acoustics and obsolescence in scottish gaelic stop consonants claire nance and jane stuart-smith...
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Acoustics and obsolescence in Scottish Gaelic stop consonants
Claire Nance and Jane Stuart-Smith [email protected]
[email protected] of Glasgow
Overview
• (Very brief) sociolinguistic introduction• Stop consonants in Gaelic• Research questions• Methods• Results• Ongoing work• Conclusion
Sociolinguistic context
• c.60,000 ‘speakers’ but numbers reducing• Revitalization ongoing• MacKinnon 2010
• Framework here: obsolescence (Anderson 1982, Dorian 1981, Jones 1998, Babel 2009), and contact with English (Thomason 2007)
Lewis context
• Densest concentration(MacKinnon2010)
Lewis/LeòdhasLewis/
Leòdhas
Stop consonants in Gaelic
• Word initial /ph th kh/ and /p t k/
• Word medial and word final /hp ht hk/ and /p t k/ (Ladefoged et al. 1998)
• (Also palatalised vs. velarised distinction)• ‘Aspirating language’ (Jessen and Ringen
2002), [spread glottis] (Kingston, forthcoming 2010)
Examples
boc ‘male goat’
bog ‘soft’
Examples
smoc ‘smoke’
snog ‘nice’
Research questions
• What are the phonetic correlates of the contrast /ph th kh/ and /p t k/ in modern Gaelic?
• Is this system changing as the language undergoes obsolescence?
Methods
• Native speakers of Lewis Gaelic• 3 older generation, 3 younger• Recording conditions• Word list data• Non-parametric statistical tests
Durational measures• Segmenting on the waveform in Praat• What is pre-aspiration? (Ní Chasaide 1985)
a c a
VowelVowelPreaspirationPreaspiration
BVBV NoiseNoiseModal voiceModal voice
Adapted Zero Crossing Rate (Gordeeva and Scobbie 2010)
• Ongoing work: Adapted ZCR in collaboration with Olga Gordeeva – still awaiting statistical analysis
• Compares and quantifies pre- and post-aspiration using by counting zero crossings on a band-pass filtered sound file
• Interested in noise from the glottis
Results: contrast /kh/, /k/ càl [kʰɑ:ɫ̪R ] cabbage, gal [kaɫ̪R ] steam
Results: contrast /hk/, /k/aca ‘at them’ [aʰkə], baga ‘bag’ [pakə]
vowel startvowel startStop burstStop burst
Differences: word initial
• YP VOT longer • Also proportionally
Results medial and final /hk/, /k/
• YP Shorter pre-aspiration• Pre-aspiration different
n = 144
Stop closureStop closure
Results medial and final /hk/, /k/
• YP Shorter pre-aspiration• Pre-aspiration different
Examples: can you hear the difference?
Older speaker: boc ‘male goat’ Younger speaker: boc ‘male goat’
Younger speaker: smoc ‘smoke’
Older speaker: smoc ‘smoke’
Adapted Zero Crossing Rate:Initial /kh/ càl [kʰɑ:ɫ̪R ], /k/ gal [kaɫ̪R ]
n = 108
Word medial /hk/, /k/ aca ‘at them’ [aʰkə], baga ‘bag’
[pakə]
n = 72
Word final /hk/, /k/boc ‘male goat’ [pɔʰk], bog ‘soft’ [pok]
n = 108
Conclusion
• Apparent time differences• Comparison to Ladefoged et al. (1998) Real
time change?
Conclusion
• Gradient phonetic shift (Babel 2009)• Obsolescence / contact / ‘normal’ change?• Lexical attrition
References• Anderson, R., 1982. Determining the linguistic attributes of language attrition. In Lambert and Freed, eds.,
The loss of language skills. Rowley: Newbury House Publishers• Babel, M., 2009. The phonetic and phonological effects of obsolescence in Northern Paiute. In J. Stanford
and D. Preston, eds., Variation in indigenous minority languages. Amsterdam: John Benjamins• Dorian, N., 1981. Language death: the life cycle of a Scottish Gaelic dialect. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press • Gordeeva, O., and Scobbie, J., 2010. Preaspiration as a correlate of word-final voice in Scottish English
fricatives. In S. Fuchs, M. Toda, M. Zygis, eds., Turbulent sounds: an interdisciplinary guide. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter
• Jessen, M., and Ringen, C., 2002. Laryngeal features in German. Phonology, 19:2, pp. 189-218 • Jones, Mari, 1998. Obsolescence and revitalization: linguistic change in two sociolinguistically contrasting
Welsh communities. Oxford: Blackwell• Kingston, J., Voice. Forthcoming in Phonology• Ladefoged, P., and Ladefoged, J., Turk, A., Hind, K., Skilton, St. J., 1998. Phonetic structures of Scottish
Gaelic. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 28, pp. 1-41• MacKinnon, K., 2010. Scottish Gaelic today: social history and contemporary status. In M. Ball and N.
Müller, eds., The Celtic languages. 2nd. ed. London: Routledge • Ní Chasaide, A., 1985. Pre-aspiration in phonological stop contrasts. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of
Bangor• Silverman, D., 2003. On the rarity of pre-aspirated stops. Journal of linguistics, 39:3. pp. 575-598• Thomason, S., 2007. Language contact: an introduction. 4th ed. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press
• My supervisor and co-author: Jane Stuart-Smith• Collaborator: Olga Gordeeva, Acapela Group
[email protected]• My informants: Susan Bell, Christeen Combe,
Aoghas MacCoinnich, Sarah MacKinnon, Colm Macqueen and all those who wished to remain anonymous
• Research funded by a Kelvin-Smith Scholarship, University of Glasgow
Tapadh Leibh / Thank you