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O ensino/aprendizagem da metafonia do português como língua estrangeira por aprendizes alemães
(2009)
The present article deals with a phenomenon of the portuguese language which is well-known and yet rather neglected in brazilian schools as well as in schools abroad: metaphony. Since this regular vowel change is a phenomenon that foms part exclusively of speech and is not represented in writing, it constitutes a problem for foreign learners, in our case speakers of German. We therefore propose a strategy by the help of which the phenomenon of metaphony in Portuguese can be explained, based on analogies with a similar regular sound change in the German language, called Umlaut. Our study is based upon data collected among students at Christian-Albrechts-Universität in Northern Germany.
Many teachers of German as a second language make some statements regarding this language that mix concepts from three distinct fields: Orthography (letters), Phonetics (phones or speech sounds) and Phonology (phonemes). In this paper I attempt to shed some light on these concepts and fields. I also provide examples of such statements and make comments on them.
U članku se opisuje morfonologija glagolske osnove u prezentskoj paradigmi na građi hrvatsko-crkvenoslavenskih (dalje: HCS) glagola s temeljnom osnovom na -i- u kojih tom završnom -i- prethodi zubni sonant: r, l, n (tj. tipa tvori-ti, moli-ti, brani-ti). U obzir su uzeti svi glagolski leksemi tog tipa iz kartoteke Rječnika crkvenoslavenskoga jezika hrvatske redakcije: 110 li-glagola, 127 ni-glagola i 83 ri-glagola i njihovi prezentski oblici. Metoda opisa je usporedba dotičnog fragmenta HCS gramatike sa staroslavenskim stanjem kao i sa stanjem u starohrvatskim (čakavskim) govorima. U staroslavenskom jeziku u prezentskoj je paradigmi tihglagola osnova okrnjena (tj. okrnjen je sufiks -i-) i pojavljuje se u dvije varijante: palatalnoj (u 1. licu jednine), i tvrdoj (u svim ostalim oblicima). Tako u prezentu nalazimo u osnovi alternacije r ~ ŕ, l ~ ĺ i n ~ ń. U HCS tekstovima morfonološki su najinovativniji ri-glagoli. Kako je u hrvatskom depalataliziran fonem ŕ, kod ri-glagola nije sačuvan staroslavenski morfonološki model. HCS građa ne pokazuje staroslavensku alternaciju r ~ ŕ, tj. kod ri-glagola nema variranja osnove u prezentu (okrnjena osnova u svim oblicima završava nepalatalnim suglasnikom). Kod li-glagola i ni-glagola staroslavenski je morfonološki model očuvan. Međutim, u tekstovima su ipak potvrđene rijetke devijacije od tog modela. Naime, usprkos postojanju grafijskoga sredstva za označavanje palatalnosti fonema ĺ i ń ispred gramatičkog morfema 1. lica jednine -u (tj. uporaba slova ű iza l, n), neki su pisari u rijetkim slučajevima izostavljali označavanje palatalnosti, tj. pisali grafem u (molu, branu). Autorica predlaže različita moguća objašnjenja te pogreške i utvrđuje u kojoj je mjeri ta pojava ograničena na određene HCS tekstove.
Nakon kratkoga prikaza geografskoga položaja zagorskoga mjesta Šemnice Gornje u radu se na osnovi vlastitoga terenskog istraživanja i dostupne literature iznose fonološka obilježja govora toga mjesta. Opisuje se naglasni sustav i unutar toga razlike koje se mogu uočiti u odnosu na osnovnu kajkavsku akcentuaciju, te obilježja samoglasničkoga i suglasničkoga sustava.
