Complexities in the Level Tone Systems of Naish Subgroup (Sino-Tibetan languages)

Author(s): Xu Duoduo / Language(s): English Issue: 1-2/2015

The level tone systems, widely spread in the Naish subgroup of Sino-Tibetan languages, are contrastive in comparison with the register tone systems as spotted in Sinitic languages. This paper reviews published evidences about the tonal systems in languages of the Naish subgroup of Sino-Tibetan languages and presents the results of a preliminary analysis on Qiansuo Na, a new field of documentation in the Na language studies. After a brief introduction on the background of Na, the second section aims at displaying the level tone systems revealed in several Naish subgroup languages and at summarizing the approaches applied so far by scholars to the tonal systems analysis. The case study section has its origin from the fact that the level tone systems are widespread in Naish languages. It reports the initial reconstruction of the tone systems in Qiansuo Na, highlighting in them a level tone system, categories of surface phonological tones, and complex underlying / lexical tones. The collected data about Qiansuo Na could contribute to a better understanding of Naish tone systems and to further comparative studies.

ACOUSTIC ANALYSIS OF POST-ACCENTUAL QUANTITY IN SERBIAN

Author(s): Aleksandra Lončar Raičević / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2015

Due to its inconsistency, the prosodic norm of the Serbian language has generated a lot of discussion within the linguistic community. What has particularly been obvious in recent times is the major discrepancy between the prescribed and the actual language in use. Deviations from the norm relate to the sequence of accents and the repertoire of prosodic units. However, one of the most unstable positions is considered to be the pronunciation of the post-accentual length, which, based on the conducted research, is often equalized with the post-accentual shortness in younger population. This paper studies the pronunciation of the post-accentual length in the speech of western Serbia, and employs an acoustic analysis of duration and listening perception to examine the patterns of the disappearance of the post-accentual length (depending on the position within a word, type of syllable, type of accent, etc.).

Frekwencja a przemiany współczesnej normy wymawianiowej (W świetle dyskusji na temat NRSF Witolda Mańczaka)

Author(s): Halina Kurek / Language(s): Polish Issue: 21/2016

The paper attempts to answer the question whether, in the case of rapid changes such as we currently observe in Polish, a linguist is able to determine if these changes are systemic, i.e. permanent, or remain at the stage of innovation, i.e. are temporary – and hence, whether he or she can declare a change in the linguistic standard and set to looking for its cause. The focus of the article is on the law of speech economy, redundancy, and frequency which is the most important factor correlated with change, as without it the optimal conditions for a phonetic process would not occur .

Aporije jezičke ideologije

Author(s): Zorana Simić / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 19/2015

Regionalne cechy fonetyczne w międzywojennej kulturalnej polszczyźnie wileńskiej (wokalizm)

Author(s): Joanna Joachimiak-Prażanowska / Language(s): Polish Issue: XVI/2014

This paper presents the phonetic peculiarities of vocalism functioning in the cultural VilniusPolish language during the interwar period. The research reveals the most common phenomenaas well as the most characteristic ones for the northern borderlands pronunciation. Characteristiclinguistic facts were excerpted from “Kurier Wileński” published in 1924–1939. In the studiednewspaper there were 6 effects reflecting the occurrence of regional dialect (vocalism). The majorityof phonetic peculiarities were characterized by a high textual frequency. The most often recordedwere the following ones: quaint o as an equivalent of common ó, the extension of o to a and e to a,as well as hypercorrect inverted alternations.

Вокал јат у језику Петра II Петровића Његоша

Author(s): Miodarka Tepavčević / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 10/2013

The author deals with the problem of the distribution of vowel jat and its reflexes in the language of Petar II Petrović Njegoš. The analysis looks at the relationship to modern standards, the relationship to the Montenegrin people's speeches, as well as the standard of literary language of that time with the objecive to determine how the linguistic expression of this poet fits into today's linguistic situation and to his time.

Fonološki prikaz hrvatskih nagovora pape Benedikta XVI.

