Transcript Cora Lesure [.pptx]

Towards A Description of Ch’ol Mayan Prosody:
Beginning with Boundaries
Cora Lesure, U3, BA Linguistics | Supervisors: Prof. Jessica Coon, Department of Linguistics (McGill)
Prof. Lauren Clemens, Department of Linguistics (SUNY Albany)
Data was
collected from
six native
speakers over
26 days.
Ch’ol: A Mayan
language of the
greater
Tseltalan
branch.
Out of the
office and
into the
field…
Prosody:
• Determine reliable acoustic correlates of prosodic constituent boundaries
at the word level and phrase level.
Research • Apply this understanding to an outstanding question elsewhere in the
Objectives: grammar.
…to be a
field linguist
means to be
flexible.
My Field Sites:
-San Cristobal
-San Miguel
-El Campanario
Chiapas, Mexico
Acoustic
Analysis
Waveform
Spectrogram
• Prosody is studied
through acoustic analysis.
• This involves examining
the details of the
complex sound waves
that comprise human
speech.
• Prosody is the study of the aspects of human speech that are
phonological. This includes areas such as intonation, tone, and stress.
• This can be studied at the level of the syllable, word, phrase, and whole
utterance.
Method:
What is a Prosodic
Boundary?
• Acoustically analyze primary field data examining a variety of acoustic
parameters in order to establish what language specific cues are
employed by Ch’ol to signal boundaries.
What indicates a
prosodic boundary?
•Across Languages:
• Duration
• Voicing Contrast
• Spirantization
• Any many more!
-If you have spent any time listening to a
language that you do not speak a word of, you
have come to realize that words in spoken
language are not actually separated by neat
pauses. Therefore languages use other
indicators to denote a boundary between
words…
•In Ch’ol:
• Glottalization, a type of voicing
contrast.
• Pitch
• Duration
Going Further:
•Word level boundaries can
be used to inform the study
of other word level
processes
•Morphology
•Phrase level boundaries can
be used to inform the study
of other phrase level
processes
•Syntax
VoiceSauce
Many thanks to my supervisors, The Arts Internship Office, The Linguistics
Department, The Maldoff Family, my language consultants in Chiapas, and
all those who showed me kindness in my travels. This research would not
have been possible without each and every one of you. Thank you. Wokox
awäläl.