Ključne riječi: Šemnica Gornja ; govor ; naglasni sustav; samoglasnički i suglasnički sustav
All's well that ends well
(2009)
A few years ago, Jasanoff adopted the central tenet of my accentological theory, viz. that the Balto-Slavic acute was a stød or glottal stop, not a rising tone (cf. Kortlandt 1975, 1977, 2004, Jasanoff 2004a). Of course, nobody will believe Jasanoff’s claim that he arrived at the same result independently thirty years after I published it and ten years after we discussed it when he came to Leiden to visit us. Though at the time he haughtily dismissed “the tangle of secondary hypotheses and “laws” that clutter the ground in the field of Balto-Slavic accentology” (Jasanoff 2004b: 171), he has now recognized the importance of Pedersen’s law, Hirt’s law, Winter’s law, Meillet’s law, Dolobko’s law, Dybo’s law and Stang’s law and largely accepted my relative chronology of these accent laws, including the loss of the acute shortly before Stang’s law (cf. Jasanoff 2008). He has also accepted my split of Pedersen’s law into a Balto-Slavic and a Slavic phase (to which a Lithuanian phase must be added), my thesis that the tonal contours of Baltic and Slavic languages are post-Balto-Slavic innovations (cf. Jasanoff 2008: 344, fn. 10), and the rise of a tonal distinction on non-acute initial syllables before Dybo’s law which I discussed at some length in my review (1978) of Garde’s monograph (1976). This is great progress.
Like its predecessor in Zagreb, the conference on Balto-Slavic accentology in Copenhagen was a great success. The enthusiasm of the organizers Adam Hyllested and Thomas Olander proved highly effective in stimulating discussion among the participants. While in Zagreb most papers dealt with Slavic data, in Copenhagen the emphasis was on Balto-Slavic problems.
Hittite ammuk 'me'
(2005)
In the Indo-European department of Leiden University, Alwin Kloekhorst has initiated a discussion on Hittite ammuk ‘me’. The central question is: where did the geminate come from? This has led me to reconsider the origin of the Indo-European personal pronouns against the background of my reconstruction of Indo-Uralic (2002: 221-225). For the historical data I may refer to Schmidt (1978).
Koivulehto and Vennemann have recently (1996) revived Posti’s theory (1953) which attributed Finnic consonant gradation to Germanic influence, in particular to the influence of Verner’s law. This theory disregards the major differences between Finnic and Saami gradation (cf. Sammallahti 1998: 3) and ignores the similar gradation in Nganasan and Selkup (cf. Kallio 2000: 92).
Most scholars nowadays reconstruct a static root present with an alternation between lengthened grade in the active singular and full grade in the active plural and in the middle. I am unhappy about this traditional methodology of loosely postulating long vowels for the proto-language. What we need is a powerful theory which explains why clear instances of original lengthened grade are so very few and restrains our reconstructions accordingly. Such a theory has been available for over a hundred years now: it was put forward by Wackernagel in his Old Indic grammar (1896: 66-68). The crucial element of his theory which is relevant in the present context is that he assumed lengthening in monosyllabic word forms, such as the 2nd and 3rd sg. active forms of the sigmatic aorist injunctive.
S.R. Ramsey writes (1979: 162): "The patterning of tone marks in Old Kyoto texts divides the vocabulary into virtually the same classes as those arrived at by comparing the accent distinctions found in the modern dialects. This means that the Old Kyoto dialect had a pitch system similar to that of proto-Japanese. The standard language of the Heian period may not actually be the ancestor of all the dialects of Japan, but at least as far as the accent system is concerned, it is close enough to the proto system to be used as a working model. The significance of this fact is important: It means that each of the dialects included in the comparison has as much to tell, at least potentially, as any other dialect about Old Kyoto accent."
A correct interpretation of the genitive plural forms in Slavic and related languages requires a detailed chronological analysis of the material. At every stage of development we have to reckon with both phonetically regular and analogical forms. Analogy operates quite often along the same lines in different periods. Explaining an analogic change amounts to indicating a model, a motivation, and a stage of development for its effectuation. If one of these cannot be indicated, we must look for a phonetic explanation.
