Adjacent Consonants and the Universality of Sonority Sequencing Principle in Dotyali Dialects: Syllable Contact Analysis

This paper presents on all the possible adjacent consonant letters in Dotyali, one of the descendant language of Sanskrit, mainly spoken in Shudoor Paschim Nepal [sʊdʊrə-pəssɪmə] (Far-western) and compares the results of their phonological changes in seven local contemporary speech (dialects)：Doteli，Dadeldhuri，Bajhangi，Achhami，Baitadeli，Darchuli and Bajureli. Based on the corpus data from the field survey conducted in between July-September 2017 on a list of 1000 frequently used Dotyali words, this paper comes with a conclusion that even the onset clusters with rising sonority profile (except glides) are broken up by vowel epenthesis or simplify the clusters by deletion. It is revealed that dialects, except from the Achhami and Bajureli, the consonants with different degree of sonority across the syllable boundary tend to be changed due to syllable contact to meet Sonority hierchy, but the sonority distance between two consonants (coda and onset consonants) varies, therefore phonological changes like assimilation, dissimilation, desonorization, contact anaptyxis, contact methasis etc. goes differently. The phonological changes in Bajureli occurs maily due to other separate independent constraints.

Contact-induced variation in Tetun Dili phonology

The paper analyzes the Portuguese influence on Tetun Dili phonology, which can be can be identified at different levels. The phonemic inventory of Tetun Dili has been enriched via borrowing of several consonantal phonemes, triggering an increase in the number of phonological contrasts. Portuguese influence also accounts for the phonetic realizations of a number of consonantal and vocalic phonemes, with some allophonic rules extended even to words belonging to the native stock. Furthermore, the massive influx of Portuguese loanwords has greatly increased the number of permissible onset clusters, and lexical borrowings from Portuguese have led to the occurrence of antepenultimate stress. Finally, Portuguese influence also accounts for the considerable inter-speaker variation. These contact-induced phenomena are shown to correlate with the following factors: knowledge of Portuguese; the exo-normative vs endo-normative orientation of speakers in the case of Portuguese, i.e. towards European or Brazilian Portuguese vs. the East Timorese variety of Portuguese.

On the Gradient Lenition of Spanish Voiced Obstruents: A Look at Onset Clusters

Spanish voiced obstruents are traditionally described as having a stop allophone [b, d, g] and a lenited allophone [β, ð, ɣ]. Despite this binary classification, acoustic data has shown that this variation is continuous or gradient depending on the preceding linguistic context. The goal of this paper is to investigate how the following linguistic context affects the degree of Spanish voiced obstruent lenition. Specifically, this paper reports an acoustic investigation of Spanish voiced obstruent lenition in onset cluster contexts. Nine native Spanish speakers were recorded reading Spanish-like nonce words that included a singleton voiced obstruent or an onset cluster consisting of a voiced obstruent plus [ɾ] or [l]. The relative intensity and the duration of these segments were measured and compared with linear mixed-effects regressions. In line with past work, the results show that the voiced obstruents are the most lenited in intervocalic contexts. However, Spanish voiced obstruents are significantly less lenited when followed by [ɾ] in a complex onset; when followed by [l] in a complex onset, the degree of lenition is much more variable. These results provide further support for the gradient lenition of Spanish voiced obstruents, rather than a dichotomous distribution of stops versus lenited variants.

Labial softening

This chapter is about the palatalization and assibilation of labial and nasal stops, and of labiodental fricatives. Based on several diachronic pathways, it presents the hypothesis that labial softening is achived through glide fricativization or occlusivization, depending on the language or dialect taken into consideration. A special analysis is performed of labial palatalization and assibilation in the Bantu languages, Romanian dialects, and /Cl/ onset clusters in Romance, where those changes may have taken place once the alveolar lateral shifted to a palatal approximant. In so far as two independent articulators, i.e., lips and tongue, are involved in the production of the labial and labiodental sequences of interest, their diachronic development turns out to be far more complex than the palatalization and softening of velar and dentoalveolar obstruents.

Exceptionality in Spanish Onset Clusters

Spanish complex onsets have been traditionally described as consisting of a stop (/p, t, k, b, d, g/) or the fricative /f/ plus a liquid. Given that all Spanish varieties have other fricatives (/x, s/), the obstruents that can form part of an onset cluster do not straightforwardly compose a natural class. As such, past studies have argued that /f/ is exceptional in its ability as a fricative to pattern with stops in onset clusters. This paper presents empirical data from a nonce word judgment task that challenges this claim and shows that Spanish listeners rate unattested /xr/ clusters as more acceptable than ungrammatical /sr/ clusters. These results suggest that /s/, and not /f/, is exceptional in its inability to form complex onsets in Spanish. As /s/ is the sole sibilant in the Spanish consonant inventory and is uniquely characterized by the feature [strident], this generalization is easily capturable in an Optimality Theory framework. This analysis further predicts that other non-sibilant fricatives should also be acceptable in onset cluster position, such as /θ/, which is supported by data from a follow-up study with speakers of Peninsular Spanish who have this phoneme in their dialect. This analysis also predicts that other sibilants should be unacceptable in onset clusters. This is supported by data from the related languages Portuguese and Catalan that have other sibilant phonemes (/z, ʃ, ʒ/)yet also have similar onset cluster phonotactics as Spanish in that they disallow all sibilants from being in an onset cluster.

