Phonetics/phonology workshop

Also known as 'the P-workshop'. The programme consists of talks, seminars and discussions on subjects relating to phonetics and phonology (both synchonic and diachronic) and to speech technology.

Time and place

We normally meet on Friday, 12:10-13.00 (but not every Friday).

Contact

The P-workshop is the forum of the Phonetics and Phonology Research Group. If you would like to give a talk, suggest a reading, or lead a session (or if you'd like to be added to the P-workshop mailing list), email the organisers: Patrick Honeybone, Jeremy Steffman and Oksana Lebedivna.

Current and recent events

• 11th April 2025 (12:10 - 13:00), room: G32 in 7 George Square. Amalia Arvaniti (Raboud University) 'How to tame your intonation: from concepts to methods and back'. Abstract: In this talk I will provide a brief overview of the major findings and conclusions of SPRINT, a five-year project funded by the European Research Council to study intonation in English and Greek. The main objective of SPRINT has been to develop a new approach to intonation based primarily on the investigation of intonation variability and pragmatics. SPRINT started from the position that intonation is not a “half-tamed savage”, as the frequently used (and highly questionable) metaphor of Bolinger’s has it, but part of a language’s phonological component whose phonetic features are as tame as any other aspect of speech production, provided a) we treat them as such and b) we employ suitable methodologies to study them. Starting from this position, in the talk, I cover three topics: a) the main sources of variability in intonation and the methodologies employed in SPRINT to address them, so we can distinguish systematic, linguistically determined variation, from gradience, and noise; b) the role that meaning can play in this process; c) the lessons we learned from researching these topics and the ways they have shaped the main SPRINT objective, determining what we retain from AM, the most widely adopted model of intonation, and what we need to revise. Overall, the findings support SPRINT’s starting point and provide encouraging results on which to build this new foundation.
• 4th April 2025 (12:10 - 13:00), room: G32 in 7 George Square. Fae Hicks ‘Is ‘phonetic erosion’ a phonological concept: an exploration of the nature of phonological processes and causality of change’.
• 14th March 2025 (12:10 - 13:00), room: G32 in 7 George Square. Julian Bradfield 'Metaphony, Umlaut, and ǃXóõ A-Raising'. Joint work with Shanti Ulfsbjorninn, (Memorial University Newfoundland). Abstract: Metaphony and umlaut are well studied assimilations, and metaphony in particular has attracted a range of different analyses. This paper casts both in the framework of element theory, but as quite distinct processes. We then study the complex assimilation pattern of the Khoisan language ǃXóõ, between the first vowel of its bimoraic words and the second vowel, also affected by the consonants in the word. The most recent analysis (Lionnet 2018) argues that probabilistic and cumulative gradient effects are required to account for this process. We show that the process can be seen as formally a combination of umlaut and metaphony. Moreover, our analysis explains other assimilations, and predicts a new assimilation which is confirmed by recent data.
• 28th February 2025 (12:10 - 13:00), room: G32 in 7 George Square. Pia Lehecka ‘Spelling practices of high vowels in Older Scots’.
• 21st January 2025 (12:10-13:00), room: G32 in 7 George Square. Oksana Lebedivna 'Word-final depalatalisation in Hutsul Ukrainian: The case of *[tʲ] > [t]'. Abstract: This article revisits depalatalisation of the word-final *[tj] in the Southwest Ukrainian dialects, such as Hutsul, as compared to the North Ukrainian dialects, such as East Polissja, where [tj] retains its palatal component due to lexicalisation. In Hutsul, however, forms with both depalatalised and palatalised word-final voiceless stops are observed. I argue that palatalisation is preserved in the surface representations whose paradigms exhibit lexicalisation of the palatalised stop. A lack of lexicalisation in forms with [tj] can be explained by the underlying Tendency Towards Intrasyllabic Harmony Constraint and rule scattering from sound patterns of /tj/ when followed by a vowel (so-called dialectal backing). To show the intervocalic position of a word-final palatalised stop, I analyse spectrograms from Hutsul, suggesting that [tj] is followed by a vocoid. This suggests new ways of thinking about the formalisation of syllable structure in Hutsul, proposing that in Hutsul, [t] is associated with the onset and [j] with the V-slot, while an empty nucleus position is preserved by a vocoid.
