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Contains fulltext : 150452.pdf (author's version ) (Open Access) Conferentie Tilburg

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Contains fulltext : 292301.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) Radboud University, 16 mei 2023 Promotores : Hinskens, F.L.M.P., Oostendorp, M. van 443 p.

Contains fulltext : 222237.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) Radboud University, 24 september 2020 Promotores : Oostendorp, M. van, Hermans, B. 257 p.

Contains fulltext : 222239.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) Radboud University, 18 september 2020 Promotor : Oostendorp, M. van Co-promotor : deCastro-Arrazola, V. 297 p.

This study provides a comprehensive look at the tonal system of a Kwa language, including an examination of lexical underlying tone patterns as well as intonational boundary tone and tone which signals grammatical meaning without the aid of segmental information. While a number of Kwa languages have been analyzed as having two underlying tones, the author shows that Saxwe has a three-tone system—likely a result of the historical contact between a two-tone Gbe language which had depressor consonant-related lowering effects and a three-tone Yoruboid language.Included in the analysis is a series of phonetic studies of the details of tone implementation in Saxwe. The author examines the phenomena known as automatic downstep and non-automatic downstep and notes the variation that is observed among speakers as they implement downstep. This research will be of interest to Africanists, as well as to those interested in tone and intonation studies.

This dissertation is about verse, some of its recurrent features, and cognitive aspects which can explain their prevalence. Verse includes a range of verbal phenomena, most typically songs and poems, but also nursery rhymes, religious chants or demonstration slogans. Compared to everyday speech, all these forms show additional layers of structure, like a regular alternation of accented syllables or a fixed melody. Every linguistic community in the world engages in verse, but certain features seem suspiciously widespread. On the one hand, I have developed computational tools in order to assess systematically how widespread individual verse features are. On the other hand, I have conducted behavioural experiments to investigate to which extent these widespread features may stem from properties of human cognition. Using these two approaches, the thesis examines three aspects of verse: constituent structure, final strictness, and textsetting. Although verse constitutes a prototypically creative activity subject to extensive cultural variability, it is nonetheless bound and shaped by our cognitive system.

Contains fulltext : 200514.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) Radboud University, 10 december 2018 Promotor : Oostendorp, M. van Co-promotor : D'Alessandro, Roberta 251 p.

Building upon wave-theoretic assumptions, this dissertation provides a formal description of the relationship between diatopic/diachronic micro-variation and phonologization. In particular, an analysis is performed of the phonetic/phonological properties of unstressed vowel reduction and vowel insertion in two Northern Italian dialects: Carrarese and Pontremolese. These dialects are argued to represent two frozen stages of these processes’ diffusion, Carrarese representing the diachronic stage Pontremolese has already gone through. Indeed, Pontremolese displays non-etymological vocoids that show the phonetic and phonological characteristics of epenthetic vowels and that, crucially, can be considered the phonologized correlates of Carrarese’s intrusive vocoids. These, in turn, should be rather considered articulatory/perceptually driven vowel-like releases. A formal account of this diatopic, diachronic and grammatical relationship is given that supports a modular grammar architecture, in which phonetics and phonology constitute two autonomous modules. Within such an architecture, the lateral forces (government and licensing) developed by standard Government Phonology are translated into violable constraints and inserted in a BiPhon grammar. In this optimality-theoretic grammar, the phonetics-phonology interface is managed by a set of cue constraints that map acoustic dimensions (formant structures) onto phonological primitives (elements). Furthermore, to integrate morphological information in the phonological forms, the Coloured Containment Theory is resorted to.

This dissertation focuses on the overt marking of φ features encoded on perfective active auxiliaries in a group of Southern Italian dialects. In the geolinguistic area that stretches from central Apulia-Campania to northern Calabria, present perfect and pluperfect auxiliaries generally exhibit different strategies as far as the overt marking of φ features is concerned. In these dialects, 1st and 3rd person present perfect auxiliaries are morpho-phonologically more marked than those expressing 2nd person. Conversely, pluperfect auxiliaries expressing 2nd person are morpho-phonologically more marked than those endowed with 1st and 3rd person. Our assumption is that these types of φ marking strategies depend on the application of a post-syntactic mechanism called Default Marking, according to which φ features encoded on perfective active auxiliaries get overtly marked only if their grade of markedness is the same as that expressed by the feature Tense. We propose that the Default Marking operation is at play also with definite determiners and demonstratives, as well as with modals. This is due to the fact that Default Marking is active only with (a subset of) functional heads that license periphrastic constructions.

The Feature Co-occurrence Constraint theory proposed in this dissertation provides a means to capture the development of the language-learning child's segment inventory. It does this by combining a growing set of features with constraints that are automatically activated as soon as these features are acquired. Representation and derivation go hand in hand, and develop together during acquisition. The Feature Co-occurrence Constraint theory builds on a minimal view of phonology, where the inventory is seen as epiphenomenal rather than a mentally ‘real’ object, features are few and monovalent, and the constraint set is limited to no more than two types. The theoretical consequences of the proposal for both feature theory and constraint theory are worked out in detail and a thorough discussion of phonological acquisition is provided, making this book of interest to both theoretical phonologists as acquisitionists.

This thesis deals with the tone accent opposition in the so-called “Rule B area” in Franconian. Rule B is known for its reversal of tonal melodies: in 1921, Adolf Bach published a description of the Arzbach accents, stating that the tonal melodies in Arzbach display a reversal of those in the rest of the area (Rule A). The study at hand not only provides crucial but as yet missing empirical data on Rule B but also suggests synchronic and diachronic typological analyses of the phenomenon. Newly gathered phonetic data from the Arzbach dialect show that the tone accents in Arzbach are reversed in declaration but not in interrogation, where they strongly resemble the Rule A contours. This important observation was unreported so far. On the basis of these findings, detailed synchronic autosegmental analyses for Arzbach and three other Franconian dialects show that we can understand the tone accent opposition as one of different foot structures for the two accents. The diachronic section of the thesis explores the origin of the semi-reversed tonal contours in Rule B. It argues that Rule B and Rule A developed out of a common predecessor but adapted in different ways to declaration melodies from non-accent dialects.

This book examines the use of language in Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) genres in Kenya. It focuses on Short Messaging Service (SMS), Email, Instant Messages (IM) and Social Network Sites (SNS) genres. It presents an overview of the use and characteristics of Kenyan languages in CMC texts based on data from university students in Kenya and young urban professionals. The findings reveal that factors like the need to use least effort, rapidity, technical limitations and informality play a key role in influencing the structure of messages. The book further establishes that characteristics of the CMC texts in Kenya involve variables such as pronunciation, spelling, abbreviation, acronyms, exclusive use of consonants, contractions, capitalization, punctuations marks, graphics, spelling errors, and codeswitching.