Natalia Kondroshova presented her paper, entitled Quantificational Properties of ne-Wh items in Russian (co-authored with Radek Simik), at the 40th annual North East Linguistic Society Conference on Nov. 14th.
Several UM linguists will be presenting their work at the 158th meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in San Antonio, Oct. 26-30.
Presenters and abstracts listed below
The perceptual time course of coarticulatory nasalization.
Patrice S. Beddor, Julie E. Boland, Andries Coetzee, Kevin McGowan
Abstract:
Listeners’ moment‐by‐moment processing of anticipatory vowel nasalization and a following nasal consonant was investigated. English‐speaking participants’ eye movements were monitored as they heard instructions to look at one of two pictured objects on a computer screen. Trials included pictured pairs for naturally produced words of the form CVNC‐CVC (e.g., bend‐bed), CVNC‐CVNC (bend‐bent), and CVC‐CVC (bed‐bet). Vowels in CVNC words were coarticulatorily nasalized. Results to date show that, when participants heard a CVNC word (bend), they visually fixated the correct picture earlier when the competing picture was CVC (bed)—that is, when the vowel in the competitor would be expected to be non‐nasal—than when the competitor was another CVNC word (bent). Results also suggest that participants often fixated the target CVNC picture in CVNC‐CVC trials after onset of vowel nasalization but before N onset. However, although vowel nasalization facilitated early selection of CVNC over CVC, a non‐nasalized vowel was not similarly helpful for selecting CVC over CVNC. When participants heard CVC (bed), they did not fixate the correct picture earlier when the competing picture was CVNC (bend) than when the competitor was CVC (bet). Findings are interpreted in light of production data for English and perceptual theories.
Nasal coarticulation in clear speech
Anthony Brasher
Abstract:
This study tests whether speakers, when trying to speak clearly, employ variable enhancement strategies as a function of phonetic environment. Using aerodynamic and acoustical methods, this study examines the effects of phonemic context and speaking modality and on the spatial and temporal extent of anticipatory nasal coarticulation in English. Target words are English (C)VNCvoiced (e.g., bend) and (C)VNCvoiceless (e.g., bent) words spoken in either clear or citation speech modes. In order to enhance the percept of ／n／ in clear speech, speakers increase the duration of the nasal consonant in CVNCvoiced words but marginally increase, or even decrease, ／n／ duration in CVNCvoiceless words. While highly variable, airflow results suggest little difference on anticipatory nasalization as a function of speech mode. These results argue against models predicting a global reduction in coarticulation in clear speech.
Effects of prosodic structure on the relative timing of articulators in English lateral production.
Susan S. Lin
Abstract:
Previous research has established that American English speakers tend to produce syllable‐final ／l／ with movement of the tongue dorsum preceding movement of the tongue tip. However, the results of these studies differ with respect to the articulator timing in syllable‐initial ／l／, with some claiming synchrony (Browman and Goldstein, 1995) and others claiming asynchrony in the direction opposite that of syllable‐final ／l／ (Gick, 2003). This study uses ultrasound imaging to investigate the relative timing of the tongue tip and dorsum during production of syllable‐initial and syllable‐final ／l／ in multiple prosodic contexts. Prosody has a significant effect on both duration and extent of articulator movement in speech production—onsets of larger prosodic units involve larger and longer movement than onsets of smaller prosodic (Keating, 2006). The explanation that these effects result from speakers’ attempts to render perceptually more clear the segments that initiate phrases and utterances suggests that examining these segments at varying prosodic positions may provide insight into speakers’ knowledge of speech perception. Current preliminary results show that American English speakers may utilize at least two distinct timing relations in initial laterals, supporting a position that speaker knowledge may be variable between speakers.
Aerodynamic modeling for concatenative speech synthesis.
Kevin B. McGowan
Abstract:
Listeners can perceive and use a wide array of fine‐grained phonetic details, including the detailed coarticulatory influences of adjacent sounds, when perceiving speech. Details like anticipatory nasalization can, for example, potentially provide the listener with a rich network of informative cues and are a key to understanding listeners’ ability to disambiguate speech sounds from seemingly ambiguous input. Unfortunately, these coarticulatory cues are generally missing or contradictory in the output of speech synthesis systems. These systems work by concatenating variable‐length sound units chosen from a large database of recorded speech. Units are chosen to minimize two functions: the cost of aligning a particular unit with the desired speech output (target cost) and the cost of adjoining the next sound to the most recently selected unit (join cost). Generally, these costs are calculated using features which can be automatically extracted from the acoustic speech signal. A unit selection database is created, automatically segmented and automatically labeled with nasal and oral airflow feature vectors. These aerodynamic features are used as a proxy for articulatory information in the calculation of join and cost functions. Listeners’ mean opinion scores are obtained on output from this system and a baseline acoustic system for comparison.
