Measuring rates of word‐final nasal velarization: The effect of dialect contact on in‐group and out‐group exchanges1

Three Salvadoran corpora were used to analyze word‐final nasal variation in a situation of dialect contact. To determine the effect of ethnicity on the variation, two different interviewers, one an out‐group member and a speaker of Mexican Spanish, the other an in‐group member and a speaker of Salvadoran Spanish, interacted with Salvadorans, born or claiming family ties to San Sebastián, El Salvador, now living in the Holly Spring area of Houston. To explore the impact of the speech community, the same Mexican interviewer gathered data in Segundo Barrio, which – unlike Holly Spring – is an area of Houston where Mexicans are the overwhelming majority. The Houston data were compared to data gathered in situ in San Sebastián, the latter serving as the control group used to quantify possible modifications in the contact speech samples. The Houston data showed that Salvadorans interviewed by an in‐group member of the community produced higher rates of nasal velarization; their velarization rates closely matched the patterns characteristic of the non‐contact variety. In addition, Salvadorans in Holly Spring velarized more than their counterparts in Segundo Barrio. The Houston informants used lower frequencies of nasal velarization to out‐group interviewers, thus showing accommodation and producing linguistic patterns closer to those found in the contact Mexican variety.     

Dialect change in South‐East Norway and the role of attitude in diffusion

A common claim in the literature is that the local dialects in South‐East Norway are being leveled towards the dialect of the upper social classes in Oslo. A meta‐analysis of previous studies on dialect change in this region demonstrates that this assertion is incorrect, and that linguistic features have diffused from the dialect of the lower social classes in Oslo. Attitude studies show that people in South‐East Norway have strongly negative views on the upper Oslo speech community, and this can largely explain why they do not adopt new linguistic features from this community. Within Oslo, however, linguistic features diffuse from the upper classes down to the lower classes, and the overall picture that can be drawn from these diffusion patterns is that the lower‐class dialect of Oslo is spreading its features outwards from the capital, at the same time as it is gradually disappearing as a distinct sociolect. Det er vanleg å hevda at dei lokale målføra i Søraust‐Noreg vert tiljamna talemålet i dei øvre sosiale laga i Oslo. Ein metaanalyse av tidlegare språkendringsundersøkingar i dette området syner at den påstanden ikkje er rett, og at måldrag i staden spreier seg frå talemålet i dei lægre sosiale laga i Oslo. Haldningsundersøkingar syner at folk i Søraust‐Noreg tykkjer ille om dei frå dei øvre sosiale laga i Oslo, og då kan dét vera mykje av grunnen til at dei ikkje tek imot nye måldrag frå talemålet deira heller. Men innanfor Oslo spreier måldraga seg frå dei øvre til dei lægre sosiale laga, og hovudbiletet frå desse observasjonane vert då at måldrag frå talemålet i dei lægre sosiale laga i Oslo spreier seg utetter Søraust‐Noreg samstundes som det same talemålet noko om senn vert borte i hovudstaden. [Norwegian]     

Six‐month‐old infants recognize phrases in song and speech

Infants exploit acoustic boundaries to perceptually organize phrases in speech. This prosodic parsing ability is well‐attested and is a cornerstone to the development of speech perception and grammar. However, infants also receive linguistic input in child songs. This study provides evidence that infants parse songs into meaningful phrasal units and replicates previous research for speech. Six‐month‐old Dutch infants (n = 80) were tested in the song or speech modality in the head‐turn preference procedure. First, infants were familiarized to two versions of the same word sequence: One version represented a well‐formed unit, and the other contained a phrase boundary halfway through. At test, infants were presented two passages, each containing one version of the familiarized sequence. The results for speech replicated the previously observed preference for the passage containing the well‐formed sequence, but only in a more fine‐grained analysis. The preference for well‐formed phrases was also observed in the song modality, indicating that infants recognize phrase structure in song. There were acoustic differences between stimuli of the current and previous studies, suggesting that infants are flexible in their processing of boundary cues while also providing a possible explanation for differences in effect sizes.     

Six‐Month‐Old Infants Prefer Speech with Raised Formant Frequencies

Voices can be characterized by their fundamental frequency as well as by speech timbre characteristics, such as formant frequencies. While infants' responses to fundamental frequency characteristics are well established, very little is known about how infants respond to changes in formant frequencies. This study tested whether 6‐month‐old infants prefer listening to speech with raised formant frequencies over speech with lowered formant frequencies. Naturally spoken utterances were acoustically manipulated to render raised‐formant and lowered‐formant stimuli that only differed in the formant frequencies, while keeping fundamental frequency and other acoustic characteristics constant. Infants in an infant‐controlled listening procedure listened longer to the raised‐formant than to the lowered‐formant stimuli. These results provide the first evidence that infants distinguish and show preferences for variations in formant frequencies in adult speech.     

