Syllabic Structure

. *θ 1 . Markedness 2 . Faithfulness 3 . Generator 4 . Evaluator *C.Ɂ >> DEP-IO( Segment) >> ONSET >> MAX-IO( Segment) *C.Ɂ >> MAX-IO( Segment) >> DEP-IO( Segment) >> ONSET ONSET >> MAX-IO( Segment) >> DEP-IO( Segment) >> *C.Ɂ ‫تابلو‬ 4 ‫واکة‬ ‫و‬ ‫همخوان‬ ‫به‬ ‫مختوم‬ ‫کلمات‬ ‫در‬ ‫معرفگی‬ . i ‫شیرازی‬ ‫در‬ MAX-IO ONSET DEP-IO *C.Ɂ /pirsuk+u/ * * * *! *! a. [pirsukɁu] b. [pirsukou] c. [pirsuku] ‫تابلو‬ 5 ‫ب‬ ‫مختوم‬ ‫کلمات‬ ‫در‬ ‫معرفگی‬ . ‫واکة‬ ‫ه‬ a ‫شیرازی‬ ‫در‬ ONSET DEP-IO MAX-IO *C.Ɂ /danešga+u/ * * * *! *! a.[danešgaɁu] b.[danešgou] c. [danešgu] ‫تابلو‬ 6 ‫واکة‬ ‫به‬ ‫مختوم‬ ‫کلمات‬ ‫در‬ ‫معرفگی‬ . e ‫شیرازی‬ ‫در‬ *C.Ɂ DEP-IO MAX-IO ONSET /dʒumulu+u/ * *

Sound substitution is a process whereby a phoneme in a loanword is replaced
by its closest phone in the borrowing language. English and Arabic share
dental consonants // and // which are absent in Persian. This comparative
study aimed at explaining how these consonants are substituted by Persian
speakers within the framework of optimality theory (Prince and Smolensky,
1993/2004). The findings of this research indicate that their substitution in
English (loan) words depends on their position in the syllable; the dental
consonants // and // are replaced by the dento-alveolar consonants [d] and
[t] respectively in the syllable onset of (loan)words because they are the
closest consonants to dentals. However, // changes to [s] in the coda position
since the markedness constraint ‘LAZY’ which favors sounds produced with
less energy prohibits the substitution of // by the more effortful stop
consonant [t] in this syllable position. With regard to Arabic (loan)words, the
substitution of the dental consonants // and // (which are represented by the
graphemes < >ذand < >ثrespectively in Arabic orthography) depends on how
these graphemes are pronounce in Persian. Therefore, this process cannot be
explained using an analysis that is solely phonological. So, there is a need for
an analysis which incorporates graphemes as well. Technically speaking, a
constraint which has access to graphematical information is needed. Some
optimality theory phonologists who came up with this need while working on
other languages have already proposed orthographic constraints as the third
type in addition to faithfulness and markedness constraints. Accordingly, the
pronunciation of the graphemes < >ذand < >ثin words adapted from Arabic
by Persian was analysed using orthographic constraints which require these
graphemes to be always pronunced [z] and [s] respectively. This comparative
study presents arguments in favor of different constraint rankings which cause
the occurances of these processes

در این مقاله عملکردِ واکه‌های بسیط در شعر و عروض فارسی تشریح شده‌ است. نویسنده با بازاندیشی و استدلال در نمونه‌های شعر موزون فارسی نشان داده ‌است که اولاً تظاهرِ آوایی واکه‌های بسیط به‌لحاظ کیفی و کمّی در شعر فارسی دوازده است. ثانیاً هم‌چنان‌که در آواشناسی میان واج و واج‌گونه فرق قائل هستیم این مسأله در عروض هم دخالت دارد. سوم این‌که شناختِ این واکه‌های دوازده‌گانه و نحوة کارکردشان در عروض برای آموزشِ درستِ این دانش بسیار ضروری است. روش پژوهش در این مقاله توصیفی- تحلیلی است و با استفاده از نرم‌افزار PRAAT تفاوت واکه‌ها به‌طور دقیق نشان داده شده‌ است. نتایج کاربردیِ مقاله معرفی و رفع خطاهایی است که در آموزش این دانش رخ داده ‌است. این خطاها عبارتند از: ۱ و ۲- خطای تغییر کیفیّتِ واکه به جای تغییر کمیّت در خوانشِ شعر و در نتیجه توصیفِ اشتباهِ اوزان. ۳- کوتاه‌دانستنِ برخی واکه‌های بلند. ۴- خطای ساقط‌کردنِ برخی همخوان‌ها از تقطیع. ۵- شکلِ نادرستِ طرح‌های هجایی در کتاب‌های عروض.
کلیدواژه‌ها
واکه‌  واج‌گونه  اختیار شاعری  طرح هجایی  ضرورتِ وزنی
موضوعات
زبان شناسی تطبیقی
Abstract

