Phonological Oppositions of Unstressed Vowels in The Uzbek Language

The research deals with the simple classification of phonological oppositions in relation to the unstressed vowels and also, the complex classification of phonological oppositions concerning both the stressed and unstressed vowels in the Uzbek language. The purpose of this study is to explore the extent of forming phonological oppositions of Uzbek vowel phonemes in the unstressed position and to classify the identified phonological oppositions. While carrying out of this study, a comparative method was used to compare vowel phonemes with each other, and a descriptive method was used to express their specific features. In the study, simple and complex classifications of phonological oppositions of Uzbek unstressed vowels have been developed. The study concludes that the phonological oppositions of vowels do not lose their significance in the unstressed positions and according to the simple classification, the unstressed vowels have 9 oppositions whose members are differentiated by one phonological feature, and 6 oppositions whose members are differentiated by two phonological features and according to the complex classification, unidimensional, pluridimensional, proportional, privative, gradual, equipolent and constant oppositions of unstressed vowels exist in modern Uzbek.

The emergence of a new phonological feature in Pakistan English

English is used as a lingua franca in most parts of the world (Ozaki, 2011). However, problems and issues related to learning English are country specific (Nagamine, 2011), because most of the difficulties in foreign language learning arise from L1 interference (Flege, 1995). Since this study focuses on acoustic analysis of a phonological feature of Pakistan English (PakE), we outline the historical background of the issue very briefly. Pakistan is a linguistically rich country. More than 70 languages are spoken in Pakistan (Rahman, 1996). Saraiki, Balochi, Sindhi, Punjabi and Pashto are the major indigenous languages of the country. More than 90% of the total population speaks these languages. Pakistan came into being in 1947. It inherited English as a language of education, law, the judiciary and media from the British colonial masters. The British rulers also used the English language in India for official correspondence. Therefore, English became a very effective tool and symbol of power in the subcontinent. As a result, people of the subcontinent feel pride in learning English. Although the colonial period has ended and the English rulers have departed to their homeland, English still remains the language of ruling elite in Pakistan and India.

On the interaction of phonetic parameters implementing the voiced / voiceless phonological opposition in Standard Modern Russian

The paper reports new data obtained in the experimental study of voice coarticulation of voiced and voiceless obstruents adjacent to sonorant depending on the place and manner of articulation of these consonants in Standard Modern Russian. The experimental results revealed the voice coarticulation of the obstruent in word-internal clusters of [sonorant + obstruent + sonorant] coronal consonants, possibly due to the preceding homorganic nasal consonant. In the case of sonorants [nasal + voiceless stop + vibrant] that are not identical in place and manner of articulation, the closure part of the dental stop becomes voiced throughout, with this phonation type accommodation not leading, nevertheless, to the voiced / voiceless phoneme neutralization since the contrast in question is still maintained by phonetic parameters other than voice (phonation itself). These are closure duration, burst duration, and relative overall intensity. On the contrary, in the case of dental sonorants [nasal + voiceless stop + nasal] being identical in place and manner of articulation, the contrast in burst duration is eliminated since no burst of dental stop is found in the position before homorganic nasal, with the closure part of the stop not acquiring voicing to prevent the voiced / voiceless phoneme neutralization. In conclusion, it is argued that in Standard Modern Russian, the phonetic parameter [relative overall intensity] is less significant in the hierarchical structure of distinctive phonological feature than [closure voicing] and [burst duration] ones since it cannot serve as the only parameter distinguishing the voiced and voiceless obstruents in the intersonorant position.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF A REGIONAL PHONOLOGICAL FEATURE DURING A SEMESTER ABROAD IN ARGENTINA

Although recent research suggests that gains are made in the acquisition of dialectal features during study abroad, the few studies that have been conducted on this topic in Spanish-speaking contexts have focused primarily on features characteristic of Spain. This article examines the L2 acquisition of phonological features characteristic of Buenos Aires Spanish, [ʃ] and [ʒ], known as sheísmo/zheísmo, for example the pronunciation of llave [ʝaβe] “key” as [ʃaβe] or [ʒaβe]. Participants include 23 learners of Spanish studying in Buenos Aires, Argentina. More than 4,800 tokens were gathered before, during, and at the end of the semester using sociolinguistic interviews, a reading passage, and a word list. These data were analyzed for the influence of linguistic and social factors using mixed-effects logistic regression (Rbrul; Johnson, 2009). Results suggest that participants approximate nativelike norms of use of these features and that time in country is a statistically significant predictor of patterns of phonological variation.

