Browsing by Subject "Phonology"
Now showing 1 - 18 of 18
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item Acoustic correlates of [voice] in two dialects of Venezuelan Spanish(2009-08) Lain, Stephanie; Birdsong, David; Kelm, Orlando R., 1957-The present study is an investigation of acoustic correlates corresponding to the category [voice] in two dialects of Venezuelan Spanish. The Andean mountain dialect Mérida (MER) and Caribbean coastal dialect Margarita (MAR) are thought to differ systematically in the phonetic implementation of the Spanish phonological stop series along the lines of lowland and highland divides commonly reported for Latin American Spanish. Specifically, MER has been characterized by a greater percentage of occlusive pronunciations, MAR by more fricative and/or approximant realizations of phonological stops. To test what repercussions these differences in consonant articulation have on the acoustic correlates that encode [voice], a production experiment was run. Informants were 25 adult monolingual speakers of Venezuelan Spanish from the areas of El Tirano (Margarita Island) and San Rafael de Mucuchíes (Mérida state). The materials were 44 CV syllable prompts. Target syllables were analyzed with respect to the following: consonant closure duration, VOT, %VF, RMS, preceding vowel duration, CV ratio, F1 onset frequency, F0 contour, and burst. Statistical analysis using a linear mixed model ANOVA tested for fixed effects of voicing category, dialect and condition (speeded/unspeeded) and interactions of voicing category * dialect and dialect * condition. Results showed that the dialects MER and MAR vary significantly in RMS. In addition, the following correlates were significant for the interaction of voicing category * dialect: consonant duration, VOT, %VF, RMS, CV ratio and burst. Generally, the nature of the differences indicates a greater separation between [± voice] values in MER than in MAR (notably divergent are VOT and RMS). These results imply that while the same acoustic correlates of [voice] are operative in both fortis and lenis dialects of Spanish, [± voice] categories relate differently. Furthermore, with regard to prosody and rate of speech, most significant differences in condition occurred in initial position while most significant differences in the interaction of voicing category * dialect were linked to medial position. The results of this study are relevant to current research on the specifics of dialectal variation in consonant systems. They also have wider implications for the general mapping of phonetics to phonology in speech.Item Aspects of the phonology and morphology of Zenzontepec Chatino, a Zapotecan language of Oaxaca, Mexico(2014-08) Campbell, Eric William; Woodbury, Anthony C.This dissertation is an analysis of aspects of the phonology and morphology of Zenzontepec Chatino (ISO 639-3: czn), a Zapotecan (Otomanguean) language spoken in a remote area of Oaxaca, Mexico (16°32"N, 97°30"W). There are an estimated 8,000 speakers of the language, but its vitality is weakening due to accelerating shift to Spanish. The phonological analysis begins with the segmental inventory. After that, the autosegmental contrasts are treated, with the highlight being the tone system. The tone bearing unit is the mora, which may bear high tone /H/, mid tone /M/, or no tone Ø. In tone systems with a three-way contrast, the unspecified category is usually the mid-level one. Therefore, Zenzontepec Chatino is typologically unusual in this respect. Special chapters are devoted to phonotactics and phonological processes, including a play language of "speaking backwards" that sheds light on crucial phonological questions, such as the status of glottalization and the limits of prosodic domains. There are also chapters on special topics in phonology: regional variation, Spanish loanwords, and sound symbolism. Another chapter bridges the phonology and the morphology, defining and comparing the phonological word versus the grammatical word, and outlining the basic morphological building blocks: roots, affixes, clitics, and particles. After that, lexeme classes are defined using morphosyntactic criteria, providing a syntactic sketch of the language. The language is strongly head-marking with somewhat agglutinating and synthetic morphology. Another chapter gives an overview of verbal morphology, which is the locus of most of the language's morphology. The dissertation is the beginning of a full descriptive grammar and is part of a larger project to document Zenzontepec Chatino, complementing a dictionary and a documentary text corpus recorded in the community with native speakers. The theoretical approach is one in which the language is explored as much as possible on its own terms using naturalistic textual data