Coarticulation and Sound Change in Romance

Coarticulation and Sound Change in Romance
Author: Daniel Recasens
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Total Pages: 221
Release: 2014-04-15
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027270384

This volume should be of great interest to phoneticians, phonologists, and both historical and cognitive linguists. Using data from the Romance languages for the most part, the book explores the phonetic motivation of several sound changes, e.g., glide insertions and elisions, vowel and consonant insertions, elisions, assimilations and dissimilations. Within the framework of the DAC (degree of articulatory constraint) model of coarticulation, it clearly demonstrates that the typology and direction of these sound changes may very largely be accounted for by the coarticulatory effects occurring between adjacent or neighbouring phonetic segments, and by the degrees of articulatory constraint imposed by speakers on the production of vowels and consonants. The phonetically-based explanations presented here are formulated on the basis of coarticulation data from speech production and perception research carried out during the last fifty years and are complemented with data on the co-occurrence of phonetic segments in lexical forms of the languages being considered. Attention is also paid to the role that positional and prosodic factors play in sound change implementation, as well as to the cognitive and peripheral strategies involved in segmental replacements, elisions and insertions.

Coarticulation and Sound Change in Romance

Coarticulation and Sound Change in Romance
Author: Daniel Recasens i Vives
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2014
Genre: Linguistic change
ISBN: 9789027248480

Using data from Romance languages, this book explores the phonetic motivation of several sound changes. Within the Degree of Articulatory Constraint model of coarticulation, it demonstrates that the typology and direction of these sound changes may largely be accounted for by the coarticulatory effects and by degrees of articulatory constraint.

The Handbook of Historical Linguistics, Volume II

The Handbook of Historical Linguistics, Volume II
Author: Richard D. Janda
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 717
Release: 2020-10-06
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1118732219

An entirely new follow-up volume providing a detailed account of numerous additional issues, methods, and results that characterize current work in historical linguistics. This brand-new, second volume of The Handbook of Historical Linguistics is a complement to the well-established first volume first published in 2003. It includes extended content allowing uniquely comprehensive coverage of the study of language(s) over time. Though it adds fresh perspectives on several topics previously treated in the first volume, this Handbook focuses on extensions of diachronic linguistics beyond those key issues. This Handbook provides readers with studies of language change whose perspectives range from comparisons of large open vs. small closed corpora, via creolistics and linguistic contact in general, to obsolescence and endangerment of languages. Written by leading scholars in their respective fields, new chapters are offered on matters such as the origin of language, evidence from language for reconstructing human prehistory, invocations of language present in studies of language past, benefits of linguistic fieldwork for historical investigation, ways in which not only biological evolution but also field biology can serve as heuristics for research into the rise and spread of linguistic innovations, and more. Moreover, it: offers novel and broadened content complementing the earlier volume so as to provide the fullest available overview of a wholly engrossing field includes 23 all-new contributed chapters, treating some familiar themes from fresh perspectives but mostly covering entirely new topics features expanded discussion of material from language families other than Indo-European provides a multiplicity of views from numerous specialists in linguistic diachrony. The Handbook of Historical Linguistics, Volume II is an ideal book for undergraduate and graduate students in linguistics, researchers and professional linguists, as well as all those interested in the history of particular languages and the history of language more generally.

The World's Major Languages

The World's Major Languages
Author: Bernard Comrie
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 1125
Release: 2018-04-17
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 1317290496

The World's Major Languages features over 50 of the world's languages and language families. This revised edition includes updated bibliographies for each chapter and up-to-date census figures. The featured languages have been chosen based on the number of speakers, their role as official languages and their cultural and historical importance. Each language is looked at in depth, and the chapters provide information on both grammatical features and on salient features of the language's history and cultural role. The World’s Major Languages is an accessible and essential reference work for linguists.

Toward Robotic Socially Believable Behaving Systems - Volume II

Toward Robotic Socially Believable Behaving Systems - Volume II
Author: Anna Esposito
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 214
Release: 2016-03-29
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 3319310534

This volume presents a collection of research studies on sophisticated and functional computational instruments able to recognize, process, and store relevant situated interactional signals, as well as, interact with people, displaying reactions (under conditions of limited time) that show abilities of appropriately sensing and understanding environmental changes, producing suitable, autonomous, and adaptable responses to various social situations. These social robotic autonomous systems will improve the quality of life of their end-users while assisting them on several needs, ranging from educational settings, health care assistance, communicative disorders, and any disorder impairing either their physical, cognitive, or social functional activities. The multidisciplinary themes presented in the volume will be interesting for experts and students coming from different research fields and with different knowledge and backgrounds. The research reported is particularly relevant for academic centers, and Research & Development Institutions.

The Initiation of Sound Change

The Initiation of Sound Change
Author: Maria-Josep Solé
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2012
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027248419

Examines advanced approaches to sound change from various theoretical and methodological perspectives, including articulatory variation and modeling, speech perception mechanisms and neurobiological processes, geographical and social variation, and diachronic phonology.

Consonant-induced sound changes in stressed vowels in Romance

Consonant-induced sound changes in stressed vowels in Romance
Author: Daniel Recasens
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 388
Release: 2023-02-20
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 3110990946

The book investigates historical patterns of vowel diphthongization, assimilation and dissimilation induced by consonants – mostly (alveolo)palatals – in Romance. Compiling data from dialectal descriptions, old documentary sources and experimental phonetic studies, it explains why certain vowels undergo raising assimilation before (alveolo)palatal consonants more than others. It also suggests that in French, Francoprovençal, Occitan, Rhaetoromance and dialects from northern Italy, mid low vowel diphthongization before (alveolo)palatal consonants started out with the formation of non-canonical falling diphthongs through off-glide insertion, from which rising diphthongs could emerge at a later date (e.g., Upper Engadinian OCTO ‘eight’ > [ɔc] > [ɔ(ə̯)c] > [wac]). Both diphthongal types, rather than canonical falling diphthongs with a palatal off-glide, could also give rise to high vowels (dialectal French [li]

Palatal Sound Change in the Romance Languages

Palatal Sound Change in the Romance Languages
Author: André Zampaulo
Publisher:
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2019
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 0198807384

This book presents a formal, constraint-based account of the main diachronic and synchronic patterns of variation in the palatal sounds of the Romance languages. It will appeal to graduate students and researchers in historical linguistics, phonetics and phonology, Romance linguistics, and dialectology more broadly.

Manual of Clinical Phonetics

Manual of Clinical Phonetics
Author: Martin J. Ball
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 570
Release: 2021-04-11
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1000334406

This comprehensive collection equips readers with a state-of-the-art description of clinical phonetics and a practical guide on how to employ phonetic techniques in disordered speech analysis. Divided into four sections, the manual covers the foundations of phonetics, sociophonetic variation and its clinical application, clinical phonetic transcription, and instrumental approaches to the description of disordered speech. The book offers in-depth analysis of the instrumentation used in articulatory, auditory, perceptual, and acoustic phonetics and provides clear instruction on how to use the equipment for each technique as well as a critical discussion of how these techniques have been used in studies of speech disorders. With fascinating topics such as multilingual sources of phonetic variation, principles of phonetic transcription, speech recognition and synthesis, and statistical analysis of phonetic data, this is the essential companion for students and professionals of phonetics, phonology, language acquisition, clinical linguistics, and communication sciences and disorders.

Highly complex syllable structure: A typological and diachronic study

Highly complex syllable structure: A typological and diachronic study
Author: Shelece Easterday
Publisher: Language Science Press
Total Pages: 616
Release: 2019-11-13
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3961101949

The syllable is a natural unit of organization in spoken language whose strongest cross-linguistic patterns are often explained in terms of a universal preference for the CV structure. Syllable patterns involving long sequences of consonants are both typologically rare and theoretically marginalized, with few approaches treating these as natural or unproblematic structures. This book is an investigation of the properties of languages with highly complex syllable patterns. The two aims are (i) to establish whether these languages share other linguistic features in common such that they constitute a distinct linguistic type, and (ii) to identify possible diachronic paths and natural mechanisms by which these patterns come about in the history of a language. These issues are investigated in a diversified sample of 100 languages, 25 of which have highly complex syllable patterns. Languages with highly complex syllable structure are characterized by a number of phonetic, phonological, and morphological features which serve to set them apart from languages with simpler syllable patterns. These include specific segmental and suprasegmental properties, a higher prevalence of vowel reduction processes with extreme outcomes, and higher average morpheme/word ratios. The results suggest that highly complex syllable structure is a linguistic type distinct from but sharing some characteristics with other proposed holistic phonological types, including stress-timed and consonantal languages. The results point to word stress and specific patterns of gestural organization as playing important roles in the diachronic development of these patterns out of simpler syllable structures.