In this article, the function of simple vowels in Persian poetry and prose is described. By rethinking examples of Persian poetry, the author has shown that firstly, the phonetic manifestation of vowels in Persian poetry is twelve. Secondly, it is necessary to involve phonemes and phonemes in prosody. Thirdly, knowing these twelve vowels and how they work in prosody is very necessary for the proper teaching of this knowledge. The research method in this article is descriptive-analytical, and using PRAAT software, the difference between vowels has been shown accurately. The practical results of the article are the introduction and correction of errors that occurred in the teaching of this knowledge.
Keywords

vowel  phoneme  poetic discretion  syllabic Pattern  prosodic necessity
Main Subjects

Comparative Linguistics

This paper draws a comparison, through semasiological and onomasiological methods, of three Modern Greek (MG) suffixes -in(os), -iatik(os) and -isi(os), which construct denominal adjectives of time and/or space. Following D. Corbin’s model (1987; 1991 and forthcoming) of Construction Morphology, an in depth analysis of these suffixes’ semantics will be presented. The results suggest that, in order to construct a denominal adjective following the relational Lexeme Construction Rule (LCRREL), a categorical, semantic and pragmatic compatibility are necessary between the base-noun and the suffix, as well as between the suffixed adjective and the noun of the noun phrase (NP); there are no synonyms even if the same noun is used as a base-noun. The three suffixes differ with respect to their semantic and pragmatic features; as a consequence, they are used in different genres. The data has been drawn from many dictionaries and especially from the Reverse Dictionary of Modern Greek (Anastass...

This paper draws a comparison, through semasiological and onomasiological methods, of three Modern Greek (MG) suffixes -in(os), -iatik(os) and -isi(os), which construct denominal adjectives of time and/or space. Following D. Corbin’s model (1987; 1991 and forthcoming) of Construction Morphology, an in depth analysis of these suffixes’ semantics will be presented. The results suggest that, in order to construct a denominal adjective following the relational Lexeme Construction Rule (LCRREL), a categorical, semantic and pragmatic compatibility are necessary between the base-noun and the suffix, as well as between the suffixed adjective and the noun of the noun phrase (NP); there are no synonyms even if the same noun is used as a base-noun. The three suffixes differ with respect to their semantic and pragmatic features; as a consequence, they are used in different genres. The data has been drawn from many dictionaries and especially from the Reverse Dictionary of Modern Greek (Anastass...

Стих устроен так, что при определенных условиях любые элементы звуковой цепи стиха могут быть актуализированы и восприняты как соположные и повторяемые. Вопрос в том, что в конкретных случаях выступает в качестве подсказок-актуализаторов повтора, сигналов его структурной значимости. По крайней мере, в том, без чего эта значимость никак не может реализоваться. В рамках предлагаемой силлабоцентрической модели звукового повтора необходимым условием его функциональной реализации представляется его «встроенность» в слоговой и просодический рельеф текста, требующая учета места повторяемого элемента во внутренней структуре слога, а также его места в сегментной и просодической структуре слова, стиха и фразы.
Слог – это и та арена, на которой делаются значимыми все звуковые изменения и повторения, и в то же время – естественная и простейшая единица повтора, неизменно ожидаемый, непрерывно воспроизводимый в своих универсальных свойствах сегмент, элементарная «стопа» всякой речи . Будучи уже по самой своей речевой природе «метричен», он становится материалом и отправным пунктом для всех дальнейших органических проявлений стиха.
Первое, что делает слоги основанием звукового ритма, игры сходств и различий, – это возникающий на разных участках стиха параллелизм структурно-слоговых контуров, или слоговая эквиритмия. Опираясь на эквиритмию, аллитерация, внутренняя рифма и другие виды внутристиховой эквифонии, наконец, рифма эпизодически или регулярно «достраивают» структурно-слоговой и просодический параллелизм сходным заполнением коррелятивных позиций, всегда сохраняя интригу в том, какие именно участки и позиции слоговой цепи и чем будут наполнены.

