A Dispersion-Theoretic Account of Taiwanese CV phonotactics

Wang, Shengfu

doi:10.3765/amp.v4i0.3982

Cited by 3 publications

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“…In light of these findings, I have proposed an analysis based on constraints on contrast (Wang, 2017), following the Dispersion-Theoretic framework (Flemming, 2006(Flemming, , 2008. The analysis is based on the hypothesis that whether a language has a surface contrast between voiced oral and nasal stops is crucially related to whether the language has full nasality in nasal vowels.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Phonotactics and phonetic context in the perception of onset nasality in Taiwanese

Wang

2018

AMP

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This paper reports an experiment on Taiwanese speakers' perception of the distinction between voiced oral and nasal onsets. This distinction is not phonemic in Taiwanese, a language with phonemic nasal vowels: voiced oral onsets only precede oral vowels, and the nasal onsets only precede nasal vowels. The experiment aimed to answer two research questions. First, when the distinction occurs before a nasal vowel, does perception improve when the oral onset is cued by an initial oral portion of the nasal vowel? Second, are all attested contrasts of oral and nasal syllables (e.g., [ba] vs. [mã], [la] vs. [nã]) perceived equally well, or are there effects of places and manners of articulation? The results of an ABX experiment showed that the adding an oral portion to a nasal vowel did not improve Taiwanese speakers’ perception of the unattested distinction of oral voiced and nasal onsets. Within the attested contrasts between oral and nasal syllables, the results showed that contrasts with more salient cues (e.g., aspirated stops vs. nasals) yielded better performances. Overall, this experiment shows that both phonotactics and phonetic cues play a role in the perception of nasality distinction in voiced onsets.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Phonotactics and phonetic context in the perception of onset nasality in Taiwanese

Wang

2018

AMP

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“…In Taiwanese, oral voiced consonants and nasal consonants stay in complementary distribution at the beginning of words: oral voiced consonants only appear before oral vowels, and nasal consonants only appear before nasal vowels (Wang, 2017) [9]. Wang's study shows that Taiwanese nasal vowels are fully nasalized.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Coarticulation of Nasal Vowels in Monguor Language

Zhang¹

2017

Proceedings of the 2017 International Conference on Economic Development and Education Management (ICEDEM 2017)

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The purpose of the study is to discuss the coarticulation of nasal vowels in Monguor language. On the base of acoustic parameter database of the Monguor speech, the study discusses the differences in the coarticulatory dispersions between the nasal vowels [ɑ] and [ɔ] and the locus equation slopes of the unaspirated stops by the following nasal vowels [ɑ] and [ɔ]. The results show that, in Monguor language, the coarticulatory dispersion of [ɑ] is significantly higher than that of [ɔ]. The locus of the bilabial or apical, but not for the velar, unaspirated stops can be calculated by means of the locus equation. The slope of the velar is the highest, and that of the apical is the lowest.

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Contrast Preservation in Mandarin R-suffixation: A comparative study of Beijing and Liaoning dialects

2022

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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Two dialects of Mandarin Chinese, Beijing and Liaoning, display different patterns in r-suffixation, a morphophonological process. This paper investigates the low vowel rhymes: /an/, /a/, /aŋ/ in the two dialects. In Beijing, /an/ and /a/ undergo neutralization with the addition of the diminutive /-r/ suffix (Zhang 2000). But in Liaoning, the two rhymes maintain their contrast in the suffixed forms by each employing a different /r/ allophone for the suffix. /an/ selects for the retroflex rhotic [ɻ], while /a/ opts for the non-retroflex, or bunched, [ɹ] in Liaoning. I present a contrast preservation analysis to account for the difference between the two dialects. The analysis is set in the framework of Flemming’s (1995) Dispersion Theory. It employs MinDist constraints and PreserveContrasts-BD, which is a modified version of Flemming’s MaximizeContrasts, adapted to refer to output-output mapping. I argue that the overarching objective for both dialects is to maintain salient contrasts between the suffixed forms, but they differ in whether they prioritize preserving the three-way contrasts of low vowel rhymes or maintaining enough auditory distance between the suffixed rhymes. Liaoning prioritizes preserving the three-way contrasts, ranking PreserveContrasts-BD alongside MinDist, whereas Beijing is less preoccupied with keeping three suffixed forms, ranking PreserveContrasts-BD below MinDist. This is why the contrast between /an/ and /a/ is preserved in Liaoning via /r/ allophony, but neutralized in Beijing. Acoustic evidence for the two allophones of the r-suffix is provided. Segmental processes involving the low vowel and the nasal coda are also discussed.

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A Dispersion-Theoretic Account of Taiwanese CV phonotactics

Cited by 3 publications

References 10 publications

Phonotactics and phonetic context in the perception of onset nasality in Taiwanese

Phonotactics and phonetic context in the perception of onset nasality in Taiwanese

Coarticulation of Nasal Vowels in Monguor Language

Contrast Preservation in Mandarin R-suffixation: A comparative study of Beijing and Liaoning dialects

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