Elizabeth Hume

The Buckeye corpus of conversational speech: labeling conventions and a test of transcriber reliability

This paper describes the Buckeye corpus of spontaneous American English speech, a 307,000-word corpus containing the speech of 40 talkers from central Ohio, USA. The method used to elicit and record the speech is described, followed by a description of the protocol that was developed to phonemically label what talkers said. The results of a test of labeling consistency are then presented. The corpus will be made available to the scientific community when labeling is completed.

Word-internal /t,d/ deletion in spontaneous speech: Modeling the effects of extra-linguistic, lexical, and phonological factors

The deletion of word-internal alveolar stops in spontaneous English speech is a variation phenomenon that has not previously been investigated. This study quantifies internal deletion statistically using a range of linguistic and extra-linguistic variables, and interprets the results within a model of speech production. Effects were found for speech rate and fluency, word form and word predictability, prominence, and aspects of the local phonological context. Results of the study are compared to results from the numerous studies of word-final alveolar stop deletion, internal deletion in laboratory speech, and also to another internal alveolar stop process, flapping. Our findings suggest that word-internal alveolar stop deletion is not a unitary phenomenon, but two different processes that arise at different points during speech production. In syllable codas, deletion results from cluster simplification to achieve gestural economy and is introduced during segment planning. In syllable onsets, deletion is one outcome of gradient lenition that results from gestural reduction during articulation.

Metathesis in phonological theory: The case of Leti☆

Abstract This paper examines two types of metathesis in the Austronesian language Leti. The first is motivated by a requirement that all phrases end in a vowel, and the second, by syllable well-formedness conditions: syllables have onsets and tautosyllabic consonant clusters are avoided. The analyses in this paper are cast within the framework of Correspondence Theory (CT), and bear directly upon the constraint Linearity , which penalizes the reversal of precedence relations among segments in a string. Through the interaction of Linearity with syllable structure and phrasal alignment constraints, a unified account of the Leti facts is provided. Further, it is argued that violations of Linearity are evaluated in a gradient manner. Constraints on metathesis are also shown to be needed to account for the observation that it is consistently the final vowel and consonant of a given morpheme that metathesize, even though metathesis involving other segments would result in equally well-formed Leti words. This study is of significance not only with respect to the theoretical implications it has for Correspondence Theory and, in particular, the constraint Linearity , but in addition, for further advancing our understanding of metathesis which is not only poorly understood, but perhaps misperceived as a marginal or even nonexisting process. This view is contradicted by Leti metathesis which is not only regular and productive, but may be driven by purely phonological considerations.

Labial unmarkedness in Sri Lankan Portuguese Creole

In this squib we introduce new language data into the debate concerning the markedness of place of articulation. The data illustrate a process of assimilation in Sri Lankan Portuguese Creole where coronal patterns as more marked than both labial and dorsal. Labial unmarkedness is further supported by the features asymmetrical patterning in consonant deletion as well as its distribution and frequency. The patterns are of particular significance since they provide a clear example of a language in which labial patterns as unmarked, thus leading us to the conclusion that there is no single, universal unmarked place of articulation. Implications of the Sri Lankan Portuguese Creole pattern for structure- and constraint-based accounts of markedness are discussed.

Non-moraic geminates in Leti

The representation of geminate consonants remains a controversial topic in phonological theory. In a skeletal theoretic approach, for example, a geminate is represented as bipositional: a single root node multiply linked to two skeletal positions, as in (1) (see e.g. Clements & Keyser 1983, Levin 1985). formula here Conversely, in moraic theory, geminates are inherently moraic (see e.g. Hayes 1989, 1995, Davis 1994, 1996). Thus, an underlying geminate consonant differs from a single consonant of the same quality in terms of a mora, as shown in (2): formula here It is noteworthy that evidence bearing on the representation of geminates has thus far come predominantly from the patterning of intervocalic geminates, where the first part of a geminate occurs in coda position. Discussion of syllable-initial geminates, on the other hand, has received little attention in the literature.

