanic */i/ and */e/. A prominence system is reconstructed that predicts both the outcome of syncope and the distribution of the two vowel systems between syllables. The analysis neatly accounts for many notorious cruxes of umlaut and breaking that correlate with the prosodic position of the trigger, including the frequent absence of i-umlaut in light syllables.

This paper deals with politeness phenomena which are general to all human societies, but draws many examples from Korea as understood by the writer (who is Australian). The emphasis in this analysis is on the problem of decoding politeness. It is noted that even within a culture, politeness signals can be manipulated, and that interlocutors calibrate their meaning according to knowledge of individual personalities. In Korean society, the requirement for formal politeness signals is very strong, both in body language and in fixed linguistic markers (such as verb endings). However, the pragmatic meaning of these signals is calibrated in ways that are difficult for foreigners to decode. The paper also considers the dilemma of that minority of Koreans who attempt to interact within the linguistic and social codes of English. It is noted that these attempts often go astray, both because the speaker misunderstands English politeness coding conventions and because listeners in English, almost by definition, come from radically different cultural backgrounds to the Korean.

The doctoral dissertation, accepted to be defended on 11 September 2018, contains five papers published on different forums. Some of the main findings, notably those concerning umlaut and the history of preserved contrast in the vowel system, have implications for Germanic historical phonology beyond the study of Scandinavian. In this respect the scrutiny has, during the research process, grown beyond the original scope of the research plan. The topics of the five papers are diverse, but they all relate to preliterary eastern Scandinavian sound systems during the millennium between the third and the thirteenth century CE. They all critically examine methodological issues involved in using diverse and imperfect evidence to verify etymologies or to pursue improved phonological reconstruction and analysis. The papers also all address, albeit to a quite varying degree and in different ways, sound substitutions in borrowings between Finnic and eastern Scandinavian vernacular.

Prozodická transkripce zachycuje prozodické rysy řeči. Co to vlastně jsou prozodické neboli suprasegmentální rysy? Zjednodušeně řečeno, jsou to rysy souvislé řeči, které přesahují rovinu segmentální, tj. ro-vinu hlásek. Patří sem zejména přízvuk (slovní i větný), členění řeči pomocí předělů (např. pauz) a řečové tempo; tyto rysy společně utvářejí rytmus řeči. Mezi suprasegmentální rysy dále patří větná intonace, a ta-

Persistent and fundamental dissent continues to afflict research on preliterary Scandinavian regressive remote vowel assimilation known as " umlaut " and "breaking". To date, no analysis proposed has adequately accounted for the attested distribution of fronting, rounding nor vowel-induced breaking in the Old Scandinavian lexicon. It has been far from clear how (or even whether) these different kinds of assimilation are interrelated, causally or chronologically. The predicaments extend to the very basics of phonological analysis, such as the pivotal conditions, the mechanism(s) for change and the sequential chronologies, as well as to whether the changes were phonologically metaphonic in the first place – realised to improve perception – or rather driven by phonetic coarticulation (i.e. by easening of an articulatory effort). As a starting point chosen for two articles to appear in 2017, I have not deemed it to be adequate to address the theoretical issues, as has often been done, before examining the defective description of how front umlaut came to be distributed in the attested lexicon.

ABSTRACT: Standard Valencian Catalan has three sibilant fricative consonants: /s/, /z/ and /ʃ/. Whereas the contrast between /z/ and /s/ seems unquestionable, the existence of a contrast between /ʃ/ and /s/ is much more dubious. Our first goal is to determine if, in a sample of hyperarticulate speech (Fonet, Gonzàlvez et al. 2007), /s/ is different from /z/ and /ʃ/ with respect to seven acoustic parameters: duration, harmonicity, spectral peak and four spectral moments: center of gravity, standard deviation, skewness, and kurtosis. The data indicate that /z/ and /s/ display a clear contrast in duration, harmonicity, and skewness; /ʃ/ and /s/ differ in harmonicity, standard deviation, kurtosis, and, especially, in two features typically associated with place of articulation: spectral peak and center of gravity, but to a lesser extent than in other Catalan dialects. The second goal of the paper is to assess if Valencian speakers are able to distinguish between the two pairs of fricatives: /z/-/s/ and /ʃ/-/s/, using stimuli from the center of each consonant. Perception tests reveal that subjects clearly differentiate the two alveolar consonants, but have more difficulty in distinguishing the pair /ʃ/-/s/.

Keywords: acoustic phonetics, perception, consonants, sibilants, fricatives, Valencian Catalan.

