Talk by Eva Zimmermann (U Leipzig)

by Anke Himmelreich Comment Closed
Dear colleagues, we are very happy to announce the next talk in our phonology colloquium this term. Eva Zimmermann (U Leipzig) will talk about "Gradient Symbolic Representations and the Typology of Phonological Exceptions". The talk will take place online. Title: Gradient Symbolic Representations and the Typology of Phonological Exceptions Time: 02. December 2020, 4 pm ct Place: Zoom Abstract below: Gradient Symbolic Representations and the Typology of Phonological Exceptions The assumption of Gradient Symbolic Representations that phonological elements can have different degrees of activity (Smolensky and Goldrick, 2016; Rosen, 2016; Zimmermann, 2018, 2019) allows a unified explanation for the typology of phonological exceptions. Exceptional (non)triggers and (non)undergoers of otherwise regular phonological processes are predicted from gradient constraint violations: The activation of a phonological element in an underlying morpheme representation determines 1) how much the element is preserved by faithfulness constraints and 2) how much it is visible for markedness constraints. I argue that this simple mechanism predicts the attested typology of phonological exceptions and that the predictions made...
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TALK BY NELE OTS – WEDNESDAY 5TH 4-6PM

by Tina Bögel Comment Closed
We are happy to announce the next talk in the phonology colloquium by Nele Ots, which was cancelled last year - Abstract below:   05.02.2020 Nele Ots (GU): "Conceptual and linguistic influences on sentence intonation: evidence from English and Estonian languages" Time: 16-18 Room: IG 4.301   Everybody is welcome!   Abstract: The study investigates how early phrasal F0 is planned in experimentally controlled but spontaneous utterances. Phonetic evidence indicates speakers preplan F0 declination (e.g., Yuan and Liberman, 2014). The phonetic F0 data was combined with eye movements to explore how well F0 of phrase-initial energy peaks (also F0 declination) relates to conceptual and phonological levels of planning in two typologically different languages - English and Estonian. Speakers described pictures of simple events with sentences of varying length (e.g., The girl is hanging the pink shirt/ the shirt with ladybirds vs. The girl is hanging a shirt). Importantly, the results showed that speech onset delays and F0 peaks were both affected by the length of the last-mentioned noun phrases (patient...
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Phonology Colloquium: Nele Ots (Goethe Universität)

by Anke Himmelreich Comment Closed
We are happy to announce the next talk in the phonology colloquium by Nele Ots (Goethe Universität): Title: Conceptual and linguistic influences on sentence intonation: evidence from English and Estonian languages Room: IG 4.301 Date: Wed 11.12.19 Time: 16-18 Abstract: Phonetic corpus studies have found that phrase-initial F0 peaks correlate with duration of intonation phrases, indicating that speakers are able to anticipate the length of their utterances already before the speech onset. The current view on sentence planning is that while conceptual and syntactic planning processes can be broad, comprising larger parts of upcoming sentences, phonological encoding needs to evolve word by word - incrementally. In relation to sentence production, the phonetic observation of F0 raises a question: at which stage are the global parameters of sentence intonation decided in speakers' minds? The aim of the study was to empirically verify the causal relationship between the F0 peaks and the duration of intonation phrases, and to explore the online sentence formulation in two typologically different languages...
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