The Guaporé-Mamoré language area hosts a large amount of linguistic diversity; however, its history of contact remains understudied. This thesis aims to shed light on the contact patterns in the...Show moreThe Guaporé-Mamoré language area hosts a large amount of linguistic diversity; however, its history of contact remains understudied. This thesis aims to shed light on the contact patterns in the region through a study which compares languages in area with regards to their word stress and phonological tone. For this aim, a sample of 40 languages belonging to the area, plus 9 control languages, was collected which gathered the characteristics of their word stress and tone systems. The results show that languages in the Guaporé-Mamoré area tend to prefer right-bound, fixed stress, although only the languages south-west of the Guaporé river, corresponding to the Mojo-Chiquito culture area, are significantly different from the control languages (p = .003) in this regard. The results thus imply different levels of contact in sub-regions of the proposed area. Further research is needed into the commonalities and differences between languages in the region, as well as documentation of the languages.Show less
Research master thesis | Linguistics (research) (MA)
open access
2022-08-31T00:00:00Z
Research has shown that code-switching (CS) is morpho-syntactically constrained (e.g. Poplack, 1980; Myers-Scotton, 1993; MacSwan, 1999; Lipski, 2019). The fact that phonology and syntax interface...Show moreResearch has shown that code-switching (CS) is morpho-syntactically constrained (e.g. Poplack, 1980; Myers-Scotton, 1993; MacSwan, 1999; Lipski, 2019). The fact that phonology and syntax interface in bilingual performance (Bullock, 2009) has been largely neglected in CS research. It is likely that the interface between prosody and morphosyntax, and not merely morphosyntax alone, may play a role in constraining CS. However, the phonetic and phonological reflexes of CS remain relatively unexplored. This thesis aims to improve our understanding of prosodic constraints on CS by examining the speech from a Papiamento- Dutch conversation corpus (Gullberg, Indefrey & Muysken, 2004; 2009). This language pair is eminently suitable for a prosodic analysis because Papiamento has a tonal system with two level tones that interacts with lexical stress, and Dutch a different lexical system: with stress, without tone. I examined whether stress constrains CS in the nominal domain (Akinremi, 2016), and whether Papiamento tone constrains Dutch insertions (Zheng, 1997; Tuc, 2003). Furthermore, I examined whether speech rate in bilingual vs. unilingual utterances differ to add to the research on speech planning in CS (Johns & Steuck, 2021). My findings are that the stress of switched nouns does not constrain CS, but the stress of adjacent words might; Dutch insertions occur mostly in a context where the prosodic systems of Papiamento and Dutch coincide; and speech rate in bilingual vs. unilingual utterances does not significantly differ. I conclude that congruency in prosody facilitates CS and that CS does not inhibit speech planning. Taken together, my findings are compatible with the view that CS may be an opportunistic strategy that bilinguals use to aid speech planning as prosody in both languages openly contributes to production (Beatty-Martinez, Navarro-Torres & Dussias, 2020).Show less
This thesis further explores the concept of prosodic minimums, as laid out by Itou et al., by accounting for anime title abbreviations within the established theory. Research performed led to the...Show moreThis thesis further explores the concept of prosodic minimums, as laid out by Itou et al., by accounting for anime title abbreviations within the established theory. Research performed led to the preliminary conclusion that the majority of anime title abbreviations adhered to the established prosodic minimums, although in a small set of instances they did not. To account for this, an interdisciplinary approach was taken by involving theories surrounding brand linguistics and sound-associative vocabulary (such as onomatopoeia), which led to speculative findings aptly suited for future research.Show less
Research master thesis | Linguistics (research) (MA)
open access
Sentence final particles (SFPs) play an important role in the every-day spoken communication of various languages. For example, the addition of a Dutch intentional particle hè or hoor to a bare...Show moreSentence final particles (SFPs) play an important role in the every-day spoken communication of various languages. For example, the addition of a Dutch intentional particle hè or hoor to a bare declarative utterance such as het is lekker weer ‘the weather is great’ can make the difference between the sentence being interpreted as an agreement-seeking question, or a correction. Still, we know very little about the psycho- and neurolinguistic properties of the processing and production of final particles. The purpose of this thesis is to generate more research on the psycholinguistics side and to deepen the theoretical knowledge we have by gathering experimental data. There are theoretical reasons to assume that intentional SFPs play an important role from the beginning of sentence formulation. The SFP-head selects for the entire proposition as its complement, so it is possible that speakers plan the particle ahead before they start producing the rest of the sentence. This hypothesis also makes sense from a psycholinguistic perspective, as it is presumed that the intention of the speaker is already determined before he/she starts uttering a sentence. In this thesis, I focus on sentences in isolation, and investigate the production, planning and perception of Dutch pragmatic particles (i.e. SFPs) that convey the speaker’s intention. The question I pursued to answer is whether Dutch sentence final particles are planned in advance, or whether they are inserted at the final moment. To investigate the potential planning of intentional SFPs I conducted three experiments. In a production experiment (Experiment 1) I investigated whether the speaker already starts encoding the intention of the message with prosodic cues preceding the intentional particle. Such cues would indicate that the speaker is already building up the illocutionary force of the sentence before the particle. Results indicate that there are such cues, and that even though they are sometimes quite small, they are used quite consistently across participants. In Experiment 2, the gating-technique is used in a perception experiment to investigate whether these prosodic cues preceding the particle could possibly help the listener anticipate for the intention or attitude expressed by an utterance. The results of this experiment indicate that participants were not that good at anticipating the end of sentences containing the final particles hè and hoor in the given task. Experiment 3 directly addresses the question whether the speaker plans a final particle ahead or whether they integrate the particle at a later stage of production. This question is about how incremental and how far ahead a sentence is planned in production. In this experiment, I examined the production process of the intentional SFPs hè and hoor in Dutch with a variant on the picture-word-interference task to investigate whether the particles are planned in advance, or not. I created an experiment that manipulates the prime preceding colored pictures, which are associated in a training task with a particular final element. The target condition of the experiment contains sentences with the final elements hè and hoor, which are intentional final particles. The effect of the distractor prime on the target condition was compared to a control condition. A congruent prime was assumed to facilitate sentence production at speech onset, only if the speaker is already planning the particle congruent with the prime. In the control conditions, in which it is assumed that speakers are not yet planning ahead for the final element of the sentence at speech onset, facilitation was assumed not to take place at speech onset. The results obtained for this experiment were not significant, due to high standard deviations. In future research it would be interesting to see whether the paradigm of this experiment could be adjusted, to gain more reliable results that can answer the main question we pursued.Show less
When infants have two possible rules that they can discover in an artificial language, a prosodic rule and a structure rule, which one do they discover and does this change with development? Prior...Show moreWhen infants have two possible rules that they can discover in an artificial language, a prosodic rule and a structure rule, which one do they discover and does this change with development? Prior studies on infants’ cue weighing suggest a preference for prosodic cues for eight-month-old infants, and a preference for structure for ten-month-old infants when segmenting speech. Using a Headturn Preference Procedure with adapted stimuli from Spierings and ten Cate (2014), we compared looking times for a prosody and structure test condition. We found condition did not have a significant effect on looking time. However, ten-month-old infants had significantly longer looking times compared to the eight-month-old infants. We also found a significant difference for gender, suggesting that female infants have a preference for a different cue to discover underlying language patterns than males.Show less