Andries Coetzee delivered the keynote address, entitled “An integrated grammatical/non-grammatical model of phonological variation,” in June at the “2009 Seoul International Conference in Linguistic Interfaces“.
Andries also gave an invited talk at the “2009 International Phonology and Phonetics Forum” in Kobe, Japan in August. The title of
his talk was “Gradient well-formedness in Harmonic Grammar: on the interaction of grammar and frequency.”
Pictured below: Andries, Mirjam Broersma, Maki Aoyagi, Shin-ichi Tanaka.
Sam Epstein, Hisa Kitahara and Daniel Seely presented their paper, “The Application of Transfer is Case-Sensitive and Deducible,” at the Conference on Minimalist Approaches to Syntactic Locality in late August
Abstract available as a .pdf file
Lauren Squires presented her paper, Voicing ‘Sexy Text’: TV News Representations of the Detroit Text Messaging Scandal at the Language in the (New) Media conference in Seattle, Sept. 2-5.
Abstract:
The print media have tended to represent computer‐mediated communication, including text messaging, in a negative light and as a youth‐based practice (cf. Thurlow 2003, 2006; Crystal 2008). Yet as CMC’s use continues to expand, so does its media representation. This paper addresses the representation of text messaging as practiced by adults, through a case study of TV news coverage of text messages. In 2008, Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick resigned after thousands of text messages implicated him in a range of offenses, including an affair with his Chief of Staff. Messages sent by the Mayor and other city employees became the centerpiece of local public and political discourse about the events, variously named “text‐gate,” “text messaging scandal,” and “sexy text scandal.” The scandal thus compelled local media to talk about particular adults’ text messaging practices and to represent the language used therein. This case affords an exploration of how text messaging is represented in non‐youth contexts, and moreover of how TV broadcasts use multiple modalities as representational resources when “translating” texts for a TV audience. The data comprise over 100 instances of text messages that are read aloud by TV news anchors in scandal coverage, from three Detroit stations. In analyzing how the fundamentally visual language of the text messages is represented through both visual and oral modalities, several representational variables at different levels of language and discourse structure will be discussed, including:
1) replication (the messages’ reproduction on‐screen and aloud);
2) intonation (the messages’ intonational marking);
3) organization (the messages’ sequential presentation);
4) framing (the messages’ introductions).
Preliminary analysis shows that in general, the act of texting is represented as ordinarily conversational, involving rapid back‐and‐forth exchange between two participants. However, the language used within texting is represented through a “read speech” style, and broadcasters gloss stereotypical “CMC” lexical items (e.g., lol) into standard language or omit them altogether. Hence, while the broadcasters’ presentation treats the fact of these messages’ transmission through text as generally unremarkable, novel features or uses of the medium tend to be either metalinguistically highlighted or erased.
Pam Beddor gave two keynote presentations this summer:
(1) Nasal 2009 International Workshop, co-organized by the Centre Nationale de Recherche Scientifique (Université Paul Valéry) and the Laboratoire des Sciences de la Parole (Université de Mons-Hainaut):
Title: The perceptual time course of nasals and nasalization
Abstract: Perceptual findings from identification, discrimination, gating, and reaction time studies show that listeners use coarticulatory vowel nasalization as information about a flanking nasal consonant. In ongoing work being done in our psycholinguistics laboratory (with Julie Boland, Andries Coetzee, and Kevin McGowan), we are studying listeners’ moment-by-moment processing of this information as it unfolds over time. In this research, English-speaking participants’ eye movements are monitored as they hear instructions to look at one of two pictured objects on a computer screen. Trials include pictured pairs for words of the form CVNC-CVC (e.g., bend-bed), CVNC-CVNC (e.g., bend-bent), and CVC-CVC (e.g., bed-bet). Preliminary results show that, when participants hear a CVNC word (bend), they visually fixate the correct picture earlier when the competing picture is CVC (bed) than when the competitor is another CVNC word (bent). Assuming a 200 ms delay for programming an eye movement (Dahan et al., 2001, Language and Cognitive Processes 16: 507-534), the evidence suggests that participants often fixate the target CVNC picture in CVNC-CVC trials after onset of vowel nasalization but before onset of N. However, although vowel nasalization facilitates early selection of CVNC over CVC words, a non-nasalized vowel is notsimilarly helpful for selecting CVC over CVNC. That is, when participants hear a CVC word (bed), they do not fixate the correct picture earlier when the competing picture is CVNC (bend) than when the competitor is CVC (bet). These perceptual findings will be interpreted in light of both production data (especially highly variable nasal coarticulation in English) and other perceptual processes (in particular, compensation for coarticulation).
