Doctoral Dissertation Research: Palatal approximant strengthening - social and phonetic aspects of a language change in progress

博士论文研究：腭近似强化——正在进行的语言变化的社会和语音方面

• 批准号: 2041212
• 负责人: Barbara Bullock
• 金额: $ 1.27万
• 依托单位: University of Texas at Austin
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-03-01 至 2023-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2041212&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Palatal; approximant

Despite their seemingly innumerable differences, the languages of the world all share one thing in common: they continuously change over time. Sometimes these changes take an element of a language's structure in an unexpected direction. Such is the case in the language examined in this study, where palatal approximant sounds, a speech sound similar to the "y" in English words such as "you" or "yes", has begun to be pronounced as the affricate "j" in the English word "jeans" or the fricative "s" in the English word "closure". This change is known as palatal approximant strengthening because the affricate and fricative sounds replacing the approximant require more articulatory effort and produce more acoustic energy in the speech signal. Most phonetic changes result in sounds characterized by less articulatory effort and less acoustic energy, and, thus, palatal approximant strengthening is an unexpected change. Studying a cross-linguistically rare type of phonetic change like palatal approximant strengthening offers a chance to gain deeper empirical insight into the physiological, social and linguistic forces that conspire to shape how individuals communicate and how languages change over time. This project is guided by three research questions that are of descriptive and theoretical importance to the field of sociophonetics and its various applications (e.g. natural language processing, forensic science, etc.): 1) What is the acoustic profile of palatal approximant strengthening in particular languages where it occurs? 2) What are the linguistic factors that condition palatal approximant strengthening in particular and phonetic strengthening more generally? and 3) How does palatal approximant strengthening pattern in the social matrix of speaker groups comprising the speech community for the relevant languages? To address these questions, this study's research design integrates a triangulated acoustic analysis of experimental and conversational speech data gathered from a large, diverse sample of speakers. The resulting corpus of speech data will be made available to the public through the Texas Data Repository for continued scholarly and industry-related use.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

尽管它们看起来有无数的差异，但世界上的语言都有一个共同点：它们随着时间的推移而不断变化。有时候，这些变化会将语言结构的一个元素带到意想不到的方向。在本研究所考察的语言中，腭部近音（一种类似于英语单词“you”或“yes”中的“y”的语音）已经开始被发音为英语单词“jeans”中的塞擦音“j”或英语单词“closure”中的摩擦音“s”。这种变化被称为腭接近音加强，因为取代接近音的塞擦音和摩擦音需要更多的发音努力，并在语音信号中产生更多的声能。大多数语音变化导致发音努力和声能减少，因此，腭接近加强是一个意想不到的变化。研究一种跨语言罕见的语音变化类型，如腭接近加强，提供了一个机会，可以更深入地了解生理，社会和语言力量，这些力量共同塑造了个人的沟通方式以及语言如何随着时间的推移而变化。该项目由三个对社会语音学及其各种应用（例如自然语言处理，法医学等）领域具有描述性和理论重要性的研究问题指导：1)在特定的语言中，腭近音加强的声学特征是什么？2)哪些语言学因素决定了腭部近音强化和语音强化的普遍性？（3）在构成相关语言言语社区的说话人群体的社会矩阵中，腭部近音强化模式是如何形成的？为了解决这些问题，本研究的研究设计集成了一个三角声学分析的实验和会话语音数据收集从一个大的，不同的扬声器样本。由此产生的语音数据语料库将提供给公众通过得克萨斯州的数据存储库继续学术和行业相关的use.This奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估的支持。