Volume 28, Fall 2014
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Browsing Volume 28, Fall 2014 by Subject "Phonology"
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- ItemOpen AccessCalgary Working Papers in Linguistics, Volume 28, Fall 2014(University of Calgary, 2014-09) Jones, Jacqueline; MacDonald, Danica; Windsor, Joseph W.No abstract available.
- ItemOpen AccessA comparison of Japanese and Blackfoot vowel devoicing(University of Calgary, 2014-09) St. Goddard, RosalindThis paper compares and contrasts the factors that contribute to devoicing in Japanese and Blackfoot. Japanese vowel devoicing has received rigorous discussion in linguistic literature. Tsuchida (2001) provides a particularly persuasive argument for Japanese vowel devoicing using the Optimality Theory Framework (Prince and Smolensky 2004); she argues that all Japanese voiceless fricatives are specified for [SG] and devoicing occurs when this [SG] feature is shared within a syllable. The notion that voiceless vowels carry the feature [SG] can also be extended to instances of Blackfoot vowel devoicing. Blackfoot voiceless vowels generally occur in two contexts: They occur word finally, and word-medially when they are followed by the palatal/dorsal sounds [x]/[ç], which are orthographically represented as . In contrast to Japanese voiceless fricatives, it appears that not all Blackfoot voiceless fricatives distribute the [SG] feature. The Blackfoot palatal fricative [ç] and the dorsal fricative [x] both trigger devoicing, whereas the fricative [s] does not. To explain this patterning of [x] and [ç], Reis Silva (2008) argues that [x] and [ç] are not fricatives, but rather preaspiration ([SG]) specified on certain obstruents. In this paper, I will discuss the constraints proposed in Tsuchida (2001), and extend/adapt those constraints to Blackfoot word final vowel devoicing. Additionally, In my analysis of Blackfoot word-medial vowel devoicing, I will adopt Reis Silva’s (2008) analysis that [x]/[ç] are not fricatives, but preaspiration specified on obstruents. Lastly, I argue that the word-medial vowel devoicing that occurs with [x] and [ç] is phonological rather than phonetic.
- ItemOpen AccessA cross-generational investigation of voice quality in women(University of Calgary, 2014-09) Greer, Sarah D F; Winters, Stephen JThis research investigates the use of creaky voice by university-aged women and their mothers in order to answer three main questions: i. is there a specific phonetic environment where this voice quality is more likely to occur, ii. do young women use this voice quality more frequently than older women?, and iii. is creaky voice a register marker? Five mother-daughter pairs were used to help control for social and geographical dialect variation. Participants engaged in five tasks designed to compare the speech patterns of university-aged women and their mothers in different registers. A difference is hypothesized to be found in, both, the use of creaky voice cross-generationally, and between registers. Each participant read i. the Rainbow Passage, ii. a set of Harvard Sentences, and iii. a word list. These tasks were designed to provide an idea of the distribution of creaky voice in a formal discourse situation. Tasks iv. and v. are conversation tasks consisting of: a spot-the-differences picture task, and a route finding map task. These conversation tasks simulate a less formal discourse context. Annotations of the recordings were made which marked both the syllabic context in which creaky voice was produced and the length of time it was sustained at each occurrence. Using these annotations, global measurements of the usage of creaky voice were taken for each participant and compared across generations, registers and phonetic environments.
- ItemOpen AccessThe distribution of Irish locatives (seo, sin, siúd): DP, AP, or other?(University of Calgary, 2014-09) Windsor, Joseph WThis paper presents phonological and syntactic evidence from Irish demonstratives to argue for phrasal structure and an addition to the syntactic hierarchy of projections in the nominal domain – the demonstrative phrase (DemP). Previously in the literature, demonstratives have been analyzed as belonging to the same category as adjectives (Leu 2008), or as belonging to the same category as determiners (Wiltschko 2009). In this paper, I explore the predictions made by these analyses by extending them to Irish. The Irish data refutes both of those analyses because of obligatory co-occurrence with determiners, and a lack of adjective agreement. Phonological evidence (consonantal weakening effects) further allow me to argue that, unlike what is proposed by Cinque (2005) or Roberts (to appear), the demonstrative projection is not low in the nominal structure, but is actually external to the determiner projection and very high in the structure. I conclude this paper by making cross-linguistic predictions which are briefly extended to English demonstratives and outlining avenues for future research in applying these hypotheses to unrelated, non-Indo-European languages.