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

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，这些变化会使语言结构中的某个元素朝着意想不到的方向发展。这就是这项研究中所考察的语言的情况，其中接近腭音的发音，即类似于英语单词“you”或“yes”中的“y”的语音，已经开始在英语单词“jeans”中被读成塞音“j”，在英语单词“Closed”中被读成摩擦音“S”。这种变化被称为腭部近似音增强，因为塞音和摩擦音取代了近似音，需要更多的发音努力，并在语音信号中产生更多的声学能量。大多数语音变化导致发音的特点是发音不那么费力，声音能量也更少，因此，腭部近似强化是一种意想不到的变化。研究一种跨语言罕见的语音变化类型，如腭部近似强化，提供了一个机会，让我们有机会更深入地实证地洞察生理、社会和语言力量，这些力量共同塑造了个人的交流方式，以及语言如何随着时间的推移而变化。本项目以三个对社会语音学领域及其各种应用(如自然语言处理、法医学等)具有描述性和理论重要性的研究问题为指导：1)在特定的语言中，腭部近似语强化的声学特征是什么？2)哪些语言因素特别地制约了腭部近似语强化，以及更广泛地影响了语音强化？3)在构成相关语言的言语社区的说话人群体的社会矩阵中，腭部近似强化模式是如何形成的？为了解决这些问题，这项研究的设计整合了对实验和对话语音数据的三角声学分析，这些数据来自大量不同的说话者样本。由此产生的语音语料库将通过德克萨斯数据库向公众提供，用于继续学术和行业相关用途。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.