Invited presentation to the Laboratoire des Sciences de la Parole at the Université de Mons-Hainaut, Mons, Belgium.
Title: The time course of perception of coarticulation
1. Sally Thomason was interviewed by CNN on the reports of the “millionth word in English.
2. Sally gave one of the four plenary talks at ICML XII, the 12th International Conference on Minority Languages in Tartu, Estonia.
WHAT IS LOST WHEN A LANGUAGE IS STANDARDIZED?
Abstract:
Enlightened governments all over the world are granting language rights to minority groups, a tendency that is presumably welcomed by everyone attending this conference. The specific rights vary from country to country, from making one or more minority languages official to establishing a right to native-language instruction in schools. An issue that arises very frequently concerns standardization: which variety of a minority language should be selected or (if necessary) developed for official purposes, including use as a medium of instruction? The advantages of selecting a single variety are obvious, especially the financial advantages. The disadvantages are perhaps less obvious. The focus of this presentation is on the disadvantages of standardization, in particular the concomitant loss of dialect diversity. The most important disadvantages are arguably sociopolitical; but the scientific disadvantages, from a linguist’s viewpoint, are nontrivial. Understanding of the processes and results of dialect divergence and convergence contributes signficantly to our knowledge of human language as a social and psychological phenomenon. Moreover, some nonstandard dialects have unusual, and unusually interesting, structural features that are not found in the associated standard dialect. I will not argue that standardization should not occur, but rather that nonstandard dialects should be documented as fully as possible while documentation is still possible. Examples will be drawn from several European languages and from a gravely endangered Native American language which is currently undergoing standardization.
3. Sally also gave one of the keynote talks at ISB7, the 7th International Symposium on Bilingualism, in
Utrecht.
Children vs. Adults as Agents of Contact-induced Language Change
Abstract:
This paper explores the relationship between bilingualism and contact-induced language change, focusing on the question of which contributions might be expected from children and which from adults. The issue is reflected in debates among historical linguists as to whether internally-motivated language change is initiated by children during first-language acquisition or by adults — or by both. In language contact studies, it is possible to identify changes, usually temporary ones, that are initiated by children, and it is also possible to identify changes that are initiated by adults. The conclusion, therefore, is that both adults and children are responsible for contact-induced changes, although perhaps not for the same kinds of changes: shift-induced interference, which is due to imperfect learning of a target language by members of a speech community, is likely to be almost exclusively an adult phenomenon, or at least not primarily initiated by young children during first-language acquisition. I will not address in detail the question of the role of adults vs. the role of children in the initiation and spread of linguistic changes more generally, but some implications of the results from contact-induced change will be discussed in the concluding section.
The Department will host the 39th annual meeting of the Michigan Linguistics Society on Oct. 31, 2009.
Abstract submissions are due Sept. 12.
Lauren Squires presented a paper at the Expanding Literacy Studies conference at The Ohio State University in Columbus, OH.
‘Books: not really my style’: Representing presumed literacies in online discourse
This paper discusses the use of literacy products in online profiles by taking literacy practices as one aspect of perrsonal style. I discuss ways in which literacy is presumed, packaged, and claimed through the interface, suggesting that literacy products serve as a symbolic link between virtual and non-virtual cultural practice
Lauren was also on the Conference Committee that organized the event.
The conference, Discourse Constraints on Anaphora, organized by Ezra Keshet (Department of Linguistics) and Eric Swanson (Department of Philosophy) will take place at the University of Michigan April 6-7.
Details on the conference, including a schedule and registration information, are available at http://www-personal.umich.edu/~ericsw/anaphora/. Below is the conference description from the website:
Much recent work in linguistics, philosophy of language, cognitive psychology and computer science focuses on questions about anaphora and discourse. However, some major questions about the structure of discourse and its interaction with anaphors remain unanswered. To this end, the majority of the Discourse Constraints on Anaphora Conference will consist of roundtable discussions of the following four questions:
The resulting conversations, between scholars with a diverse range of approaches, will serve as a snapshots of current thought on anaphora and discourse. We hope that they will also mark the next step towards answering these questions. Roundtable participants include Barbara Abbott, Alan Garnham, Hans Kamp, Craige Roberts, Hannah Rohde, Jason Stanley, and Matthew Stone.