supplemented by lexicographic and elicited material. The analysis is not bound by any formal framework, but it is informed by socio-cultural and diachronic considerations. It is situated in a typological perspective to offer more of a contribution to the scientific understanding of the structure of human language.Item Automated Pattern Recognition for Intonation (PRInt) : an essay on intonational phonology and categorization(2012-12) Bacuez, Nicholas; Montreuil, Jean-Pierre; Blyth, Carl; Bullock, Barbara; Erk, Katrin; Smiljanic, RajkaThis dissertation provides experimental evidence for the validity of an intonational phonology. The widely used Autosegmental-Metrical theory con- tends that the phonological structure of intonation can be expressed with two tonal targets (L/H tones and derivatives) and retrieved from its phonetic im- plementations. However, it has not been specifically demonstrated so far in a systematic way. This dissertation argues that this view on intonational phonol- ogy considers the phonetic forms of intonation as instances of phonologically structured intonational units forming functionally discrete categories (tones and derivatives). The model of Pattern Recognition for Intonation (PRInt) applies the concepts of categorization (vagueness, prototype, degrees of typicality) to in- tonation in order to abstract the phonological structure of intonational cate- gories from the ranking, by degree of typicality, of their variations in phonetic implementation. First, instances belonging to an intonation category are collected. Sec- ond, a pattern recognition module, relying on the 4-layer structure protocol, extracts a feature vector from the phonetic data of each instance: a sequence of structurally organized tones (L/H tones and derivatives). Third, a fuzzy classifier, using two functions (frequency and similar- ity), organizes the data from the feature vectors of all instances by degree of typicality (grade of membership of values in multisets) and generates the phonological structure of the intonation category, the prototypical pattern, ex- tracted from all instances, and that subsumes them all. It also re-creates the phonetic implementations of the phonological structure but with their features ranked by degree of typicality. This allows the model to distinguish phono- logically distinct structures from phonetic variations of the same phonological structure. The model successfully extracted the phonological intonation structure associated to three modalities of closed questions in French: neutral, doubt- ful, and surprised. It found that neutral and doubtful closed questions are phonologically distinct while surprise is a phonetic allocontour of the neutral modality, in line with prior characterizations of these patterns. It demon- strated that a bi-tonal phonological structure of intonation can be retrieved from phonetic variations. A versatile modeling tool, PRInt will be developed to use its acquired knowledge to evaluate the categorical status of novel instances and to extract multiple phonological units from mixed corpora.Item Consonant-vowel co-occurrence patterns produced by Spanish-English bilingual children(2011-05) Soriano, Stephanie Rose; Davis, Barbara L.(Barbara Lockett); Bedore, Lisa M.Simultaneous bilingual and early sequential bilingual children are exposed to two languages while acquiring the sound system for the first time. In bilingual children who are identified with speech sound delay or disorder, the question arises of how to approach intervention in the most effective way. In monolingual English learning children, some strong within syllable patterns of coronal consonant and front vowel, labial consonant and central vowel, and dorsal consonant and back vowel that are based on rhythmic mandibular oscillations without independent movement of the tongue have been identified as occurring more frequently. No information is available on children learning Spanish or on children who are early bilinguals relative to the presence of these patterns in output. Consideration of the presence of these patterns, typical of early development in English learning children, would help to plan remediation more precisely for bilingual speech delayed children. If the patterns are present, they should be accounted for as basic aspects of the production system output available to young children that might need to be assessed and incorporated into early intervention protocols for bilingual children. The present study tests the hypothesis that significant similarities between performance-based, consonant-vowel (CV) co-occurrence patterns produced in Spanish and English can provide greater efficacy for assessment and intervention practices for bilingual Spanish-English children. Within syllable CV co-occurrence patterns