Utterance-final lengthening and quantity in Northern Finnish

Nakai, Satsuki; Kunnari, Sari; Turk, Alice; Suomi, Kari; Ylitalo, Riikka

doi:10.1016/j.wocn.2008.08.002

Cited by 53 publications

(50 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…While this mostly remains an empirical question, the Northern Finnish data in Nakai, Kunnari, et al (2009) and Nakai, Turk, et al (2012), at least, appear consistent with the present account. That study found little overlap in the durational distributions of the voiced portion of word-final short (single) and long (double) vowel categories across phrase-medial and utterance-final positions, which could explain why the vowel length contrast is well maintained in word-final position in this variety of Finnish.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 88%

“…Final lengthening, i.e., phonetic lengthening of final elements of prosodic constituents such as the phrase and utterance, is a putative language universal found in many languages, including languages with phonemic vowel length contrasts such as Dinka (Remijsen and Gilley 2008), Estonian (Krull 1997), Finnish (Nakai et al 2009), and Hungarian (Hockey and Fagyal 1999;White and Mády 2008). Curiously, in many languages with a phonemic vowel length contrast, word-final vowel length neutralization is also commonly observed towards the short vowel phoneme (see, e.g., Buckley 1998;Myers and Hansen 2007).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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An explanation for phonological word-final vowel shortening: Evidence from Tokyo Japanese

Nakai

2013

Laboratory Phonology

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This paper offers an account for the cross-linguistic prevalence of phonological word-final vowel shortening, in the face of phonetic final lengthening, also commonly observed across languages. Two contributing factors are hypothesized: (1) an overlap in the durational distributions of short and long vowel phonemes across positions in the utterance can lead to the misidentification of phonemic vowel length and (2) the direction of bias in such misidentification is determined by the distributional properties of the short and long vowel phonemes in the region of the durational overlap. Because short vowel phonemes are typically more frequent in occurrence and less variable in duration than long vowel phonemes, long vowel phonemes are more likely to be misidentified than short vowel phonemes. Results of production and perception studies in Tokyo Japanese support these hypotheses.Satsuki Nakai: Queen Margaret University. E-mail: satsuki@ovod.net IntroductionFinal lengthening, i.e., phonetic lengthening of final elements of prosodic constituents such as the phrase and utterance, is a putative language universal found in many languages, including languages with phonemic vowel length contrasts such as Dinka (Remijsen and Gilley 2008), Estonian (Krull 1997), Finnish (Nakai et al. 2009), and Hungarian (Hockey andFagyal 1999;White and Mády 2008). Curiously, in many languages with a phonemic vowel length contrast, word-final vowel length neutralization is also commonly observed towards the short vowel phoneme (see, e.g., Buckley 1998; Myers and Hansen 2007). Myers and Hansen (2007) ask how such length neutralization often arises in the face of crosslinguistically prevalent phonetic final lengthening. Why do word-final vowels tend to be neutralized towards the short vowel phoneme if they are often in a position to be lengthened phonetically? As a solution to the apparent paradox, Myers and Hansen (2007) propose that utterance-final devoicing, reported for Unauthenticated Download Date | 5/11/18 8:46 PM 514 Satsuki Nakai various languages, may be responsible for the cross-linguistic tendency for phonological word-final vowel shortening. Myers and Hansen's (2007) proposal is based on their finding that the devoiced ending of a partially devoiced vowel is disregarded by the listener in phonemic length identification, producing perceptual shortening. This scenario may be a likely one for some languages that exhibit phonological word-final shortening, but not all, e.g., Tokyo Japanese, as we see below.In this paper, I will present an alternative account to Myers and Hansen's (2007) for the apparent paradox between the cross-linguistic tendency for phonetic final lengthening and phonological word-final vowel shortening. I will argue that the paradox is resolved by postulating two hypotheses:H1: Short and long phonemes of similar durations across positions in the utterance can produce perceptual ambiguity for these phonemes. H2: When phonemic length misidentification occurs due to distributional overlap in the durations...