• 24th January 2025 (12:10-13:00). Venue change: Due to the inclement weather and campus closure we are now meeting on Teams. Mits Ota ‘Learning, communication and the typology of phonotactic constraints’.
• 17th January 2025 (12:10-13:00) NOTE THE UNUSUAL VENUE!, room: 1.20 in the Dugald Stewart Building. Patrick Honeybone ‘English r -sandhi: where doesn’t it occur?’.
• 13th December 2024 (12:10-13:00), room: G32 in 7 George Square. Stefano Coretta & Jeremy Steffman ‘Replication of hemispheric differences in priming specificity effects: a study plan’.
• 29th November 2024 (12:10-13:00), room: G32 in 7 George Square. Benjamin Elie 'Optimal control of speech: A permanent learning approach'. Abstract: A growing number of studies support the Optimal Control Theory (OCT) view that articulatory movements in speech, similarly to non-speech movements, aim to satisfy (potentially conflicting) task requirements, including intelligibility, least articulatory effort, and utterance duration. OCT-based models of speech production assume that speech articulatory movements are planned to minimize a composite objective function defined as the weighted sum of the cost of not satisfying these individual tasks. After an introduction showing results of simulation that provide evidence that OCT can explain various aspects of speech, we will discuss how speakers learn and control optimality in speech.
• 15th November 2024 (12:10-13:00), room: G32 in 7 George Square. Alice Turk 'XT/3C: A Model of Speech Production Based on Symbolic Representations, Phonology-Extrinsic Timing, and 3 Processing Components'. Abstract: XT/3C is a model of speech articulation planning and execution based on symbolic phonological representations, phonology-extrinsic timing and three processing components: 1) Phonological Planning, 2) Phonetic Planning, and 3) Motor-Sensory Implementation. I will provide a brief discussion of the lines of evidence that motivated this model, followed by a general overview of the representations and mechanisms used in its three processing components.
• 25th October 2024 (15:10-16:00), room: G32 in 7 George Square. Matthew Sung 'Recent Developments in Computational Dialectology'. Abstract: Dialectometry is the quantitative branch of dialectology which utilises computational methods to calculate linguistic distances and generate visualisations which allow us to explore relationships between dialects. Although dialectometry is a growing field with an increasing number of new approaches, some corners in dialectal variation are still rather unexplored. Firstly, dialectometry is a popular method in Europe, but not so much in other parts of the world. It is unclear whether our findings of dialectal variation in Europe (e.g. the existence of a dialect continuum, the specific dynamics of dialect spread) are also found in other corners of the world. Secondly, most of the work on phonetic variation is based on segments, while most of the world’s languages are tonal (Yip 2002). It is unclear how dialects vary on the tonal level. Lastly, the outcome of a dialectometric analysis is usually a classification of dialects, but the features that contribute to this classification, i.e. dialect features which are exclusive to certain groups, are not explored in these classifications. In this talk, we would like to address the issues raised above based on our latest work done in Leiden.
• 18th October 2024 (12:10-13:00), room: G32 in 7 George Square. Brandon Kieffer 'Are there Rhotic Affricates in Kilimanjaro?'.
• 4th October 2024 (12:10-13:00), room: G26 in 7 George Square. Stephen Nichols 'Word-initial NC sequences in two varieties of Amuzgo'.
• 20th September 2024 (12:10-13:00), room: G32, 7 George Square. P-Workshop kick-off session – come along and meet other P-people.

