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Pre-aspiration, quantity, and sound change

Pre-aspiration, quantity, and sound change Abstract Geminate voiceless stops /pː tː kː / have been recently found to show optional pre-aspiration under certain circumstances in spontaneous and read Italian speech. This paper investigates the impact of pre-aspiration on the perception and production of contrastive quantity, e.g., fato ‘fate’ vs. fatto ‘done’. It tests the hypothesis that synchronic variability involving pre-aspiration, together with concomitant stop closure shortening, may be setting in motion a sound change in Italian ultimately leading to de-gemination, i.e., /pː tː kː / > ( h p h t h k) > /p t k/. The proposed sound change would be perceptually driven (Ohala 1981, 1993) and comes about via listener association of pre-aspiration with the preceding vowel rather than the oral closure. The hypothesis is only partially supported by the experimental results. Perception data show that Italians perceive pre-aspirated stops as shorter than plain stops of analogous overall duration. However, production data show that pre-aspiration in Italian does not in fact involve concomitant oral closure shortening. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Laboratory Phonology de Gruyter

Pre-aspiration, quantity, and sound change

Laboratory Phonology , Volume 5 (4) – Nov 1, 2014

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References (70)

Publisher
de Gruyter
Copyright
Copyright © 2014 by the
ISSN
1868-6346
eISSN
1868-6354
DOI
10.1515/lp-2014-0015
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Abstract Geminate voiceless stops /pː tː kː / have been recently found to show optional pre-aspiration under certain circumstances in spontaneous and read Italian speech. This paper investigates the impact of pre-aspiration on the perception and production of contrastive quantity, e.g., fato ‘fate’ vs. fatto ‘done’. It tests the hypothesis that synchronic variability involving pre-aspiration, together with concomitant stop closure shortening, may be setting in motion a sound change in Italian ultimately leading to de-gemination, i.e., /pː tː kː / > ( h p h t h k) > /p t k/. The proposed sound change would be perceptually driven (Ohala 1981, 1993) and comes about via listener association of pre-aspiration with the preceding vowel rather than the oral closure. The hypothesis is only partially supported by the experimental results. Perception data show that Italians perceive pre-aspirated stops as shorter than plain stops of analogous overall duration. However, production data show that pre-aspiration in Italian does not in fact involve concomitant oral closure shortening.

Journal

Laboratory Phonologyde Gruyter

Published: Nov 1, 2014

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