17.359, Review: Phonetics/Phonology/Romance Lang: Face (2004)

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Subject: 17.359, Review: Phonetics/Phonology/Romance Lang: Face (2004)

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1)
Date: 29-Jan-2006
From: Joaquín Romero < jromero at tinet.fut.es >
Subject: Laboratory Approaches to Spanish Phonology 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Thu, 02 Feb 2006 13:36:08
From: Joaquín Romero < jromero at tinet.fut.es >
Subject: Laboratory Approaches to Spanish Phonology 
 

EDITOR: Face, Timothy L. 
TITLE: Laboratory Approaches to Spanish Phonology
SERIES: Phonology & Phonetics
PUBLISHER: Mouton de Gruyter
YEAR: 2004
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/16/16-990.html 

Joaquín Romero, Department of Anglogermanic Philology, Universitat 
Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain.

OVERVIEW

This book presents a selection of papers from the Laboratory 
Approaches to Spanish Phonology conference, held at the University 
of Minnesota in September 2002. The collection of papers is edited by 
the conference organizer, Timothy L. Face, who is also the author of 
one of the papers. The volume follows the philosophy of the 
conference in that it is an attempt to present a sample of current 
research in the phonetics/phonology interface of Spanish and it 
follows the example of the now consolidated Laboratory Phonology 
series of conferences and edited volumes. Following a brief 
introduction by the editor, the individual papers are presented in three 
major parts. Part 1 deals with Intonation, Part 2 is entitled Syllables 
and Stress, and Part 3 is presented under the heading Segmental 
Constraints. Following is a summary of each of the papers, with a brief 
critical evaluation stressing the major contributions as well as any 
possible shortcomings.

SYNOPSIS AND EVALUATION

Conxita Lleó, Martin Rakow & Margaret Kehoe, Acquisition of 
language-specific pitch accent in Spanish and German monolingual 
and bilingual children.
The paper by Lleó, Rakow and Kehoe investigates the acquisition of 
some basic intonational patterns by monolingual and bilingual 
children. A comparison is made between monolingual Spanish and 
German children, on the one hand, and Spanish/German bilinguals, 
on the other hand, in terms of their acquisition of the basic patterns of 
prenuclear accents in broad-focus declarative utterances. The results 
show that, while the monolingual children seem to show no difficulty in 
acquiring the correct intonational pattern at an early age, the 
acquisition of these patterns in the bilingual children is more subject-
dependent. One of the bilingual children seemed able to differentiate 
the patterns of the two languages, while the other used a variety of 
patterns in either language. These findings are taken as evidence that 
the acquisition of intonational patterns follows along similar paths to 
other prosodic features. They also give indirect evidence that 
unmarked patterns of intonation (H*L) seem to develop earlier than 
marked patterns (L*H). A drawback of the study is the very limited 
number of subjects that participated in it, which seems more suitable 
for a pilot study than a full-fledged one, especially since no mention is 
made in the paper of any possible further experiments. All in all, 
however, the paper provides interesting data of an aspect of L1 
acquisition that is still largely unknown, especially as concerns 
bilinguals, and it opens numerous possibilities for further research in 
this topic.

Pilar Prieto, The search for phonological targets in tonal space: H1 
scaling and alignment in five sentence-types in Peninsular Spanish.
Pilar Prieto's contribution focuses on the description of sentence initial 
peaks as a function of sentence type. She compares the tonal scaling 
and alignment of five types of sentences in peninsular Spanish: 
statements, yes-no questions, wh-questions, imperatives and 
exclamatives. The main theoretical assumption in this paper is that 
variations in pitch range are not exclusively paralinguistic, they can 
also convey linguistic information, in particular, information about 
sentence type. Results confirm this hypothesis, showing that the 
scaling of initial tones is consistently higher in questions (both 
absolute and wh) than in statements. Similarly, imperatives and 
exclamatives show consistently higher initial tones than the other 
sentence types. In terms of tonal alignment, the results show a clear 
distinction between late H1 peaks for statements and questions, and 
an early H1 peak for imperatives and exclamatives. The author argues 
that these results evidence some shortcomings in the traditional 
autosegmental description of pitch accents. She proposes that certain 
extra features are needed to refine both tonal scaling and alignment, 
such as [delayed peak] and [raised peak]. While this proposal might 
be in agreement with current work in the phonology of intonation, it 
seems unnecessarily abstract and categorical. A more phonetically 
based approach might consider the possibility of looking at tonal 
scaling as gradient, so pitch accents need not be categorically 
described by specific features, but rather determined dynamically in 
relation to the overall tonal structure of the utterance. 