‘First things first,I'm the realest’: Linguistic appropriation,white privilege,and the hip‐hop persona of Iggy Azalea

The ‘hip‐hop nation’ is a multiethnic, transnational community that originates from and privileges urban African American experiences. Scholars have explored ways that non‐African Americans worldwide use linguistic features of African American English (AAE) as a way of constructing hip‐hop affiliated identities. The current paper ties these strands together in a study of the linguistic patterns of white Australian rapper Iggy Azalea, who makes use of AAE in her music, but not in other public speech. Our study presents a variationist analysis of copula absence in her lyrics. Findings show that her rates of this hallmark feature of AAE are extremely high, when compared to similar analyses of other rappers. We argue that her overzealous application of AAE features in her music, in order to create a specific linguistic style, enables a success that rests ultimately on the appropriation of African American language and culture, and the privilege that whiteness affords.     

Prosodic Structure in Early Word Segmentation: ERP Evidence From Dutch Ten‐Month‐Olds

Recognizing word boundaries in continuous speech requires detailed knowledge of the native language. In the first year of life, infants acquire considerable word segmentation abilities. Infants at this early stage in word segmentation rely to a large extent on the metrical pattern of their native language, at least in stress‐based languages. In Dutch and English (both languages with a preferred trochaic stress pattern), segmentation of strong‐weak words develops rapidly between 7 and 10 months of age. Nevertheless, trochaic languages contain not only strong–weak words but also words with a weak‐strong stress pattern. In this article, we present electrophysiological evidence of the beginnings of weak‐strong word segmentation in Dutch 10‐month‐olds. At this age, the ability to combine different cues for efficient word segmentation does not yet seem to be completely developed. We provide evidence that Dutch infants still largely rely on strong syllables, even for the segmentation of weak–strong words.     

Infant‐Directed Speech Facilitates Word Segmentation

There are reasons to believe that infant‐directed (ID) speech may make language acquisition easier for infants. However, the effects of ID speech on infants' learning remain poorly understood. The experiments reported here assess whether ID speech facilitates word segmentation from fluent speech. One group of infants heard a set of nonsense sentences spoken with intonation contours characteristic of adult‐directed (AD) speech, and the other group heard the same sentences spoken with intonation contours characteristic of ID speech. In both cases, the only cue to word boundaries was the statistical structure of the speech. Infants were able to distinguish words from syllable sequences spanning word boundaries after exposure to ID speech but not after hearing AD speech. These results suggest that ID speech facilitates word segmentation and may be useful for other aspects of language acquisition as well. Issues of direction of preference in preferential listening paradigms are also considered.     

Monolingual and bilingual infants’ word segmentation abilities in an inter‐mixed dual‐language task

Previous studies show that young monolingual infants use language‐specific cues to segment words in their native language. Here, we asked whether 8 and 10‐month‐old infants (N = 84) have the capacity to segment words in an inter‐mixed bilingual context. Infants heard an English‐French mixed passage that contained one target word in each language, and were then tested on their recognition of the two target words. The English‐monolingual and French‐monolingual infants showed evidence of segmentation in their native language, but not in the other unfamiliar language. As a group, the English‐French bilingual infants segmented in both of their native languages. However, exploratory analyses suggest that exposure to language mixing may play a role in bilingual infants’ segmentation skills. Taken together, these results indicate a close relation between language experience and word segmentation skills.     

Eighteen‐Month‐Old Infants Correct Non‐Conforming Actions by Others

At around their third birthday, children begin to enforce social norms on others impersonally, often using generic normative language, but little is known about the developmental building blocks of this abstract norm understanding. Here, we investigate whether even toddlers show signs of enforcing on others interpersonally how “we” do things. In an initial dyad, 18‐month‐old infants learnt a simple game‐like action from an adult. In two experiments, the adult either engaged infants in a normative interactive activity (stressing that this is the way “we” do it) or, as a non‐normative control, marked the same action as idiosyncratic, based on individual preference. In a test dyad, infants had the opportunity to spontaneously intervene when a puppet partner performed an alternative action. Infants intervened, corrected, and directed the puppet more in the normative than in the non‐normative conditions. These findings suggest that, during the second year of life, infants develop second‐personal normative expectations about their partner's behavior (“You should do X!”) in social interactions, thus making an important step toward understanding the normative structure of human cultural activities. These simple normative expectations will later be scaled up to group‐minded and abstract social norms.     

