Papers by Geoffrey Nathan
Acquisition of Prosody in a Spanish-English Bilingual Child
The current study examined the pattern of prosodic phrasing and the distribution of post-lexical ... more The current study examined the pattern of prosodic phrasing and the distribution of post-lexical pitch accent types in a Spanish-English bilingual child. We collected utterances from natural interactions between parents and the child at the age of 2;6 and 3;0, and analyzed them using MAE_ToBI and SP_ToBI. Then we compared prosodic development across ages within each language, and compared the child's speech production with monolingual English and Spanish parents' productions. Results revealed that both the child and parents divide their short utterances into smaller prosodic phrases and that most content words bear post-lexical pitch accent. The result suggests that there are abundant acoustic correlates of prosodic phrases and prominence in the language input, and it can make the word segmentation task easy for children. Results also showed that the majority of the child's English pitch accented words was produced with H*. This was similar to his father's pitch acce...
Vowel space development in a child acquiring English and Spanish from birth
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2005
To date, research on bilingual first language acquisition has tended to focus on the development ... more To date, research on bilingual first language acquisition has tended to focus on the development of higher levels of language, with relatively few analyses of the acoustic characteristics of bilingual infants’ and childrens’ speech. Since monolingual infants begin to show perceptual divisions of vowel space that resemble adult native speakers divisions by about 6 months of age [Kuhl et al., Science 255, 606–608 (1992)], bilingual childrens’ vowel production may provide evidence of their awareness of language differences relatively early during language development. This paper will examine the development of vowel categories in a child whose mother is a native speaker of Castilian Spanish, and whose father is a native speaker of American English. Each parent speaks to the child only in her/his native language. For this study, recordings made at the ages of 2;5 and 2;10 were analyzed and F1−F2 measurements were made of vowels from the stressed syllables of content words. The developme...
Acquisition of stress and pitch accent in English–Spanish bilingual children
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2005
Although understanding of prosodic development is considered crucial for understanding of languag... more Although understanding of prosodic development is considered crucial for understanding of language acquisition in general, few studies have focused on how children develop native-like prosody in their speech production. This study will examine the acquisition of lexical stress and postlexical pitch accent in two English–Spanish bilingual children. Prosodic characteristics of English and Spanish are different in terms of frequent stress patterns (trochaic versus penultimate), phonetic realization of stress (reduced unstressed vowel versus full unstressed vowel), and frequent pitch accent types (H* versus L*+H), among others. Thus, English–Spanish bilingual children’s prosodic development may provide evidence of their awareness of language differences relatively early during language development, and illustrate the influence of markedness or input frequency in prosodic acquisition. For this study, recordings from the children’s one-word stage are used. Durations of stressed and unstre...
Considers the promotion of data citation and attribution standards by: 1) establishing an educati... more Considers the promotion of data citation and attribution standards by: 1) establishing an education and training mandate, drawing on existing resources and standards, and engaging researchers early in their careers; and 2) exploring the role of scholarly organizations in creating and disseminating such standards. Presented at the first workshop on Developing Standards for Data Citation and Attribution for Reproducible Research in Linguistics, held at the University of Colorado at Boulder from 09/18/15-09/20/15.
Orthography and Phonology
Language, Jun 1, 1989
1. List of Contributors 2. Preface 3. Towards a Theory of Phonemic Orthography (by Sgall, Petr) 4... more 1. List of Contributors 2. Preface 3. Towards a Theory of Phonemic Orthography (by Sgall, Petr) 4. The Description of Spelling-to-Sound Relationships in English, French, and Russian: Progress, Problems, and Prospects (by Derwing, Bruce L.) 5. The Automatic Phonetic Transcription of English Text (by Lawrence, S.G.C.) 6. Phonological Access to Data Bases (by Hitzenberger, L.) 7. On Linguistic Error (by Luelsdorff, Philip A.) 8. A Preliminary Report on a Pilot Investigation of Greenlandic School Children's Spelling Errors (by Jacobsen, Birgitte) 9. The Orthographic Representation of Nasal Vowels in Acehnese (by Durie, Mark) 10. Spelling and Dialect (by Melchers, Gunnel) 11. The Reflection of Linguistic Structure in Dutch Spelling (by Booij, Geert) 12. Zur alphabetischen Orthographie als Gegenstand der Sprachwissenschaft (by Penzl, Herbert)
The Phonology of Modern English
Language, Dec 1, 1984
Cognitive Linguistics for Linguists, 2020
Conceptual and Historical Background 2.1 Introduction When we consider the precursors of Cognitiv... more Conceptual and Historical Background 2.1 Introduction When we consider the precursors of Cognitive Linguistics, what is striking is that, unlike the Kuhnian paradigm (Kuhn 2012), those who developed the theory were, in a sense, rebelling against themselves, not against earlier practitioners, their teachers and mentors. Ronald Langacker and George Lakoff were active participants in the development of Generative Semantics while early European practitioners, like Dirk Geeraerts and Rene Dirven, had, themselves, worked in the more philosophicallybased semiotic approach to language. The present chapter will look at some of their papers. It is the case, of course, that separating analysis from the theory that supports it is not an easy (nor, we would say, a desirable) task. There will be some overlap, therefore, between this chapter, whose focus is analysis, and the following one, which will abstract the underlying theory from later analyses and from the very early theoretical pieces discussed here. 2.2 The Initial Spark 2.2.1 The English Passive Construction In the late nineteen seventies and early eighties a flurry of papers by Langacker, Lakoff, and their students introduced the general conception of Cognitive Linguistics to the world. Although, as mentioned in Chap. 1, Langacker first referred to the theory as 'Space Grammar', the fundamental commitments that formed the theory were already all in evidence in Langacker (1982). An earlier, somewhat obscure paper (Langacker 1979) contained some of the same ideas. Langacker (1982) analyzed the syntax and semantics of the English passive construction, perhaps because
Conceptual Underpinnings and Methodology
Here are set out the basic commitments of Cognitive Linguistics: its semantic base, with particul... more Here are set out the basic commitments of Cognitive Linguistics: its semantic base, with particular consideration of constructions, its use of prototype theory to describe pervasive polysemous meaning, and its emphasis as well on the metaphoric and metonymic lines of extension from one meaning to another within what is called the radial set. The chapter also addresses methodologies used to underpin analyses, both experimental and with the use of corpora. Fundamental to the entire enterprise is the claim of full psychological reality.