Erik W. Willis, Dominican Spanish absolute interrogatives in broad 
focus.
In his paper Erik Willis sets out to show that the intonational contours 
of broad-focus absolute interrogatives in Dominican Spanish differ 
from previously reported Caribbean Spanish patterns. Standing 
accounts of the intonation contour of these types of sentences in 
Caribbean dialects mention a pattern with an initial rise which is 
followed by a high plateau and ends in a fall. Instead, Willis provides 
experimental evidence that Dominican Spanish absolute interrogatives 
show an overall rising contour, with a characteristic upstepped 
prenuclear low pitch accent and a final plateau. These results are 
obtained from both laboratory speech and a spontaneous speech 
sample, which corroborates the validity of the findings as a faithful 
representation of Dominican Spanish intonation. Despite the rather 
narrow scope of this study, the author makes an interesting 
observation regarding the pragmatics of specific intonational contours, 
which suggests that the same pattern can be used in different dialects 
for different communicative purposes. In addition to possible 
implications for crossdialectal intelligibility, this point raises interesting 
issues having to do with the potential phonological nature of intonation 
contours and the existence of intonational universals.

David Eddington, A computational approach to resolving certain 
issues in Spanish stress placement.
In his paper, David Eddington advocates for an analogically-driven or 
exemplar-based approach to phonological processing. Eddington 
investigates the relevance of this theory in reference to the aspects 
that determine the position of word stress in Spanish. Using materials 
from a Spanish frequency dictionary, he runs a series of 
computational simulations with two different analogical learning 
modeling techniques (Tilburgh Memory Based Learner and Analogical 
Modeling of Language). The results show that phonological notions 
such as syllable weight and the CV tier do not play an important role in 
the assignment of word stress in Spanish. Instead, what seems to 
determine whether word stress in Spanish will be antepenultimate, 
penultimate, or final, is the phonemic makeup of the word. Similar 
results are obtained from a different experiment in which native 
speakers of Spanish were asked to assign stress to a series of written 
nonce words. These results evidence the need to move away from 
models of phonological processing that are excessively mentalistic 
and abstract. At the same time, however, one should be cautious in 
drawing conclusions based on simulation data and nonce word data. 
For example, it is rather striking that, as illustrated in Table 2, two 
nonce words with identical phonemic makeup--'dagola' and 'dalona'-- 
obtain opposite values for percentage of antepenultimate vs. 
penultimate stress. In a case like this, more detail about exactly how 
these tests were administered (i.e., the instructions that the 
participants received, the time allowed for the test, how the words 
were presented, etc.) is crucial in order to validate the findings 
unequivocally.

Timothy L. Face, Perceiving what isn't there: Non-acoustic cues for 
perceiving Spanish stress.
The second paper in Part II is by Timothy L. Face, the editor of the 
volume, and it deals with the role of non-acoustic factors in the 
perception of stress in Spanish. The paper presents the results of a 
series of experiments that test whether factors such as syllable 
weight, lexical similarity, lexical regularity and morphological category 
play a role in determining stress placement. The experimental 
methodology is based on the use of synthesized trisyllabic nonsense 
words in which the acoustic cues that are known to correlate with 
stress are kept constant, i.e., pitch, duration and intensity; listeners 
are asked to indicate which syllable bears the stress. Contrary to the 
results found in Face (2000), the current study finds little evidence to 
support the role of syllable weight in the perception of Spanish stress. 
Instead, it is argued that it is the presence vs. absence of a word-final 
consonant that determines whether the word will be perceived as 
having final vs. penultimate stress. Other results point at the important 
role that the lexicon plays in the perception of Spanish stress. All in all, 
the results of Face's study are taken as evidence that stress 
placement in Spanish relies on many different factors other than just 
acoustic cues. In particular, a great deal of weight is given to the role 
of lexical patterns existing in the speaker's mind that influence the 
choice of stress pattern in nonsense words. One possible criticism has 
to do with the rather sparse presentation of the results as simple 
overall percentages, with little or no explanation of any possible within-
group variation. In particular, as refers to the experiment dealing with 
lexical similarity, it is surprising that all the words in the list should 
behave the same way. One of the words in this list, 'capita', which is 
supposedly unequivocally reminiscent of 'capital' or 'capitán', can 
actually be a real word, as in the common expression 'per capita'. It 
would have been interesting to see whether this particular item 
behaved the same way as the rest.

