Jaye Padgett

Contrast and Post-Velar Fronting in Russian

There is a well-known rule of Russianwhereby /i/ is said to be realized as [į] after non-palatalized consonants. Somewhat less well known is another allophonic rule of Russian whereby only [i], and not [į], can follow velars within a morphological word. This latter rule came about due to a sound change in East Slavic called post-velar fronting here: kį > kji(and similarlyfor the other velars). This paper examines this sound change in depth, and argues that it can be adequately explained only by appeal to the functional notions of perceptual distinctiveness of contrast and neutralization avoidance. Further, these notions crucially require a systemic approach to phonology, in which the wellformedness of any form must be evaluated with reference to the larger system of contrasts it enters into. These notions are formalized in a modified version of Dispersion Theory (Flemming 1995a), a systemic theory that incorporates these functional notions into Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 1993).

Stricture and nasal place assimilation

Theories of feature organization typically treat stricture features like [continuant], [consonantal] and [approximant] as independent of place of articulation features. The best argument for this view centers on [continuant] and facts of nasal place assimilation — in particular, instances of nasal place assimilation to fricatives, where the nasal appears to remain a stop. However, a closer look at nasal place assimilation provides a strong argument against this standard view: across languages, place assimilation to fricatives is highly disfavored in comparison to assimilation to stops, and occurring nasal-fricative clusters behave like affricates. I show how a theory in which [continuant] is place-dependent can explain these facts, exploiting the notion of structure preservation. The treatment of stricture proposed brings feature geometry more in line with models based on facts of phonetics and vocal tract anatomy, e.g., the gestural model of Browman and Goldstein.

Adaptive dispersion theory and phonological vowel reduction in Russian.

Russian exhibits a rich pattern of phonological vowel reduction, by which some vowel contrasts are neutralized in unstressed syllables. Recent work in phonology suggests a mechanism by which phonetic vowel reduction - compression of the overall vowel space due to target undershoot - might lead to patterns like Russian. Presenting acoustic data from 9 speakers of Russian, we use Euclidean distance measures, measures of F1-F0 and F2-F1, and Bayesian classification to provide a basic picture of how the overall vowel space, as well as the distribution of vowels, change as stress is reduced. We are particularly interested in whether contraction of the vowel space in unstressed positions is primarily due to raising, and in whether contrasting pairs of vowels are evenly spaced within and across contexts. Our results provide qualified support for the first hypothesis, but largely do not support the hypothesis of equal spacing, in particular across contexts. Of additional interest, we find that some impressionistically described neutralizations are incomplete.

Systemic contrast and Catalan rhotics

Abstract It is argued here that an appealing approach to the distribution and behavior of rhotics in Catalan can be had by appealing to the maintenance, and the perceptual goodness, of contrast. Since the Catalan facts are very similar to those of Spanish, the relevance of these ideas to Spanish is also discussed. The analysis is cast within Dispersion Theory (Flemming, Auditory representations in phonology, Routledge, 1995, Flemming, Contrast and perceptual distinctiveness, Cambridge University Press, 2004), in a version following Padgett (Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 21: 39–87, 2003a, The emergence of contrastive palatalization in Russian, Kluwer Academic Press, 2003b). The analysis is interesting because it (i) provides novel insight into the rhotic facts, (ii) extends dispersion-theoretic thinking into the area of consonants, and (iii) contributes to a program of research showing how allophonic generalizations can be explained by appeal to contrast.

The Emergence of Contrastive Palatalization in Russian

The well-known contrast in Russian between palatalized and non-palatalized consonants originated roughly one thousand years ago. At that time consonants were allophonically palatalized before front vowels, as in danj I. When the ‘jer’ (high, lax) vowels disappeared in certain positions, the palatalization formerly triggered by the front jer remained, leading to a palatalization contrast across most consonant types, e.g., danj I ‘tribute’ vs. dan ‘given’ (< danʊ). At the same time or soon thereafter, a rule is said to have been established by which /i/ surfaced as [ɨ] after non-palatalized consonants, e.g., ot ɨm j en j i ‘on behalf of’ (< otʊ j en j i This paper analyzes these two sound changes within a version of Dispersion Theory (DT, Flemming 1995a) elaborated by Ni Chiosain & Padgett (2001) and Padgett (1997, to appear). DT differs from other current models of phonology in its fundamentally systemic orientation: constraints evaluate not only isolated forms as is usual, but sets of forms in contrast. References to these systems of contrast is key to the statement of constraints governing the perceptual distinctiveness of contrasts on the one hand, and constraints directly penalizing merger (neutralization) on the other. The analysis of the Russian facts here illustrates how this theory works, and provides an explanation for the otherwise mysterious allophonic /i/→ [ɨ] rule, and for the historical emergence of this rule as a consequence of the loss of the jers.