Die sprachlichen Beispiele [...] sind dem Korpus „Institutionelle Konfliktgespräche“ des Instituts für deutsche Sprache in Mannheim entnommen. Es sind vorgerichtliche Schlichtungen in Nachbarschaftsstreitigkeiten aus dem kurpfälzischen Raum. Die Gespräche liegen dort in einer Transkription vor, die nicht nur deshalb unzureichend ist, weil Nonstandardmuster weitgehend in Standard wiedergegeben werden. Wir haben zwei der Gespräche völlig neu transkribiert. Beide Gespräche werden von demselben Schlichter geführt. Sie sind je etwa 45 Minuten lang, im ersten Gespräch, gekennzeichnet als „Die Mopeds“, verwendet der Schlichter nach IPA-Transkription ca. 12.000 Laute, im zweiten, gekennzeichnet als „Alte Sau“, ca. 14.000. Im folgenden werden die ersten 2.000 Laut aus den Äußerungen des Schlichters analysiert. Zum Vergleich haben wir einen in einer traditionellen Dialekterhebung aufgenommenen, überwiegend monologischen Text analysiert: einen ebenfalls 2000 Laute umfassenden Ausschnitt aus der Aufname einer jungen Mutterstadter Sprecherin aus den 50er Jahren, ediert von Karch. Die Frage der Standarddefinition, des Vergleichsmaßstabes und der Wahl der Einheiten soll hier nicht diskutiert werden: Wir gehen aus von Lauten, wie sie sich mit den Zeichen des IPA darstellen lassen. Als Kodifikation des Standards wurde, um einen vorläufig praktikablen Maßstab zu haben, das Duden-Aussprachewörterbuch zu Grunde gelegt. Dort für ein Morphem nicht verzeichnete Laute wurden Unberücksichtigt blieb die Unterscheidung zwischen stimmhaften und nicht stimmhaften Konsonanten. Stotternde, verzögernde, lachende [..] etc. wurden bisher weder ausgeblendet, noch zu Nonstandard gerechnet. Einer vorgängigen Skalierung und Gewichtung sprachlicher Merkmale bedarf es nicht. Es genügt eine erste Dichotomisierung und alle weiteren Differenzierungen können im Anschluss daran durchgespielt werden.
In this paper we provide an account of the historical development of Polish and Russian sibilants. The arguments provided here are of theoretical interest because they show that (i) certain allophonic rules are driven by the need to keep contrasts perceptually distinct, (ii) (unconditioned) sound changes result from needs of perceptual distinctiveness, and (iii) perceptual distinctiveness can be extended to a dass of consonants, i.e. the sibilants. The analysis is cast within Dispersion Theory by providing phonetic and typological data supporting the perceptual distinctiveness claims we make.
In this article I reanalyze sibilant inventories of Slavic languages by taking into consideration acoustic, perceptive and phonological evidence. The main goal of this study is to show that perception is an important factor which determines the shape of sibilant inventories. The improvement of perceptual contrast essentially contributes to creating new sibilant inventories by (i) changing the place of articulation of the existing phonemes (ii) merging sibilants that are perceptually very close or (iii) deleting them. It has also been shown that the symbol š traditionally used in Slavic linguistics corresponds to two sounds in the IPA systemsystem: it stands for a postalveolar sibilant (ʃ) in some Slavic languages, as e.g. Bulgarian, Czech, Slovak, some Serbian and Croatian dialects, whereas in others like Polish, Russian, Lower Sorbian it functions as a retroflex (s). This discrepancy is motivated by the fact that ʃ is not optimal in terms of maintaining sufficient perceptual contrast to other sibilants such as s and ç. If ʃ occurs together with s and sj there is a considerable perceptual distance between them but if it occurs with ç in an inventory, the distance is much smaller. Therefore, the strategy most languages follow is the change from a postalveolar to a retroflex sibilant.
In this paper it is argued that several typologically unrelated languages share the tendency to avoid voiced sibilant affricates. This tendency is explained by appealing to the phonetic properties of the sounds, and in particular to their aerodynamic characteristics. On the basis of experimental evidence it is shown that conflicting air pressure requirements for maintaining voicing and frication are responsible for the avoidance of voiced affricates. In particular, the air pressure released from the stop phase of the affricate is too high to maintain voicing which in consequence leads to a devoicing of the frication part.
