“Checked” has been a term that is reported in various languages, but lacks a clear definition. It usually refers to syllables or vowels that are closed by oral or glottal stops; associated with distinct tones; have glottalized quality; and/or have shorter duration. My study asks: is “checked” a meaningful phonological feature in languages where it is reported? How do “checked” syllables differ from closed syllables? How do “checked” tones differ from glottalized tones? How do “checked” vowels differ from short vowels? And how does “checked” phonation differ from creaky phonation? To answer these questions, I have surveyed Chinese and Zapotecan languages. The focuses of my presentations are 1) how to determine the phonological structure that “checked” feature is assigned to; 2) how to determine whether the glottal stop in Vʔ structure is a segment or a suprasegment; 3) how to determine whether “checked” is a meaningful phonological feature when it is a syllable type vs. when it is a phonation type.

Period doubling (PD) is a type of creaky voice that contains two alternating periods, which contribute to an indeterminate pitch with a low and rough quality. By presenting data from Mandarin Chinese read speech recordings, this study probes the articulatory properties of period-doubled voice and its tonal distribution based on time-domain measures using electroglottography (EGG). Besides the alternation of frequency and amplitude in two adjacent glottal cycles, alternation of contact quotient and symmetry quotient was also seen in a few samples, suggesting that PD is likely articulated through two alternating pulses with distinct voice qualities and pitches. Preliminary data also suggest H1*-H2* is the most salient cue differentiating PD, vocal fry, and modal voice.

In a couple of recent short squibs, Reiss (2021a, 2021b) claims to have solved the related problems of describing chain shifts (e.g. Kirchner 1996) and saltations (see e.g. Hayes & White 2015) in Optimality Theory using underspecified underlying representations and Max-F/Dep-F featural faithfulness constraints. With a focus on the formal definitions of featural faithfulness constraints as they apply to fully-specified and underspecified representations, we show that (a) Reiss’s solutions do not in fact require Max-F/Dep-F constraints, and that (b) they require less underspecification than Reiss posits. Reiss’s singular focus on establishing “existence proofs” and the consequent inattention to the details of his solutions leads him to miss these facts. Time permitting, we will also show some preliminary analysis of the factorial typologies predicted by Reiss’s solutions and variations on them.

I think everyone in this group agrees that signed languages should be incorporated into linguistics education, so this isn’t going to be a talk about why this should be done (though I can answer that if need be). Instead, the hope is for this to be more of an informal discussion about how to start incorporating signed languages into our phonology and phonetics courses (and how to keep going with it). While I am by no means an expert on the topic, especially as a hearing L2 signer, it is my focus in research and in teaching. So, I can go over how I teach this content in LIGN7, what readings for students (undergrads and grads) and resources for instructors may be useful, and some concrete things we can all do to be inclusive in how we teach phonology & phonetics throughout our curricula. Everyone who attends is encouraged to ask questions, provide suggestions, and discuss ideas. This is not meant to be an exhaustive discussion but I hope for this to be a start and at least help us all feel a little more equipped to keep working towards an inclusive cross-modal education for all future linguists.

Are the cognitive processes involved in the retrieval of words, planning of speech, and speech articulation modularly separated, or are these stages of processing interactive? I’ll discuss recent work examining this issue in multilingual speakers, leveraging automated acoustic analysis methods to substantially increase sample sizes relative to previous phonetic studies. The emerging empirical picture suggests that processing does not neatly fall into either side of the modular/interactive divide, challenging current theories of speech production.

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You can learn more about Matt Goldrick and his work here. Matt is visiting San Diego through Feb. 25; please contact him if you’d like to meet!

Day & time: Mondays 12-1pm (unless otherwise noted)
Location: Zoom, and eventually also AP&M 2452 (unless otherwise noted)

[This is a presentation of Yuan and Shihong’s upcoming ASA meeting poster; you can find the poster here.]