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 88%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An explanation for phonological word-final vowel shortening: Evidence from Tokyo Japanese

Nakai

2013

Laboratory Phonology

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“…Local and Simpson (1988) explain these results by referring to the rhythmic properties of syllables in Malayalam. Nakai et al (2009) further find that V 2 is shorter in the context of a long rather than a short V 1 in Finnish. In none of these studies, however, has V 2 acted as a major cue for distinguishing between the singleton-geminate contrast, which may be why more emphasis has been placed on V 1 and consonant length.…”

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confidence: 57%

“…Where V 2 was in final position and the last part was voiceless and low in amplitude, the end boundary was placed before the start of formant shadows/end of voicing and a hypothetical consonant was labelled to represent the last portion ( Figure 5). This was done in order not to include this last portion in the analyses of V 2 , following work by Nakai et al (2009) which suggests that the voiceless offset does not contribute to the perception of length in this vowel. It was not our intention to analyse the hypothetical consonant or claim its phonological status.…”

Section: Speakers and Data Processingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Geminate timing in Lebanese Arabic: the relationship between phonetic timing and phonological structure

Khattab

Al-Tamimi

2014

Laboratory Phonology

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This study investigates medial gemination patterns in Lebanese Arabic (LA). It offers an account of the duration patterns of quantity distinction for vowels and consonants in LA by using the most comprehensive dataset for this variety, and for Arabic in general, so far in terms of the number of speakers (20), the consonant types examined (24), the inspection of vowels preceding and following the consonant in durational analyses, and the inclusion of male and female speakers. The main aim is to show correspondence between phonetic timing in LA and phonological accounts of syllabic structure that are based on moraic weight (Hayes 1989;Broselow 1995;McCarthy and Prince 1995). The study extends predictions of mora-sharing in disyllables with medial clusters that are preceded by a long vowel (e.g., /ˈmaal.ħa/ 'salty-FEM-SG') to comparable syllables with a medial geminate (e.g., /ˈmaal.la/ 'bored-FEM-SG'), which have not been investigated in Arabic before. It shows that vowel shortening preceding medial geminates affects phonologically long but not short vowels, downplaying the commonly referred to closed-syllable shortening effect as the main reason for this phenomenon (Maddieson 1997). Instead, an account based on the interface between phonetic and phonological effects on compensatory vowel shortening offers better predictions.

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“…In a recent study on the interaction of prosodic lengthening and vowel length contrasts in Northern Finnish, Nakai et al (2009) showed a ceiling effect in which an allophonically half-long final vowel in a CVCV word was less influenced by utterance-final lengthening relative to the other vowels. The authors proposed a durational ceiling constraint which would provide a safeguard against perceptual confusion with phonemic long vowels in Northern Finnish.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Three-year-olds' production of Australian English phonemic vowel length as a function of prosodic context

Yuen

Cox

Demuth

2014

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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Durational contrasts are used not only to signal phrasal boundaries and focused constituents, but also to make phonemic distinctions. Boundary and focus effects can therefore interact with phonemic length contrasts, presenting a challenge for learners. Boundary effects are most clearly seen in the syllable rhyme, where the nucleus and coda are longer in utterance-final compared to utterance-medial position, the magnitude of lengthening diminishing leftward from the end of the word. In the case of focus, where the nucleus and coda are also lengthened, the magnitude of lengthening diminishes rightwards toward the end of the word. The goal of this paper was therefore to compare productions of the phonemic vowel length contrast /AE+/ vs /AE/ in adults and 3-yr-old children learning Australian English in the face of competing demands from boundary and focus lengthening. The results showed that the children maintain the /AE+/ vs /AE/ contrast across prosodic contexts. They are also able to implement an adult-like pattern of boundary-related lengthening, but are still developing focus-related lengthening. The findings suggest that these 3-yr-olds have good command of the phonemic vowel length contrast, but are still fine-tuning language-specific aspects of temporal organization (i.e., the vowel-coda trading relationship) within the rhyme.

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Utterance-final lengthening and quantity in Northern Finnish

Cited by 53 publications

References 51 publications

An explanation for phonological word-final vowel shortening: Evidence from Tokyo Japanese

An explanation for phonological word-final vowel shortening: Evidence from Tokyo Japanese

Geminate timing in Lebanese Arabic: the relationship between phonetic timing and phonological structure

Three-year-olds' production of Australian English phonemic vowel length as a function of prosodic context

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