| Date | Time | Speaker | Title | Room |
| 8 April | 3:00 PM | Erin Franklin, UChicago |
Backchanneling in Russian: Form, Function and Occurrence |
WB 408 |
| 29 April | 3:00 PM | Amanda Miller, Ohio State University |
What Can We Do with High Frame Rate Ultrasound: Investigating the Phonetic Basis of the Back Vowel Constraint in Mangetti Dune !Xung |
WB 408 |
| 6 May | 3:00 PM | Galen Sibanda, Michigan Sate University |
An Overview of Nguni Verbal Reduplication with Special Reference to Ndebele | WB 408 |
| 13 May | 3:00 PM | Joshua Katz, Princeton University |
What are they?: Some Hidden Forms of the Copula in Old Irish |
WB 408 |
| 28 May | 3:00 PM | Sam Boyd, UChicago |
Language Contact, the Ancient Near East, and the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: Bringing Data and Theory Together | HM 103 |
Spring 2013 Talks!
Posted in schedules.
– 23 May 2013
28th May: Sam Boyd (UChicago)
Tuesday, May 28th @ 3 PM, Harper 103
Language Contact, the Ancient Near East, and the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: Bringing Data and Theory Together
While the phenomenon of language contact in the ancient Near East generally and the Hebrew Bible (also called the Old Testament) specifically has long been acknowledged, only recently have Semitic linguists and philologists begun to ask more theoretical questions about contact-induced changes. Biblical scholars have been even slower to engage in Contact Linguistics, despite the fact that the theoretical work in Language Contact can greatly enhance our understanding of how and why Mesopotamian traditions came into the biblical texts. In this paper, I will begin with some examples of language contact in ancient Mesopotamia in order to show some of the problems faced when asking sociolinguistic questions of this data set. I will then focus on Akkadian-Aramaic contact in the Iron Age II (roughly 1000 BCE-586 BCE), Neo-Babylonian (586 BCE-537 BCE), and Persian (537 BCE-330 BCE) periods (the dates are approximate to their relevance for Levantine history). Finally, I will use this information to set the socio-historical background for language contact between biblical Hebrew, Aramaic, and Akkadian.
Posted in Uncategorized.
– 23 May 2013
13th May: Joshua Katz (Princeton)
Monday, May 13th @ 3 PM, Wieboldt 408
What are they?: Some Hidden Forms of the Copula in Old Irish
It is uncontroversial that Proto-Indo-European *-nti# regularly becomes -t /d/ in Old Irish, as in berait ‧berat ‘(they) carry’ (< *bheronti). Nevertheless, my principal claim in this talk is that just in the copula, and under certain specifiable conditions, the same sequence results instead in -n. In the course of using this new phonological rule to uncover a couple of hitherto unnoticed copular forms, I also comment on morpho-phonological curiosities in the paradigm of the Old Irish copula more generally.
Posted in faculty talks, historical, invited talks, morphology, Phonology, sound change.
– 9 May 2013
6th May: Galen Sibanda (Michigan State)
Monday, May 6th @ 3 PM, Wieboldt 408
An Overview of Nguni Verbal Reduplication with Special Reference to Ndebele
Previous works on verbal reduplication in Nguni (isiNdebele, siSwati, isiXhosa and isiZulu) such as Downing (1996, 1997a) and Sibanda (2004) have not paid much attention to possible verbal morphology inaccuracies but have been concerned mainly with theoretical aspects of reduplication from a phonological, morpho-phonological or morpho-syntactic perspective. The assumption has been that the morphological analyses in, for example, Doke (1931 (and later editions)) and Ziervogel (1952) are correct. In this presentation I begin by questioning the morphological analyses themselves taking into account results from diachronic studies, specifically Proto-Bantu reconstructions. I focus on verbs with vowel initial stems and those with sub-minimal -C- roots. For example, the reduplicated form of the stem -dla ‘eat’ has previously been assumed to have the morphological structure -dla-yi+dla but I argue, drawing from historical evidence, that this should be -dla+yidla. A morphological reanalysis of the data could potential pose problems for any theory. However, using mainly isiNdebele examples, I show that the Morphological Doubling Theory (Inkelas and Zoll 2005) which places less emphasis on Base-RED phonological identity still handles the Nguni data well in spite of the morphological changes suggested.
