18th November 2024 12:20 PM

Phonetics Lab Meeting

Nielson will give a practice talk on his Cornell Gatty Lecture Series talk:  Implosives in Khmer:  Acoustics Analysis and Phonetics Implications.

 

Abstract:

 

Implosives are a class of consonants characterized by their unique articulation and acoustic properties. Despite their linguistic significance, their detailed analysis in Khmer, a language with a notable presence of these sounds, remains underexplored.

 

This study aims to fill this gap by providing a comprehensive analysis of implosive consonants in Khmer. The primary objective of this research is to analyze the acoustic properties of implosives in Khmer and to understand how these properties compare to those of other consonant types within the language. We also aim to explore how implosives interact with other phonetic variables.

 

Acoustic data were collected from native Khmer speakers in Phnom Penh, Cambodia; Long Beach, California; and Seattle, Washington focusing on implosive consonants in various phonetic contexts. Using advanced acoustic analysis techniques, including spectral and temporal measurements, I examined the characteristics of implosives.

 

The analysis revealed distinct acoustic signatures for Khmer implosives, including specific patterns in spectral frequency and temporal duration. Significant variations were observed based on phonetic context, with differences in implosive characteristics across word positions and speaking rates.

 

These findings highlight the complexity of implosive articulation in Standard Khmer and its interaction with other phonetic features as well as that of the American diasporic varieties of Khmer. This research provides new insights into the acoustic properties of implosives in Khmer, contributing to a deeper understanding of their role in the language's phonetic inventory.

 

The findings have implications for both theoretical phonetics and practical applications, such as speech synthesis and language teaching.

 

About the Speaker:

 

Nielson Sophann Hul was born in Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge period and escaped to the United States of America when he was very young. After High School, he joined the U.S. Army and deployed during OIF/OEF as a Combat Medic.

 

During his breaks in service, Nielson graduated from UCLA with a BA in English Literature and the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa with an MA in Linguistics. He is currently working toward his PhD in Linguistics at Cornell and is interested in the acoustic phonetics of laryngeal sounds in Khmer.

 

About the Gatty Lecture Series:

 

The Ronald and Janette Gatty Lecture Series (formerly known as the Brown Bags) is a weekly lecture series featuring advanced SEAP graduate students as well as academics, diplomats, researchers, and others who have expertise in Southeast Asia. 

 

 

Location: B11 Morrill Hall, 159 Central Avenue, Morrill Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853-4701, USA

20th November 2024 12:20 PM

PhonDAWG - Phonetics Lab Data Analysis Working Group

John Starr will give a practice talk.

 

Location: B11 Morrill Hall, 159 Central Avenue, Morrill Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853-4701, USA

25th November 2024 12:20 PM

Phonetics Lab Meeting

Leo will present Dafydd Gibbon's 2021 paper:  The rhythms of rhythm

 

 

Location: B11 Morrill Hall, 159 Central Avenue, Morrill Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853-4701, USA

5th December 2024 04:30 PM

Linguistics Colloquium Speaker: Dr. Martina Martinovic lectures on "Clitics in Wolof: Syntax all the way up"

The Department of Linguistics proudly presents Dr. Martina Martinovic, Assistant Professor at McGill University.

 

Dr. Martinovic will give a talk titled:  Clitics in Wolof: Syntax all the way up

 

Abstract:

 

This talk explores the properties and placement of Wackernagel-like clitics in the Niger-Congo language Wolof.

 

I affirm the proposal initially put forth by Dunigan (1994), that Wolof clitics move to the highest head in the extended projection of the verb, contra subsequent analyses which argue for the need for a prosodic component to Wolof clitic placement (Zribi-Hertz & Diagne 2002, Russell 2006).

 

The main argument for the absence of a post-syntactic readjustment of clitic position comes from the behavior of the subject clitic, which is initial in the extended projection of the verb if there is no higher functional head that could attract it, but patterns with other clitics when such a head is present.

 

I show that this is straightforwardly accounted for if the subject clitic can undergo EPP-triggered A-movement to the specifier of the highest head in the extended projection of the verb, placing it outside the c-command domain of that head. I demonstrate that accounts which argue for a prosodic component to clitic placement misanalyze a crucial piece of data related to subject pronouns; once the correct empirical observations are adopted, a purely syntactic analysis straightforwardly derives all clitic placement patterns.

 

I formalize clitic movement as triggered by an EDGE-feature on the highest head in the extended projection of the verb, so that the goal feature on the clitics becomes activated in the c-command domain of the EDGE-feature, and stays inactive otherwise. Finally, clitic climbing reveals another property of Wolof clitics: their need to be located in the inflectional layer of the clause. 

 

Wolof clitics confirm an important property of Wackernagel-like clitics: that their movement is primarily syntactic, as argued by Ouhalla (1989) for Berber, Franks (1998/2010) for Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, and Legate (2008) for Warlpiri, even if it in some languages involves a prosodic component. Clitic Movement of this type looks similar to other types of movement to the edges of domains.

 

To the extent that such movements are syntactically motivated, so then is the movement of Wolof-type clitics.

 

Bio:

 

Dr. Martinovic is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Linguistics at McGill University. She obtained her dissertation from the University of Chicago in 2015.

 

Her primary research interests lie in cross-linguistic variation in the domains of morphology and syntax. The overarching goal of her work is to uncover operations responsible for the building of syntactic structures and the role of other modules of the grammar, especially morphology, in their final shape. To that end, she explores the cross-linguistic uniformity of syntax, while identifying ways in which certain phenomena that superficially appear to be syntactic can in fact be relegated to other modules of the grammar.

 

She has also done work in phonetics/phonology, where she is especially interested in word-accentual systems.

 

She collects her data primarily through fieldwork. Since 2011 she has worked extensively on Wolof, a West-Atlantic language spoken in Senegal. Since 2021, she has also worked on the Volta-Niger language Igala, spoken in Nigeria.

 

Other topics she has worked on include:

 

• *A’-movement and its morpho-syntactic effects
• *Cartographic and non-cartographic effects
• *Ordering of syntactic and post-syntactic (morphological) operations
• *Copular sentences the syntax of information structure
• *The syntax and semantics of tense and aspect
• *Control

 

 

 

Location: Morrill Hall, 106 Cornell University Dept, 159 Central Avenue, Morrill Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853-4701, USA