Languages with restrictions on syllable structure permit vowel epenthesis in order to satisfy Hausa is one of the major languages that have more first language speakers than any other language in Sub-Saharan Africa (Caron, 2013). It belongs to the Chadic branch of Afro Asiatic languages with about 50 million people speaking the language in Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon, Togo and Ghana (Caron, 2013). The majority of its speakers live in northern Nigeria and in the southern areas of the So, when there is occurrence of this phonological aberration (epenthesis) in the English of Hausa speakers, achieving international intelligibility may be hindered. And even if it does not hinder intelligibility to an extent, it may show lack of competence, maturity, and expertise in the use of English language. The occurrence of this aberration may make the English of a Hausa speaker to sound, rather, clumsy when compared to Standard British English (SBE).

Despite the apparent freedom to express our views, substantial extent of written and spoken texts of natural languages generally have consistencies for the pattern of its various components i.e. they tend to obey some simple regulations which can be, by analyzing the texts, transmogrified in the form of mathematical models and equations to put in a theoretical framework. Present paper is an attempt to present an account for the applications of different mathematical models employed for modeling the pattern of occurrence of diverse constitutional components of natural languages.

Japanese loanword adaptations show an asymmetry in the treatment of word-final [n] in words from French and English, respectively: while word-final [n] is adapted as a moraic nasal consonant in loanwords from English, it is adapted as a geminate nasal followed by an epenthetic vowel in loanwords from French. We provide evidence that this asymmetry originates in the way Japanese speakers perceive word-final [n] in French and English. Indeed, in a forced choice task with nonwords, Japanese listeners perceived an epenthetic vowel significantly more often in stimuli produced by French speakers than in stimuli produced by American English speakers. In the former, the final nasal consonant was longer and had a more important vocalic release than in the latter; the perception of an epenthetic vowel correlated with the length and intensity of the nasal consonant and its release, showing that listeners are sensitive to fine phonetic detail. We conclude, then, that the adaptation of word-final [n] in loanwords reflects phonetically minimal transformations that apply during speech perception.

We investigate the influence of orthography on loanword adaptations by means of an experiment in which late French-English bilinguals produce on-line adaptations of English non-words. In half of the experiment, the stimuli are presented orally only, whereas in the other half, the oral stimuli are accompanied by their written representation. The adaptations of eight English vowels are shown to be different according to whether the input is oral or mixed (i.e. oral + written). In particular, the adaptations based on the mixed input more often reflect the way French speakers are used to read English graphemes. These results thus confirm the sensitivity of loanword adaptations to the presence versus absence of a written representation. We conclude that in order to control for orthography, loanword adaptations are best studied in an experimental framework.

Most Artes grammaticae of late antiquity start with a 'phonetic complex' traditionally placed into chapters entitled De voce and De lit(t)eris. The content and terminology of the complex became an object of criticism among humanist scholars. In this paper, the complex will be briefly characterized and then the attitude of Julius Caesar Scaliger towards the term lit(t)era in De causis linguae Latinae will be presented. This contribution will describe in detail Petrus Ramus's definitions of the key terms of the complex and his classification of Latin speech sounds based on a dichotomic approach. In the context of Ramus's dichotomic model of the Latin sound inventory, two vernacular models of the sound inventory of a Slavic language will be analysed. The aim of the paper is to outline how Ramus's approach was adopted in the grammatical texts of a Slavic language: Nudožerinus's Grammaticae Bohemicae libri duo and Anonymous's De litteratura Slavorum germanissima. This research was inspired by the statement of G. A. Padley in Trends in Vernacular Grammar I concerning the small degree of mutual awareness among scholars working in the Latin and vernacular grammatical traditions. 1

In modern linguistics where natural spoken language has been the main, if not the sole, target of research inquiry, one area in which orthography becomes as yet at issue is phonology. This should be the case because (a) writing systems encode phonological structure, syllables in particular, as shown in Gnanadesikan (2011), accordingly (b) the orthographical knowledge of a language may merge into the knowledge of that spoken language, and finally (c) once the knowledge at the two levels merge in the language user's brain, it is hard to separate the two levels. Strictly speaking, then, it is not possible to retrieve phonological evidence for purely spoken language from members of orthography-rich communities. This paper nonetheless demonstrates that there are atypical occasions when orthography-free phonological evidence can be observed. Specifically, it reports on a remarkable performance in a Japanese word-reversing ludling (Latin ludus 'game' + lingua 'language'), which was demonstrated by an individual born with a genetic disorder called Williams syndrome. The paper contends that written evidence, of syllables in particular, may constitute evidence for their linguistic reality but only at the time of the orthography invention. Purely phonological evidence that is free of orthographic and prescriptive influences is vital and ideal in that it encodes and reveals far more dynamic phonological structures of the language.