RESUM: El valencià estàndard presenta tres consonants fricatives sibilants: /s/, /z/ i /ʃ/. Mentre que el contrast entre /z/ i /s/ sembla indiscutible, l’existència d’una oposició real entre /ʃ/ i /s/ és més dubtosa. El primer objectiu d’aquest treball és comprovar si, en un estil de parla hiperarticulat (Fonet, Gonzàlvez et al. 2007), la consonant /s/ és diferent de /z/ i de /ʃ/ tenint en compte set paràmetres acústics: durada, harmonicitat, pic espectral i quatre moments espectrals: centre de gravetat, desviació estàndard, asimetria i curtosi. Les dades revelen que /z/ i /s/ contrasten clarament en durada, harmonicitat i asimetria; /ʃ/ i /s/ contrasten en harmonicitat, desviació estàndard, curtosi i, en particular, es distingeixen per dos trets típicament associats amb el punt d’articulació: pic espectral i centre de gravetat, però en un grau menor al d’altres dialectes catalans. El segon objectiu del treball és comprovar si els parlants són capaços de discriminar les fricatives /z/-/s/ i /ʃ/-/s/ a partir d’estímuls extrets del centre de les consonants. Els tests de percepció realitzats indiquen que els subjectes perceben clarament el contrast entre les dues consonants alveolars, però tenen més dificultats per distingir el parell /ʃ/-/s/.

Paraules clau: fonètica acústica, percepció, consonants, fricatives, sibilants, valencià.

Previous work demonstrates that a word's status as morphologically-simple or complex may be reflected in its phonetic realization. One possible source for these effects is phonetic paradigm uniformity, in which an intended word's phonetic realization is influenced by its morphological relatives. For example, the realization of the inflected word frees should be influenced by the phono-logical plan for free, and thus be non-homophonous with the morphologically-simple word freeze. We test this prediction by analysing productions of forty such inflected/simple word pairs, embedded in pseudo-conversational speech structured to avoid metalinguistic task effects, and balanced for frequency, or-thography, as well as segmental and prosodic context. We find that stem and suffix durations are significantly longer by about 4–7% in fricative-final inflected words (frees, laps) compared to their simple counterparts (freeze, lapse), while we find a null effect for stop-final words. The result suggests that wordforms influence production of their relatives.

Pitch range (difference between maximum and minimum pitch), pitch dynamism and mean pitch level have been shown to differ between varieties of English, and such differences can lead to (un)favourable judgements about a speaker's attitude and like-ability. Little is known about pitch range in nativised varieties of English, which are spoken in postcolonial countries. While in many functional and structural ways they are similar to native varieties, in other ways they resemble learner varieties. Since learners commonly have a compressed pitch range compared to native speakers, this paper investigates pitch range and level in 20 speakers of Educated Indian English (IndE) in order to determine whether IndE is similar to British English or more like learner varieties in this respect. The analysis reveals that IndE has a smaller pitch range than British English in read speech, but a wider pitch range in spontaneous speech, which is not compatible with results for learner varieties. Moreover, IndE has a higher pitch level than BrE. These prosodic differences might explain reports of cross-cultural communication difficulties. Finally, the comparison of four different L1 backgrounds in IndE also shows small L1-based differences, which, however, are not significant.

Abstract, errata and corrigenda to article: With the application of the Contrastive Hierarchy Theory, the contrastive features of preliterary Scandinavian vowels are here inferred from the interaction between targets and triggers for metaphonic fronting, rounding and breaking. One Proto-Scandinavian feature hierarchy is reconstructed for prominent syllables and another for non-prominent ones. The former hierarchy sustained contrasts that differed from the latter, including contrast for rounding and a preserved distinction between Pre-Germanic */i/ and */e/. A prominence system is reconstructed that predicts both the outcome of syncope and the distribution of the two vowel systems between syllables. The analysis neatly accounts for many notorious cruxes of umlaut and breaking that correlate with the prosodic position of the trigger, including the frequent absence of i-umlaut in light syllables. (see link,  has appeared in Nowele 70:2, September 2017)

https://brill.com/downloadpdf/journals/jjl/5/1/article-p81_4.xml

The present article describes the vowel chain shift that occurred in the variety of Tajik spoken by Jewish residents in Bukhara. It identifies the chain shift as constituting of an intermediate stage of the Northern Tajik chain shift and accordingly tentatively concludes that in the Northern Tajik chain shift Early New Persian ā shifted before ō did, shedding light on the process whereby the present-day Tajik vowel system was established. The article is divided into three parts. The first provides an explanation of the variety of Tajik spoken by Jewish inhabitants of Bukhara. The second section explains the relationship between this particular variety and other varieties that have been used by Jews in Central Asia. The third section deals specifically with the vowel system of the variety and the changes that it has undergone since the late 19th century.