EXPRESS: Phonological encoding in Vietnamese: an experimental investigation

In English, Dutch, and other Germanic languages the initial phonological unit used in word production has been shown to be the phoneme; conversely, others have revealed that in Chinese this is the atonal syllable and in Japanese the mora. The current paper is, to our knowledge, the first to report chronometric data on Vietnamese phonological encoding. Vietnamese, a tonal language, is of interest as, despite its Austroasiatic roots, it has clear similarities with Chinese through extended contact over a prolonged period. Four experiments (i.e., masked priming, phonological Stroop, picture naming with written distractors, picture naming with auditory distractors) have been conducted to investigate Vietnamese phonological encoding. Results show that in all four experiments both onset effects as well as whole syllable effects emerge. This indicates that the fundamental phonological encoding unit during Vietnamese language production is the phoneme despite its apparent similarities to Chinese. This result might have emerged due to tone assignment being a qualitatively different process in Vietnamese compared to Chinese.

Functional and parametric mapping of the semantics of phraseological units in intercultural space

The research objective in the proposed work circles around the semantic of the French phraseological units in the light of the functional-parametric description. In particular, it identifies the new motivational characteristics of the national language, as well as the linguistic and cultural commentary of phraseological units and the principles of correlating the semantic basics of different systems and sentences based on figurative sense and locutions in the French language. The study aims to develop a new model of functional cartographic and parametric cartography of the phraseological units in the interlingual and intercultural space and to present a methodology for the development of the phonological unit.

Foundations of early literacy among Arabic-speaking pre-school children

The present study aimed to shed light on (i) the most accessible phonological unit and (ii) the nature of letter knowledge among native Arabic-speaking preschool children living in Israel. One hundred and sixty-seven children were assessed on phonological awareness with initial and final isolation tasks as well as knowledge of the standard names and sounds of Arabic letters. Children’s responses in these tasks were categorized in accordance with the phonological unit that the child supplied. Regarding phonological unit accessibility, the novel finding of this study was the prevalence of a tri-phonemic /ʔεC/ unit that begins with the prefix /ʔε-/ and ends with the target (consonantal) phoneme which we have termed the “demi-phoneme” (e.g., /ʔεs/ for the consonant /s/). Awareness of the consonant–vowel unit was the next most prevalent unit followed lastly by the “smallest unit” – the phoneme. It appears that the demi-phoneme functions as a psycholinguistic aid to facilitate phoneme perception and pronunciation (as proposed by the 8th-century scholar – Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi) and both phoneme and demi-phoneme responses are underpinned by the same knowledge. With regard to letter knowledge, the standard name for Arabic letters was the preferred response and letter sounds were retrieved as a demi-phoneme unit.

The Orthographic Consistency Effect in French and Spanish: Phoneme-to-Grapheme Mappings Influence Auditory Word Recognition

PurposeIn languages with alphabetical writing systems, the relationship between phonology and orthography is strong. Phonology-to-orthography mappings can be consistent (i.e., one phonological unit corresponds to one orthographic unit) or inconsistent (i.e., one phonological unit corresponds to multiple orthographic units). This study investigates whether the Orthographic Consistency Effect (OCE) emerges at the phonemic level during auditory word recognition, regardless of the opacity of a language’s writing system.MethodsThirty L1-French (opaque language) and 30 L1-Spanish (transparent language) listeners participated in an L1 auditory lexical decision task which included stimuli with either only consistently-spelled phonemes or both consistently-spelled and a number of inconsistently-spelled phonemes. ResultsThe results revealed that listeners were faster at recognizing consistently-spelled words than inconsistently-spelled words. This implies that consistently-spelled words are recognized more easily than inconsistent ones. As for pseudoword processing, there is a numerical trend that might indicate a higher sensibility of French listeners to phoneme-to-grapheme inconsistencies. ConclusionsThese findings have theoretical implications: inconsistent phoneme-to-grapheme mappings, like inconsistencies at the level of the syllable or rhyme, impact auditory word recognition. Moreover, our results suggest that the OCE should occur in all languages with alphabetical writing systems, regardless of their level of orthographic opacity.

From Mentalism to Optimality Theory. Notion of the Basic Phonological Segment

The work discusses the notion of the basic phonological segment from the perspective of selected European and American phonological theories. The discussion consists in the analyses of specific phonological problems in accordance with the tenets of a given framework, starting with the Kazan School and ending with the Optimality Theory. The goal of this study is to show the differences in the methodology and predictions of each framework that prove significant in the process of establishing the basic phonological unit. The dissertation elaborates on the data from English, Polish, German, and Russian.

The essence of ‘word’

This chapter offers general background for the analysis of ‘phonological word’ and ‘grammatical word’ in a cross-linguistic perspective. It outlines the defining characteristics of phonological word (including segmental and suprasegmental features and phonological processes), formulates restrictions on the length of a minimal word, and places ‘word’ within a hierarchy of phonological units. Defining features of grammatical word are outlined next. In most instances phonological words and grammatical words coincide. In some cases a grammatical word can consist of a number of phonological words, and vice versa. Typical instances of mismatches involve reduplication, compounding, and complex predicates, including serial verbs. Clitics—morphological units which form a phonological unit with a word preceding or following them—account for further mismatches. The reality of word and the nature of its orthographic representation are discussed next. The chapter concludes with an overview of the volume, and an appendix containing points to be addressed by fieldworkers.