A universal concerning the origin of syllabic consonants is proposed by Bell, 1978: 165. This says that ‘the syllabicity of syllabic consonants never arises spontaneously from a marginal consonant, as far as I can ascertain. The source of syllabicity is always a vowel’. Certain apparently contradictory data in English ([elm] &lt; elm) are adduced, but following Dobson, 1968, Bell (167) assumes an intermediate stage with shwa (eləm). There is evidence in Dobson that spellings with a vowel letter are indeed earlier than (for instance) Bullokar&#39;s capitalized consonant letters representing syllabic consonants. It seems to me, though, that we need to make a reservation about the assumption of the priority of svarabhakti over syllabization.

Stefania Chiapello, BA/MA in Modern Languages and Literatures at the University of Genova, MA in Japanese Studies at the Sophia University of Tokyo and Diploma of Advanced Studies in Translation Studies at the University of Alicante. She collaborates at the University of Alicante (Dept. Translation and Interpretation), and she teaches Italian as a Foreign Language at the University of Dhaka in Bangladesh. Her working languages are Spanish, English and Italian. Her research mainly focuses on contrastive analysis, TICs as an innovation on didactics, politeness in the political discourse and humanism. She participates in the following research groups: ORSA (actionresearch and new technologies in the collaborative teaching-learning at the

This article critically assesses the sociology curriculum prepared for an e-learning platform between 2012-2015 called e-PG Pathshala whose objective was to provide a new perspective to post graduate students learning sociology in India. This paper, written by authors who were associated with this project, examines its successes and failures in displacing Eurocentric and narrow nationalist assumptions framing of sociology in India and its substitution with an interdisciplinary approach that uses India as a site for comprehending the global 'social'. It also evaluates its success and failures in terms of the time and context when it was introduced: when India had entered the path towards neoliberalism and a regime change in favour of rightist populist Hindutva governance had occurred. This article discusses the various constraints it faced and the challenges it had to overcome in terms of institutional inertia, red tapeism, budget decreases and in attracting module writers to develop a reflexive and inclusive syllabus. It argues that in spite of these constraints, it was able to create a novel set of syllabi for sociology students which came into use when the universities closed down during Covid times. Today this e-learning space provides the much-needed opportunity to rethink and revise the sociology curriculum and syllabi in India.

Cette thèse est une étude du comportement spécifique des consonnes liquides en position coda à la fois du point de vue de la production et de la représentation phonologique. L’étude combine deux ensembles de résultats de la littérature dans le but d’expliquer pourquoi les liquides sont une classe de consonnes à part. D’un point de vue de la production, les consonnes liquides en position coda en anglais présentent des patrons d’organisation temporelle spécifiques à la position attaque. D’un point de vue de la représentation phonologique, il a été montré qu’en anglais, les intuitions des locuteurs natifs sur le nombre de syllabes de mots,traditionnellement monosyllabiques, comportant une voyelle longue suivie par une liquide,sont variables. Une description unifiée, de ces deux résultats, intégrant à la fois des données quantitatives et qualitatives est proposée. La proposition principale comporte deux aspects.Premièrement, je postule que les deux résultats, présentés séparément dans l...

To assess a phonological theory, we often compare its predictions to phonetic observations. This can be complicated, however, because it requires a theoretical model that maps from phonological representations to articulatory and acoustic observations. In this study we are concerned with the question of how phonetic observations are interpreted in relation to phonological theories. Specifically, we argue that deviations of observations from theoretical predictions do not necessitate the rejection of the theoretical assumptions. We critically discuss the problem of overinterpretation of phonetic measures by using syllable coordination for different speaker groups within Articulatory Phonology. It is shown that surface variation can be explained without necessitating substantial revision of the underlying phonological theory. These results are discussed with respect to two types of interpretational errors in the literature. The first involves the proliferation of phonological categori...