Sharon Gerlach, Effects of environment on L2 epenthesis: Evidence 
for transfer of ranked constraints.
Vowel epenthesis in Spanish is the subject of Sharon Gerlach's 
contribution to this volume. In this study the author combines 
experimental data with a theoretical account within the optimality 
framework. The experimental study looks for patterns of epenthetic /e/ 
in L2-English productions of native Spanish speakers in word-
initial /s/+stop sequences. The dependent variable in the study is the 
preceding context, identified as 'vowel', 'consonant' or 'pause'. The 
results show some interesting patterns with respect to the dependent 
variable, but also, for example, in the separation of the subjects 
between 'epenthesizers' and 'non-epenthesizers'. Unfortunately, the 
paper does not investigate what factors might underlie this distinction. 
It does explore in detail, however, the effect of context and it 
concludes that, contrary to prior belief, a preceding consonant does 
not necessarily favor epenthesis over a pause. Preceding vowels, on 
the other hand, seem to hinder epenthesis, which is in accordance 
with previous research. The paper then moves on to providing an 
optimality-theoretic account of the phenomenon taking as a basis the 
interaction between resyllabification principles and the constraints 
governing the shape of onsets in Spanish. Independently of the 
validity of this analysis, it presents a simplistic view of the reality of the 
phenomenon by reducing it to an all-or-nothing situation. This is 
supported by the fact that no explanation is provided as to the criteria 
used to decide whether epenthesis was present or not in the 
experimental data. A more thorough analysis would likely reveal a 
gradient phenomenon, which would probably not make for such an 
elegant theoretical analysis, but would definitely be closer to reality.

Mark Waltermire, The effect of syllable weight on the determination of 
spoken stress in Spanish.
Mark Waltermire's paper uses some of the data in Face (2000) to 
further investigate the role of syllable weight in the assignment of 
stress in Spanish. The study consists in the analysis of the results of a 
series of written questionnaires aimed at obtaining a glimpse into 
native Spanish speakers' intuitions as to the placement of stress in 
disyllabic and trisyllabic words. The data are subjected to a probability 
analysis that explores the effect that the presence or absence of final 
consonants will have in determining final vs. penultimate vs. 
antepenultimate stress. The results overwhelmingly confirm Face 
(2000)'s findings that the presence of a coda consonant in the final 
syllable favors final stress, whereas a light (codaless) final syllable 
induces penultimate stress. They also show, however, that the 
interaction between syllable weight and stress placement is more 
complex than that. Thus, his findings point at an intricate pattern of 
dependency between syllable weight and stress that can hardly be 
handled by traditional rule-based approaches. It is surprising, 
however, to see such a strong claim for the role of syllable weight in 
the same volume where Face admits that his own claim in this sense 
in Face (2000) was misled by a flaw in the experimental design.

Travis G. Bradley, Gestural timing and rhotic variation in Spanish 
codas.
In this paper, Travis Bradley deals with the phonetic variation of 
rhotics in preconsonantal position in Highland Ecuadorian Spanish. He 
provides acoustic data that show how homorganicity with the following 
consonant results in an assibilated pronunciation of -r-, while when 
the following consonant is not coronal, the -r- is realized as the 
expected flap followed by a so-called svarabhakti vowel. This variation 
is explained within the theory of Articulatory Phonology in terms of 
gestural alignment. In the homorganic situation, the supralaryngeal 
gestures for -r- and for the following consonant are produced with the 
same articulator, which results in a process of gestural blending. In the 
heterorganic configuration, the -r- and the following consonants do 
not share a supralaryngeal gesture and therefore are pronounced in 
sequence. The temporal coordination between the two is responsible 
for the svarabhakti vowel. This simple explanation provides a lot more 
insight into the nature of this type of consonant variation than 
resorting to categorical rules of epenthesis and assimilation. 
Surprisingly, Bradley seems to miss this generalization when he 
questions the adequacy of the gestural account to explain why 
assibilation doesn't result from homorganic clusters. Bradley then 
provides a phonetically-motivated  OT analysis of the phenomenon , 
which makes for an interesting exercise but unfortunately does not 
add much insight into the nature of the process.

Manuel Díaz-Campos, Acquisition of sociolinguistic variables in 
Spanish: Do children acquire individual lexical forms or variable rules?
Manuel Díaz-Campos contributes to this volume with a study about the 
acquisition of sociolinguistic variables by Venezuelan children. He 
investigates whether children of different age groups have acquired 
the stylistic and sociolinguistic variation that is associated with 
intervocalic /d/ deletion in Venezuelan Spanish. One of the goals of 
the study is to test whether acquisition of variation is done on a case-
by-case basis or, more generally, by rule. The study includes a series 
of independent variables or factors such as the dictionary frequency 
of the lexical items used in the design, the frequency within the corpus 
and the age group of the participants. The dependent variable is the 
presence vs. absence of alternation in the pronunciation of 
intervocalic /d/. Even though the results are presented in a somewhat 
confusing manner-the interaction between the age variable and the 
frequency variables is not quite explained--the outcome of the 
experiments show that the factors having to do with frequency 
(dictionary or corpus) play a crucial role in predicting the 
pronunciation of intervocalic /d/, whereas age does not seem to be a 
significant factor. The weight of the frequency variables is taken by 
the author to support the hypothesis that variation is not acquired by 
rule, but on a case-by-case basis.