Vowel harmony decay in Old Norwegian

Vowel harmony involves the systematic correspondence between vowels in some domain for some phonological feature. Though harmony represents one of the most natural and diachronically robust phonological phenomena that occurs in human language, how and why harmony systems emerge and decay over time remains unclear. Specifically, what motivates harmony decay and the pathways by which harmony languages lose harmony remains poorly understood since no consistent historical record in any single language has yet been identified which displays the full progression of this rare sound change (McCollum 2015, 2020; Kavitskaya 2013, Bobaljik 2018). In this paper, I explore the progression and causation of vowel harmony decay in Old Norwegian (c 1100–1350). Using a grapho‐phonologically tagged database of a sample of 13th‐ to 14th‐century manuscripts, I present novel corpus methods for tracking and visualising changes to vowel co‐occurrence patterns in historical records, demonstrating that the Old Norwegian corpus provides a consistent and coherent record of harmony decay. The corpus distinguishes categorical pre‐decay harmony, probabilistic intermediate stages, and post‐decay non‐harmony. Across the Old Norwegian manuscripts, we observe a variety of pathways of harmony decay, including increasing harmony variability via the collapse of harmony classes introduced by vowel mergers, the lexicalisation of historically harmonising morphemes, and trisyllabic vowel reductions which limit harmony iterativity. This paper provides the first detailed corpus study of the full spectrum and causation of this rare sound change in progress and provides valuable empirical diagnostics for identifying and analysing harmony change in contemporary languages.

Modeling Vowel Quantity Scales in Q Theory

A growing body of research suggests that vowels vary in degree of strength. These strength differences are borne out in the degree to which these segments undergo or trigger phonological processes such as stress assignment or harmony. Traditionally, this variability has been accounted for through binary differences in phonological representations, such as presence or absence of a segment in the underlying representation, presence or absence of a phonological feature, and moraicity or non-moraicity of the relevant segment. While distinctions in underlying status and moraic structure are an effective tool for capturing some of the observed differences in vowel strength, they do not capture all attested differences. In this paper, we offer evidence supporting a four-point strength scale to which faithfulness and markedness constraints can refer. This model allows for strength differences among underlying and inserted vowels, and within monomoraic and bimoraic vowels as well, subject to scalar implications. We argue that Q-Theoretic representations offer the necessary representational tool to capture the full range of vowel strength.

Phonological rule spreading across hostile lines: (TH)-fronting in Philadelphia

This article examines the transfer of (TH)-fronting, a phonological feature of African American English, into the speech of white speakers from South Philadelphia. While most cases of linguistic diffusion, particularly of African American English, are found in speakers with a positive affiliation with the source dialect (e.g., Bucholtz, 1999; Cutler, 1999; Fix, 2010), here the white adopters of (TH)-fronting exhibit overtly hostile attitudes toward black neighbors. I argue that (TH)-fronting has been adopted as an index of street or masculinity by the white speakers in this study. Furthermore, I demonstrate that the phonological constraints on borrowed (TH)-fronting have been restricted and simplified from the constraints in the source dialect. Finally, I discuss how hostile interactions may play a role in language change, allowing change in dialects not only to proceed in tandem across unexpected boundaries (e.g., Milroy & Milroy, 1985), but also to be directly diffused across hostile boundaries.

Lip spreading, not lip rounding

The article is devoted to the issue of detecting classificatory features of phonemes. Unlike phonetic characteristics of phoneme realisations, which are explored instrumentally, phonological features should be discovered by means of functional analysis. Due to their role as exponents of meaningful units, phonemes are grouped according to their morphophonological behaviour. Here, detecting phonological features is illustrated by the analysis of the vocalic systems of Russian, Latvian and Finnish. The ‘lip rounding’ feature traditionally used in descriptions of these languages has no functional grounds and should be considered as an incorrect substitution of an articulatory characteristic for a phonological feature. However, apart from ‘height’ and ‘backness’, another feature should be postulated. For this feature the articulatory-based term ‘lip spreading’ is proposed. In Russian, the spread vowels /e/, /i/, /ɨ/ are distinguished due to their sensibility (primarily in morphophonological alternations) to the correlative feature of softness-hardness of the preceding consonant. Non-spread vowels /a/, /o/, /u/ are indifferent to the softness-hardness of the preceding consonant. Thus, /a/ is grouped not with /e/, /i/, /ɨ/ (as non-rounded in traditional models), but with /o/ and /u/ (no separate group of these two “rounded” phonemes, /o/ and /u/, exists). In Latvian, the spread phonemes /i/, /e/, /i:/, /e:/, /i͡e/ determine the choice of the closed vowels /e/ and /ē/ (instead of open /æ/ and /æ:/) in the preceding syllable. It is worthwhile to differentiate front vowels (according to lip spreading), not the back ones (according to lip rounding). In Finnish, the distinguishing of spread /i/ and /e/ is based on their relation with the fundamental peculiarity of the exponent of a word form, vowel harmony. These phonemes themselves do not participate in harmony alternation and they determine front vocalism of affixes only when other, non-spread phonemes are lacking.

Is there phonological feature priming?

While there is robust evidence of segment priming, particularly in some real word contexts, there is little to no evidence bearing on the issue of priming of subsegmental features, particularly phonological features. In this article, we present two lexical decision task experiments to show that there are no consistent priming effects attributable to phonological place of articulation features. Given that there is clear evidence of segment priming, but no clear evidence of priming due to other phonological representations, we suggest that it is doubtful that priming is a good tool to study phonological representations, particularly those that are not consciously accessible.