Cette thèse est une étude du comportement spécifique des consonnes liquides en position coda à la fois du point de vue de la production et de la représentation phonologique. L’étude combine deux ensembles de résultats de la littérature dans le but d’expliquer pourquoi les liquides sont une classe de consonnes à part. D’un point de vue de la production, les consonnes liquides en position coda en anglais présentent des patrons d’organisation temporelle spécifiques à la position attaque. D’un point de vue de la représentation phonologique, il a été montré qu’en anglais, les intuitions des locuteurs natifs sur le nombre de syllabes de mots,traditionnellement monosyllabiques, comportant une voyelle longue suivie par une liquide,sont variables. Une description unifiée, de ces deux résultats, intégrant à la fois des données quantitatives et qualitatives est proposée. La proposition principale comporte deux aspects.Premièrement, je postule que les deux résultats, présentés séparément dans l...

This paper studies word length in the Tatar language examining data of fiction texts (the sample includes examples of both prose and poetry). Word length is a stochastic phenomenon depending on a great number of factors, including language type, text organization, its addressee, etc.; however, there are internal linguistic laws governing parameters of word length and frequencies of words, and the issue comprises universal and language specific features. We found that ration of words of different length are dissimilar in individual texts, and the most common words are those composed of 5 phonemes and 2 syllables. We evaluated word length in Tatar texts and attempted to fit a model based on Poisson distribution (in particular, a model based on one-displaced Poissonuniform distribution was used), so description of empirical data was complemented with fitting theoretical values for word frequencies. Besides, Shannon&#39;s entropy of word lengths was evaluated, and a weak correlation bet...

The present study examined the nature of the metaphonological units that are used by Japanese native speakers who know both mora-based and phoneme-based writing systems. In three experiments, participants were asked to perform a reversal task. The results show that, in comparison to phonemes and syllables, moras are the most prominent units in spontaneous reversal. On the other hand, the participants were perfectly able to manipulate phonemes under request. Yet, detailed analysis of their phonemic reversals as well as introspective reports reveal that, when asked to reverse phonemes, most subjects used an interchange of written kana characters instead. While coherent with the notion that phonemes are not the major metaphonological units of Japanese, the use of such a strategy implies the ability to analyze CV kanas into their internal consonant-vowel constituents. Thus, whereas the nature of the first acquired writing system seems to exert a strong, pervasive influence on the native...

To assess a phonological theory, we often compare its predictions to phonetic observations. This can be complicated, however, because it requires a theoretical model that maps from phonological representations to articulatory and acoustic observations. In this study we are concerned with the question of how phonetic observations are interpreted in relation to phonological theories. Specifically, we argue that deviations of observations from theoretical predictions do not necessitate the rejection of the theoretical assumptions. We critically discuss the problem of overinterpretation of phonetic measures by using syllable coordination for different speaker groups within Articulatory Phonology. It is shown that surface variation can be explained without necessitating substantial revision of the underlying phonological theory. These results are discussed with respect to two types of interpretational errors in the literature. The first involves the proliferation of phonological categori...

This study investigated how non-native listeners learning Japanese as a second language represent within-word structure of Japanese spoken words, focusing on two kinds of phonological units, syllables and moras. Three groups of American subjects, whose experience with Japanese varied, were tested with an explicit segmentation task. The results showed that irrespective of learning experience, they preferred syllable-based representations. However. it was also found that there was a tendency for the learning cxpericnce to facilitate sensitivity to moras.

Chapter 2 of this book provides an overview of the previous experiments on rendaku, but no experimental details are provided in that chapter for the sake of readability. To complement Chapter 2, as a case study, this chapter reports a new experiment on rendaku in full detail. Recent experimental studies of rendaku identified a hitherto unnoticed factor that inhibits rendaku (Kawahara & Sano, 2014a,b): when rendaku results in adjacent identical CV moras, rendaku applicability is reduced (e.g., schematically, */iga+ganiro/ from /iga/+/kaniro/). However, these previous experiments have only tested the Identity Avoidance effects at the CV moraic level. The current study therefore tests whether Identity Avoidance at the consonantal level (i.e. *[C i ...C i ]) affects the applicability of rendaku. The current study shows that, although its effect is weaker than the moraic Identity Avoidance effect, Japanese speakers do avoid creating identical consonants in adjacent moras (e.g., schematically, */iga+gomoke/ from /iga/+/komoke/). The current study overall offers the following new understanding about Japanese phonology: (i) rendaku is subject to the consonantal Identity Avoidance effect, which is a new descriptive discovery, (ii) a restriction that is operative in many other languages is also operative in Japanese, revealing an intriguing cross-linguistic parallel, (iii) Identity Avoidance at different phonological levels can coexist within a single language, and (iv) the strength of the avoidance effect positively correlates with the degree of similarity.