were observed from 66 months to 81 months of age in six bilingual Spanish-English speaking children. Consonants were categorized into labial, coronal, and dorsal place of articulation while vowels were categorized by front, central, and back dimensions to evaluate co-occurrences. Predictions based on the Frame then Content (FC) theory (MacNeilage & Davis, 1990) were evaluated relative to intrasyllabic combinations of consonants and vowels. Results confirmed the prediction that CV co-occurrence patterns produced by bilingual Spanish-English speaking children share significant similarities with those produced by children in previously researched languages. These results show that the production based hypothesis of the FC theory of speech production, tested previously on English learning children is also characteristic of bilingual children learning Spanish and English. These findings suggest that consonant-vowel co-occurrence patterns are impacted by the capacity of the production system to produce different sounds in combination in diverse language learning circumstances, even when children are simultaneous bilingual learners. Mandibular oscillation without independent tongue movement within syllables is responsible for early intrasyllabic patterns produced by children. The FC theory supports the role of performance-based assessment and intervention for future practices in the field.Item The effect of phonological, semantic, and hybrid associates on accurate recall and false memories of adults who stutter : a preliminary study(2011-05) Delahoussaye, Amy Leigh; Byrd, Courtney T.; Sheng, LiThere are data to suggest that the phonological representations of young children who stutter are less specified than their typically fluent peers. The purpose of the present study is to determine if this apparent difference in phonological encoding persists in adults who stutter. Utilizing a false memory paradigm, nine adults who stutter (AWS) were asked to listen to and then recall/produce 12 lists of 12 words each. Each word list was comprised of either semantic, phonological or an equal number of semantic and phonological associates of a single, unpresented, critical ‘lure’ word. Three parameters of recall performance were measured across these three conditions: 1) number of accurately recalled productions, 2) number of lure intrusions and 3) number of other intrusions. AWS produced significantly more accurate recalls in the semantic condition than either the hybrid or phonological conditions, and significantly more lure intrusions in the phonological and hybrid conditions than the semantic condition, but there was no significant difference on measures of other intrusions. These results extend the findings with young children who stutter, and indicate that the phonological representations are less robust than the semantic representations in the lexicon of AWS.Item A grammar of Chol, a Mayan language(2011-08) Vázquez Álvarez, Juan Jesús, 1971-; England, Nora C.; Zavala, Roberto; Epps, Patience L.; Woodbury, Anthony C.; Stuart, David S.This dissertation consists of a description of the grammar of Tila Chol. Chol is one of the 30 Mayan languages spoken in Mexico, Guatemala and Belize. This language is used by nearly 200,000 speakers, distributed in two main dialects: Tila Chol and Tumbalá Chol. The data for this thesis are mostly from Tila Chol. This dissertation includes aspects of phonology, morphology, and syntax from a contrastive and typological perspective. The grammar begins with general information about the speakers and the language (chapter one). Chapter two is a description of phonology, which includes the inventory of sounds, stress, syllabic patterns and phonological processes. Chapter three presents the properties of root/word classes, as well as affixes and particles. Chapter four is about the person and number markers. Chapter five provides the main features of word classes, such as verbs, nouns, adjectives, positionals, affect words, adverbs, minor classes and clitics. The next chapter (chapter six) deals with the elements that verbs can take, including incorporation of modifiers and noun incorporation. Chapter seven provides the main features of non-verbal predicates. In chapter eight, the structures of noun phrases, such as possessors, determiners and modifiers are presented. Chapter nine describes the structure of simple sentences in both verbal and non-verbal predicates. Chapter ten is devoted to the operations that changevalence, including passive, antipassive, reflexive/reciprocal, causative and applicative. Chapter eleven deals with information structure in the discourse, specifically topicalization and focus. Chapter twelve is a brief description of passive constructions as operations triggered by paradigmatic gaps related