Looking through opacity

Abstract 1. Introduction Comparative Markedness deals with alternations which are problematic for classical Optimality Theory such as counterfeeding opacity. In Sea Dayak, for example, the distribution of nasal and oral vowels is generally predictable: after a nasal consonant, a vowel is typically nasal and after an oral consonant, the vowel is oral. However, an oral vowel also occurs after a nasal consonant just in case the consonant is optionally followed by an oral stop, as in [rambo?] ∼ [ramo?] ‘a kind of flowering plant’. The orality of the postnasal vowel in such cases is thus opaque (Scott 1957, 1964). Representative forms are shown in (1).

Coronal consonant, front vowel parallels in Maltese

This paper presents new evidence in support of the view that front vowels and coronal consonants are members of the natural class of coronal sounds. Evidence is drawn from coronal consonant/front vowel parallels in Maltese where these segments pattern together in default assignment, in vowel-to-coronal consonant assimilation, and in the more general process of coronal assimilation. The significance of the present study goes beyond the support that it offers for the coronality of front vowels; it also bears directly on the representation of consonant/vowel interaction in nonlinear phonology. Further, the evidence from consonant/vowel parallels as default segments is of particular interest in light of proposals suggesting that [coronal] is the unmarked place of articulation for consonants. In this work, it is proposed that the unmarked status of [coronal] can be extended naturally to include not only consonants but vowels as well.

Vowel preservation in Leti

OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY The focus of this paper is on a set of phonological processes affecting words and morphemes in Leti, a language spoken on the island of Leti off the coast of Timor. The processes in question involve segment merger, in the form of secondary articulation formation, glide formation, metathesis, resyllabification, and vowel deletion. A given form may undergo a number of these processes, depending upon the structure of the word itself and on the context in which it occurs. It is shown that the particular modifications of a given underlying form are required as a means of satisfying a small set of syllable, segmental, and morphological conditions. With respect to syllable structure, three conditions figure centrally in the analyses: syllables are required to have onsets, coda consonants are prohibited, and tautosyllabic consonant clusters are avoided. A segmental structure condition prohibiting tautosyllabic sequences of segments bearing [+high] also plays an active role, as does a requirement that a nonhigh vowel can only be realized as a syllable nucleus. A morphologically-driven syllable structure condition against morpheme-final open syllables also figures prominently in the analyses. It is demonstrated that this requirement is in conflict with a more general phrasal coda condition that requires a phrase-final morpheme to end in a vowel. The interaction of these two conditions is shown to lead to metathesis in one set of forms, while assuring no change in others.

Tones and features : phonetic and phonological perspectives

This volume includes papers by leading figures in phonetics and phonology on two topics central to phonological theory: tones and phonological features. Papers address a wide range of topics bearing on tones and features including their formal representation and phonetic foundation.

Voice assimilation in French obstruents: Categorical or gradient?

This work contributes to the issue of categoricity versus gradiency in natural assimilations. We focused on voice-assimilation in French and started from the assumption that the main cue to obstruent voicing is glottal pulsing. We quantified glottal pulsing continuously with a single acoustic measure — the proportion in duration of voiced portion(s) within a consonant — which we call v-ratio. We used a large corpus of French radio and television speech to compute v-ratios for all the obstruents appearing in word-final to word-initial obstruent contacts. The results were analyzed in terms of v-ratio distributions, which were compared with theoretical distributions predicted by two contrasted hypotheses on the mechanisms of assimilation: categorical switch versus v-ratio shift. The comparisons strongly suggested that, although voicing itself can be incomplete, voice assimilation is essentially categorical in terms of v-ratio. We discuss this result in the light of recent perceptual data showing sensitivity to extremely subtle acoustic differences: secondary cues to voicing do not seem to follow the same pattern of categoricity as glottal pulsing.