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The acoustics of Lewis Gaelic stop consonants

The acoustics of Lewis Gaelic stop consonants. Claire Nance and Jane Stuart-Smith c.nance.1@research.gla.ac.uk j.stuart-smith@englang.arts.gla.ac.uk University of Glasgow. Overview. Gaelic: a sociophonetician’s perspective Stop consonants in Gaelic Acoustics of stops in Gaelic

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The acoustics of Lewis Gaelic stop consonants

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  1. The acoustics of Lewis Gaelic stop consonants Claire Nance and Jane Stuart-Smith c.nance.1@research.gla.ac.uk j.stuart-smith@englang.arts.gla.ac.uk University of Glasgow

  2. Overview • Gaelic: a sociophonetician’s perspective • Stop consonants in Gaelic • Acoustics of stops in Gaelic • Research questions • Methods • Results • Ongoing work • Discussion

  3. Gaelic: a sociophonetician’s perspective • Bilingualism • Language contact (Thomason 2007) • Obsolescence and revitalisation (Dorian 1981, Jones 1998) • Acoustic phonetic study of linguistic variation

  4. 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)

  5. Initial stops VOT Vowel voicing Closure pòg ‘a kiss’ Vowel voicing Closure bog ‘soft’

  6. Pre-aspiration • ‘Delay in the offset of normal voicing’ (Laver 1994:150) • Vocal fold vibration and airflow independent

  7. Pre-aspiration Pre-asp Vowel voicing Close smoc ‘smoke’ Vowel voicing Closure snog ‘nice’

  8. Pre-aspiration zoom in Pre-asp Vowel voicing Close smoc ‘smoke’

  9. Pre-aspiration zoom in Breathy Voice Noise Pre-asp Close smoc ‘smoke’

  10. Research Questions • What are the phonetic correlates of the contrast /ph th kh/ and /p t k/ in modern Gaelic? • Is this system changing?

  11. Methods • Native speakers of Lewis Gaelic • 3 older generation, 3 younger • Recording conditions • Word list data • 2257 tokens analysed • Non-parametric statistical tests

  12. Durational measures • Segmenting on the waveform in Praat Vowel Modal voice Pre-aspiration BV Noise a c a

  13. Results – word initial • VOT: Cho and Ladefoged (1999)

  14. Results – word medial and final • Pre-aspiration makes the contrast

  15. Differences - initial

  16. Differences – medial and final • Calculated proportionally as well as raw numbers • Breathy voice, closure, vot ns. • Detail of pre-aspiration

  17. Can you hear the difference? Older speaker: boc ‘male goat’ Younger speaker: boc ‘male goat’ Older speaker: smoc ‘smoke’ Younger speaker: smoc ‘smoke’

  18. Summary • Younger speakers: • Longer VOT word initial position • Shorter pre-aspiration word medial and final • Pre-aspiration different: less voiceless

  19. 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

  20. Some preliminary results:Initial /kh/, /k/

  21. Word medial /hk/, /k/

  22. Conclusion • Apparent time differences • Comparison to Ladefoged et al. (1998): Real time change?

  23. Conclusion • Apparent time differences • Comparison to Ladefoged et al. (1998): Real time change?

  24. Conclusions • Gradient phonetic shift (Babel 2009, Bybee 2010) • Obsolescence / contact / ‘normal’ change? • Lexical attrition

  25. References • 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

  26. Mòran Taing • Collaborator: Olga Gordeeva, Acapela Group ogordeeva@gmail.com • My informants: Christeen Combe, Aonghas MacCoinnich and all those who wished to remain anonymous • Research funded by a Kelvin-Smith Scholarship, University of Glasgow

  27. The acoustics of Lewis Gaelic stop consonants Claire Nance and Jane Stuart-Smith c.nance.1@research.gla.ac.uk j.stuart-smith@englang.arts.gla.ac.uk University of Glasgow

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