Author(s): Damir Mišetić / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 5/2016

Although many people manage to hide their origin when writing – using strictly standard language – that is almost impossible in phonology. Very important conclusions about a human being can be often made on the basis of pronunciation. Those conclusions refer to the age, mother tongue, attitude towards the language he uses – either mother or foreign – places he has visited as well as languages he speaks. Phonology is often unexplored treasury and it leaves visible traces for decades even after disappearance of an area material heritage. After the Pope from Poland, who always held all his addresses and sermons in Croatian when visiting Croatian areas, we did not expect his successor, German – although only in a couple of addresses – such a nice pronunciation of our Croatian language, which should be very hard and strange to him. That brings us to presumption that he was in contact with Croats and that he visited Croatian areas. That and the fact that he has a positive attitude to Croatian language can be seen in his biography. Analysis of his addresses in Croatian, pronunciation of some Italian phonemes and comparison with German pronunciation, brought us to the conclusion that pluricentricity of German language and its pronunciation are a good role model to Croatian language speakers who struggle with classical, acceptable and accepted pronunciation and that besides having a gift for languages, sound knowledge of Italian is a great help in mastering Croatian pronunciation for speakers of other Roman languages and especially English, German and other Germanic languages.

classroom talk; gender; interruptions; language; overlaps

Author(s): Margareta Bašaragin / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 47/2016

This paper aims to explore form and function of overlap and interruption sequences in a classroom talk and how they affect the formation of gender and language identities of pupils in Serbian and Hungarian classes during the final year of bilingual primary schools in Subotica (Vojvodina) in the year 2015. The basic unit of analysis is one IRE-circle presented in turn, consisting of multiple or single speech contributions of actors, which are further divided into single predications as the smallest units of analysis. The corpus consists of the fine transcript of two video recordings of mother tongue lessons in Serbian and Hungarian classes during the final year of primary schools. The results confirm the differences in overlaps and interruptions performed by male and female pupils and by a teacher in both cultural micro-groups. They are mostly cooperative but there are also some intrusive interruptions in a classroom talk that influence the conversational status of participants. The classroom talk is the socialization model and affects the formation of stereotypical gender-based behavioral patterns of female and male pupils.

Niš Speech in the Light of the Newest Sociolinguistic Research

Author(s): Tatjana G. Trajković / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2017

The new approach to the research of the speech of Niš is explained in this paper, in light of the newest sociolinguistic research. Since the research of the speech of Niš so far were determined by the approaches chosen by the authors and having in mind the newly made conditions in which the city of Niš changed in the demographic sense, the possibility of a newer, more modern and more encompassing exploration of the Niš vernacular has arisen. The goal of the research, the choice of the informers, the manner in which the material was gathered, the methodology of the treatment of the gathered material and the presentation of the results is presented. Following the suggested steps in the sociolinguistic approach to the speech of Niš, a new and more reliable representation of the speech of Niš today would be arrived at.

Akustičke značajke vokalnoga zamora

Author(s): Gordana Kovačić,Emica Farago / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 1/2017

Vocal fatigue is characterized by self-perceived increased laryngeal strain and voice quality changes. The condition can have organic or/and functional causes. Typically, it affects vocal professionals, and teachers are most numerous among them. Despite great number of studies, many questions about vocal fatigue such as its acoustic characterstics are still open. The hypothesis of the present study conducted on female teachers was that there are significant differences in acoustic variables between vocally fatigued teachers (N=23) and teachers without it (N=27). Running speech and prolonged phonation of the vowel /a/ were analyzed in PRAAT software calculating the long-term average speech spectrum LTASS and harmonic spectrum. The average speech F0 and series of spectral variables were calculated: the strength of the strongest spectral peak L0, the α ratio of the level difference above and bellow 1 kHz for the 0-5 kHz range analyzed, and the variables Δ1, Δ2, Δ3 and Δ4 showing the ratios of the respective spectral energy bands of 1-2 kHz, 2-3 kHz, 3-4 kHz and 4-5 kHz relative to the 0-1 kHz reference. The average H1/H2 ratio based on harmonic spectrum of three samples of the prolonged vowel /a/ production was calculated as well. The hypothesis was tested by multivariate and univariate analyzes of variance and discriminant analysis. The results showed that there are no significant differences in the set of acoustic variables between the two teacher groups, thus the hypothesis was rejected. However, the average speech F0 showed to be strong single discriminator. Its mean value in the group of teachers with vocal fatigue, that is 176 Hz, suggests dysfunction. Several factors may explain the absence of acoustic differences between the two groups, one of the most compelling of which is the fact that both groups reported similar numbers of subjective vocal and physical complaints. The results confirm the complex phenomenology of vocal fatigue syndrome, and suggest that acoustic analysis may have limited power to detect it.

