The role of contextual frequency in the articulation of initial /f/ in Modern Spanish: The same effect as in the reduction of Latin /f/?

2023

Lang Var Change

This paper tests the idea that the speech rate with which surrounding words are spoken affects the mental representation of words and conditions production of words. This possibility is operationalized by measuring a word's ratio of occurrence in speaker-relative fast speech. Other variables shown in the literature to influence speech rate are controlled for in a 10,000-iteration bootstrapping procedure of a mixed-effect linear regression model. The results of the analysis of 39,397 tokens of content words from 1,232 word types in English display a significant effect for a word's ratio of conditioning in speaker-relative fast speech, although the effect size is small or very small. Other variables shown in the literature to condition speech rate also significantly condition speech rate here. This paper suggests that in addition to other aspects of the context of use of words, contextual speech rate also influences the mental representation of words.

supporting

confidence: 60%

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cumulative exposure to fast speech conditions duration of content words in English

2023

Lang Var Change

“…This result falls in line what has been reported by other authors with respect to the interactive effect of FRC and the phonological context upon which it is based. Brown and Alba (2017) show that the effect of FRC interacts with the propitious phonological context for fricational reduction of word-initial /f/ in Spanish, as measured by the center of gravity of /f/. In that study, the influence of FRC was assuaged when measured in the conditioning context.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 77%

“…Brown (2018) shows that the conditioning effect of FRC also significantly interacts with the phonological context upon which it is based in an analysis of the duration and center of gravity of /s/ in Spanish, such that the effect of FRC is enlarged when measured in the conditioning context. Future studies will do well to continue exploring the interaction between FRC and the phonological context upon which it is based, and especially the magnifying effect that the favorable phonological context has on FRC's conditioning effect on the response variable in question in some studies (e.g., Brown 2018), while having an inhibitory effect with other variables (e.g., Brown and Alba 2017).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effect of Forms’ Ratio of Conditioning on Word-Final /s/ Voicing in Mexican Spanish

2020

Languages

There is mounting evidence that words that occur proportionately more often in contexts that condition a phonetically-motivated sound change end up changing more rapidly than other words. Support has been found in at least modern-day Spanish, Medieval Spanish, bilingual English-Spanish, and modern-day English. This study tests whether there is support for this idea with regards to the variable voicing of word-final /s/ in Spanish. An analysis of 1431 tokens of word-final /s/ spoken by 15 female speakers of Mexican Spanish living in Salinas, California, USA is performed. The response variable is the percentage of the /s/ segment that is voiced, and the effect of a handful of predictor variables shown in the literature to condition /s/ voicing is investigated. The variable of interest is forms’ ratio of conditioning (FRC), or the proportion of times with which word types occur in the context that conditions voicing of word-final /s/. The results of a series of 40 beta regression models indicate that FRC significantly conditions the percentage of voicing of word-final /s/ in these data. Also, the effect of manipulating two aspects of FRC operationalization is analyzed. This study adds to the growing body of literature documenting the importance of cumulative contextual information in the mental representation of words.

“…The conditioning effects that accrue on words in memory can affect pronunciation variation (Brown, 2004(Brown, , 2020Brown & Alba, 2017;Chevrot et al, 2009), but FRC effects are also evident in morphosyntactic variation. Brown and Rivas (2012), for instance, examine variable regularization of the Spanish presentational verb haber ('there is / there are') with plural noun phrase (NP) complements and find that the rate at which haber pluralizes reflects each NP's likelihood of occurring as a grammatical subject.…”

Section: Forms' Ratio Of Conditioningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Acquisition of cumulative conditioning effects on words: Spanish-speaking children’s [subject pronoun + verb] usage

Shin

2022

First Language

Child language acquisition research has provided ample evidence of lexical frequency effects. This corpus-based analysis introduces a novel frequency measure shown to significantly constrain adult language variation, but heretofore unexplored in child language acquisition research. Among adults, frequent occurrence of a form in a particular discourse context that conditions usage accumulates in memory over time and shapes the lexical representation of that form. This study contributes to the body of research on frequency effects in child language acquisition by testing whether such cumulative conditioning effects are also found among children, and, if so, at what age such effects appear. Specifically, the study investigates the influence of a distributional frequency measure (each verb form’s likelihood of use in a switch vs same-reference discourse context) on variable subject personal pronoun (SPP) expression ( N = 2227) in Spanish (e.g. yo voy ~ voy, both meaning ‘I go’) in the speech of 65 monolingual children in two age cohorts. Results reveal sensitivity to the contextual conditioning of discourse continuity (switch reference) among both the younger (6- and 7-year-olds) and older (8- and 9-year-olds) children in support of previous research. In addition, each verb’s likelihood of use in a switch-reference context significantly predicted the SPP use among the older children, but not the younger ones, suggesting that the cumulative effect of a probabilistic pattern takes time to emerge during childhood. The lexically specific accumulation in memory of contextual conditioning effects supports exemplar models of child language acquisition: each instance of use in discourse contributes to the lexical representation of that form and, over time, plays a role in the creation of morphosyntactic patterns during language development.