Rachel Vogel presented a poster titled "Dissociating prosodic and segmental cues of narrow focus in Nepali" at LabPhon 17, held virtually July 6-8, 2020.  

Poster Abstract:

Cross-linguistically, narrow focus is known to have both segmental and suprasegmental phonetic cues (e.g., Ladd 1980, Avesani et al. 2007, Féry and Kügler 2008, Mücke and Grice 2014, DiCanio et al. 2018). Two ongoing questions in this area are how these cues are related and which prosodic units serve as domains of their realization.

I investigate these issues in Nepali, an Indo-Aryan language with relatively understudied prosodic phonology, looking particularly at whether phonetic cues of narrow focus take as their domain a single prominent syllable or some larger unit. It is demonstrated that the suprasegmental cues tested span the entire word, while the segmental cues are restricted to positions that are otherwise prone to lenition in the absence of narrow focus.

More generally, these findings suggest that different types of acoustic cues of focus can pattern independently, and they need not be restricted to the stressed syllable of a word. Method. The study uses data produced by four native Nepali speakers in an experiment testing 32 real disyllabic words with dental stops /t, tʰ, d, dɦ/ in either word-initial or intervocalic position. Nepali is said to have weight sensitive word-level stress falling within the first two syllables (or first foot) of the word (Acharya 1990); all words tested here are expected to have stress on the first syllable.

The target words were embedded in two types of question-answer dialogues: the target was under narrow focus in the answer of one type, and in a backgrounded position preceding a verb with contrastive focus in the other. The target vowels were measured for F0 (z-scored by speaker) and duration (z-scored by speaker and vowel quality). The prevocalic interval duration (PVI) - used instead of VOT in languages with voiced aspirated stops (Schwarz et al. 2019) - was measured for all the stops. Since deaspiration of aspirated stops has been observed in Nepali as a type of lenition, /th/ and /dɦ/ tokens with PVIs within two standard deviations of the mean of their unaspirated counterparts were coded as deaspirated. Consistent aspiration of phonemically aspirated stops and longer PVI for all stops were taken as a manifestation of relative segmental strength; greater F0 and longer vowel durations were taken to reflect suprasegmental prominence.

Results. Regarding suprasegmental properties, Figure 1 shows that narrow focus significantly enhances vowel duration in both syllables (confirmed with a t-test; p < 0.005). Additionally, in the non-focus condition, the first vowel is significantly longer than the second (p = 0.005). This difference disappears under focus, however, reflecting a relatively greater lengthening effect on the second syllable.

Figure 2 shows that narrow focus significantly raises F0 in both syllables (p < 0.001) and that F0 is higher in the second syllable than in the first in both conditions (p < 0.005). The only significant effects of narrow focus on the segmental properties appeared with the aspirated stops.

Figure 3 shows that in the non-focus condition, /tʰ/ and /dɦ/ have significantly shorter PVIs in medial position than in initial position (p < 0.005), indicating intervocalic, or possibly foot-medial, lenition. Medial /dɦ/ exhibits particularly substantial lenition with a PVI distribution closer to that of /t/ and /d/, and with 37.8% of its tokens deaspirated. As a comparison of

Figures 3 and 4 shows, focus has no effect on initial /tʰ/ and /dɦ/, but lengthens PVI of both intervocalically, such that there is no longer a difference between PVI durations in word-initial and medial positions. There are also no instances of deaspiration under focus. Discussion. In sum, the segmental results show an anti-lenition effect of narrow focus, by which the word-medial stops prone to lenition in the absence of focus (/tʰ/ and /dɦ/) are strengthened. This is concentrated on the unstressed syllable. Suprasegmental effects on the other hand are spread throughout the word, enhancing duration and F0 of both syllables.

These findings indicate that segmental and suprasegmental cues of narrow focus are distributed differently from one another in Nepali, and prominent positions within a word are not necessarily privileged for narrow focus. Rather, it is a larger unit, which seems here to be the full word or a foot, that manifests its effects.