This paper evaluates trills [r] and their palatalized counterparts [rj] from the point of view of markedness. It is argued that [r]s are unmarked sounds in comparison to [rj]s which follows from the examination of the following parameters: (a) frequency of occurrence, (b) articulatory and aerodynamic characteristics, (c) perceptual features, (d) emergence in the process of language acquisition, (e) stability from a diachronic point of view, (f) phonotactic distribution, and (g) implications. Several markedness aspects of [r]s and [rj] are analyzed on the basis of Slavic languages which offer excellent material for the evaluation of trills. Their phonetic characteristics incorporated into phonetically grounded constraints are employed for a phonological OT-analysis of r-palatalization in two selected languages: Polish and Czech.
The contribution of von Kempelen’s “Mechanism of Speech” to the ‘phonetic sciences‘ will be analyzed with respect to his theoretical reasoning on speech and speech production on the one hand and on the other in connection with his practical insights during his struggle in constructing a speaking machine. Whereas in his theoretical considerations von Kempelen’s view is focussed on the natural functioning of the speech organs – cf. his membraneous glottis model – in constructing his speaking machine he clearly orientates himself towards the auditory result – cf. the bag pipe model for the sound generator used for the speaking machine instead. Concerning vowel production his theoretical description remains questionable, but his practical insight that vowels and speech sounds in general are only perceived correctly in connection with their surrounding sounds – i.e. the discovery of coarticulation – is clearly a milestone in the development of the phonetic sciences: He therefore dispenses with the Kratzenstein tubes, although they might have been based on more thorough acoustic modelling. Finally, von Kempelen’s model of speech production will be discussed in relation to the discussion of the acoustic nature of vowels afterwards [Willis and Wheatstone as well as von Helmholtz and Hermann in the 19th century and Stumpf, Chiba & Kajiyama as well as Fant and Ungeheuer in the 20th century].
Articulatory token-to-token variability not only depends on linguistic aspects like the phoneme inventory of a given language but also on speaker specific morphological and motor constraints. As has been noted previously (Perkell (1997), Mooshammer et al. (2004)) , speakers with coronally high "domeshaped" palates exhibit more articulatory variability than speakers with coronally low "flat" palates. One explanation for that is based on perception oriented control by the speaker. The influence of articulatory variation on the cross sectional area and consequently on the acoustics should be greater for flat palates than for domeshaped ones. This should force speakers with flat palates to place their tongue very precisely whereas speakers with domeshaped palates might tolerate a greater variability. A second explanation could be a greater amount of lateral linguo-palatal contact for flat palates holding the tongue in position. In this study both hypotheses were tested.
Arguing against Bhat’s (1974) claim that retroflexion cannot be correlated with retraction, the present article illustrates that retroflexes are always retracted, though retraction is not claimed to be a sufficient criterion for retroflexion. The cooccurrence of retraction with retroflexion is shown to make two further implications; first, that non-velarized retroflexes do not exist, and second, that secondary palatalization of retroflexes is phonetically impossible. The process of palatalization is shown to trigger a change in the primary place of articulation to non-retroflex. Phonologically, retraction has to be represented by the feature specification [+back] for all retroflex segments.
In this article we propose that there are two universal properties for phonological stop assibilations, namely (i) assibilations cannot be triggered by /i/ unless they are also triggered by /j/, and (ii) voiced stops cannot undergo assibilations unless voiceless ones do. The article presents typological evidence from assibilations in 45 languages supporting both (i) and (ii). It is argued that assibilations are to be captured in the Optimality Theoretic framework by ranking markedness constraints grounded in perception which penalize sequences like [ti] ahead of a faith constraint which militates against the change from /t/ to some sibilant sound. The occurring language types predicted by (i) and (ii) will be shown to involve permutations of the rankings between several different markedness constraints and the one faith constraint. The article demonstrates that there exist several logically possible assibilation types which are ruled out because they would involve illicit rankings.
Glide formation, a process whereby an underlying high front vowel is realized as a palatal glide, is shown to occur only in unstressed prevocalic position in German, and to be blocked by specific surface restrictions such as *ji and *“j. Traditional descriptions of glide formation (including derivational as well as Optimality theoretic approaches) refer to the syllable in order to capture its conditions. The present study illustrates that glide formation (plus the distribution of long and short tense /i/) in German can better be captured in a Functional Phonology account (Boersma 1998) which makes reference to stress instead of the syllable and thus overcomes problems of former approaches.
