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Language is a system of message transmission, which conveys a variety of messages including both lexical messages and social messages. It has been demonstrated that lexical messages are realized with phonetically reduced signals, when they are contextually predictable. For example, a word may be produced with shorter duration, when it is more predictable given a context such as a preceding word and a following word. This message-oriented reduction can be encapsulated by positing that a speaker is required to balance two biases: a bias for maximizing the accuracy of message transmission and a bias for maximizing the efficiency of message transmission. This raises a question: Does a speaker balance the two biases in relation to social messages? The aim of this study is to address this question, and advance our understanding of the message-oriented probabilistic reduction. We will explore the social-message-predictability effects by examining the phonetic redundancy in a variant in New Zealand English loanword phonology, a tap sound [ɾ]. It is demonstrated that the duration of this rhotic variant is affected by the social message predictability given a loanword.

A large number of studies have demonstrated that a linguistic unit with higher frequency and that with higher contextual predictability are realized with reduced speech signals. This effect is known in previous literature as probabilistic reduction. A few studies also demonstrate that these contextual effects may be memorized; that is, average predictability may also influence phonetic redundancy in speech signals. This study aims to investigate the extent to which probabilistic reduction effects extend to morpheme duration in Japanese. It is demonstrated that the production of a morpheme in Japanese is influenced by morpheme frequency, contextual morpheme predictability, and average morpheme predictability. These findings are interpreted to mean that speech signals are influenced by ease of lexical access or they are modified to maximize communicative ease, and the productions are accumulated in the mind of a speaker.

There is variation in the pronunciation of loanwords, because they can be pronounced with native sounds or non-native sounds. For example, loanwords from te reo Māori to New Zealand English (NZE) are sometimes pronounced with native rhotic sounds (e.g., 'ko'[ɹ]'u' and 'ma'[ɹ]'ae') and sometimes with non-native rhotic sounds (e.g., 'ko'[ɾ]'u' and 'ma'[ɾ]'ae'). This study aims to explore the relationship between the selection of a variant in loanword phonology and situation-specific sociolinguistic factors such as topic in speech and cultural images. Additionally, we explore the effects of speaker- and word-specific sociolinguistic factors on the likelihood of choosing a variant. In order to explore these effects, a set of two experiments was conducted, and the results demonstrate that the selection of a variant in NZE loanword phonology is influenced by some sociolinguistic factors. It is argued that these findings can be encapsulated by an exemplar-based approach. More specifically, they can be neatly captured by positing that exemplars with native sounds and those with non-native sounds are represented in the cognitive system of a borrower and updated on the basis of linguistic experience, and exemplars with non-native sounds are stored in relation to a social category associated with the source language and its culture.

The aim of this study is to clarify the two properties of Malay hypocoristic word formation: length determination and segmental alternations. We collected 211 Malay hypocoristic words from one female Malay speaker, and descriptively generalized and theoretically analyzed these two properties. As for the length determination, it turns out that Malay hypocoristics are either monosyllabic or disyllabic. For example, Azrin is truncated to a monosyllabic form Rin , whereas Marniyati is shortened to a disyllabic form Yati . Default length is disyllabic, but monosyllabicity occurs in restricted environments. As for the segmental alternation, some segments in base names are altered to other segments in their hypocoristic forms. For example, [f] is changed to [p], such that Saiful is truncated to Pul and Suffian is truncated to Pian . Segmental structure usually becomes less marked in hypocoristic forms, but it becomes more marked in restricted environments. From the perspective of Optimality Theory, it will be claimed that both the length determination and the segmental alternation can be captured as The Emergence of The Unmarked (TETU) phenomenon, basically as in other languages, but that they involve anti-faithfulness effects in restricted environments.