to obviation as documented in Algonquian languages. Chapter thirteen deals with complex predicate structures. Finally, in Chapter fourteen, the complex sentences are described, including complement clauses, relative clauses, adverbial clauses, conditional clauses and coordination. This grammar will provide useful information for current Chol projects related to strengthening and revitalization efforts, such as in the construction of pedagogical materials and will also be useful for the field of linguistics or other related areas.Item Improving spelling ability among speakers of African American vernacular English: an intervention based on phonological, morphological, and orthographic principles(2009-05-15) Pittman, Ramona TrinetteGiven the importance of the role of spelling in literacy, it is important to have knowledge of the linguistic features that allow students to be successful spellers. Having phonological, morphological, and orthographic knowledge is essentially important to spell conventionally. In the United States, the standard language is Academic English (AE). African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is considered a deviation from AE, with its own sound system. AAVE is the most widely used form of dialect in the United States. Many students who speak AAVE may have difficulties in producing the correct spelling of AE words. The overall purpose of this study was to provide sixth-grade students, who are speakers of AAVE, with an eight-week intervention in the principles of phonology, morphology, and orthography that would assist them in improving their spelling performance. Students had similar scores on all spelling and dialect pretest measures before the intervention began. The research design was a pretest/posttest/posttest design using waitlist- control. This study included 142 students divided into 14 class sections taught by two teachers. The two teachers provided the intervention to the students. The experimental group consisted of seven classes, and the control group consisted of seven classes. After the first implementation of the intervention, the study was replicated with the control group of students. MANOVA was utilized to determine the effect of the intervention. The intervention produced large effects for the students who received the spelling instruction. The results from the criterion-referenced spelling assessments and a sentence writing task revealed that students who received explicit instruction from the intervention made gains in their spelling performance from pretest/posttest 1/posttest 2 and maintained these gains after being tested eight weeks later. Practical and theoretical recommendations are provided for teachers and researchers. Suggested recommendations include: providing teacher training that will enable teachers to be more linguistically aware of AAVE and its features, making students aware of the difference in the AAVE and the AE sound system, and conducting more research-based studies that will assist speakers of AAVE in literacy and spelling.Item Italian metaphony in optimality theory with candidate chains(2013-12) Gaskill, Anne E.; Montreuil, Jean-Pierre; Russi, Cinzia; Donaldson, Bryan; Bullock, Barbara E; Kelm, OrlandoThe regressive (mor)phonological assimilatory process most commonly referred to as metaphony is one which is quite common in Romance: it is found in the dialects of Portugal, Spain, and Italy, with traces appearing in Rumanian and the Spanish of the Americas, as well. As a result, it has been the subject of a great deal of scholarly research both diachronically, (Hall 1950, Blaylock 1965, Leonard 1978, Papa 1981, Kaze 1989) and synchronically (McCarthy 1984, Calabrese 1985, 1998, 2008, Vago 1988, Hualde 1989, Martínez-Gil 2006, Walker 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010). What has eluded recent researchers, however, is a framework that can successfully address the myriad variations of metaphony found in these regions; there exists to date no comprehensive analysis of metaphony in Romance. This dissertation offers an analysis of Italian Metaphony that is couched in a recent variety of Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 1993, 2004), Optimality Theory with Candidate Chains (McCarthy 2007), a framework which exploits the rarely used serial capacity of OT. In exploring the myriad varieties of metaphony found in the Italian dialects, this dissertation tests the capabilities and limitations of both Traditional Optimality Theory and Optimality Theory with Candidate Chains; this exploration culminates with the analysis of a problematic variety of OT that currently lacks an acceptable solution in OT-CC. To address this shortcoming, this dissertation introduces a new constraint to the established constraint hierarchy of