Japanese shows an asymmetry in the treatment of word-final [n] in loanwords from English and French: while it is adapted as a moraic nasal consonant in loanwords from English, it is adapted with a following epenthetic vowel in loanwords from French. We provide experimental evidence that this asymmetry is due to phonetic differences in the realisation of word-final [n] in English and French, and, consequently, to the way in which English and French word-final [n] are perceived by native speakers of Japanese. Specifically, French but not English word-final [n] has a strong vocalic release that Japanese listeners perceive as their native vowel [ffl]. We propose a psycholinguistic model in which most loanword adaptations originate in perceptual assimilation, a process which takes place during perception and which maps non-native sounds and sound structures onto the phonetically closest native ones. We compare our model to alternatives couched within phonological theory. * Research for this article was funded by a doctoral grant from the French ministry of Foreign Affairs and by a grant from the Agence Nationale pour la Recherche (05-BLAN-0065-01). For comments and discussion we would like to thank participants at the 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, the Paris Workshop on Problems with Surface-Based Generalizations, the 12th Manchester Phonology Meeting, audiences at the

Japanese shows an asymmetry in the treatment of word-final [n] in loanwords from English and French: while it is adapted as a moraic nasal consonant in loanwords from English, it is adapted with a following epenthetic vowel in loanwords from French. We provide experimental evidence that this asymmetry is due to phonetic differences in the realisation of word-final [n] in English and French, and, consequently, to the way in which English and French word-final [n] are perceived by native speakers of Japanese. Specifically, French but not English word-final [n] has a strong vocalic release that Japanese listeners perceive as their native vowel [ɯ]. We propose a psycholinguistic model in which most loanword adaptations originate in perceptual assimilation, a process which takes place during perception and which maps non-native sounds and sound structures onto the phonetically closest native ones. We compare our model to alternatives couched within phonological theory.

This study investigates the phonological, semantic, and pragmatic features of acronyms in Arabic. Acronyms in Arabic have appeared quite recently as a result of globalization and exposure to or contact with, mainly, English via radio stations and TV channels, which are broadcasting in English and in some countries, for example, Morocco in both English and French. Through in-depth analysis, it has been observed that acronyms in Arabic are subject to different restrictions: (a) The phonological combinations are formed on the basis of Arabic templates; hence, should be compatible with Arabic phonotactics, for example, consonant clusters should be broken up by vowels; (b) the connotation of the acronyms should not be negative; and (c) in conformity with relevance theory, when the acronyms are homophonous to existing words, the former maximize contextual effects with minimum processing effort. The fact that they appear in certain contexts also reduces the processing effort. It has also b...

Recent work has provided evidence that syllables consist of schemes of organization expressed in terms of characteristic temporal coordination patterns. Word-initial clusters in languages like English show a stable pattern of timing associated with the onset consonants and the subsequent vowel whereby the vowel appears to be timed globally to the preceding consonantal cluster (the so-called C-Center effect, Browman & Goldstein 1988). English is a language which permits syllables with complex onsets; both "lay", "play" are monosyllables. The conjecture has therefore been put forward that the C-Center effect embodies the temporal basis of complex onsets (Browman & Goldstein 1988). In contrast, Shaw et al. (2009) show that for word-initial clusters in Moroccan Arabic (MA), the C-Center of the prevocalic consonantal cluster is perturbed as consonants are added, from CV to CCV to CCCV. MA thus exhibits a different 'local' timing pattern: it is the interval delimited by the immediately prevocalic C and the vowel which shows stability. This is a 'local' timing pattern because stability holds over the adjacent gestures of the CV string to the exclusion of extra consonants that may exist before the immediately prevocalic C. MA is also a language in which complex onsets are disallowed (Dell & Elmedlaoui 2002); in [kra] 'rent', [k] is in a different syllable from [ra]. Therefore, there appears to be a correspondence between syllable structure and temporal stability patterns. In MA, but not in English, since only the immediately prevocalic consonant is in the same syllable with the subsequent vowel, their timing relation should remain stable when another consonant is added, as shown by the data reported so far. However, both the MA and the English data heretofore concern word-initial clusters. If the timing patterns found in MA are characteristic of syllableinitial as opposed to word-initial clusters, then that same timing pattern should also be found for MA word-medial clusters, since in both word positions the syllabification is claimed to be the same. In our present work, we show that word-medial clusters do indeed show the same temporal properties as word-initial clusters. Herein, we report data from one MA speaker, recorded using Electromagnetic Articulography; we expect to report results from a second speaker by the time of the meeting. A subset of our stimuli, which included a wide variety of clusters so that we can robustly test for generality, are in Table 1. Following past work, we quantified the durations of the Left Edge (LE) to the acoustic offset of the Vowel (henceforth, V), the C-Center-to-V, and the Right Edge (RE)-to-V intervals across word-medial clusters of one (VCV), two (VCCV), and three C's (VCCCV). As in past work, the LE is the timestamp of the target achievement of the first consonant in a cluster, the C-Center is the mean of the midpoints of the plateaus of all consonants in a cluster, and the RE is the timestamp of the release of the final consonant in a cluster. Our results (Table 1) indicate that the RE-to-V interval shows the highest degree of

