The Relationship Between the (Mis)-Parsing of Coarticulation in Perception and Sound Change: Evidence from Dissimilation and Language Acquisition

Harrington, Jonathan; Kleber, Felicitas; Stevens, Mary

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-28109-4_3

Cited by 8 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 37 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…This was the opposite of Ohala's prediction. Harrington et al 2016 found a similar lack of evidence for perceptual rounding dissimilation in Italian. Historically, in the development of Latin to Italian, words containing two rounded consonants lost rounding on the first, as in *kwinkwe > kinkwe > [tʃinkwe] 'five'.…”

mentioning

confidence: 87%

“…. Abrego-Collier (2013), Harrington et al (2016) and Ozburn (2016) have greatly moved forward the debate over Ohala's theory of sound change, by demonstrating that it is not trivial to produce long-range perceptual hypercorrection or hypocorrection in the laboratory in ways that mimic historical processes of long-range dissimilation or harmony. However, one issue with all three experiments was that each attempted to produce a type of assimilation or dissimilation that does not currently exist in the language studied.…”

Section: Limitations Of Previous Hypercorrection Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The experiment that comes closest to testing a language-appropriate process is that of Harrington et al (2016), which attempted to reproduce in Italian a type of rounding dissimilation that occurred in the history of Italian. However, the process in question is an ancient one; cinque for quinque was already attested in Vulgar Latin (Posner 1961:78).…”

Section: Limitations Of Previous Hypercorrection Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Evidence for perceptual hypercorrection in American r-dissimilation: A pilot study

et al. 2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We tested Ohala's (1993) theory that dissimilation results from perceptual hypercorrection for assimilation. We created nonce words by splicing syllables containing /r/ to continuations that either did or did not contain another /r/. When listeners were asked to type these nonce words, they were significantly more likely to omit the first /r/ if there was a later /r/. This is consistent with Ohala’s claim that one rhotic can perceptually mask the presence of another rhotic. The patterns of r-dropping mimics the characteristics of real English r-dissimilation, in which speakers tend to drop the first /r/ from words like surprise. We argue that perceptual errors are a plausible cause of the actuation of r-dissimilation, although other articulatory or processing constraints may contribute to its persistence.

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 87%

Section: Limitations Of Previous Hypercorrection Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Limitations Of Previous Hypercorrection Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Evidence for perceptual hypercorrection in American r-dissimilation: A pilot study

et al. 2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…However, imitation is not an automatic consequence of interactions between individuals (see e.g. Harrington et al 2016;…”

Section: Yu 2010)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Individual variation and the coarticulatory path to sound change: agent-based modeling of /str/ in English and Italian

Stevens

Harrington

2022

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This study is concerned with sound change in single populations. Sources differ as to whether such sound changes are attributed to the accumulation of coarticulatory variation, i.e. shared tendencies, or whether idiosyncratic variation is necessary to shift population norms. Using agent-based modeling, this study compares effects of interaction amongst members of single populations with (English-speaking) and without (Italian-speaking) coarticulatory variation involving /s/-retraction in /str/. After interaction, directional shifts /s/ -> /ʃ/ are found in English but not Italian /str/. Manipulating starting conditions to remove outlier individuals from the group of interacting agents has little effect on population-level outcomes. These results provide empirical support for the idea that sound change originates in phonetic variation that is common, rather than exceptional, in a population.

show abstract

“…An intrinsic and pervasive source of variation in speech is coarticulation (Lindblom, 1963;Iskarous et al, 2013). In order to map coarticulated speech to higher level units, listeners must recognize which cues or properties are the result of coarticulation, and take these effects into account when perceiving speech (Mann & Repp, 1980;Fowler, 1986;Gaskell & Marslen-Wilson, 1998;Fowler, 2005;Beddor, McGowan, Boland, Coetzee, & Brasher, 2013;Harrington, Kleber, & Stevens, 2016;Zellou, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perceptual vowel contrast reduction in Australian English /l/-final rimes

Szalay

Benders

Cox

et al. 2021

Laboratory Phonology: Journal of the Association for Laboratory Phonology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In Australian English rimes, coarticulation between coda /l/ and its preceding vowel has the potential to attenuate cues that contribute to phonological vowel contrast. Therefore, vowel-/l/ coarticulation may increase ambiguity between prelateral vowels. We used a vowel identification task to test the effect of vowel-/l/ coarticulation on vowel disambiguation in perception. Listeners categorized vowels in /hVd/ and /hVl/ contexts. Results showed reduced accuracy of vowels before coda /l/ compared to coda /d/, showing that coda /l/ increases vowel disambiguation difficulty. In particular, reduced perceptual contrast was found for the rime pairs /ʉːl-ʊl, aeɔl-ael/ and /əʉl-ɔl/ (e.g., fool-full, howl-Hal, dole-doll). A second experiment tested the effect of reduced perceptual contrast on word recognition. Listeners identified minimal pairs contrasting key vowel pairs in the /CVl/ and /CVd/ contexts. Reduced accuracy and increased response time in /l/ contexts shows that coda /l/ hinders listeners' ability to identify vowels. The implications of reduced perceptual vowel contrast for compensation for coarticulation and sound change are discussed.

show abstract

The Relationship Between the (Mis)-Parsing of Coarticulation in Perception and Sound Change: Evidence from Dissimilation and Language Acquisition

Cited by 8 publications

References 37 publications

Evidence for perceptual hypercorrection in American r-dissimilation: A pilot study

Evidence for perceptual hypercorrection in American r-dissimilation: A pilot study

Individual variation and the coarticulatory path to sound change: agent-based modeling of /str/ in English and Italian

Perceptual vowel contrast reduction in Australian English /l/-final rimes

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About