Priming Maltese plurals

We investigate the storage and processing of sound and broken plural forms in the Maltese lexicon by means of a cross-modal priming study. The results show no significant differences in reaction time between sound and broken plurals, but indicate a different priming effect for sound than for broken plurals. We argue that the different priming effect is a result of the phonological overlap between sound singulars and their corresponding plurals forms, while broken singulars and their plurals do not share the same phonological structure. Our results support a single-mechanism model of morphological processing in which both frequency of pattern and morphophonological similarity interact.

Formal variation in the Kata Kolok lexicon

Sign language lexicons incorporate phonological specifications. Evidence from emerging sign languages suggests that phonological structure emerges gradually in a new language. In this study, we investigate variation in the form of signs across 20 deaf adult signers of Kata Kolok, a sign language that emerged spontaneously in a Balinese village community. Combining methods previously used for sign comparisons, we introduce a new numeric measure of variation. Our nuanced yet comprehensive approach to form variation integrates three levels (iconic motivation, surface realisation, feature differences) and allows for refinement through weighting the variation score by token and signer frequency. We demonstrate that variation in the form of signs appears in different degrees at different levels. Token frequency in a given dataset greatly affects how much variation can surface, suggesting caution in interpreting previous findings. Different sign variants have different scopes of use among the signing population, with some more widely used than others. Both frequency weightings (token and signer) identify dominant sign variants, i.e., sign forms that are produced frequently or by many signers. We argue that variation does not equal the absence of conventionalisation. Indeed, especially in micro-community sign languages, variation may be key to understanding patterns of language emergence.

The sound of gender – correlations of name phonology and gender across languages

Our article is dedicated to the relation of a given name’s phonological structure and the gender of the referent. Phonology has been shown to play an important role with regard to gender marking on a name in some (Germanic) languages. For example, studies on English and on German have shown in detail that female and male names have significantly different phonological structures. However, little is known whether these phonological patterns are valid beyond (closely related) individual languages. This study, therefore, sets out to assess the relation of gender and the phonological structures of names across different languages/cultures. In order to do so, we analyzed a sample of popular given names from 13 countries. Our results indicate that there are both language/culture-overarching similarities between names used for people of the same gender and language/culture-specific correlations. Finally, our results are interpreted against the backdrop of conventional and synesthetic sound symbolism.

The Phonology of Compounds

A number of recent developments in phonological theory, beginning with The Sound Pattern of English, are particularly relevant to the phonology of compounds. They address both the phonological phenomena that apply to compound words and the phonological structures that are required as the domains of these phenomena: segmental and nonsegmental phenomena that operate within each member of a compound separately, as well as at the juncture between the members of compounds and throughout compounds as a whole. In all cases, what is crucial for the operation of the phonological phenomena of compounds is phonological structure, in terms of constituents of the Prosodic Hierarchy, as opposed to morphosyntactic structure. Specifically, only two phonological constituents are required, the Phonological Word, which provides the domain for phenomena that apply to the individual members of compounds and at their junctures, and a larger constituent that groups the members of compounds together. The nature of the latter is somewhat controversial, the main issue being whether or not there is a constituent in the Prosodic Hierarchy between the Phonological Word and the Phonological Phrase. When present, this constituent, the Composite Group (revised from the original Clitic Group), includes the members of compounds, as well as “stray” elements such as clitics and “Level 2” affixes. In its absence, compounds, and often the same “stray” elements, are analyzed as a type of Recursive Phonological Word, although crucially, the combinations of such element do not exhibit the same properties as the basic Phonological Word.