Lietuvių kalbos fonologijos įsisavinimas: netikrų žodžių kartojimo eksperimentinis tyrimas

Author(s): Eglė Krivickaitė-Leišienė,Ineta Dabašinskienė / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 86/2013

A child’s capacity to repeat a new polysyllable word heard for the first time in the early age shows the ability to memorise new words and to expand one’s dictionary (Gathercole 2006a); therefore, the nonword repetition test is associated with language acquisition. It is stated that the repetition of nonwords starts very early in life when a child starts learning the first words (Gathercole 2006a): each word once heard by a child for the first time sounded unusual and new – like the words which are asked to be repeated in the nonword repetition test (Chiat, Roy 2007).The article presents a pilot experimental study carried out on the basis of nonword and word repetition tests. The Lithuanian Nonword Repetition Test was designed with due regard to the structural characteristics of Lithuanian words (word length, vowel and consonant frequency, syllable structure); the test consists of 24 nonwords of different structure. Each nonword is associated with a Lithuanian equivalent taking into account word length and syllable structure. The sample of the pilot study is made of 25 typically developing preschool and school-age children (from 4 to 9 years old).The results of the study revealed that the accuracy of repetition of nonwords and words is determined by three factors:1) syllable structure: most errors occur in the repetition of words and nonwords containing combinations of consonants. What is more, the accuracy of repetition of nonwords is also determined by the place where the consonant combination occurs: more errors occur in repeating words with a consonant combination in the middle of the word compared to those with a consonant combination in the beginning of the word. The place of consonant combination does not affect the accuracy of repetition of words;2) word length: the longer the word, the lower the accuracy of its repetition;3) age of participants in the study: the older the age group, the more accurately both shorter (one-two syllable) and longer (three-four syllable) words and nonwords are repeated.

Ndihmesat e prof. dr. Jorgji Gjinarit në lëmin e fonetikës së shqipes

Author(s): Rami Memushaj / Language(s): Albanian Issue: 03-04/2015

Prof. Jorgji Gjinari is widely known as the main Albanian dialectologist, but he has also many contributions in other fields of linguistics as well. The dialectological research, at least in the traditional form that it is carried out by Albanian linguists, is multidisciplinary, including the phonetic, morphologic, lexical, and syntactic facets of language. Thus, the phonetic aspect of language, being part and parcel of the dialectal research, requires that the dialectologist not only to be prepared theoretically in the field of phonetics, but also to know deeply the phonological system of the language and of its dialects serving as object of his study. Without this knowledge can’t be carried out the field research and the analysis the phonetic system of any dialect. These conditions are fully fulfilled in the dialectological studies of prof. Jorgji Gjinari, comprising his articles, monographs or university textbooks. He started his scientific career in the field of dialectology, but later on he shifted to the study of the phonetic aspect of dialectal variants and of the standard variant of Albanian. He has treated in his studies the phonological system of dialectal variants of our language in the second part of XX century, some historic phenomena, such as the development of the kl and gl consonantic groups or of the ua/ue, ie and ye diphthongs, and changes in the phonological system of the two main dialects of Albanian. Besides, he has contributed to the study of the phonological system of the Standard Albanian with a number of papers and monographs on the vocalic and consonantic systems of the Standard, on the similarities and differences between these systems and those of the dialects, and on the alternations of Standard Albanian. In his writings on morphological alternations of the Standard there are elaborated for the first time in our linguistics some theoretical concepts such as the definition of the alternations, of their basic form etc., on which further morphological studies of Albanian are based. Prof. Gjinari’s scientific heritage include many papers, but his main works are the monograph “Dialektet e gjuhës shqipe” (The dialects of Albanian), the university textbook “Dialektologjia shqiptare” (The Albanian dialectology), and “Atlasi dialektologjik i gjuhës shqipe” (The Dialectal Atlas of the Albanian Language), of which he has been the main author and chief editor. This work, which is one of the three main works of the Albanian Linguistics of the last century, can be seen as the culmination of the work the prof. J. Gjinari’s work in the field of dialectology.