Phonological Word and Grammatical Word

‘Word’ is a cornerstone for the understanding of every language. It is a pronounceable phonological unit. It will also have a meaning, and a grammatical characterization-a morphological structure and a syntactic function. And it will be an entry in a dictionary and an orthographic item. ‘Word’ has ‘psychological reality’ for speakers, enabling them to talk about the meaning of a word, its appropriateness for use in a certain social context, and so on. This volume investigates ‘word’ in its phonological and grammatical guises, and how this concept can be applied to languages of distinct typological make-up-from highly synthetic to highly analytic. Criteria for phonological word often include stress, tone, and vowel harmony. Grammatical word is recognized based on its conventionalized coherence and meaning, and consists of a root to which morphological processes will apply. In most instances, ‘grammatical word’ and ‘phonological word’ coincide. In some instances, a phonological word may consist of more than one grammatical word. Or a grammatical word can consist of more than one phonological word, or there may be more complex relationships. The volume starts with a typological introduction summarizing the main issues. It is followed by eight chapters each dealing with ‘word’ in an individual language—Yidiñ from Australia, Fijian from the Fiji Islands, Jarawara from southern Amazonia, Japanese, Chamacoco from Paraguay, Murui from Colombia, Yalaku from New Guinea, Hmong from Laos and a number of diasporic communities, Lao, and Makary Kotoko from Cameroon. The final chapter contains a summary of our findings.

Phonological Reduction in Pashto

The study is concerned with the phonological reduction in Pashto. The study particularly focuses on the reduction in the structure of complex predicates, verbal clitics and postpositional phrases in Pashto. The study finds out that the phonological reduction has syntactic/semantic or phonological factors allowing or constraining it. These more or less reduced and expanded forms are closely related to a number of linguistics abstractions. In structures with verbal clitics and postpositions, the reduction is optional, while in structure with complex predicates, the phonological reduction is obligatory if the compound verb denotes imperfective aspect. The obligatory reduction makes a single phonological unit from two syntactic units by omitting consonants or vowels in the structure of the phrase. The reduction is avoided if it creates an ambiguity of some kind or if the meaning of the lexical items is changed, and so, its allowance in one structure is constrained in another.

Paradigm Structure in French Verbal Inflection

Verb inflectional morphology in French exhibits a range of complexities both in the structure of verb stems (stem-final latent consonant; vowel variation; stem-final nasal vowel ; suppletive forms ; etc.) and the organization of the inflectional system, marked for five grammatical categories: tense, aspect, mode, person and number, which in the majority of cases cannot be identified as a morphological or phonological unit. The main objective of this paper is to show that these morphosyntactic properties should be analyzed as a global affix, which operate within the same space, with no fixed order. This strategy has the advantage to 1) take into account all the verb syntactic properties, 2) avoid multiple zero suffixes, 3) avoid the use of different analyses depending on the verb class, 4) avoid non-productive and phonologically unmotivated rules of insertion of theme vowels as in [dorm-i-r-ons] dormirons, and epenthetic consonants as in [ku-d-r-ons] coudrons, 5) account for French verb inflectional system in a simple and more explanatory way than strictly segmental analyses without "motivated" processes, using massive suppletion and/or stems dependencies, where inflected verbal forms are related by arbitrary implicational associations or quantitative measures based on extensive memorization. This analysis also has the property of explaining by means of a very general principle (the Onset principle) the realization of a stem-final FC in front of the affixes 'ions' and 'iez' as in before any suffix beginning with an empty onset. The verb inflectional paradigmatic structures is captured within Construction Morphology (CxM) as stated in Booij, 2010.

Phonological Awareness Skills in Children With Early and Late Cochlear Implantation: Effects of Task and Phonological Unit

Purpose Phonological awareness (PA) skills are critical for spoken language acquisition and literacy. PA manifests in various skills that can be identified based on task performance and speech sound unit size. This study compared the PA skills of children with early cochlear implantation (E-CI), children with late cochlear implantation (L-CI), and children with typical hearing (TH) in relation to task and phonological unit. It also attempted to identify the significant predictors of PA skills in each CI and TH group. Method Twenty children with E-CI, 20 children with L-CI, and 20 children with TH participated in this study. PA skills were assessed using elision, blending, and segmenting tasks at both the syllabic and phonemic levels. Results The E-CI and L-CI groups performed significantly less well than the TH group on the elision and blending tasks at the syllabic level. However, the E-CI group performed at a similar level as the TH group in the segmenting tasks at both the syllabic and phonemic levels. The regression analysis identified age at implantation and receptive vocabulary scores as significant predictors of PA skills in children with CIs. Conclusions Although all the children with CIs had age-appropriate receptive vocabulary skills, the PA skills of both the E-CI and L-CI groups tended to lag behind those of the TH group in the elision and blending tasks at the syllabic level. Age at implantation and receptive vocabulary skills affected the development of PA skills in children with CIs.