Posted in fieldwork, invited talks, mophology, Phonology.
– 2 May 2013
29th April: Amanda Miller (Ohio State)
Monday, April 29th @ 3 PM, Wieboldt 408
What Can We Do with High Frame Rate Ultrasound: Investigating the Phonetic Basis of the Back Vowel Constraint in Mangetti Dune !Xung
Previously, the main articulatory field method used to investigate place of articulation was static palatography/ linguography. This method is invasive, and contact patterns are smeared over an entire syllable. Portable ultrasound can be used to find the place of articulation of consonants in field work settings, and it is safe and non-invasive. Standard ultrasound has made great gains in our understanding of sounds with relatively stable gestures: vowels, fricatives and liquids. High FR ultrasound allows us to view stop shutting and release gestures, the dynamics of diphthongs, clicks, labial-velars, and affricates, and C-V and V-V coarticulation.
I present a case study designed to investigate the phonetics basis of the Back Vowel Constraint (BVC), found in many non-Bantu and non-Cushitic click languages. The BVC is a C-V co-occurrence constraint found between alveolar and lateral clicks and the uvular fricative, with [i]. I present four experiments that investigate the phonetic basis of the BVC, by looking at the production of the four clicks, [k] and [ᵪ], in Mangetti Dune !Xung. The first two experiments investigate the production of the clicks using high FR ultrasound collected using the CHAUSA method (Miller and Finch 2011). TD and TR constriction locations prior to the anterior release are measured. The second experiment investigates the TD and TR locations over the first half of the vowel. The third experiment investigates F1 and F2 patterns in the vowel following the clicks. Regression analyses of the vowel data shows that the F2 patterns are statistically related to the TD/TR constriction locations in the alveolar and lateral clicks, while the F2 patterns in the dental and palatal clicks are best predicted by the TT constriction location. I attribute the TRR in the vowel to muscular constraints on click-vowel sequences that are similar to those found in English [r] variants.
Posted in faculty talks, fieldwork, invited talks, Phonetics, Phonology.
– 18 April 2013
8 April: Erin Franklin (UChicago)
Monday, April 8th @ 3 PM, Wieboldt 408
Backchanneling in Russian: Form, Function and Occurrence
Backchannels, otherwise known as listener response tokens, have been shown to occur quite frequently in the course of interactions between two speakers and they are considered to occur universally. However as shown by Tottie, there is some evidence for backchanneling being a culturally specific phenomenon, as in her study British and American English speakers backchanneled in a significantly different manner, using both different backchannels at different frequencies (Tottie 1991). However the exploration of this aspect of backchanneling is currently non-existent, with the vast majority of existing research focusing on varieties of English and only a handful of studies have been done on any aspect of backchanneling in any other language. This paper is intended to be a first step in filling this gap in regards to the occurrence of backchannels in the Russian language.
The first part of the paper discusses the extent to which the current work on backchanneling can be applied to Russian data. Particular focus is paid to the particular forms that these tokens take in Russian and their functions as well as the relationship between these things.
The second part of the paper discusses a rough frequency of backchanneling in Russian and attempts to determine whether the occurrence of these tokens is prosodically or syntactically governed. To this end, this paper analyzes a radio program “Obložka-1” hosted by Exo Moskvy, which is approximately 57 minutes long and consists of a single interview with one interviewee, two interviewers and one program host. The backchannel rates of each of the participants are compared to each other in order to determine a potential frequency range for the phenomenon specifically in relation to English language data. The backchannels of all the participants are also analyzed in terms of the location of their occurrence in relation to the prosodic and syntactic structure of the co-occurring speech which leads to the conclusion that prosody rather than syntax is the more probably determining factor.
Finally this paper will discuss the limitations of the data as gathered and suggest possible areas for further research.
Posted in Phonology, student talks, syntax, Uncategorized.
– 6 April 2013