Xiapu Min is a variety of Min Chinese spoken in Xiapu, Fujian, China. The language has seven tones, two of which (T5 & T2) are checked tones that only appear in syllables with a glottal stop coda (Chai & Ye, 2019). Compared with their unchecked counterparts, checked tones have distinct f0 contours, glottalization at the end of the syllable, and are of shorter duration. In this study, we investigate whether those acoustic features are used by listeners of Xiapu Min to identify whether a tone is checked or not. We ran a forced-choice identification task with resynthesized audio stimuli. Stimuli consisted of a natural unchecked token resynthesized with five distinct f0 contours. Each vowel was further modified to have a short vs. long duration and presence vs. absence of glottalization. The results indicate that the listeners are more likely to identify a stimulus as having a checked tone when it has a high/low-falling f0 contour, shorter duration, or glottalization, among which the f0 and duration have larger coefficients than glottalization. Thus, all three phonetic parameters found in checked tone production also influence checked tone identification. However, f0 and duration are more likely to be the main cues whereas glottalization is the periphery cue for checked tone identification.

Neuro- and psycholinguistic experimentation supports the early decomposition of morphologically complex words within the ventral processing stream, which MEG has localized to the M170 response in the (left) visual word form area (VWFA). Decomposition into an exhaustive parse of visual morpheme forms extends beyond words like “farmer” to those imitating complexity (e.g. “brother”, Lewis et al. 2011), and to “unique” stems occurring in only one word but following the syntax and semantics of their affix (e.g. “vulnerable”, Gwilliams & Marantz 2018). Evidence comes primarily from suffixation; other morphological processes have been under-investigated. This study explores circumfixation, infixation, and reduplication in Tagalog. In addition to investigating whether these are parsed like suffixation, we address an outstanding question concerning semantically empty morphemes. Some words in Tagalog resemble English “winter” as decomposition is not supported (wint-er); these apparently reduplicated pseudoreduplicates lack the syntactic and semantic features of reduplicated forms. However, unlike “winter,” these words exhibit phonological behavior predicted only if they involve a reduplicating morpheme. If these are decomposed, this provides evidence that words are analyzed as complex, like English “vulnerable”, when the phonological grammar demands it. In a lexical decision task with MEG, we find that VWFA activity correlates with stem:word transition probability for circumfixed, infixed and reduplicated words. Furthermore, a Bayesian analysis suggests that pseudoreduplicates with reduplicate-like phonology are also decomposed; other pseudoreduplicates are not. These findings are consistent with an interpretation that decomposition is modulated by phonology in addition to syntax and semantics.

Please note that the presentation is expected to last about 20 minutes, with 10 minutes for Q&A with Dr. Wray before she needs to leave for another engagement. PhonCo will continue with discussion afterwards.

Day & time: Mondays 12-1pm (unless otherwise noted)
Location: AP&M 2452 (unless otherwise noted, and simultaneously over Zoom)

ATR vowel harmony is a common feature in African languages that has received massive scholarly work. Although some of these languages have both phonemic oral and nasal vowels, only the oral vowels usually feature in descriptions and analyses. Also, although some of these languages have phonemic nasal vowels, Rolle (2013) notes that phonemic /ẽ, õ/ nasal vowels are missing in some West African languages. He notes further that, earlier, Hyman (1972) had observed that [n] (and sometimes [m] does not occur before mid vowels), hence the restricted patterns *[ne]~*[nẽ] and *[no]~*[nõ]. If these vowels are barred and their possible occurrences are restricted, are there other means for them to be realized in these languages? In this paper, I present data on the interactions between ATR vowel harmony and nasality in Gua (a Guang language of Ghana) and shows that nasal vowels fully participate in the harmony process, and where nasal vowels /ẽ, õ, ɜ̃/ are missing, they are created allophonically [ẽ, õ, ɜ̃] via ATR vowel harmony, nasalization and a combination of both processes in the language. This is similar to harmony patterns in African languages where missing oral vowels in seven vowel systems are created allophonically (Rose 2018 and Casali 2003). I further discuss some typological implications of the patterns and useful questions that will guide further research in these interactions.

References cited:
Casali, R. F. 2003. [ATR] value asymmetries and underlying vowel inventory structure in Niger-Congo and Nilo-Saharan. Linguistic Typology 7, pp. 307-382
Hyman, L. M. 1972. “Nasals and nasalization in Kwa”. Studies in African Linguistics, 3.2, pp. 167-205.
Rolle, N. 2013. Nasal vowel patterns in West Africa. UC Berkeley PhonLab Annual Report 9.9.
Rose, S. 2018. ATR Vowel Harmony: new patterns and diagnostics. In Proceedings of the 2017 Annual Meeting on Phonology (Vol. 5).