Directional Syllabification in Generalized Alignment

(Fall 1993). We gratefully acknowledge significant help from discussions and correspondence with Junko Ito, Ellen Broselow, John McCarthy, Alan Prince,Cheryl Zoll, and PASC editors Jason Merchant and Rachel Walker. It was Zolls work on Yawelmani Yokuts (Zoll 1993) that first inspired us to confront the issues dealt with in this note. As usual, all remaining shortcomings are our responsibility alone.

A Perceptual Study of Polish Fricatives, and its Implications for Historical Sound Change

Abstract The present study probes perception of place of articulation distinctions among Polish sibilants using an AX discrimination task, and compares results from 13 Polish-speaking and 10 English-speaking subjects. Besides providing information on the relative discriminability of the sibilants, the perceptual study is designed to investigate the claim that a particular kind of diachronic change which has taken place in Polish and other languages, as well as related facts about sibilant inventories, could be perceptually motivated. The results lend support to this claim and to the general view that a principle of dispersion plays a role in explaining sound change tendencies, and therefore in shaping phonological tendencies, for consonants, not only vowels.

Domain generalisation in artificial language learning

Many languages have restrictions on word-final segments, such as a requirement that any word- final obstruent be voiceless. There is a phonetic basis for such restrictions at the ends of utterances, but not the ends of words. Historical linguists have long noted this mismatch, and have attributed it to an analogical generalization of such restrictions from utterance-final to word-final position. To test whether language learners actually generalize in this way, two artificial language learning experiments were conducted. Participants heard nonsense sentences in which there was a restriction on utterance-final obstruents, but in which no information was available about word-final, utterance-medial obstruents. They were then tested on utterances that included obstruents in both positions. They learned the pattern and generalized it to word-final utterance-medial position, confirming that learners are biased toward word-based distributional patterns.

An acoustic and perceptual study of Connemara Irish palatalization

Palatalization contrasts are subject to certain asymmetries across languages (Takatori 1997, Kochetov 2002). For example, they are preferred at the beginning of words or syllables rather than at the end, and they are preferred in coronals rather than labials. Kochetov (2002, 2004) argues that these asymmetries are perceptually motivated, and he provides supporting evidence from Russian. We report on results of an acoustic and perceptual study of palatalization in Connemara Irish. Our acoustic analysis documents a range of properties distinguishing palatalized from non-palatalized consonants in Irish, though our acoustic data come from only one speaker. Based on a speeded AX discrimination task, our perceptual results in some ways parallel Kochetovs for Russian (listeners show degraded performance for the coda contrast compared to the onset contrast), and in some ways do not (they do not perform better on coronals than on labials).

An Ultrasound Study of Connemara Irish Palatalization and Velarization

Author(s): Bennett, Ryan; Chiosain, Maire Ni; Padgett, Jaye; McGuire, Grant | Abstract: We present the first ultrasound analysis of the secondary palatalization contrast in Irish, analyzing data from five speakers from the Connemara dialect group. Word-initial /pʲ(bʲ) pˠ(bˠ) tʲ tˠ kʲ kˠ fʲ fˠ sʲ sˠ xʲ xˠ/ are analyzed in the context of /iː uː/. We find, first, that tongue body position robustly distinguishes palatalized from velarized consonants, across place of articulation, manner, and vowel place contexts, with palatalized consonants having fronter and/or higher tongue body realizations than their velarized counterparts. This conclusion holds equally for labial consonants, contrary to some previous descriptive claims. Second, the nature and degree of palatalization and velarization depend in systematic ways on consonant place and manner. In coronal consonants, for example, velarization is weaker or absent. Third, the Irish consonants examined resist coarticulation in backness with a following vowel. In all of these respects Irish palatalization is remarkably similar to that of Russian. Our results also support an independent role for pharyngeal cavity expansion/retraction in the production of the palatalization contrast. Finally, we discuss preliminary findings on the dynamics of the secondary articulation gestures. Our use of principal component analysis (PCA) in reaching these findings is also of interest, since PCA has not been employed a great deal in analyses of tongue body movement.