OT-CC: Subsequence. Subsequence builds on the theoretical premises established in McCarthy (2007) with the introduction of Precedence, which evaluated not a single output candidate but rather the order of the constraint violations found within an individual candidate chain. The resulting analyses create a unified account of Italian metaphony that demonstrates the usefulness not only of OT-CC for addressing different types of opacity, but also the need for an enhancement such as subsequence to account for types of variation that are currently impossible to address in OT-CC. This dissertation offers an analysis of Italian Metaphony that is couched in a recent variety of Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 1993, 2004), Optimality Theory with Candidate Chains (McCarthy 2007), a framework which exploits the rarely used serial capacity of OT. In exploring the myriad varieties of metaphony found in the Italian dialects, this dissertation tests the capabilities and limitations of both Traditional Optimality Theory and Optimality Theory with Candidate Chains; this exploration culminates with the analysis of a problematic variety of OT that currently lacks an acceptable solution in OT-CC. To address this shortcoming, this dissertation introduces a new constraint to the established constraint hierarchy of OT-CC: Subsequence. Subsequence builds on the theoretical premises established in McCarthy (2007) with the introduction of Precedence, which evaluated not a single output candidate but rather the order of the constraint violations found within an individual candidate chain. The resulting analyses create a unified account of Italian metaphony that demonstrates the usefulness not only of OT-CC for addressing different types of opacity, but also the need for an enhancement such as subsequence to account for types of variation that are currently impossible to address in OT-CC.Item Joint usage in sign language acquisition : a pedagogical model(2013-12) Wynne, Michael Francis, Jr.; Meier, Richard P.This paper utilizes prior studies attempting to explain different possible phonological production errors among adults who learn American Sign Language (ASL) as a second language (L2). These studies have offered theoretical grounding to such production errors. One area of study in particular is further explored in this paper and that is how specific joints of the arm and hand are used in the production of signs (Mirus, et al., 2001, Meier, et al 2008). L2 learners of ASL are essentially learning a new language using a different modality and this new modality requires that they relearn how to use specific motor skills needed in order to produce sign vocabulary. To address this, an exploratory teaching module is proposed with the need for further action research to discuss its effectiveness.Item Kakua phonology : first approach(2010-12) Bolaños Quiñónez, Katherine Elizabeth; Epps, Patience, 1973-; Woodbury, AnthonyThis work presents a preliminary analysis of the phonology of Kakua, an endangered language of the Kakua-Nukak family (formerly classified as Makú). Kakua is spoken by approximately 300 people living in the Vaupés region of the Amazon rain forest, in northwest Amazonia, Eastern Colombia. This analysis is based on data collected with Kakua speakers from the village of Wacará, a settlement of approximately 120 people, living along the basin of Caño Wacará, located between the Querarí and the Vaupés Rivers, to the east of Mitú, close to the Colombia-Brazil borders. The phonological inventory of Kakua includes five vowels and seventeen consonants. Kakua also presents contrastive prosodic features of nasalization and an inventory of three contrastive tones. Kakua phonology presents various interesting typological features from both areal and cross-linguistic perspective. The work presented here is a first attempt to provide a better illustration of a little-known endangered language of Amazonia.Item Lexical influence on phonological processing in adults with and without stuttering(2011-05) Moriarty, Kirsten Elizabeth; Byrd, Courtney T.; Hampton, ElizabethPurpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate how phonetic complexity influences the accuracy and rate of speech production in adults who do (AWS, N=15) and do not stutter (AWNS, N=15). Target words were characterized according to high phonetic complexity (HIPC) and low phonetic complexity (LIPC), and were controlled for lexical influences such as word frequency and neighborhood density. It was hypothesized that if phonetic complexity influenced speech production, there would be a difference in reaction time and accuracy for AWS during the HIPC condition. Method: Participants produced two rounds of 40 target words corresponding to specific line drawings, during a