The article presents some evaluations of four aspects of word length in different languages and compares both models and data: distribution, smoothness, word length in sentence, word length in text. A general discussion of the theoretical background is offered. As is shown, even these four problems require great teams, in order to bring elementary concepts and decisions. The number of co-authors should not surprise: everybody did what (s)he could.

The article studies the relationship between adjectival and nominal adnominals (nouns in attributive function) in Russian prose fiction. The corpora include the works of six Russian female writers whose novels represent two different genres-literary fiction (belles-lettres fiction) and genre fiction (entertaining fiction). The results obtained demonstrate that all the authors follow similar implicit rules of setting the same relationship between the two classes of adnominals, irrespective of the genre and the period of the writers' creative activity. The Zipf-Alekseev function proved to fit well the distribution of distances between adjectival adnominals in the texts. The counts of distances between them corroborated Skinner's hypothesis.

Due to statistical analysis, the issue of random sampling is pertinent to any quantitative study. Unlike quantitative study, the elimination of inferential statistical analysis, allows qualitative researchers to be more creative in dealing with sampling issue. Since results from qualitative study cannot be generalized to the bigger population, qualitative researchers do not have to endure the strenuous randomization process of sampling procedure. However, qualitative researchers should not take sampling procedures too lightly, and if they do, it will affect the richness and the appropriateness of the data. The chances are, the data will not answer their research questions and this can frustrate the researchers when making meanings to the data. This paper will examine the available methods in sampling participants for qualitative study. Specifically, the paper will discuss the sampling frame suitable for case study, such as single-case (holistic and embedded), multi-case, and a snowball or network sampling procedure. Discussion will also involve challenges anticipated for each procedure.

This paper is concerned with the relation between syllabic organization and intersegmental spatiotemporal coordination using Electromagnetic Articulometry recordings from seven speakers of American English (henceforth, English). Whereas previous work on English has focused on word-initial clusters (preceding a vowel whose identity was not systematically varied), the present work examined word-medial clusters /pl, kl, sp, sk/ in the context of three different vowel heights (high, mid, low). Our results provide evidence for a global organization for the segments involved in these cluster-vowel combinations. This is reflected in a number of ways: compression of the prevocalic consonant and reduction of CV timing in the word-medial cluster case compared to its singleton paired word in both stop-lateral and s-stop clusters, early vowel initiation (as permitted by the clusters’ phonetic properties), and presence of compensatory relations between phonetic properties of different segments o...

One of the challenges of child language research is to identify the relevant factors that play a role in the acquisition course of a particular linguistic feature. This article analyzes the role of stress, word position, and word length in the acquisition of coda consonants by Catalan and Spanish children. The fact that the two languages differ substantially in their coda distribution (e.g., stressed word-final codas are more frequent in Catalan than in Spanish) will allow us to test the potential effects of coda distribution in the target language on early coda production. Sixteen Catalan-dominant and Spanish-dominant two-year-olds from the Barcelona area participated in two elicitation tasks with both novel and familiar words of different phonological shapes. Coda productions were assessed in stressed vs. unstressed syllables, in word-medial vs. word-final syllables, and in monosyllables vs. polysyllables. Results showed that the distributional difference between coda consonants in the two languages has crucial effects on the children's coda production. That is, Catalan-dominant children produce significantly more stressed word-final codas than Spanish-dominant children. This result lends support to the idea that when prominence is held equal, as in a controlled experiment, there are still crosslinguistic differences in coda production that are consistent with the frequency distribution of coda consonants in the respective languages, which means that children are very closely attuned to the frequency patterns of prosodic structure in the input language and are aware of their specific distributions across the lexicon.

