Richard Ogden

A declarative account of strong and weak auxiliaries in English

This paper presents a declarative analysis of the phonology of English auxiliaries. The strong and weak forms of auxiliary verbs in English have generally been treated as either related derivationally (Zwicky 1970, Wood 1979, Selkirk 1984) or as lexically suppletive items (Kaisse 1985; this view is also implicit in traditional treatments of English phonetics, e.g. Jones 1960). The derivational treatment involves destructive processes, which Declarative Phonology eschews (Bird 1995, Coleman 1995). The treatment as separate lexical entries fails to address the commonalities observable in related forms such as [hav hbv bv v] for have . This paper provides a declarative analysis of the relations between the multiple forms of English auxiliaries without derivation, and without suppletion. The analysis is based on a corpus as well as data from informants, and is formalised using a computationally tractable formalism. Many of the examples cited in the paper are taken from marsec (Roach et al . 1993), a machine-readable English corpus of material taken from BBC radio broadcasts during the 1980s. The dominant variety of English in marsec is ‘standard’, although in reality this merely means that there is a variety of accents represented which tend towards RP. The database provides natural material rather than idealised or specifically elicited material. As Rischel (1992: 381) notes: ‘Phonology has been based on very exaggerated idealisations about the power of rule machinery as the format in which to take care of variation’. However, some of the structures needed in the analysis presented in this paper do not occur in marsec , so the natural material is complemented by material based on native informants.

An Introduction to English Phonetics

1. Introduction 2. Overview of the human speech mechanism 3. Representing speech 4. Voicing 5. Vowels 6. Approximants 7. Plosives 8. Nasals 9. Fricatives 10. Airstreams 11. Sounds and structures Glossary

A Parametric Approach to the Phonetics of Postvocalic /r/ in Dutch

This paper describes the phonetic exponents of rhoticity in postvocalic position in the speech of 4 young adult speakers of Standard Dutch. In addition to describing aspects of the segmental realisation of /r/, the paper focusses on parametric differences between rhymes with and without postvocalic /r/ in the material under consideration, presenting both impressionistic observations and instrumental measurements. Results of the investigation suggest that parametric analysis is a crucial complement to segmental classification, in providing insights into the relation between segmental realisations and ‘contextual effects’ of /r/, the phonetics of /r/ deletion and similarities and differences between rhotics cross-linguistically.

A Model of Timing for Nonsegmental Phonological Structure

Usually the problem of timing in speech synthesis is construed as the search for appropriate algorithms for altering durations of speech units under various conditions (e.g., stressed versus unstressed syllables, final versus non-final position, nature of surrounding segments). This chapter proposes a model of phonological representation and phonetic interpretation based on Firthian prosodic analysis [Fir57], which is instantiated in the YorkTalk speech generation system. In this model timing is treated as part of phonetic interpretation and not as an integral part of phonological representation. This leads us to explore the possibility that speech rhythm is the product of relationships between abstract constituents of linguistic structure of which there is no single optimal distinguished unit.

The communicative functions of final rises in Finnish intonation.

This paper considers the communicative function of final rises in Finnishconversational talk between pairs of teenage girls. Final rises are fairly common,occurring approximately twice a minute, predominantly on declaratives and in nar-rativesequences. We briefly consider the interplay between voice quality (known tobe a marker of transition relevance) and rising intonation in Finnish. We argue that innarrative sequences, rising terminals manage two main interactional tasks: they pro-videa place for a coparticipant to mark recipiency, and they project more talk by thecurrent speaker. Using a methodology which combines phonetic observation withconversation analysis, we demonstrate participants’ orientation to these functions.

Clicks and percussives in English conversation

Clicks are known to occur in English conversation, and have traditionally been assumed to convey affective meaning, generally negative. This is indeed the lay interpretation of clicks. In this paper, we build on the work of Wright (2011a, b), who shows that clicks are also used in the management of sequences of talk. Firstly, we consider similarities and differences in the production of clicks and percussives. We consider some distributional properties of clicks in one variety of English. Drawing on a wide range of conversational data from Britain and the USA, we show some of the functions of clicks and percussives in conversation, which include stance-taking and sequence management (projection of a turn constructional unit and word-search), and handling aspects of timing between turns. We also consider some of the visual behaviours that may accompany clicks. The meaning or function of clicks and percussives, it is argued, must be considered in a fuller interactional context.

The phonetics of talk in interaction--introduction to the special issue.

This overview paper provides an introduction to work on naturally-occurring speech data, combining techniques of conversation analysis with techniques and methods from phonetics. The paper describes the development of the field, highlighting current challenges and progress in interdisciplinary work. It considers the role of quantification and its relationship to a qualitative methodology. It presents the conversation analytic notion of sequence as a version of context, and argues that sequences of talk constrain relevant phonetic design, and so provide one account for variability in naturally occurring speech. The paper also describes the manipulation of speech and language on many levels simultaneously. All of these themes occur and are explored in more detail in the papers contained in this special issue.

Exploring Interactional Features with Prosodic Patterns

This study adopts a multiple-methods approach to the investigation of prosody, drawing on insights from a quantitative methodology (experimental prosody research) as well as a qualitative one (conversation analysis). We use a k-means cluster analysis to investigate prosodic patterns in conversational sequences involving lexico-semantic contrastive structures. This combined methodology demonstrates that quantitative/statistical methods are a valuable tool for making relatively objective characterizations of acoustic features of speech, while qualitative methods are essential for interpreting the quantitative results. We find that in sequences that maintain global prosodic characteristics across contrastive structures, participants orient to interactional problems, such as determining who has the right to the floor, or avoiding disruption of an ongoing interaction. On the other hand, in sequences in which the global prosody is different across contrastive structures, participants do not generally appear to be orienting to such problems of alignment. Our findings expand the interpretation of “contrastive prosody” that is commonly used in experimental prosody approaches, while providing a way for conversation-analytic research to improve quantification and generalizability of findings.

Making Sense of Outliers

Phonetic inquiry, particularly of the kind which looks at large numbers of items, frequently asks what a ‘typical’ example of a phenomenon of speech is like. For example, in describing the plosives of a language, it is common to calculate average closure durations or voice onset times in some contexts. In this paper, the focus is on examples from natural conversation where there are untypical patterns, and where the item of interest is, in statistical terms, an outlier. Outliers are generally excluded from linguistic analysis, and may be treated as e.g. production errors. The paper shows instead that at least some outliers are in fact part of a meaningful practice, and an orderly method by which speakers can create meaning. The phenomenon more precisely is that of intensifying emphasis, which has been described for German. We consider its phonetic exponents in American English, which are both ‘prosodic’ and ‘segmental’. We provide an account of function based on participants’ own use and displayed understanding of the phenomenon, and argue for a structurally rich account of the phenomenon which includes aspects of turn construction and sequential organisation.

Carnochan, Scott & Whitley's Prosodic Analysis of French Regular Verbs

This paper presents a Firthian Prosodic Analysis of the French verb. The original analysis was done by J. C. Carnochan, N. C. Scott and E. M. Whitley at SOAS in the early 1950s, and was presented at a departmental seminar in 1954. The paper is important for several reasons: it is one of the few extant pieces of work in which Eileen Whitley had a hand; it is the only documented prosodic analysis of a major Indo–European language carried out at SOAS by Firths co–workers, and as such it has great historical value; and finally it portrays an important stage in the development of FPA. Our paper describes the history of the original manuscript and explains the phonological analysis it contains. Some comparison is made with a contemporaneous phonemic analysis of French.