On the Mid and High Non-Labial Vowels in Luuditsa Votic

Author(s): Fedor Rozhanskiy,Elena Markus / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2017

This article investigates two questions concerning the Votic vowel system: (1) Is the contrast between e and e̮ vowel phonemes preserved in contexts after j; (2) Does contemporary Votic distinguish the vowel e̮ used in Russian borrowings from other Votic vowels? The study is based on materials recorded from the last speakers of Votic. The analysis shows that in contexts after j the vowel e̮ is phonetically similar but not identical to e; therefore, the contrast between the two vowels is not neutralized. The vowel i̮ in Russian borrowings did not merge with any Votic vowels, but it had been adopted differently into Jõgõperä and Luuditsa varieties. The Jõgõperä speaker pronounces the vowel similarly to the Russian i̮, so this high non-front vowel becomes a pair to the high front i̮. The Luuditsa speaker, however, pronounces i̮ almost as i. This fact is unexpected, but it can be explained with the hypothesis of ”double borrowing” under the influence of the contacting Ingrian language. Notably, the Luuditsa Votic speaker may have adopted the Ingrian pronunciation of the Russian borrowings where the Russian vowel i̮ is pronounced similarly to i.

GOVOR BOŠNJAKA SREBRENICE

Author(s): Refik Bulić / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 1/2014

The speech of Bosniaks from Srebrenica is interesting on account of several reasons. One of them is the question of long at substitution. The second reason is its topicality, along with the question of its vitality and survival, considering the genocide, displacement and reduced number of native speakers. The third one is the question of its dialectal affiliation. All these aspects are united by the fact that this speech is unexplored. In literature about dialects of Bosnia and Herzegovina there are some disagreements about the dialectal affiliation of Srebrenica’s speech.This paper explores some the most significant features of the speech of Srebrenica’s Bosniaks and compares them with the features of Ijekavian-Šćakavian (East Bosnian) dialect and contiguous (South-) East Bosnian speech type of East Bosnian dialect. It is shown that these speeches are similar based on a number of features, but they also have some differential features. Thus the existing borders between two BosnianHerzegovinian dialects presented in literature should not be considered completely reliable.

AKUSTIČKE POSEBNOSTI AKUTA U ČAKAVSKOM, KAJKAVSKOM I STAROŠTOKAVSKOM GOVORU

Author(s): Jelena Vlašić Duić,Elenmari Pletikos Olof / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 1/2014

Contemporary prosody in Croatian dialects possesses three different rising tones: “long rising”, “short rising” (which evolves from the former diachronically), and “acute” which is older. The acute appears mostly in Čakavian dialects, but is also present in Old Štokavian and some Kajkavian dialects. It is variously known as: “neoacute”; “new acute”; “čakavian acute”; “Posavina acute”; and “twisted”. The acute occurs on stressed long syllables; its main distinction from the other two rising tones is that it is produced in one syllable, while in long and short rising tones the high tone is spread over two syllables. Therefore, the acute can occur in monosyllabic words, as well in the last syllable of a word. The other difference between the acuteand the other rising tonesis its tone contour: Štokavian rising tones have a mostly flat frequency contouron the two neighboring syllables (therefore the rising tone would better suit the description “high tone”), while the acute has been described as “jump rising”. This description of the acute has been made mostly through listeners’ perceptions. In this paper we analyze phonetic realizations of the acute tone in recordings of Old Čakavian dialects (from Pitve and Pučišća), in Kajkavian dialects (from Đurđevac and Molve) and in Old Štokavian dialects (from Bački Monoštor, Stari Mikanovci and Gundinci). From speech recordings we extracted words with realizations of the acute, which were then auditorily verified by a dialectological expert. For further acoustic analysis, we selected words with the least influence of sentence intonation on the lexical tone. In the vowel with acute tone we analyzed frequency direction, frequency range and duration as well as the tone level of the post-accented syllable, where present. The analysis shows variability in acute realization within speakers, and within dialects. In Čakavian and Old Štokavian dialects the post-accented syllable can be low or high, whereas in Kajkavian dialects it is mostly high. Tone contour in the stressed vowel varies: it can be realized as flat, falling, rising, or falling-rising tone contours.

Analogical extension of vowel length in Vend Romani

Author(s): Zuzana Bodnárová,Jakob Anton Paul Wiedner / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2015

Distinctive vowel length has been only recently re-introduced into the Romani varieties that have been in intimate contact with the various languages of Europe exhibiting vowel quantity. This article describes the process of analogical extension that accounts for certain intra-dialectal variation of vowel length found within the South Central Romani dialect group. The emergence of vowel length by means of this process is demonstrated by the example of the possessive pronouns and the remoteness suffix of Vend Romani, a variety spoken in Western Hungary. This analysis also discusses the phonological and semantic constraints of the examined instances of analogical change.