The article presents some evaluations of four aspects of word length in different languages and compares both models and data: distribution, smoothness, word length in sentence, word length in text. A general discussion of the theoretical background is offered. As is shown, even these four problems require great teams, in order to bring elementary concepts and decisions. The number of co-authors should not surprise: everybody did what (s)he could.

In this paper, we discuss the phases through which Greek initialisms / acronyms are created. More specifically, we show that these abbreviated configurations take the forms of: (A) &quot;initialisms&quot;: objects of the written language; (B) &quot;acronyms&quot;: legitimate pronounceable objects; (C) &quot;meaningful&quot; objects: legitimate elements of the lexicon. In parallel, we touch on the graphetic, phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic processes which stimulate the development of these abbreviated forms. Finally, we cast light on other morphosyntactic and semantic phenomena involved in the creation of Greek initialisms/acronyms.

The present study reports the basic characteristics of a game-like application entitled “Playing with Words – PwW”. PwW is a single-user application where a word must be guessed given an anagram of that word. Anagrams are presented from a predefined word list and users can repeatedly try to guess the word, from which the anagram is derived, by placing (drag & drop) successively the given letters into the correct orthotactic order. Each effort is assessed as either correct or incorrect, while reaction and total time consumed are also recorded. The purpose of this game is both to entertain the user and to provide teachers with a simple computerized assessment tool. Summative evaluation results, based on 76 primary schoolchildren sample, indicate that the performance of anagram solving tasks explain a significant proportion of variance in reading fluency.

1 Abstract Japanese loanword adaptations show an asymmetry in the treatment of word-final (n) in words from French and English, respectively: while word-final (n) is adapted as a moraic nasal consonant in loanwords from English, it is adapted as a geminate nasal followed by an epenthetic vowel in loanwords from French. We provide evidence that this asymmetry originates in the

Loanword adaptations are traditionally analyzed as phonologically minimal changes that are computed by the production grammar of the borrowing language. Several authors, however, have proposed that some loanword adaptations take place in perception and are based on phonetic distance (Silverman 1992, Yip 1993, Kenstowicz 2001, Kenstowicz 2003, Kang 2003). Based on experimental evidence concerning the perception of non-native contrasts, Peperkamp and Dupoux (2003) argued that all loanword adaptations result from perceptual assimilation and are based on the phonetic closeness of the surface form of a foreign word to the surface form of possible native words. W adopt the position of Peperkamp & Dupoux (2003) and examine a possible confounding factor. That is, the impact of perception might be obscured by the role of orthography. In fact, a great deal of loanword adaptations are arguably based on written input, and often some standardization has taken place as to how the L2 graphemes are...

Menzerath’s law is a quantitative linguistic law which states that, on average, the longer is a linguistic construct, the shorter are its constituents. In contrast, Menzerath-Altmann’s law (MAL) is a precise mathematical power-law-exponential formula which expresses the expected length of the linguistic construct conditioned on the number of its constituents. In this paper, we investigate the anatomy of MAL for constructs being word tokens and constituents being syllables, measuring its length in graphemes. First, we derive the exact form of MAL for texts generated by the memoryless source with three emitted symbols, which can be interpreted as a monkey typing model or a null model. We show that this null model complies with Menzerath’s law, revealing that Menzerath’s law itself can hardly be a criterion of complexity in communication. This observation does not apply to the more precise Menzerath-Altmann’s law, which predicts an inverted regime for sufficiently range constructs, i.e...

Menzerath’s law is a quantitative linguistic law which states that, on average, the longer is a linguistic construct, the shorter are its constituents. In contrast, Menzerath-Altmann’s law (MAL) is a precise mathematical power-law-exponential formula which expresses the expected length of the linguistic construct conditioned on the number of its constituents. In this paper, we investigate the anatomy of MAL for constructs being word tokens and constituents being syllables, measuring its length in graphemes. First, we derive the exact form of MAL for texts generated by the memoryless source with three emitted symbols, which can be interpreted as a monkey typing model or a null model. We show that this null model complies with Menzerath’s law, revealing that Menzerath’s law itself can hardly be a criterion of complexity in communication. This observation does not apply to the more precise Menzerath-Altmann’s law, which predicts an inverted regime for sufficiently range constructs, i.e...