Previous events

• MONDAY 27th May 2024 (14:10-15:00) NOTE THE UNUSUAL TIME AND PLACE!, room 1.17, Dugald Stewart Building. Rosalía Rodríguez-Vázquez (University of Vigo) 'Behavioural and Physiological Responses in the Identification of Basic Emotions by American-English Speakers'. Abstract: The study of emotional prosody examines the way in which specific emotions are associated to certain intonation patterns which, in turn, function as cues to recognize those emotions. The research dealing with emotional prosody has undergone considerable development in the last two decades, with a good number of studies exploring the identification of the so-called basic emotions (e.g. Castro & Lima, 2010; Ma, Zhou & Thompson, 2022; Cho & Dewaele, 2021). Parallel to this, studies about musical training and enhanced auditory skills confirm the influence of musical experience on several aspects of auditory processing, such as pitch (e.g. Habibi et al., 2016; Moreno et al., 2009; Tervaniemi et al., 2005), timing (e.g. Rammsayer & Altenmüller, 2006; Slater et al., 2013), and timbre processing (e.g. Chartrand & Belin, 2006; Putkinen et al., 2019). Although there is a growing interest in the perception of emotions by L1 (native) and LX (non-native) users, the studies that have delved into the identification of basic emotions when conveyed by non-native speakers of a language are still scarce (Dewaele et al. 2019; Lorette & Dewaele, 2015, 2020). Moreover, only a handful of studies have investigated the effect that the listeners’ musical experience has on the degree of accuracy in identifying those emotions through speech prosody (Correia et al., 2020; Farmer et al., 2020; Fuller et al., 2014; Lima & Castro, 2011; Park et al., 2015; Pinheiro et al., 2015). This talk aims at extending the research on the topic by presenting the results of a behavioural and physiological study conducted with a group of American English-speaking subjects with varying degrees of musical experience who were exposed to sentences pronounced with different emotional prosodies (happy, sad, neutral) in English L1 and L2, and in European Spanish. The objective of the study was to identify which variables—the prosodic makeup of the utterances as pronounced by speakers of English and speakers of Spanish, the speakers’ sex, the listeners’ degree of musical experience, and the listeners’ sex—could influence the level of accuracy and reaction time as well as the subjects’ physiological response in the identification of the emotions on the part of the listeners. To fulfil that objective, a behavioural experiment (N=40) and a physiological experiment (N=20) were conducted. Preliminary results show, first of all, that the prosodic makeup of the utterances had an effect on the accuracy with which the listeners identified emotions, as the degree of accuracy decreased when the subjects listened to the English sentences uttered by non-English speakers. Secondly, the sex of the speaker had an effect on the observed rate of accuracy, as the emotions conveyed by male speakers were recognized more accurately. Thirdly, the sex of the listener also had an impact on the results, as females were more successful at recognizing the emotion conveyed by the speakers. Last, a significant interaction was observed between the subjects’ level of musical experience and the correct identification of the emotions in sentences uttered by non-native English speakers, as the rate of accuracy increased and the reaction time decreased for participants with a higher level of musical experience.
• 3rd May 2024 (12:10-13:00), room 1.17, Dugald Stewart Building. Georges Sakr 'Insights from Ultrasound into the Articulation of Emphasis in Central Mount Lebanon Lebanese'.
• Extra session (practice talk): 27th March 2024 (12:10 start), room M.1 in Appleton Tower. Brandon Kieffer 'Bantu Spirantization in Great Lakes Bantu.' NOTE THE UNUSUAL TIME AND PLACE!
• 22nd March 2024 (12:10-13:00), room G26, 7 George Square. Mirella Blum and Bob Ladd 'Cross-dialect evidence for an analysis of Dinka noun number inflection'. Abstract: The number morphology of Dinka nouns is a long-standing source of wonder for Eurocentric linguists. Seen in terms of the question “how do you form the plural of a Dinka noun?”, the system seems highly unpredictable. Ladd & Blum 2021 suggested that the key to understanding the system was twofold: first, that the relation between the singular and plural forms depends heavily on the system of vowel grades that is of pervasive importance for the verb morphology (Andersen 1993, 1992-94); and second, that either the singular or plural can be (in a clearly definable sense) “marked”, meaning that the empirical question is not really “forming the plural” but rather “assembling a congruent pair of marked and unmarked forms”. However, another recent proposal (van Urk & Sun 2021), though acknowledging the relevance of markedness, is based on “forming the plural”, and suggests that there is a “default” ending, seen most clearly in recent loan words from English. Based on a set of cognate items in five Dinka dialects, collected by the first author, we explore the patterns of variability and change in number morphology. We find no evidence that the supposed “default” pattern is spreading or in any way driving variation in patterns of number inflection. Instead, most of the many cases where one or two dialects diverge from the others involve alternative plausible ways of “assembling a congruent pair of marked and unmarked forms” – importantly, including the creation of innovative singular forms as well as plural forms. Most of this cross-dialect variability is strongly consistent with the Ladd-Blum analysis.
