Acoustic differences between lexical and epenthetic vowels in Lebanese Arabic

Hall, Nancy

doi:10.1016/j.wocn.2012.12.001

Cited by 19 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…As always, a null result does not prove the absence of an effect; incomplete neutralization could potentially emerge with more data or under a different methodology. However, the lack of significant results stands in contrast to our previous studies of neutralization in Levantine vowel epenthesis (Gouskova & Hall 2009;Hall 2013) differences emerged under highly comparable experimental paradigms. The differences in these studies' outcomes do not seem to be attributable to differences in experiment size, which are summarized in Table 4.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 99%

“…Our previous work (Gouskova & Hall 2009;Hall 2013) found what is arguably a case of incomplete neutralization in some speakers' production of Levantine vowel epenthesis. We compared words with vowel epenthesis, such as /libs/ [libis] 'clothing', to similar words containing lexical vowels, such as /libis/ [libis] 'he wore'.…”

Section: Phonetic Neutralization In Levantine Arabicmentioning

confidence: 90%

“…This approach is informed by our previous work on the phonetics of Levantine epenthesis (Gouskova & Hall 2009;Hall 2013), which found that levels of neutralization did not differ significantly across items, but did differ significantly and qualitatively across speakers. For an initial exploration of a phenomenon within a dialect area exhibiting great microvariation, there is a practical tradeoff between the number of speakers recorded and the amount of data collected from each.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Words were elicited using a technique developed by Hall (2013). In a quiet room, participants viewed a self-paced Powerpoint presentation on a laptop computer.…”

Section: Elicitationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the stimuli for Gouskova &Hall (2009) andHall (2013)'s studies of Levantine epenthesis, neither epenthetic nor lexical vowels were represented in the orthography (e.g., [libis] from /libs/ and /libis/ were both written , lbs), and yet incomplete neutralization occurred. In the current study, there was a clear orthographic indication of underlying length: underlyingly long vowels were written with the letter for long /aː/, while short vowels were not written (as is normal), and yet they were pronounced with no discernable difference.…”

Section: Orthography Does Not Determine Completeness Of Neutralizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Phonetic neutralization in Palestinian Arabic vowel shortening, with implications for lexical organization

Hall

2017

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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This study acoustically compares lexically short vowels in Palestinian Arabic to vowels that are underlyingly long, but have undergone closed syllable shortening, a phonological process affecting certain CV:CC sequences (as in /faːq-ʃ/ → faqʃ 'woke-negative'; /ӡaːb-l-ak/ → ӡablak 'brought to you'). In a study of word pairs produced by 74 speakers, the two vowel types were found to be indistinguishable in duration. Speakers differ as to the contexts in which they apply shortening: some shorten before the negative suffix /-ʃ/, but not the dative suffix /-l/, likely due to paradigm leveling. The results are compared to earlier studies finding incomplete neutralization in Arabic vowel epenthesis, to identify factors that affect completeness of neutralization. It appears that orthography is not an important factor, but that morphologized or lexicalized processes produce more complete neutralization. It is proposed that allomorphs produced by more fossilized processes are more weakly linked in the mental lexicon, and that incomplete neutralization of vowel quantity in particular would require linkage through the abstract CV word pattern.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 99%

Section: Phonetic Neutralization In Levantine Arabicmentioning

confidence: 90%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Words were elicited using a technique developed by Hall (2013). In a quiet room, participants viewed a self-paced Powerpoint presentation on a laptop computer.…”

Section: Elicitationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Orthography Does Not Determine Completeness Of Neutralizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Phonetic neutralization in Palestinian Arabic vowel shortening, with implications for lexical organization

Hall

2017

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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Vowel nasalisation in Scottish Gaelic: No evidence for incomplete neutralisation in initial mutation

Morrison

2020

Morphology

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The existence of incomplete neutralisation in connection with processes like final devoicing is well-known, but little work exists on typologically more uncommon morphological processes such as Celtic initial mutation. This paper reviews the small existing literature on incomplete neutralisation in initial mutation, showing that no convincing evidence has been found so far, and presents a new nasal airflow study on four speakers of Scottish Gaelic that adds to these negative results. Radical initial /p/ and /m/ in Scottish Gaelic are neutralised to [v] under the lenition mutation. Vowels following radical initial /m/ in Scottish Gaelic may display either categorical phonological nasalisation or gradient phonetic nasalisation. Nasal airflow in items with radical initial /p/ and /m/ is measured in order to determine whether the degree of vowel nasalisation after [v] in lenited forms is sensitive to the identity of the corresponding radical consonant. LME model comparison finds that only categorical phonological nasalisation, and not gradient phonetic nasalisation, may be subject to morphological conditioning. This is at odds with widespread existing findings for processes such as final devoicing, where the gradient phonetic properties of neutralised segments display sensitivity to paradigmatic effects. The absence of incomplete neutralisation in initial mutation is consistent with recent proposals that restrict the types of morphophonological processes that may bring about incomplete neutralisation to highly transparent, phonetically natural processes involving conflict between word-specific morphological pressures and language-wide phonotactic constraints. These findings can inform us about the structure of the mental lexicon and the derivation of morphologically complex forms.

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Cross-linguistic variation in word-initial cluster production in adult and child language: evidence from English and Norwegian

et al. 2020

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Young children simplify word initial consonant clusters by omitting or substituting one (or both) of the elements. Vocalic insertion, coalescence and metathesis are said to be used more seldom (McLeod, van Doorn & Reed, 2001). Data from Norwegian children, however, have shown vocalic insertion to be more frequently used (Simonsen, 1990; Simonsen, Garmann & Kristoffersen, 2019). To investigate the extent to which children use this strategy to differing degrees depending on the ambient language, we analysed word initial cluster production acoustically in nine Norwegian and nine English speaking children aged 2;6–6 years, and eight adults, four from each language. The results showed that Norwegian-speaking children produce significantly more instances of vocalic insertions than English-speaking children do. The same pattern is found in Norwegian- versus English-speaking adults. We argue that this cross-linguistic difference is an example of the influence of prosodic-phonetic biases in language-specific developmental paths in the acquisition of speech.

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Acoustic differences between lexical and epenthetic vowels in Lebanese Arabic

Cited by 19 publications

References 5 publications

Phonetic neutralization in Palestinian Arabic vowel shortening, with implications for lexical organization

Phonetic neutralization in Palestinian Arabic vowel shortening, with implications for lexical organization

Vowel nasalisation in Scottish Gaelic: No evidence for incomplete neutralisation in initial mutation

Cross-linguistic variation in word-initial cluster production in adult and child language: evidence from English and Norwegian

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