From Syllables to Syntax: Multilevel Statistical Learning by 12‐Month‐Old Infants

To successfully acquire language, infants must be able to track multiple levels of regularities in the input. In many cases, regularities only emerge after some learning has already occurred. For example, the grammatical relationships between words are only evident once the words have been segmented from continuous speech. To ask whether infants can engage in this type of learning process, 12‐month‐old infants in 2 experiments were familiarized with multiword utterances synthesized as continuous speech. The words in the utterances were ordered based on a simple finite‐state grammar. Following exposure, infants were tested on novel grammatical and ungrammatical sentences. The results indicate that the infants were able to perform 2 statistical learning tasks in sequence: first segmenting the words from continuous speech, and subsequently discovering the permissible orderings of the words. Given a single set of input, infants were able to acquire multiple levels of structure, suggesting that multiple levels of representation (initially syllable‐level combinations, subsequently word‐level combinations) can emerge during the course of learning.     

Speech Perception by 6‐to 8‐Month‐Olds in the Presence of Distracting Sounds

The role of selective attention in infant phonetic perception was examined using a distraction masker paradigm. We compared perception of /bu/ versus /gu/ in 6‐ to 8‐month‐olds using a visual fixation procedure. Infants were habituated to multiple natural productions of 1 syllable type and then presented 4 test trials (old‐new‐old‐new). Perception of the new syllable (indexed as novelty preference) was compared across 3 groups: habituated and tested on syllables in quiet (Group 1), habituated and tested on syllables mixed with a nonspeech signal (Group 2), and habituated with syllables mixed with a non‐speech signal and tested on syllables in quiet (Group 3). In Groups 2 and 3, each syllable was mixed with a segment spliced from a recording of bird and cricket songs. This nonspeech signal has no overlapping frequencies with the syllable; it is not expected to alter the sensory structure or perceptual coherence of the syllable. Perception was negatively affected by the presence of the auditory distracter during habituation; individual performance levels also varied more in these groups. The findings show that perceiving speech in the presence of irrelevant sounds poses a cognitive challenge for young infants. We conclude that selective attention is an important skill that supports speech perception in infants; the significance of this skill for language learning during infancy deserves investigation.     

Prosodic levelling during language shift: Okinawan approximations of Japanese pitch‐accent1

This article demonstrates how the language death process potentially contributes to the emergence of a new dialect. A sociolinguistic survey of the prosodic phonology of Japanese spoken in Yaeyama, Okinawa shows that the obsolescence process of Okinawan has resulted in a new dialect of Japanese. First, Okinawan is undergoing processes typical of language death, including increased variability and the elimination of phonological contrasts at the prosodic level. These processes are also occurring in the incoming language, Japanese. Second, these processes have influenced the acquisition of the prosody of Standard Japanese, resulting in a new prosodic system. Third, a positive attitude towards the local variant of Japanese is prevalent among the younger members of the community, particularly the working‐class males. These results suggest that a local prosodic system is emerging, resulting in a new dialect of Japanese.     

Infant‐Directed Prosody Helps Infants Map Sounds to Meanings

Adults typically use an exaggerated, distinctive speaking style when addressing infants. However, the effects of infant‐directed (ID) speech on infants' learning are not yet well understood. This research investigates how ID speech affects how infants perform a key function in language acquisition, associating the sounds of words with their meanings. Seventeen‐month‐old infants were presented with two label‐object pairs in a habituation‐based word learning task. In Experiment 1, the labels were produced in adult‐directed (AD) speech. In Experiment 2, the labels were produced in ID prosody; they had higher pitch, greater pitch variation, and longer durations than the AD labels. We found that infants failed to learn the labels in AD speech, but succeeded in learning the same labels when they were produced in ID speech. Experiment 3 investigated the role of variability in learning from ID speech. When the labels were presented in ID prosody with no variation across tokens, infants failed to learn them. Our findings indicate that ID prosody can affect how readily infants map sounds to meanings and that the variability in prosody that is characteristic of ID speech may play a key role in its effect on learning new words.     

The Feasibility of IFI‐Led Institutional Reform: Four Turkish Experiments Compared

Institutional reform has proved an enduring theme in the lending programmes of international financial institutions (IFIs) such as the IMF and the World Bank. But research harbours strong objections to the feasibility of IFI‐led institutional restructuring. This article evaluates these objections in the light of evidence from Turkey, a country with an early record of programme‐based reform initiatives in many institutional domains. Drawing on Turkey's central bank independence, banking regulation, anti‐corruption and agricultural subsidy reforms, it argues that IFI‐guided institutional restructuring may indeed encounter severe feasibility problems unless prescribed and implemented in a propitious environment marked by powerful international norms, widely accepted design templates, high levels of bureaucratic preparedness, and active endorsement from key domestic players.     