• Extra session: 20th March 2024 (13:10 start), room 1.01, Dugald Stewart Building. British Association of Academic Phoneticians conference practice talks. NOTE THE UNUSUAL TIME AND PLACE!
• 8th March 2024 (12:10-13:00), room G26, 7 George Square. Inigo Urrestarazu 'Rare but not impossible. A nasalance-based account of the /h/ vs. /h~/ opposition in Zuberoan Basque'. Abstract: Eastern varieties of Basque have been described with an extremely rare opposition between an oral /h/ and a nasalized aspirate /h˜/, which some researchers considered impossible. This paper presents the first nasalance-based study of the /h/ vs. /h˜/ contrast in Basque, with data from the endangered Zuberoan variety. We report the production of a reading task by 5 participants from the village of Larraine (4 male, 1 female; age range 60-70) including items with nasalized and oral aspirates (e.g. ih˜ue ’no one’ vs. aihai ’dinner’), with oral aspirates comprising both words with only oral segments and words with a nasal stop that might trigger nasal assimilation. Our results suggest that the /h/ vs. /h˜/ opposition is still present in Larraine Basque, although some lexical items sporadically lost nasality, and some speakers have completely merged both segments by consistently producing /h/.
• 16th February 2024 (12:10-13:00), room G26, 7 George Square. Pavel Iosad and Yonatan Goldshtein 'The moraic mess that is Danish'.
• 9th February 2024 (12:10-13:00), room G26, 7 George Square. Laura Arnold 'A fudged tone split: Innovation in a Raja Ampat ideolect'.
• 1st December 2023 (12:10-13:00), room G26, 7 George Square. Malin Svensson Lundmark (Lund University) 'Segmental articulations'. Abstract: This talk is about an aspect of the articulatory-acoustics relationship that is rarely addressed but which is both stable and robust across e.g. places of articulation and different prosodic contexts. It’s about acceleration peaks and deceleration peaks of the articulators and how these coincide with the acoustic segment boundaries.
• 17th November 2023 (12:10-13:00), room G26, 7 George Square. Jeremy Steffman 'K-means clustering for time series data: An illustration with intonational tunes'.
• 3rd November 2023 (12:10-13:00), room G26, 7 George Square. Ricardo Napoleão de Souza 'An evaluation of syllable structure in contact situations: Typological data from 150 languages'. Abstract: This talk introduces a novel approach to language contact research that combines tried and tested tools from linguistic typology, but also from sociolinguistics and second language acquisition. Zooming in on syllable structure, I will present data from 150 languages from across the globe in the context of the larger project. I will also discuss how ‘deeper’ phonological structure is perhaps a more suitable means to assess the impact of contact on the linguistic structures of a language than the investigation of segment inventories alone. Further implications for historical linguistics, and for smaller-scale studies of contact will be addressed.
• 20th October 2023 (12:10-13:00), room G26, 7 George Square. Federico Falletti 'Ghost segments in Sengwer'.
• 6th October 2023 (12:10-13:00), room: MST_Teaching Room 02 (G.203) - Doorway 3, in the Old Medical School. P-Workshop kick-off session – come along and meet other P-people.
• 17th August 2023 (12:10-13:00), room 1.17, Dugald Stewart Building. Katherine Demuth (Macquarie University). 'Language Processing in Children with Hearing Loss'. Abstract: Advances in early newborn hearing screening, hearing devices and intervention have allowed many children with hearing loss to develop oral language skills commensurate with their hearing peers. However, teachers and parents continue to report many listening and learning challenges these children face during the critical language learning years, with concomitant knock-on effects, including listening fatigue, at school. This talk reports on recent research that goes ‘beyond speech’ to explore aspects of these children’s language processing abilities, both at the lexical, morphological, and sentential/discourse level. In so doing it raises many questions about the nature of these children’s lexical representations and language processing abilities, how these have developed by school age, and the areas which present the most challenges to effective communication. Implications for future research and clinical intervention are discussed.
• 16th August 2023 (12:10-13:00), room 1.17, Dugald Stewart Building. Haruo Kubozono (NINJAL, Tokyo) 'Syllable-mora interactions in Japanese: Evidence from phonology, morphology, acquisition, and text-setting'. Abstract: Tokyo Japanese is known as a ‘mora language’ where the mora plays pivotal roles in meter, speech rhythm, word accent, and other linguistic phenomena. On the other hand, it is also recently reported that the syllable, too, is indispensable in the same language. This talk considers how the two prosodic units coexist and interact with each other in the same linguistic system with main focus on (i) word accent and other phonological processes, (ii) truncation and other morphological processes, (iii) language acquisition/development, and (iv) text setting in Japanese songs. Overall, there are many phenomena that can be generalized solely by the mora, while there are also a good number of phenomena that require information about the syllable and syllable structure. However, there are few processes, if any, that are solely dependent on the syllable.

For older events, have a look at our archive: