Transcript Rannsachadh

The acoustics of Lewis Gaelic
stop consonants
Claire Nance and Jane Stuart-Smith
[email protected]
[email protected]
University of Glasgow
Overview
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Gaelic: a sociophonetician’s perspective
Stop consonants in Gaelic
Acoustics of stops in Gaelic
Research questions
Methods
Results
Ongoing work
Discussion
Gaelic: a sociophonetician’s perspective
• Bilingualism
• Language contact (Thomason 2007)
• Obsolescence and revitalisation (Dorian 1981,
Jones 1998)
• Acoustic phonetic study of linguistic variation
Stop consonants in Gaelic
• Stops
• Word initial
/ph th kh/ and /p t k/
• Word medial and word final
/hp ht hk/ and /p t k/ (Ladefoged et al. 1998)
• (Also palatalised vs. velarised distinction)
Initial stops
VOT
Vowel voicing
pòg ‘a kiss’
Vowel voicing
Closure
bog ‘soft’
Closure
Pre-aspiration
• ‘Delay in the offset of normal voicing’ (Laver
1994:150)
• Vocal fold vibration and airflow independent
Pre-aspiration
Pre-asp
Vowel voicing
Close
smoc ‘smoke’
Vowel voicing
Closure
snog ‘nice’
Pre-aspiration zoom in
Pre-asp
Vowel voicing
smoc ‘smoke’
Close
Pre-aspiration zoom in
Breathy Voice
Noise
Pre-asp
Close
smoc ‘smoke’
Research Questions
• What are the phonetic correlates of the
contrast /ph th kh/ and /p t k/ in modern
Gaelic?
• Is this system changing?
Methods
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Native speakers of Lewis Gaelic
3 older generation, 3 younger
Recording conditions
Word list data
2257 tokens analysed
Non-parametric statistical tests
Durational measures
• Segmenting on the waveform in Praat
Vowel
Modal voice
a
Pre-aspiration
BV
Noise
c
a
Results – word initial
• VOT: Cho and Ladefoged (1999)
ph
th
kh
p
t
k
0
20
40
60
80
100
Results – word medial and final
• Pre-aspiration makes the contrast
th
vot
t
preasp
-100
-80
-60
-40
-20
0
20
40
Differences - initial
ph
th
kh
p
Younger
t
Older
k
0
20
40
60
80
100
Differences – medial and final
• Calculated proportionally as well as raw
numbers
• Breathy voice, closure, vot ns.
• Detail of pre-aspiration
Younger
ph pmodv
ph pbv
ph pnoise
Older
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
Can you hear the difference?
Older speaker: boc ‘male goat’
Younger speaker: boc ‘male goat’
Older speaker: smoc ‘smoke’
Younger speaker: smoc ‘smoke’
Summary
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Younger speakers:
Longer VOT word initial position
Shorter pre-aspiration word medial and final
Pre-aspiration different: less voiceless
Ongoing work
• Adapted Zero Crossing Rate (Gordeeva and
Scobbie 2010)
• In collaboration with Olga Gordeeva
• Quantifies pre- and post- aspiration
• Counts zero crossings in a band pass filtered
sound file
Some preliminary results:
Initial /kh/, /k/
4500
younger /kh/
older /kh/
younger /k/
older /k/
4000
3500
3000
2500
2000
1500
1000
500
0
zcr_1
zcr_2
zcr_3
zcr_4
zcr_5
Word medial /hk/, /k/
3500
3000
2500
2000
1500
younger /hk/
1000
older /hk/
younger /k/
500
older /k/
0
zcr_1
zcr_2
zcr_3
zcr_4
zcr_5
Conclusion
• Apparent time differences
• Comparison to Ladefoged et al. (1998): Real
time change?
th
Younger
Older
t
Ladefoged
0
20
40
60
80
100
Conclusion
• Apparent time differences
• Comparison to Ladefoged et al. (1998): Real
time change?
Young
Old
noise
Ladefoged
vot
-120
-100
-80
-60
-40
-20
0
20
40
60
Conclusions
• Gradient phonetic shift (Babel 2009, Bybee
2010)
• Obsolescence / contact / ‘normal’ change?
• Lexical attrition
References
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Babel, M., 2009. The phonetic and phonological effects of obsolescence in Northern Paiute. In J.
Stanford and D. Preston, eds., Variation in indigenous minority languages. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins
Bybee, J., 2010. Language usage and cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Cho, T., and Ladefoged, P., 1999. Variation and universals in VOT: evidence from 18 endangered
languages. Journal of phonetics, 27, pp. 207-229
Dorian, N., 1981. Language death: the life cycle of a Scottish Gaelic dialect. Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press
Gordeeva, O., and Scobbie, J., 2010. Preaspiration as a correlate of word-final voice in Scottish
English fricatives. In S. Fuchs, M. Toda, M. Zygis, eds., Turbulent sounds: an interdisciplinary guide.
Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter
Jones, Mari, 1998. Obsolescence and revitalization: linguistic change in two sociolinguistically
contrasting Welsh communities. Oxford: Blackwell
Ladefoged, P., and Ladefoged, J., Turk, A., Hind, K., Skilton, St. J., 1998. Phonetic structures of
Scottish Gaelic. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 28, pp. 1-41
Laver, J., 1994. Principles of phonetics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
MacKinnon, K., 2010. Scottish Gaelic today: social history and contemporary status. In M. Ball and
N. Müller, eds., The Celtic languages. 2nd. ed. London: Routledge
Silverman, D., 2003. On the rarity of pre-aspirated stops. Journal of linguistics, 39:3. pp. 575-598
Thomason, S., 2007. Language contact: an introduction. 4th ed. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press
Mòran Taing
• Collaborator: Olga Gordeeva, Acapela Group
[email protected]
• My informants: Christeen Combe, Aonghas
MacCoinnich and all those who wished to remain
anonymous
• Research funded by a Kelvin-Smith Scholarship,
University of Glasgow
The acoustics of Lewis Gaelic
stop consonants
Claire Nance and Jane Stuart-Smith
[email protected]
[email protected]
University of Glasgow