Doctoral Dissertation Research: Consonant Weakening in Florentine Italian

为什么有些辅音的发音与我们预期的在不同语境中的发音非常不同？哪些因素会影响辅音如何在流利的语音中出现？某些声音比其他声音更有可能发生变化吗？在伊丽莎白·兹加博士的指导下，克里斯蒂娜·维拉法纳女士的博士论文将讨论这些与佛罗伦萨意大利语有关的问题，佛罗伦萨意大利语是一种表现出丰富的弱化辅音的方言。维拉法纳小姐和其他人之前的研究表明，这种过程需要详细的声学分析和理论解释。所使用的研究方法将是(1)开发一个实验设计，控制与弱化有关的语音、语音和社会因素，以及(2)收集、数字化和定量分析该方言中弱化的声音。这篇论文的核心将是对佛罗伦萨的透镜的实验分析，它超越了现有的文学作品。它的次要关注点将是整合已有的有关语音变化的理论，并分析导致该方言中外来词汇的因素。对Gorgia Toscana的分析是评估音系理论的实力和阐明我们对语言处理中涉及的生理和认知因素的总体理解的起点。这样的评估至少有助于理论音系学领域以外的四个广泛领域的研究。首先，这项研究的结果，特别是在试图协调语音变化中的语音(抽象)和语音(物理)因素方面，将使理论和应用语言学家更好地理解从第一语言到第二语言的共同迁移过程。对这些已知会导致第二语言习得问题的过程的透彻理解，为第二语言教师(可能还有言语/语言病理学家)提供了诊断和治疗与声音有关的语言问题和障碍的工具。其次，对这种方言的发音模式进行详细的声学分析，可能会对经常与不标准和带口音的语音作斗争的语音识别工程师有用。第三，该项目将加强语言学家对一种语言与其非标准变体之间的关系的了解和理解，特别是在音素库存和与声音有关的过程方面。最后，收集和分析的广泛数据将有助于保存佛罗伦萨的语言--随着全球语言库存通过方言的转移和吸收而变得越来越小，对少数民族语言现象的存档记录将对历史学家、人类学家、社会学家和语言学家有用。

Why are some consonants pronounced very differently from the way we expect them to be in different contexts? What factors affect how a consonant surfaces in fluent speech? Are certain sounds more likely to undergo changes than others? Under the supervision of Dr. Elizabeth Zsiga, Miss Christina Villafana's doctoral dissertation will address these questions as they relate to Florentine Italian, a dialect exhibiting a rich array of weakened consonants. Previous studies by Miss Villafana and others indicate that this type of process warrants detailed acoustic analysis and theoretical explanation. The research methodologies used will be (1) the development of an experimental design that controls for the phonological, phonetic, and social factors involved in weakening and (2) the collection, digitization, and quantitative analysis of sounds that weaken in this dialect. At this dissertation's core will be an experimental analysis of lenition in Florentine that surpasses what presently exists in the literature. Its secondary focus will be an integration of established theories relating to sound change and an analysis of the factors contributing to lenition in this dialect.Analysis of Gorgia Toscana is a starting point for assessing the strength of phonological theories and for illuminating our general understanding of the physiological and cognitive factors involved in language processing. Such assessment contributes to at least four broad areas of study outside the domain of theoretical phonology. First, the results of this study, particularly in its attempt to reconcile the phonological (abstract) and phonetic (physical) factors involved in sound changes, will offer both the theoretical and applied linguist a better understanding of common processes that transfer from first to second language. Thorough understanding of such processes, known to cause problems in second language acquisition, furnishes the second language teacher (and possibly the speech/language pathologist) with tools for diagnosing and treating sound-related linguistic problems and disorders. Second, detailed acoustic analysis of the sound patterns of this dialect may be of use to speech recognition engineers who regularly struggle with nonstandard and accented speech. Third, the project will enhance the linguist's knowledge and understanding of the relationship between a language and its non-standard varieties, particularly with respect to their phoneme inventories and sound-related processes. Finally, the broad range of data collected and analyzed will contribute to the preservation of Florentine speech - as the global inventory of languages grows ever smaller through dialect shift and absorption, archived records of minority language phenomena will be useful to the historian, anthropologist, sociologist, and linguist.