confrontational naming task. Speech reaction time (SRT) was recorded from initial presentation of picture, and fluency and accuracy of production were coded for each target. Results: There was no significant difference in SRT according to HIPC and LIPC for either AWS or AWNS. AWS participants had slower SRT recorded compared to AWNS for all conditions tested. There was no relationship found between HIPC and increased moments of disfluency. Accuracy of target word production decreased during LIPC words. Conclusion: Phonetic complexity does not affect rate or fluency of speech production for either AWS or AWNS. While there is no difference in phonetic complexity measures, AWS are consistently slower than AWNS across both groups of target productions. Increased errors for both groups on LIPC target words may indicate a motor component to accuracy of speech production.Item The long line of the Middle English alliterative revival : rhythmically coherent, metrically strict, phonologically English(2012-05) Psonak, Kevin Damien; Cable, Thomas, 1942-; Henkel, Jacqueline M.; Hinrichs, Lars; Lesser, Wayne; King, Robert D.This study contributes to the search for metrical order in the 90,000 extant long lines of the late fourteenth-century Middle English Alliterative Revival. Using the 'Gawain'-poet's 'Patience' and 'Cleanness', it refutes nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholars who mistook rhythmic liveliness for metrical disorganization and additionally corrects troubling missteps that scholars have taken over the last five years. 'Chapter One: Tame the "Gabble of Weaker Syllables"' rehearses the traditional, but mistaken view that long lines are barely patterned at all. It explains the widely-accepted methods for determining which syllables are metrically stressed and which are not: Give metrical stress to the syllables that in everyday Middle English were probably accented. 'Chapter Two: An Environment for Demotion in the B-Verse' introduces the relatively stringent metrical template of the b-verse as a foil for the different kind of meter at work in the a-verse. 'Chapter Three: Rhythmic Consistency in the Middle English Alliterative Long Line' examines the structure of the a-verse and considers the viability of verses with more than the normal two beats. An empirical investigation considers whether rhythmic consistency in the long line depends on three-beat a-verses. 'Chapter Four: Dynamic "Unmetre" and the Proscription against Three Sequential Iambs' posits an explanation for the unusual distributions of metrically unstressed syllables in the long line and finds that the 'Gawain'-poet's rhythms avoid the even alternation of beats and offbeats with uncanny precision. 'Chapter Five: Metrical Promotion, Linguistic Promotion, and False Extra-Long Dips' takes the rest of the dissertation as a foundation for explaining rhythmically puzzling a-verses. A-verses that seem to have excessively long sequences of offbeats and other a-verses that infringe on b-verse meter prove amenable to adjustment through metrical promotion. 'Conclusion: Metrical Regions in the Long Line' synthesizes the findings of the previous chapters in a survey of metrical tension in the long line. It additionally articulates the key theme of the dissertation: Contrary to traditional assumptions, Middle English alliterative long lines have variable, instead of consistent, numbers of beats and highly regulated, instead of liberally variable, arrangements of metrically unstressed syllables.Item Native and non-native intuitions on the phonology of binomial locutions(2016-08) Green, Viola Vladimirovna; Birdsong, David; Griffin, Zenzi; Smiljanic, Rajka; Blyth, CarlBinomial locutions are a well-known case of structural iconicity that exists in many languages. By binomial locutions I understand formations that have the shape of A conjunction B (1a), or A-B (1b): (1). a. English: bread and butter, wear and tear; French: dire et juger, aller et retour, ni foi ni loi b. English: wishy-washy, helter-skelter; French: pêle-mêle, clopin-clopant, tohu-bohu This dissertation deals with phonological patterns in binomial locutions. It will be argued that two kinds of constraints underlie their formation and fossilization of their word order: constraints on the directionality of a certain phonological feature (Birdsong, 1979; Cooper & Ross, 1975) and constraints on the choice of the corresponding segments (Minkova, 2002; Yip, 1988-2000). I refer to the first kind of constraints as to Directionality Constraints and to the second kind of constraints as to Correspondence Constraints. The main objective of this study is to investigate the psychological reality and the relative strength of these constraints in native and non-native speakers of English and French. This study is experimental