Feb. 6, 2025 - Feb. 8, 2025
https://sites.google.com/uniurb.it/aisv2025/home
The sound of grammar. New perspectives on the interplay of phonetics with morphology, syntax and the lexicon.
The thematic session of the conference aims to investigate the relationship between phonetics and other levels of linguistic analysis, considering the most recent theoretical and empirical findings on the patterns, functions, and limits of phonetic variation. The starting point is therefore the role of gradual phonetic detail in the transmission and in the processing of meaning, not only in relation to the pragmatic and contextual dimensions of communication but also, and especially, concerning grammar and language structures.
For example, much of the phonetic variation once considered dependent on biomechanical constraints and outside the speaker's control has now been found to display systematic – as well as cross-linguistic – variation depending on prosodic, pragmatic, and semantic/lexical factors (e.g., Recasens, Farnetani, 1990; Savy, 1999; Solé, 2007; Gahl, 2008; Baker, Bradlow, 2009; Cho, 2015; Sóskuthy, Hay, 2017; Martinuzzi, Schertz, 2022). Additionally, it can be employed to mark paradigmatic contrasts more saliently (e.g., Baese-Berk, Goldrick 2007; Wedel, Nelson & Sharp, 2018); its forms of systematic variation also emerge from across-speaker comparisons (e.g., Chodroff, Wilson, 2017); it is perceived by the listener, and employed to locally resolve signal ambiguities (e.g., Warner, Brenner, Tucker & Ernestus, 2022).
While there is increasing empirical evidence in this direction, its integration within a coherent linguistic theory is still a matter of discussion, starting with questions such as:
How much and what kind of phonetic variation is internalized by the speaker?
What is part of, and what is not part of, phonological grammar?
How much of phonetic variation is relevant in the development of phonological, orthographic, and lexical competence?
Which models of linguistic perception most coherently account for the role of local acoustic cues in accessing lexical representation?
Building further upon these considerations, an expanding number of empirical studies suggest that identical phonological structures with different morphological status are phonetically differentiated by the speaker, independent of prosodic and contextual variables, in a way that is useful to the listener to decode higher-level structural information using the signal’s phonetic detail (e.g., Cho, 2001; Hay, Bresnan 2006; Plag, Homann & Kunter, 2017; Clayards, Gaskell & Hawkins, 2021; Schlechtweg, Corbett, 2021; Tomaschek, Plag, Ernestus & Baayen, 2021).
If this is true, then it becomes crucial to provide an answer to a series of questions about the relationships between phonetics and grammar, such as:
Is there a significant relationship between gradual phonetic variation and morphological and syntactic categories?
Is it possible to identify phonetic correlates (acoustic, articulatory) of grammatical structure, independent of prosodic, lexical, pragmatic, and contextual covariations?
Can the investigation of gradual phonetic variation challenge or, on the contrary, confirm traditional models of morphological analysis?
The AISV Annual Conferences do host sessions on broader themes. Thus, proposals on any other aspect of speech research are welcome.
References
Baese-Berk, M., Goldrick, M. (2009). Mechanisms of interaction in speech production. In Language and Cognitive Processes, 24(4), 527-554. https://doi.org/10.1080/01690960802299378.
Baker, R.E., Bradlow, A.R. (2009). Variability in word duration as a function of probability, speech style, and prosody. In Language and Speech, 52(4), 391-413. https://doi.org/10.1177/0023830909336575.
Cho, T. (2001). Effects of morpheme boundaries on intergestural timing: Evidence from Korean. In Phonetica, 58(3), 129-162. https://doi.org/10.1159/000056196.
Cho, T. (2015). Language effects on timing at the segmental and suprasegmental levels. In Redford, M. A. (Ed.), The Handbook of Speech Production. Malden/Oxford/Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 505-529. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118584156.ch22.
Chodroff, E., Wilson, C. (2017). Structure in talker-specific phonetic realization: Covariation of stop consonant VOT in American English. In Journal of Phonetics, 61, 30-47. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2017.01.001.
Clayards, M., Gaskell, M. G. & Hawkins, S. (2021). Phonetic detail is used to predict a word’s morphological composition. In Journal of Phonetics, 87, 101055. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2021.101055.
Gahl, A. (2008). Time and Thyme are not homophones: The effect of lemma frequency on word durations in spontaneous speech. In Language, 84(3), 474-496. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.0.0035.
Hay, J., Bresnan, J. (2006). Spoken syntax: The phonetics of giving a hand in New Zealand English. In The Linguistic Review, 23, 321-349. https://doi.org/10.1515/TLR.2006.013.
Martinuzzi, C., Schertz, J. (2022). Sorry, Not Sorry: The independent role of multiple phonetic cues in signaling the difference between two word meanings. In Language and Speech, 65(1), 143-172. https://doi.org/10.1177/0023830921988975.
Plag, I., Homann, J. & Kunter, G. (2017). Homophony and morphology: The acoustics of word-final S in English. In Journal of Linguistics, 53(1), 181-216. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022226715000183.
Recasens, D., Farnetani, E. (1990). Articulatory and acoustic properties of different allophones of /l/ in American English, Catalan and Italian. In Proceedings of the First International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (ICSLP 1990), 961-964. https://doi.org/10.21437/ICSLP.1990-253.
Savy, R. (1999). Riduzioni foniche nella morfologia del sintagma nominale nel parlato spontaneo. Indagine quantitativa e aspetti strutturali. In Fonologia e morfologia dell'italiano e dei dialetti d'Italia, 201-221. https://doi.org/10.1400/27849.
Schlechtweg, M., Corbett, G. G. (2021). The duration of word-final s in English: A comparison of regular-plural and pluralia-tantum nouns. In Morphology, 31(4), 383-407. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11525-021-09381-x.
Solé, M.-J. (2007). Controlled and mechanical properties in speech. A review of the literature. In Solé, M.-J., Beddor, P. S. & Ohala, M. (Eds.), Experimental Approaches to Phonology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 302-322. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199296675.003.0018.
Sóskuthy, M., Hay, J. (2017). Changing word usage predicts changing word durations in New Zealand English. In Cognition, 166, 298-313. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2017.05.032.
Tomaschek, F., Plag, I., Ernestus, M. & Baayen, R. H. (2021). Phonetic effects of morphology and context: Modeling the duration of word-final S in English with naïve discriminative learning. In Journal of Linguistics, 57(1), 123-161. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022226719000203.
Warner, N., Brenner, D., Tucker, B. V. & Ernestus, M. (2022). Native listeners’ use of information in parsing ambiguous casual speech. In Brain Sciences 12, 930. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci12070930.
Wedel, A., Nelson, N. & Sharp, R. (2018). The phonetic specificity of contrastive hyperarticulation in natural speech. In Journal of Memory and Language, 100, 61-88. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2018.01.001.
Submission instructions:
Abstracts should be written in Italian or English (500 words minimum, excluding references) and not exceed 3 pages of text, including tables, images, and references. Please use the template provided at the following link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p6IAeNKcxNj3q5HtJSUCTEmFF6flcnqA/edit#heading=h.gjdgxs . Abstracts must be anonymous and must be submitted electronically in PDF format. Contributions will be selected for oral or poster presentation following a double-blind peer review process. Authors are encouraged to indicate their preference at the time of submission (the final decision will be made by the organizing committee).
Submissions open: July 1, 2024 - Oct. 15, 2024
Abstract review period: Oct. 16, 2024 - Nov. 10, 2024