Refine
Year of publication
Document Type
- Part of a Book (19)
- Article (7)
- Conference Proceeding (3)
Language
- English (29) (remove)
Has Fulltext
- yes (29)
Keywords
- Deutsch (11)
- Phonologie (11)
- Prosodie (7)
- Englisch (6)
- Morphologie <Linguistik> (5)
- Wortbildung (5)
- Phonetik (4)
- Grammatik (3)
- Optimalitätstheorie (3)
- Suffix (3)
Publicationstate
- Veröffentlichungsversion (13)
- Postprint (5)
- Zweitveröffentlichung (5)
Reviewstate
- (Verlags)-Lektorat (19)
- Peer-Review (3)
- Peer-Revied (1)
Publisher
- Benjamins (2)
- De Gruyter (2)
- Linguistic Analysis (2)
- Linguistic Society of America (2)
- Mouton de Gruyter (2)
- Oxford University Press (2)
- de Gruyter (2)
- Akademie Verlag (1)
- Buske (1)
- Cambridge Univ. Press (1)
American English and German AI, AU observed in cognates such as Wein, wine, Haus, house are usually treated on a par, represented with the same initial vowel (cf. [ai], [au] for Am. Engl, and German [1]). Yet, acoustic measurements indicate differences as the relevant trajectories characteristically cross in Am. Engl, but not in German. These data may indicate consistency with the same initial target for these diphthongs in German, supporting the choice of the same Symbol /a/ in phonemic representation, as opposed to distinct targets (and distinct initial phonemes) in American English.
Notions such as “corpus-driven” versus “theory-driven” bring into focus the specific role of corpora in linguistic research. As for phonology with its intrinsic focus on abstract categorical representation, there is a question of how a strictly corpus-driven approach can yield insight into relevant structures. Here we argue for a more theory-driven approach to phonology based on the concept of a phonological grammar in terms of interacting constraints. Empirical validation of such grammars comes from the potential convergence of the evidence from various sources including typological data, neutralization patterns, and in particular patterns observed in the creative use of language such as acronym formation, loanword adaptation, poetry, and speech errors. Further empirical validation concerns specific predictions regarding phonetic differences among opposition members, paradigm uniformity effects, and phonetic implementation in given segmental and prosodic contexts. Corpora in the narrowest sense (i.e. “raw” data consisting of spontaneous speech produced in natural settings) are useful for testing these predictions, but even here, special purpose-built corpora are often necessary.
We present evidence for the analysis of the vowels in English <say> and <so> as biphonemic diphthongs /ɛi/ and /əu/, based on neutralization patterns, regular alternations, and foot structure. /ɛi/ and /əu/ are hence structurally on a par with the so called “true diphthongs” /ɑi/, /ɐu/, /ɔi/, but also share prosodic organization with the monophthongs /i/ and /u/. The phonological evidence is supported by dynamic measurements based on the American English TIMIT database.
Calculations of F2-slopes proved to be especially suited to distinguish the relevant groups in accordance with their phonologically motivated prosodic organizations.
Evaluating phonological status: significance of paradigm uniformity vs. prosodic grouping effects
(2007)
A central concern of linguistic phonetics is to define criteria for determining the phonological status of sounds or sound properties observed in phonetic surface form. Based on acoustic measurements we show that the occurrence of syllabic sonorants vs. schwa-sonorant sequences in German is determined exclusively by segmental and prosodic structure, with no paradigm uniformity effects. We argue that these findings are consistent with a uniform representation of syllabic sonorants as schwa sonorant sequences in the lexicon. The stability of schwa in CVC-suffixes (e.g. the German diminutive suffix -chen), as opposed to its phonetic absence in a segmentally comparable underived context, is argued to be conditioned by the prosodic organisation of such suffixes external to the phonological word of the stem.
The shortening of linguistic expressions naturally involves some sort of correspondence between short forms and (some portion of) the respective full forms. Based mostly on data from English and Hebrew this article explores the hypothesis that such correspondence concerns necessary sameness of symbolic form, referring either to graphemic or to a specific level of phonological representation. That level indicates a degree of abstractness defined by language-specific contrastiveness (i.e. “phonemic”). Reference to written form can be shown to be highly systematic in certain contexts, including cases where full forms consist of multiple stems. Specific asymmetries pertaining to the targeting of material by correspondence (e.g. initial vs. non-initial position) appear to be alike for both types of representation, a claim supported by a study based on a nomenclature strictly confined to writing (chemical element symbols).
Perhaps the biggest challenge in derivational morphology is to reconcile morphological idiosyncrasy with semantic regularity. How can it be explained that words with dead affixes and irregulär allomorphy can nonetheless exhibit straightforward and stable semantic relations to their etymological bases (cf. strength ‘property of being strong’, obedience ‘act of obeying’, ‘property of being obedient’)? Theories based on the idea of capturing regularity in terms of synthetic rules for building up complex words out of morphemes along with rules for interpreting such structures in a compositional fashion have not made - and arguably cannot make - sense of this phenomenon. Taking the perspective of the learner in acquisition, I propose an alternative approach to meaning assignment based, not on syntagmatic relations among their constituent morphemes, but on paradigmatic relations between whole words. This approach not only explains the conditions under which meaning relations between words are expected to be stable but also accounts for another notorious mystery in derivational morphology, the frequent occurrence of total synonymy among affixes, as opposed to words.