This week will feature colloquium presentations by two of our graduate students.
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Effects of Experience in Second-Language Listening: Non-Native Vowel Context Speeds Identification of Non-Native Consonant Categories (Dave Ogden)
In an exemplar-based model, effects of linguistic experience in second-language (L2) acquisition are explained as the conspiracy of experienced tokens in reshaping category representations (e.g., Wade et al., 2010). Such a model predicts that acquisition of a new category boundary is facilitated in phonetic contexts which are highly dissimilar to first-language experience. I present results of an experiment that tested this prediction for English-speaking advanced learners of French, who must recognize the novel category distinction between lead and short-lag voice onset time for word-initial stops in French, particularly that the unaspirated stop [p] exemplifies the category /b/ in English but /p/ in French. Learners’ were faster to identify word-initial [p] as French /p/ when it preceded a vowel that occurs in French but not in English. This evidence supports the conclusion that representations of phonological categories are not purely discrete and static, but include information about experienced tokens in phonetic context. Implications will also be discussed for two important models of L2 speech learning and perception: the Speech Learning Model (Flege, 2007) and the L2 extension of the Perceptual Assimilation Model (Best & Tyler, 2007).
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Overt Movement as a Marker of (Ir)realis in Iquito (Marcus Berger)
The Iquito language is unique among the world’s languages in that it makes a distinction between realis and irrealis clauses with purely syntactic differences, without differences in overt morphology. Iquito realis clauses display SVO word order, while irrealis clauses are characterized by an element appearing between the subject and the verb, yielding SXV(O) word order, where X can be a variety of syntactic elements. After providing a formal analysis of the basic syntax of Iquito, I develop an account in which the distinction between realis and irrealis clauses is a result of the verb raising or failing to raise to T(ense) respectively. I argue that this is due to a feature in T which causes the verb to raise in realis structures, but not in irrealis. This analysis relates in part to Kempchinsky’s (2009) analysis of the subjunctive in Romance languages, which follows from subjunctive clauses being a subset of irrealis clauses. Finally, I investigate variations in word order in embedded clauses based on finiteness, and show that the same variation in surface word order that is indicative of a realis/irrealis distinction in main clauses also captures a finiteness distinction in embedded clauses.
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Effects of Experience in Second-Language Listening: Non-Native Vowel Context Speeds Identification of Non-Native Consonant Categories (Dave Ogden)
In an exemplar-based model, effects of linguistic experience in second-language (L2) acquisition are explained as the conspiracy of experienced tokens in reshaping category representations (e.g., Wade et al., 2010). Such a model predicts that acquisition of a new category boundary is facilitated in phonetic contexts which are highly dissimilar to first-language experience. I present results of an experiment that tested this prediction for English-speaking advanced learners of French, who must recognize the novel category distinction between lead and short-lag voice onset time for word-initial stops in French, particularly that the unaspirated stop [p] exemplifies the category /b/ in English but /p/ in French. Learners’ were faster to identify word-initial [p] as French /p/ when it preceded a vowel that occurs in French but not in English. This evidence supports the conclusion that representations of phonological categories are not purely discrete and static, but include information about experienced tokens in phonetic context. Implications will also be discussed for two important models of L2 speech learning and perception: the Speech Learning Model (Flege, 2007) and the L2 extension of the Perceptual Assimilation Model (Best & Tyler, 2007).
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Overt Movement as a Marker of (Ir)realis in Iquito (Marcus Berger)
The Iquito language is unique among the world’s languages in that it makes a distinction between realis and irrealis clauses with purely syntactic differences, without differences in overt morphology. Iquito realis clauses display SVO word order, while irrealis clauses are characterized by an element appearing between the subject and the verb, yielding SXV(O) word order, where X can be a variety of syntactic elements. After providing a formal analysis of the basic syntax of Iquito, I develop an account in which the distinction between realis and irrealis clauses is a result of the verb raising or failing to raise to T(ense) respectively. I argue that this is due to a feature in T which causes the verb to raise in realis structures, but not in irrealis. This analysis relates in part to Kempchinsky’s (2009) analysis of the subjunctive in Romance languages, which follows from subjunctive clauses being a subset of irrealis clauses. Finally, I investigate variations in word order in embedded clauses based on finiteness, and show that the same variation in surface word order that is indicative of a realis/irrealis distinction in main clauses also captures a finiteness distinction in embedded clauses.
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