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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20240205T160000
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SUMMARY:Colloquium Talk - Connor Mayer: Are scalar models of sonority enough? Insights from L2 acquisition of English complex onsets
DESCRIPTION:Languages vary in their phonotactics: how sounds are allowed to be sequenced into words. For example\, although English\, Spanish\, and Farsi all have the sounds /p l s/\, English allows the complex onsets /sp/ and /pl/\, as in ‘speech’ and ‘play’\, Spanish only /pl/\, as in ‘playa’\, while Farsi allows no complex onsets at all. Learners of a second language (L2) often struggle with producing complex onsets that are banned in their first language (L1) and will commonly repair them using epenthesis: the insertion of a vowel to break up an illegal sequence. There is a robust asymmetry in repair strategies for complex onsets across languages: sC onsets are more typically repaired by epenthesizing before the cluster (prothesis; as in ‘stop’ → ‘estop’) while other onsets are repaired by epenthesizing into the cluster (anaptyxis; as in ‘please’ → ‘pelease’). One analysis of this asymmetry has been in terms of sonority\, the overall resonance of a sound: this proposal suggests that there is a pressure to avoid sonority rises across syllable boundaries (Vennemann 1988\, Gouskova 2001\, 2004). A second analysis suggests that speakers choose epenthesis locations that maximize perceptual similarity to the unepenthesized form (Fleischhacker 2001\, 2005\, Flemming 2008). \nIn this talk\, I will compare the predictions of these two theories against new empirical data from L1 Farsi/L2 English speakers. In the first part of the talk\, I will present the results of a corpus study and an experimental study\, which consist of recordings of speakers of varying English proficiency reading English passages. The results of these studies confirm previous observations that (a) sC onsets almost categorically undergo prothesis\, while other onsets undergo anaptyxis; (b) overall rates of cluster repair decrease as English ability increases; and (c) sC clusters are repaired more frequently and acquired more slowly than other clusters. In the second part of the talk\, I will present a maximum entropy optimality theory model of the experimental data. First\, I will show that constraint scaling can be used to model the effects of L2 proficiency on epenthesis paterns\, providing a starting point for more nuanced modeling of\nL2 acquisition. Second\, I will demonstrate that when the models are extended to encode the increased difficulty of sC clusters\, the perceptual account of epenthesis asymmetry beter predicts the data than the syllable contact account. Although the perceptual model makes errors in the overall rates of epenthesis\, it consistently predicts the correct type. The syllable contact model\, on the other hand\, fails to predict both the rate and type of epenthesis of many clusters. I will close by arguing that models that treat sonority as a scalar value\, such as the syllable contact account or the more recent NAP model (Albert & Nicenboim 2022)\, are ultimately insufficient to deal with the wide range of sonority-related phenomena observed in speech. I suggest instead that further study of the articulatory and perceptual reflexes of sonority will be important to ensure our models are both empirically and explanatorily adequate. Specifically\, I will suggest that the concept of ‘good’ vs. ‘bad’ variability (e.g. Latash 2012) from the motor control literature may provide a principled way to relate the perceptual and articulatory properties of sC clusters. – Connor Mayer
URL:https://linguistics.ucla.edu/event/colloquium-talk-connor-mayer/
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20240209T110000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20240209T130000
DTSTAMP:20240201T185311Z
CREATED:20240117T183052Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240201T185311Z
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SUMMARY:Colloquium Talk - Shengyun Gu: When the phonological mind meets another modality: Two-handed articulation in Shanghai Sign Language " (See below for abstract)
DESCRIPTION:Location – Royce Hall 362 \nThe department tour slot is still open. You can sign up here (same link). \nWhen the phonological mind meets another modality: Two-handed articulation in Shanghai Sign Language \nAbstract:\nTo what extent are the phonological systems of languages\, spoken or signed\, structured similarly if we assume that they both draw on the same linguistic capacities\, and to what extent is sign language phonology different due to the visual-manual modality it is transmitted through? One striking difference in sign languages is that two identical articulators (i.e.\, hands) are available for linguistic expressions. This talk will address the above two overarching questions through the lens of two-handed articulation in Shanghai Sign Language. I will present evidence from complex word formation and phonological processes such as non-dominant hand spread (‘stability’ of the non-dominant hand across different signs) and weak drop (i.e.\, deletion of the non-dominant hand) to show that the phonological principles in the organization of a word and a prosodic domain in relation to the non-dominant hand transcend modality differences. I will also discuss the relevance of considering the aspects of simultaneity and iconicity in sign language grammar. I argue that each of these two modality-related properties\, i.e.\, an increase in simultaneous complexity and a prevalence of lexical iconicity\, shape sign language phonology. Finally\, by comparing deaf signers and hearing non-signers in their processing of weak drop\, I reveal that knowledge of a sign language mediates not only the way iconicity is leveraged\, but also almost all levels of the phonology of the non-dominant hand\, including lexical representation\, phonological repairs\, and phonetic implementation. Synthesizing these findings\, I support the view that a sign phonological system includes a mixture of properties that are modality-independent and others that are modality-specific. Crucially\, I highlight that the integration of these properties is specialized and mediated by the knowledge of a sign language.
URL:https://linguistics.ucla.edu/event/colloquium-talk-shengyun-gu/
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20240223T110000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20240223T130000
DTSTAMP:20240212T181313Z
CREATED:20231005T173440Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240212T181313Z
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SUMMARY:Colloquium Talk - Viola Schmitt: Distributivity is Complex
DESCRIPTION:In this talk I show (based on joint cross-linguistic work with various collaborators) that distributive  — i.e.\, `classical’ — meanings for the universal part of the language (connectives and DP-internal quantifiers) correspond to bigger morpho-syntactic structures while the corresponding smaller structures have a weak (plural) meaning. This\, I will argue\, raises a problem for a number of current theories of scalar implicatures\, as the `classical’ universal expressions required as alternatives are structurally too complex to be accessible. To tackle this problem\, I will tentatively suggest an adjustment to the algorithm via which scalar implicatures are derived. \nLocation – Royce Hall 362
URL:https://linguistics.ucla.edu/event/colloquium-talk-viola-schmitt/
CATEGORIES:Colloquium
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