and closely models the hypothesis and the methodology set forth in Birdsong (1979). Speakers’ sensitivities to the putative constraints are tested with a computer-based judgment task, using pairs of nonsensical expressions, structured in such a way that one expression obeys a specific constraint, and the other expression disobeys it. The task of the participants is to listen to such pairs and to indicate which of them they prefer by using a 6-point scale. The results of this experiment reveal that native English speakers are more sensitive than both native French speakers and non-native English speakers to Directionality Constraints. Moreover, native English speakers prefer rhyming patterns over ablaut alliterating patterns – a trend, that was not observed in other groups tested. Finally, most participants displayed sensitivities to two constraints on directionality – Vowel Quality and Final Consonant Number. I argue that sensitivity to these constraints stems from various factors (iconicity, perceptual salience, short-before-long and unmarked-before-marked principles), which all conspire to favor the same order and predict the same direction of fossilization.Item Phonological and semantic list learning with individuals with TBI(2011-05) Lindsey, Andre Michele; Harris, Joyce L.; Marquardt, ThomasThe purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which learning and recall are facilitated by semantic and phonological targets. A list-learning paradigm was administered to 10 individuals with a history of traumatic brain injury. Participants were asked to recall and identify words that were present on the list. The lists consisted of semantically related associate words and phonologically related associate words. Participants recalled significantly more semantically related associates than phonological associates. Demographic factors such as age, time-post injury, and educational attainment did not have a significant effect on the recall ability for either word target type. Word recognition ability also was not influenced by target type. The results of this study found adults with TBI use a semantic network following brain injury and that semantic targets are more beneficial for recall than phonological targets.Item Phonological working memory in adults who do and do not stutter(2011-05) Vallely, Megann Nicole; Byrd, Courtney T.; Sussman, HarveyThe purpose of the present study was to explore whether the phonological encoding difficulties that have been demonstrated in children who stutter persist in adults whose stuttering persists. This hypothesis was investigated by comparing the phonological working memory of adults who stutter (AWS) and adults who do not stutter (AWNS) using non-word repetition and phoneme elision tasks. Twenty-four adults (age range = 17;9 to 46;11 mean age = 28;2): 12 AWS and 12 AWNS matched on gender and age participated in this study. A total of 48 non-words consisting of an equal number (N = 12 per syllable length category) of two-syllable, three-syllable, four-syllable and seven-syllable non-words were selected for use in the non-word repetition and phoneme elision tasks. In the non-word repetition task, results showed a significant interaction between fluency group and syllable length for the 7-syllable length category only, indicating that AWS require a significantly higher mean number of attempts than AWNS. Results of the phoneme elision task revealed a significant main effect for syllable length with both groups demonstrating a significant reduction in accuracy as the non-words increased in length, but there was no significant interaction between fluency group and syllable class length. Potential implications of these findings are presented along with recommendations for future research.Item Poetic organization and poetic license in the lyrics of Hank Williams, Sr. and Snoop Dogg(2010-12) Horn, Elizabeth Alena; Crowhurst, Megan Jane; Hancock, Ian F.; Epps, Patience L.; Mooney, Kevin E.; Fitzgerald, Colleen M.This dissertation addresses the way a linguistic grammar can yield to poetic organization in a poetic text. To this end, two corpora are studied: the sung lyrics of country music singer Hank Williams, Sr. and the rapped lyrics of gansgta rap artist Snoop Dogg. Following a review of relevant literature, an account of the poetic grammar for each corpus is provided, including the manifestation of musical meter and grouping in the linguistic text, the reflection of metrical grouping in systematic rhyme, and rhyme fellow correspondence. In the Williams corpus, final cadences pattern much as in the English folk verse studied in Hayes and MacEachern (1998), but differ in that there are more, and therefore more degrees of saliency. Rhyme patterns reflect grouping structure and correlate to patterns