Music to Your Ears

Listeners usually have no difficulties telling the difference between speech and song. Yet when a spoken phrase is repeated several times, they often report a perceptual transformation that turns speech into song. There is a great deal of variability in the perception of the speech-to-song illusion (STS). It may result partly from linguistic properties of spoken phrases and be partly due to the individual processing difference of listeners exposed to STS. To date, existing evidence is insufficient to predict who is most likely to experience the transformation, and which sentences may be more conducive to the transformation once spoken repeatedly. The present study investigates these questions with French and English listeners, testing the hypothesis that the transformation is achieved by means of functional re-evaluation of phrasal prosody during repetition. Such prosodic re-analysis places demands on the phonological structure of sentences and language proficiency of listeners. Two experiments show that STS is facilitated in high-sonority sentences and in listeners’ non-native languages and support the hypothesis that STS involves a switch between musical and linguistic perception modes.

Connecting Structure and Variation in Sound Change

“Structured heterogeneity”, a founding concept of variationist sociolinguistics, puts focus on the ordered social differentiation in language. We extend the notion of structured heterogeneity to formal phonological structure, i.e., representations based on contrasts, with implications for phonetic implementation. Phonology establishes parameters for what varies and how. Patterns of stability and variability with respect to a given feature’s relationship to representations allow us to ground variationist analysis in a framework that makes predictions about potential sound changes: more structure correlates to more stability; less structure corresponds to more variability. However, even though all change requires variability, not all variability leads to change. Two case studies illustrate this asymmetry, keeping a focus on phonetic change with phonological stability. First, Germanic rhotics (r-sounds) from prehistory to the present day are minimally specified. They show tremendous phonetic variability and change but phonological stability. Second, laryngeal contrasts (voicing or aspiration) vary and change in language contact. We track the accumulation of phonetic change in unspecified members of pairs of the type spelled <s> ≠ <z>, etc. This analysis makes predictions about the regularity of sound change, situating regularity in phonology and irregularity in phonetics and the lexicon. Structured heterogeneity involves the variation inherent within the system for various levels of phonetic and phonological representation. Phonological change, then, is about acquiring or learning different abstract representations based on heterogeneous and variable input.

The role of metre in creating phonological parallelism in Azerbaijan and English

The article deals with the role of metre in forming linguopoetic features of parallelism in the Azerbaijan and English languages. Phonological parallelism plays a crucial role in forming of linguopoetic features of parallelism. Being the basic rhythmic structure of a verse or lines in verse metre is one of the main ways of forming phonological parallelism in both languages. In the research of metre literary texts have been considered by linguistic scholars of both languages and in these texts the most common types of metres and their frequency of use have widely been investigated. In both languages approaches to the issue of metre are quite various and thereby we observe the possibilities of different linguopoetic features in poetic samples of stated languages. In the literary texts of both languages we witness that metre is one of the main requirements of determining prosodic- phonological structure of poems. Key words: phonological parallelism, metre, linguopoetic properties, poetry, language

Prosody and morphology

This text describes the lower units of the prosodic hierarchy (syllables, moraes and feet) to illustrate how these constituents are used by a branch of Morphology called Prosodic Morphology (McCarthy & Prince, 1986 et seq.). It seeks to present the theoretical principles of this type of approach, as well as the advantages of incorporating aspects of the prosodic structure into the morphological description. This paper focuses mainly on a variety of ways in which morphological systems can use this type of phonological structure and it shows the relevance of syllables, moraes and feet in the description of inflexion and word formation processes in natural languages. Finally, it shows that some Portuguese phenomena, such as clipping ('biju' for „bijuteria‟, “imitation jewelry”; „refri‟ for „refrigerante, “soft drink”) and reduplication ('chororô', “excessive crying”) can be satisfactorily described by this model. The idea of the paper is to show that the prosodymorphology "partnership" worked well, managing to solve a series of problems that had hitherto been unanswered or badly solved in morphological literature.

Phonological Structure of Borrowed Words in the Karakalpak Language

This article examines the phonological changes in morphemes of borrowings of the Karakalpak language. Study shows of the process of penetration of elements of one language into another. Researchers examined some works and prove that the facts about the transformation of foreign language elements exit in Karakalpak.