The Phonology of Modern English
Language, 1984
Orthography and Phonology
Language, 1989
What Functionalists can Learn from Formalists in Phonology [What formalists can learn fromfunctionalists in phonology]
Page 312. What Functionalists can Learn from Formalists in Phonology Geoffrey S. Nathan Southern ... more Page 312. What Functionalists can Learn from Formalists in Phonology Geoffrey S. Nathan Southern Illinois University at Carbondale Abstract While the debate between formalism and functionalism in phonology is as old as the field (Sapir vs. ...
Phonology
Cognitive linguistics in practice CLiP, Sep 18, 2008
Phonology: A cognitive grammar introduction
Page 1. Phonology Page 2. Cognitive Linguistics in Practice (CLiP) A text book series which aims ... more Page 1. Phonology Page 2. Cognitive Linguistics in Practice (CLiP) A text book series which aims at introducing students of language and linguistics, and scholars from neighboring disciplines, to established and new fields in language research from a cognitive perspective. ...
The question of how (or even whether) speakers store speech sounds (segment-sized linguistic unit... more The question of how (or even whether) speakers store speech sounds (segment-sized linguistic units) has been a contentious one for over a century. Since the concept of the phoneme was first introduced as a synchronic notion in the late nineteenth century, conflicting views have proliferated and contended with each other. Along with the mental target view of Baudouin, Sapir and Stampe, the distinctive feature view of Trubetzkoy and various flavors of generativeoriented phonology, including OT, a few new views have gained hold recently, incuding a much more concrete storage-heavy view termed 'usage-based' (Bybee et al.) and one based on exemplar theory (Pierrehumbert and others), as well as historically-based explanations such as Blevins. The issues raised by these competing theoretical standpoints differ along a number of dimensions related to how speech is stored, produced and perceived, and how those three issues relate to each other. Some of the dimensions include:
On the Natural Phonology of Voicing
Journal of Phonetics, 1987
In this paper is described the acquisition of English voiced stops by native speakers of South Am... more In this paper is described the acquisition of English voiced stops by native speakers of South American Spanish. Spanish is characterized by the use of lo ng lead "voiced" stops, while English uses primarily short-lag "voiced" stops. Although there would seem to be no communicative pressure to do so, over a period of 18 months in the U.S. , Spanish ESL students modified their English target voiced stops by reducing the length of voicing lead and adding a significant number of short-lag versions, although only for velar targets. Aerodynamics suggest an explanation for the limitation to the velar point of articulation while the traditional notion of " ease of articulation " may explain the reason for this change.
Cognitive Linguistics for Linguists
SpringerBriefs in Linguistics, 2020
International Journal of English Studies, Jan 19, 2009
After a brief review of the history of the phoneme, from its origins in the nineteenth century to... more After a brief review of the history of the phoneme, from its origins in the nineteenth century to Optimality Theory, including some Cognitive Linguists' views of the concept. I argue that current 'usage-based' theorists views of the phoneme may not be able to explain some facts about how naïve speakers process language, both consciously and subconsciously. These facts include the invention of and worldwide preference for alphabetic writing systems, and language processing evidence provided by Spoonerisms, historical sound changes affecting all (or most) lexical items in a language and each other, and the fact that allophonic processes normally do not show lexical conditioning. I further suggest that storing speech in terms of a small number of production/perception units such as phonemes could be due to the fact that phonemes seem to optimize both efficiency and informativeness in much the same way as other basic-level categories.
How different is prototype change?
Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 2012
Over the last twenty-five years a consensus has developed among cognitive linguists that semantic... more Over the last twenty-five years a consensus has developed among cognitive linguists that semantic change (as viewed within polysemous radial categories or sets) includes the modification of meaning in ways that cause some element(s) of the category to become more or less central (or prototypical) over time. Among other changes, the prototype itself may change, with an earlier central instance becoming more peripheral (or disappearing entirely) and being replaced by another, related meaning. This paper addresses changes in prototypicality, through an exploration of the degree to which change in the most central meaning of a radially configured set is the same as or different from change in other aspects of the set. We examine examples from phonology, the lexicon, and grammar and conclude that the outcomes of prototype change are different from other changes in set configuration, but that the processes by which these central instances of a linguistic unit change are the same as other, non-prototype modifications in meaning.
12. Phonology
Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics, 2015
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Papers by Geoffrey Nathan