In the following study we present the results of three acoustic experiments with native speakers of German and Polish which support implications (a) and (b). In our experiments we measured the friction phase after the /t d/ release before the onset of the following high front vocoid for four speakers of German and Polish. We found that the friction phase for /tj/ was significantly longer than that of /ti/, and that the friction phase of /t/ in the assibilation context is significantly longer than that of /d/.
This paper addresses remarks made by Flemming (2003) to the effect that his analysis of the interaction between retroflexion and vowel backness is superior to that of Hamann (2003b). While Hamann maintained that retroflex articulations are always back, Flemming adduces phonological as well as phonetic evidence to prove that retroflex consonants can be non-back and even front (i.e. palatalised). The present paper, however, shows that the phonetic evidence fails under closer scrutiny. A closer consideration of the phonological evidence shows, by making a principled distinction between articulatory and perceptual drives, that a reanalysis of Flemming’s data in terms of unviolated retroflex backness is not only possible but also simpler with respect to the number of language-specific stipulations.
The present study shows that though retroflex segments can be considered articulatorily marked, there are perceptual reasons why languages introduce this class into their phoneme inventory. This observation is illustrated with the diachronic developments of retroflexes in Norwegian (North- Germanic), Nyawaygi (Australian) and Minto-Nenana (Athapaskan). The developments in these three languages are modelled in a perceptually oriented phonological theory, since traditional articulatorily-based features cannot deal with such processes.
This paper reconciles the standpoint that language users do not aim at improving their sound systems with the observation that languages seem to improve their sound systems. Computer simulations of inventories of sibilants show that Optimality-Theoretic learners who optimize their perception grammars automatically introduce a so-called prototype effect, i.e. the phenomenon that the learner’s preferred auditory realization of a certain phonological category is more peripheral than the average auditory realization of this category in her language environment. In production, however, this prototype effect is counteracted by an articulatory effect that limits the auditory form to something that is not too difficult to pronounce. If the prototype effect and the articulatory effect are of a different size, the learner must end up with an auditorily different sound system from that of her language environment. The computer simulations show that, independently of the initial auditory sound system, a stable equilibrium is reached within a small number of generations. In this stable state, the dispersion of the sibilants of the language strikes an optimal balance between articulatory ease and auditory contrast. The important point is that this is derived within a model without any goal-oriented elements such as dispersion constraints.
In Ocotepec Mixe, the stem-initial sibilants /s tÉs ß/ undergo a palatalization process when the prefix /j/ is added. Descriptions of other Mixe languages report that this palatalization is realized either as addition of a glide (in the case of the alveolar and retroflex sibilants) or as a change in the primary place of articulation (in the case of the affricate). The acoustic measurements in the present study indicate that all palatalized sibilants in Ocotepec have an additional glide, unless they are followed by the high front vowel(s) /i (e)/, and that both the affricate and retroflex fricative show a consistent change in primary place of articulation under palatalization.
The present article illustrates that the specific articulatory and aerodynamic requirements for voiced but not voiceless alveolar or dental stops can cause tongue tip retraction and tongue mid lowering and thus retroflexion of front coronals. This retroflexion is shown to have occurred diachronically in the three typologically unrelated languages Dhao (Malayo-Polynesian), Thulung (Sino-Tibetan), and Afar (East-Cushitic). In addition to the diachronic cases, we provide synchronic data for retroflexion from an articulatory study with four speakers of German, a language usually described as having alveolar stops. With these combined data we supply evidence that voiced retroflex stops (as the only retroflex segments in a language) did not necessarily emerge from implosives, as argued by Haudricourt (1950), Greenberg (1970), Bhat (1973), and Ohala (1983). Instead, we propose that the voiced front coronal plosive /d/ is generally articulated in a way that favours retroflexion, that is, with a smaller and more retracted place of articulation and a lower tongue and jaw position than /t/.