Francesco Burroni and Simone Harmath de Lemos presented a paper titled "A unified account for morphologically governed stress systems in Romance" at the 50th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL 50), held virtually July 1-3 and July 6-8, 2020

Paper Abstract:

A still debated question in Romance phonology is whether the stress systems of Romance varieties are weight-sensitive. Italian and Brazilian Portuguese are two well-known examples of varieties where both weight-sensitive and weight-insensitive analyses have been put forth in the literature.

In this paper, we show that the assumptions required by weight-sensitive analyses of these languages do not with-stand closer scrutiny and that their empirical coverage is limited. Accordingly, capitalizing on a feature that was already present in some weight-sensitive analyses– underlying accents –, we present a new account based on lexical accents tied to morphemes.

We show that this analysis has both well-motivated assumptions and wider empirical coverage. Further, we show that an analysis of Italian and Brazil-an Portuguese as morphological lexical-accent systems can readily be extended to other Romance varieties as well, in a hitherto unexplored (quasi-)pan-Romance perspective.

Given these shared similarities across Romance varieties, we theorize that a morphological accent system arose in Proto-Romance after the dissolution of the weight-sensitive system of Latin. We then return to our key assumption, the categorical presence/absence of lexical accent on morphemes, and we show that it is supported experimentally by the results of a pilot nonce-word stress assignment study in Italian.

We conclude by sketching out two possible models of the lexical accent systems, one couched in Optimality Theory and one couched in a connectionist model of stress assignment.

Seung-Eun Kim and Dr. Sam Tilsen  presented a paper titled "Speech rate and syntactically conditioned influences on prosodic boundaries" at the 10th International Conference on Speech Prosody, held virtually May 25-28, 2020.

Paper Abstract: 

Previous studies of the interaction between syntactic structure and prosodic organization have not resolved whether there is articulatory and acoustic evidence for categories of prosodic boundaries or phrase types. One of the major problems in interpreting past studies is that the effects of speech rate have not been thoroughly examined.

In the current study, we used a visual analogue cue to elicit continuous variation in speech rate for the production of two types of relative clauses. We hypothesized that if syntactic structure is mapped to categorical differences in prosodic organization, then measures of articulator kinematics and acoustic durations at phrase boundaries should differ or should scale differently with rate.

Articulographic and acoustic data were collected from four English speakers. Analyses of gestural timing and movement range revealed strong differences in the effects of rate at boundaries before vs. after the relative clauses. Interaction effects between relative clause type and rate were found for some speakers. For acoustic measurements, both effects of boundary and relative clause type were observed.

These findings are important because they show that articulatory kinematic and acoustic variables are more sensitive to rate variation at some phrasal boundaries than others.

Rachel Vogel presented a paper titled "Phonetic cues of narrow focus are mediated by phonemic contrast in Nepali"  at Berkeley Linguistics Society Workshop (BLSW) 2020, held Feb 7-8, 2020 

Paper Abstract:

Phonetic studies of a broad range of languages have observed strengthening of segmental articulations in prosodically prominent positions (e.g., nuclear stress, narrow focus)[1][2][3][4][5]. Such "localized hyperarticulation" can enhance segments along different dimensions, however, not all properties or dimensions are affected equally[1][2][5]. This paper examines hyperarticulatory effects of narrow focus on the four-way laryngeal contrast (+/-voice, +/-SG) of Nepali stops as a case study, in order to address the broader question of to what extent the dimensions privileged by the gradient manifestations of hyperarticulation interact with the phonological system of contrasts.

Specifically, I investigate narrow focus[6] effects on two properties of Nepali aspirated stops: degree of closure and aspiration, corresponding to their [-cont] and [+SG] features respectively. Both are claimed to exhibit substantial lenition, with frequent spirantization and deaspiration in intervocalic or foot medial positions[7][8]. Crucially, variations along these two dimensions have different implications for the phonemic stop contrasts: deaspiration of aspirated stops results in the loss of contrast with unaspirated stops, while spirantization does not affect contrasts, since there are no phonemic fricatives at the same places of articulation as the oral stops.