in final cadences, and imperfect rhyme is limited to phonologically similar codas. In the Snoop Dogg corpus syllables do not always align with the metrical grid, metrical mapping and rhyme patterning often challenge grouping structure, and imperfect rhyme is more diverse, as has been shown to be the case for contemporary rap generally (Krims 2000, Katz 2008). Following Rice (1997), Golston (1998), Reindl and Franks (2001), Michael (2003), and Fitzgerald (2003, 2007), meter, grouping and rhyme are modeled as driving phonological, morphological and syntactic deviation in Optimality Theoretic terms. In the Hank Williams corpus, metrical mapping and grouping constraints are shown to drive a number of linguistically deviatory phenomena including stress shift, syllabic variation and allomorphy, while rhyme patterning constraints govern syntactic inversion. In the Snoop Dogg corpus, rhyme fellow correspondence and rhyme patterning constraints play a more significant role, driving enjambment, syllabic variation, and allomorphy. Some linguistically deviatory phenomena derive from ordinary language variation, e.g. (flawr)~(flaw.[schwa]r), and some do not, e.g. syllable insertion in insista. The latter is more common in the Snoop Dogg corpus.Item The signing of deaf children with autism : lexical phonology and perspective-taking in the visual-spatial modality(2010-05) Shield, Aaron Michael; Meier, Richard P.; Cohen, Leslie B.; Beaver, David; Neal-Beevers, A. Rebecca; Quinto-Pozos, DavidThis dissertation represents the first systematic study of the sign language of deaf children with autism. The signing of such children is of particular interest because of the unique ways that some of the known impairments of autism are likely to interact with sign language. In particular, the visual-spatial modality of sign requires signers to understand the visual perspectives of others, a skill which may require theory of mind, which is thought to be delayed in autism (Baron-Cohen et al., 1985). It is hypothesized that an impairment in visual perspective-taking could lead to phonological errors in American Sign Language (ASL), specifically in the parameters of palm orientation, movement, and location. Twenty-five deaf children and adolescents with autism (10 deaf-of-deaf and 15 deaf-of-hearing) between the ages of 4;7 and 20;3 as well as a control group of 13 typically-developing deaf-of-deaf children between the ages of 2;7 and 6;9 were observed in a series of studies, including naturalistic observation, lexical elicitation, fingerspelling, imitation of nonsense gestures, two visual perspective-taking tasks, and a novel sign learning task. The imitation task was also performed on a control group of 24 hearing, non-signing college students. Finally, four deaf mothers of deaf autistic children were interviewed about their children’s signing. Results showed that young deaf-of-deaf autistic children under the age of 10 are prone to making phonological errors involving the palm orientation parameter, substituting an inward palm for an outward palm and vice versa. There is very little evidence that such errors occur in the typical acquisition of ASL or any other sign language. These results indicate that deaf children with autism are impaired from an early age in a cognitive mechanism involved in the acquisition of sign language phonology, though it remains unclear which mechanism(s) might be responsible. This research demonstrates the importance of sign language research for a more complete understanding of autism, as well as the need for research into atypical populations for a better understanding of sign language linguistics.Item Visual to auditory silent matching task in adults who do and do not stutter(2015-05) Novack, Julie Sarah; Byrd, Courtney T.; Hampton, ElizabethThe purpose of the present study was to investigate the role of phonological working memory in adults who do and do not stutter through a visual to auditory silent matching task. This task also explored the possible relationship between auditory processing and its ability to affect performance on the task. Participants were 13 adults who stutter (mean age = 28 years), matched in age, gender, handedness, and education level with 13 adults who do not stutter (mean age = 28 years). For the nonvocal visual to auditory task, participants silently read an initial target nonword and matched that target nonword to four subsequent auditory nonword choices. The participants completed this task for 4- syllable and 7- syllable nonwords (N = 8 per set). Results indicated that adults who stutter were significantly less accurate than adults who do not stutter at both syllable lengths. Our present findings support previous research that suggests less efficient phonological working memory in adults who stutter.