Dialect stabilization and speaker awareness in non‐native varieties of English1

Research on indigenized non‐native varieties of English has aimed to distinguish these varieties from individual second language learning in structural and social terms ( B. Kachru 1983 ; Platt, Weber and Ho 1984 ; Cheshire 1991 ) ; however, quantitative evidence of this divergence remains scarce. Through an analysis of a range of Indian English speakers in a contact situation in the United States, this study distinguishes developing dialect features from second language learning features and explores the concomitant emergence of dialect consciousness. First, an implicational analysis shows that some non‐standard variables (past marking, copula use, agreement) exhibit a second language learning cline while others (articles) form a more stable, incipient non‐standard system shared to some extent by all speakers; a multivariate analysis suggests that both sets of variables are governed by proficiency levels. Next, the explanatory scope of proficiency is assessed by examining the use of selected phonological variants (rhoticity, l‐velarization, aspiration). The use of these features resembles native‐like style‐shifting, as it appears to be more sensitive to speakers’ attitudinal stances than to proficiency levels. This points to the importance of understanding emerging speaker awareness and perceptions of stigma, risk, and value in new varieties of English.     

Early Word Segmentation in Naturalistic Environments: Limited Effects of Speech Register

We examined 7.5‐month‐old infants' ability to segment words from infant‐ and adult‐directed speech (IDS and ADS). In particular, we extended the standard design of most segmentation studies by including a phase where infants were repeatedly exposed to target word recordings at their own home (extended exposure) in addition to a laboratory‐based familiarization. This enabled us to examine infants' segmentation of words from speech input in their naturalistic environment, extending current findings to learning outside the laboratory. Results of a modified preferential‐listening task show that infants listened longer to isolated tokens of familiarized words from home relative to novel control words regardless of register. However, infants showed no recognition of words exposed to during purely laboratory‐based familiarization. This indicates that infants succeed in retaining words in long‐term memory following extended exposure and recognizing them later on with considerable flexibility. In addition, infants segmented words from both IDS and ADS, suggesting limited effects of speech register on learning from extended exposure in naturalistic environments. Moreover, there was a significant correlation between segmentation success and infants' attention to ADS, but not to IDS, during the extended exposure phase. This finding speaks to current language acquisition models assuming that infants' individual attention to language stimuli drives successful learning.     

The role of marriage in linguistic contact and variation: Two Hmong dialects in Texas1

The role of marriage in linguistic contact and variation has been under‐represented in sociolinguistic research. In any practice‐based analysis, individual interactions and relationships are crucial. Therefore, marriage relationships – small but intense communities of practice – deserve variationist attention for their role in dialect construction and identity. This investigation of cross‐dialectal marriages explores how dialect practices and choices are negotiated between partners. The results show the importance of viewing this linguistic behavior in terms of community ideology, culture, and individual choice, rather than primarily as a matter of the amount and intensity of contact. Likewise, the study shows how less commonly studied minority communities can bring new insights to the study of dialect acquisition and linguistic contact. Specifically, this investigation focuses on marriages between speakers of two different dialects of Hmong, a Hmong‐Mien language of Southeast Asia. On the basis of home visits to ten Hmong immigrant households in Texas, the study analyzes lexical and phonetic contrasts and ethnographic interviews. Results suggest that macro‐level shifts in Hmong social organization and gender roles are being reflected and constructed by gendered, marriage‐level dialect practices. The linguistic behavior in these marriages is best viewed as a matter of community ideology in tension with individual choice: individual wives are choosing to challenge the traditional Hmong ideology regarding language behavior in cross‐dialect marriages.     

Clause Segmentation by 6‐Month‐Old Infants: A Crosslinguistic Perspective

Each clause and phrase boundary necessarily aligns with a word boundary. Thus, infants' attention to the edges of clauses and phrases may help them learn some of the language‐specific cues defining word boundaries. Attention to prosodically well‐formed clauses and phrases may also help infants begin to extract information important for learning the grammatical structure of their language. Despite the potentially important role that the perception of large prosodic units may play in early language acquisition, there has been little work investigating the extraction of these units from fluent speech by infants learning languages other than English. We report 2 experiments investigating Dutch learners' clause segmentation abilities. In these studies, Dutch‐learning 6‐month‐olds readily extract clauses from speech. However, Dutch learners differ from English learners in that they seem to be more reliant on pauses to detect clause boundaries. Two closely related explanations for this finding are considered, both of which stem from the acoustic differences in clause boundary realizations in Dutch versus English.     

Telephone Troubles: Interactional Breakdown and its Management by Stutterers and Their Listeners*

While both face-to-face and telephone interaction involve problems of management for stutterers and their listeners, the absence of visual cues in telephone talk poses special problems which can lead to interactional breakdown. These problems are accentuated by factors such as an individual's pattern of stuttering and adaptations to stuttering, the awareness context in which interaction takes place, and the nature of the relationship between the speakers. The author's sociological perspective goes beyond the clinical perspective of speech pathology in helping to understand the interactional and identity troubles of stutterers. His analysis also shows how both stutterers' breaches of conversational norms and the practices used to remedy these breaches illuminate taken-for-granted expectations in telephone interaction.