I show that narrow focus has an anti-lenition effect on aspiration, but not on closure degree, in intervocalic position. This in turn suggests an interaction between phonetic focus cues and the system of phonemic contrasts, with hyperarticulation serving as a mechanism of contrast maintenance.

Method.

Four native Nepali speakers were recorded producing 32 real disyllabic words with dental stops /t, tʰ, d, dɦ/ in either word-initial or intervocalic position (e.g., tʰali, kətʰa, dɦatu, gədɦa); all are assumed to have initial stress[7]. The stimuli were embedded in two types of question-answer dialogues, with the target in the answer either bearing narrow focus, or in a backgrounded position preceding a verb that bears contrastive focus.

The stops were measured for prevocalic interval duration (PVI), comparable to VOT, previously used in languages with voiced aspirated stops[9]. The analysis focuses on the manifestation of /tʰ/ and /dɦ/, using /t/ and /d/ as reference points. Phonemically aspirated stops with PVIs within two standard deviations of the mean PVI of their unaspirated counterparts were coded as categorically deaspirated; ones with substantial noise before the release were coded as spirantized. Since hyperarticulation is taken here to include resistance to lenition, more consistent aspiration and an increase in overall PVI distribution constitute relative strength of the [+SG] feature; lack of spirantization constitutes relative strength of the [-cont] feature.

Results.

The results for the non-focus condition show lenition of both aspiration and stop closure intervocalically. Deaspiration occurred in 37.8% of the medial /dɦ/ tokens; spirantization occurred in 25% of medial /dɦ/ and 6.7% of medial /tʰ/ tokens. Under narrow focus, no stops deaspirated, and the overall PVI distributions for medial /tʰ/ and /dɦ/ increased significantly from the non-focus condition (p < 0.005). The rate of medial spirantization, on the other hand, did not change significantly under narrow focus (confirmed by logistic regression analysis). Spirantization never occurred in initial position and no effect of focus was observed on aspiration of initial stops.

Conclusion.

These findings demonstrate that narrow focus enhances the realization of the [+SG] feature but not the [-cont] feature of aspirated stops in Nepali. This is consistent with work on localized hyperarticulation in other languages showing that not all features are uniformly affected. Moreover, in Nepali, this strengthening only occurs in medial position, where lenition and contrast reduction occur in the absence of narrow focus. I thus propose that focus hyperarticulation in this case is primarily manifested as an anti-lenition or contrast maintenance effect. Finally, it can be seen that although phonetic strengthening is gradient in nature, it nevertheless interacts with the phonological system of contrasts resulting in enhancement of categorically contrastive features.

References

[1] de Jong, K. (1995). The supraglottal articulation of prominence in English: Linguistic stress as localized hyperarticulation. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 97, pp. 491–504.

[2] Cho, T. (2005). Prosodic strengthening and featural enhancement: Evidence from acoustic and articulatory realizations of /a, i/ in English. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 177(6), pp. 3867-3878.

[3] Avesani, C., C. Zmarich, and M. Vayra (2007). “On the articulatory bases of prominence in Italian.” In Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, pp. 981-984.

[4] Cole, J., H. Kim, H. Choi, and M. Hasegawa-Johnson (2007). “Prosodic effects on acoustic cues to stop voicing and place of articulation: Evidence from Radio News speech.” Journal of Phonetics 35, pp. 180-209.

[5] Mücke, D. and M. Grice (2014). “The effect of focus marking on supralaryngeal articulation – Is it mediated by accentuation.” Journal of Phonetics, 44, pp. 47-61.

[6] Ladd, D. R. (1980). The structure of intonational meaning: Evidence from English. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

[7] Acharya, J. (1990). A Descriptive Grammar of Nepali and an Analyzed Corpus. PhD thesis. Georgetown University.

[8] Khatiwada, R. (2009). “Nepali.” JIPA, 39(3), pp. 373–380. [9] Schwarz, M., M. Sonderegger, and H. Goad (2019). “Realization and representation of Nepali laryngeal contrasts: Voiced aspirates and laryngeal realism.” In Journal of Phonetics, 73, pp. 113-127.