A VOGAL DE APOIO EM POSIÇÃO INICIAL EM CLUSTERS /SC/ POR APRENDIZES DE INGLÊS COMO L2

Este estudo descreve e analisa o processo variável da vogal epentética em palavras na língua inglesa iniciadas por clusters por aprendizes brasileiros de inglês como segunda língua (L2). O objetivo dessa pesquisa é, então, identificar a frequência de inserção da vogal de apoio na posição inicial das palavras em língua inglesa que se iniciam com um dos seguintes clusters: /sp/, /st/, /sk/, /sl/, /sm/, e /sn/. O corpus deste estudo é constituído por 18 informantes paraibanos, aprendizes de inglês como L2, estratificados nos níveis básico, intermediário e avançado de proficiência. Os dados mostram que as variáveis sonoridade do encontro consonantal, nível de proficiência, instrução explícita na L2 e contexto precedente foram as mais relevantes à realização do fenômeno. REFERÊNCIASALLAN, D. Oxford placement test 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.ALVES, U. K. O que é consciência fonológica. IN: LAMPRECHT et. al. Consciência dos sons da língua: subsídios teóricos e práticos para alfabetizadores, fonoaudiólogos e professores de língua inglesa. 2 ed. Porto Alegre: EDIPUCRS, 2012, p. 29-41.BOUDAOUD, M.; CARDOSO, W. Vocalic [e] epenthesis and variation in Farsi-English interlanguage speech. Concordia Working Papers in Applied Linguistics, 2, 2009.CARDOSO, W. The variable development of English word-final stops by Brazilian Portuguese speakers:A stochastic optimality theoretic account. Language variation and change, v.19, 2007, p. 1-30.______, W. The Development of sC Onset Clusters in interlanguage: markedness vs. frequency effects. Proceedings of the 9th Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition Conference, (GASLA 2007), ed. Roumyana Slabakova et al., 15-29. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project, 2008.CARLISLE, R. The effects of markedness on epenthesis in Spanish/English interlanguage phonology. Issues and Developments in English and Applied Linguistics, 3, 1988, 15-23._______, R.S. The Influence of Environment on Vowel Epenthesis in Spanish/English Interphonology. Applied linguistics, v.12, n.1, 1991, p. 76-95._______, R. Environment and markedness as interacting constraints on vowel epenthesis. In:_______ J. Leather; JAMES, A (Eds.), New sounds 92 (p. 64–75). Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press, 1992._______, R. S. Markedness and environment as internal constraints in the variability of interlanguage phonology. In:_____. M. Yavas (ed.) First and Second Language Phonology. San Diego: Singular Publishing Company, 1994 p. 223-249.______, R. The modification of onsets in a markedness relationship: Testing the interlanguage structural conformity hypothesis. Language learning, v.47, 1997, p. 327-361.______, R. The acquisition of onsets in a markedness relationship. A longitudinal study. Studies in second language acquisition. 20, 1998, 245–260.COLLISCHONN, G. Um estudo da epêntese à luz da teoria da sílaba de Junko Ito (1986). Letras de hoje, Porto Alegre: v. 31, n.2, 1996, p. 149-158.CORNELIAN JR, D. Brazilian learners’ production of initial /s/ clusters: Phonological structure and environment. New Sounds 2007: Proceedings of the Fifth International Symposium on the Acquisition of Second Language Speech, 2007.DUBOIS, J. et al. Dicionário de lingüística. São Paulo: Cultrix, 2006.ESCARTÍN, C. I. The development of sC onset clusters in Spanish English. Tese – Concordia University, Canadá, 2005.GASS, S.; SELINKER, L. (eds). Language transfer in language vs learning. Newbury House, Rowley, Massachusetts, 2008.LABOV, W. Padrões sociolinguísticos. Tradução de Marcos Bagno; Mª Marta Pereira Scherre e Caroline Rodrigues Cardoso. São Paulo: Parábola Editorial, (1972) 2008.LUCENA, R. M; ALVES, F. C. Análise Variacionista da Aquisição do /p/ em Coda Silábica por Aprendizes de Inglês Como LE. Revista Intertexto. v. 5, n. 2, 2012.PEREYRON, L. Epêntese vocálica em encontros consonantais mediais por falantes porto-alegrenses de inglês como língua estrangeira. Dissertação (Mestrado) – Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre: 2008.RAUBER, A. S. The production of English initial /s/ clusters by Portuguese and Spanish EFL speakers. Unpublished Master's thesis, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, SC: Brazil, 2002.RAUBER S.; BAPTISTA. The production of English initial /s/ clusters by Portuguese and Spanish EFL speakers. Rev. Est. Ling. Belo Horizonte: v. 12, n. 2, 2004, p. 459-473.REBELLO, J. T. The acquisition of English initial /s/ clusters by Brazilian EFL learners. Florianópolis: UFSC, 1997.SANKOFF, D.; TAGLIAMONTE, S.; SMITH, E. GoldVarb X: a variable rule application for Macintosh and Windows. Department of Linguistics. University of Toronto, 2005.SELINKER, L. Rediscovering interlanguage. New York: Longman, 1972.SILVA. T. C. Dicionário de fonética e fonologia. São Paulo: Contexto, 2011. Recebido em 30-10-2018.Aceito em 22-02-2019.