ZDOLNOŚĆ KOMUNIKOWANIA SIĘ LUDZI Z LOGICZNEJ I PSYCHOLOGICZNEJ PERSPEKTYWY

Author(s): Piotr Łukowski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2017

In the paper, the meaning of an utterance is considered from two perspectives: the logical and the psychological one. The logical approach takes into account a number of factors affecting the final meaning of the spoken words. These include, among others: tolerance of an utterance, its vagueness, generality, accent, indirect speech and contextuality. These factors are recognized intuitively by both the message sender and recipient. Otherwise, they could not reach an agreement. It turns out that this problem is considered not only in the logic but also in the field of psychology. Different levels of the ability to recognize the meaning of an utterance corresponds to different levels of empathy and therefore also a different level of communication ability. It seems that logical intuition and psychological empathy are highly convergent abilities. The aim of the paper is not to show that intuition and empathy are the same, but that the same issues are dealt with by various sciences, and therefore the efforts should be merged. In other words, this work is a kind of an incentive to undertake interdisciplinary research. If possible, such measures should replace efforts made in isolation from other disciplines.

Association sous Contrôle grammatical: Le cas du a du pluriel externe en Kabyle

Author(s): Samir Ben Si Saïd / Language(s): French Issue: 4/2010

In Kabyle Berber there are two types of plural: one is internal and the other is external. The internal plural is characterized by the fact that the quality of the vowels changes, whereby the last vowel is always A, e.g., azarәz ‘cord’ → izuraz ‘cords’. The external plural involves the suffixation of -n, e.g., iθβir ‘pigeon’ → iθβir-n‘pigeons’. Kabyle plural presents some melodic items which are not present in the singular form (e.g., iðmәr ‘chest’ → iðmar-n ‘chests’, iðw ‘horn’ → iәiw-n ‘horns’, amәçsa ‘shepherd’ → imәçsaw-n ‘shepherds’). Since they cannot be predicted, these items must be a piece of the root’s lexical properties. For reasons to be determined, they do not appear in singular forms. It is shown that when a root of the external plural class bears an A that is not visible in the singular, this A is promoted to the surface in the plural form at any cost, i.e., even if damage on other items of the root is caused. As a consequence of the appearance of the A, the gemination of a consonant or the expression of a vowel may be suspended, e.g., azәqqur ‘log’ → izәγran ‘logs’. Yet, this Acannot be considered as a plural marker since it may well be absent from external plurals, e.g., argaz ‘man’ → irgaz-n ‘men’. Rather, it is an idiosyncratic property of the root, and the plural morpheme contains an explicit instruction for it to appear on the surface, involving, as it will be shown, a branching phenomenon. Thus, part of the plural morpheme consists in an instruction for a specific melodic item to branch.

Does Turkish diss harmony?

Author(s): Markus Alexander Pöchtrager / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2010

This article presents a Government Phonology (GP) analysis of disharmonic words in Turkish. According to GP, phonology is exceptionless. Following this claim, I will argue that the generalisations intended to capture vowel harmony in Turkish had been stated in the wrong way, leading to disharmonic words as an artefact of a faulty analysis. Once this is remedied, the exceptions vanish, allowing for a unified treatment of harmonic and disharmonic words. This also takes into account further details of the Turkish vowel system which had not been incorporated in previous analyses, as well as distributional asymmetries between stems and suffixes.

Automatic recognition of schwa variants in spontaneous Hungarian speech

Author(s): András Beke,György Szaszák / Language(s): English Issue: 2-3/2010

This paper analyzes the nature of the process involved in optional vowel reduction in Hungarian, and the acoustic structure of schwa variants in spontaneous speech. The study focuses on the acoustic patterns of both the basic realizations of Hungarian vowels and their realizations as neutral vowels (schwas), as well as on the design, implementation, and evaluation of a set of algorithms for the recognition of both types of realizations from the speech waveform. The authors address the question whether schwas form a unified group of vowels or they show some dependence on the originally intended articulation of the vowel they stand for. The acoustic study uses a database consisting of over 4,000 utterances extracted from continuous speech, and recorded from 19 speakers. The authors propose methods for the recognition of neutral vowels depending on the various vowels they replace in spontaneous speech. Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficients are calculated and used for the training of Hidden Markov Models. The recognition system was trained on 2,500 utterances and then tested on 1,500 utterances. The results show that a neutral vowel can be detected in 72% of all occurrences. Stressed and unstressed syllables can be distinguished in 92% of all cases. Neutralized vowels do not form a unified group of phoneme realizations. The pronunciation of schwa heavily depends on the original articulation configuration of the intended vowel.