Marta Ortega-Llebaria, Interplay between phonetic and inventory 
constraints in the degree of spirantization of voiced stops: Comparing 
intervocalic /b/ and intervocalic /g/ in Spanish and English.
The last paper in this collection presents a study by Marta Ortega-
Llebaria in which the author looks for evidence of the theoretical 
assumption that a particular phonological inventory imposes 
constraints on the phonetic realization of specific vowels and 
consonants. She compares the degree of lenition in intervocalic /b/ 
and /g/ in Spanish and English. Since English distinguishes 
phonologically between /b/ and /v/ while Spanish has only /b/, it is 
hypothesized that Spanish will allow for more variability, i.e., more 
lenition,  in the production of /b/ than English. On the other hand, 
since neither language contrasts /g/ with a voiced velar fricative, both 
should exhibit similar degrees of lenition in /g/. The results of an 
acoustic study show that, indeed, Spanish /b/ exhibits more lenition 
than English /b/, while /g/ shows more similar degrees of lenition in 
both languages. In spite of the clear results, two considerations can 
be made regarding this study. First, treating voiced stop lenition as 
essentially the same phenomenon in Spanish and English, though 
probably appropriate from an articulatory point of view, ignores the 
fact that in Spanish this is a generalized phonological process, 
whereas in English it could be considered a reduction typical of casual 
speech. Second, the more variable realization of /g/ could also be 
related, on the one hand, to the specific nature of tongue-body 
kinematics and, on the other hand, to the difficulties in sustaining 
voicing in velar stops, which has been proven to cause incomplete 
stop closures in a variety of languages.

OVERALL EVALUATION

Taken as a whole, this volume is a welcome contribution to the field of 
laboratory phonology and, in particular, for those of us who are 
interested in the phonetics/phonology interface of Spanish. I believe 
the editor needs to be congratulated not only for having put this 
volume together, but also for kick-starting the series of conferences 
on Spanish laboratory phonology, now heading towards its third 
edition.

The selection of papers is representative of a wide variety of interests 
within the general field of the phonetics/phonology interface, touching 
upon well-known segmental and suprasegmental issues, but also 
providing novel data from acquisition and variation studies. One 
possible criticism as far as the selection of papers is concerned could 
be the excessive concentration on prosody, with seven out of the ten 
papers dealing with prosodic issues. This might simply be a fair 
representation of the papers that were presented at the conference, 
but perhaps a more balanced distribution between segmental and 
suprasegmental issues might have been more appropriate for a 
volume of these characteristics. Also, the three parts in which the 
volume is divided are not very well balanced, especially part 2, where 
three of the four papers are about essentially the same thing and 
draw on data from each other excessively. Perhaps this is due to the 
editor's personal interests, but it seems a shame that other papers 
were left out. On the other hand, part 2 presents an in-depth 
treatment of the relationship between stress and syllable structure, but 
again this might not be the best philosophy for this type of volume.

>From a typographical point of view, the book is reasonably free of 
typos and other editorial mistakes. There are, however, a few errors 
that are confusing for the reader, since they detract from a 
straightforward understanding of the text. For example, in Lleó, 
Rakow and Kehoe's paper, the explanation of Figure 12 makes 
reference to the intonational pattern of the word 'Wasser' 
(in 'Wasserflugzeug') but the figure shows only the second part of the 
word i.e., 'Flugzeug'. In Prieto's paper, Figure 7 appears as belonging 
to speaker GH but the text refers to it as MN. Also, in Bradley's paper, 
the introduction to Section 5 refers to the coming sections as 4.1, 4.2 
and 4.3 instead of 5.1, 5.2 and 5.3, respectively.

I would like to make one final observation regarding the use of 
experimental methods and the presentation of data in some of the 
papers in this volume. As is unfortunately rather common in some of 
the work currently being done on laboratory phonology, it seems that 
some times the experimental data is viewed simply as a complement to 
the theoretical phonological analysis. Because of this, there can be a 
certain lack of rigor in the gathering, analysis and presentation of 
experimental results. Some of these problems have been pointed out 
above with respect to the specific papers. In my opinion, this lack of 
experimental rigor can in some cases undermine the theoretical 
statements that are based on the experimental data. In other 
instances, as in those papers that present OT analyses of the data, 
the distance between the experimental results and the assumptions 
made in the theoretical analysis represents such a leap of faith and 
such a simplification of the physical reality that one wonders why the 
authors bothered to gather experimental data at all. I believe two of 
the pending issues in some laboratory phonology work are the 
excessive dependence on formalism and the weakness in the 
treatment of experimental data. The continuation of series like the one 
initiated with this volume are the best guarantee that these issues will 
be resolved in future work.

REFERENCE

Face, Timothy L. (2000) The role of syllable weight in the perception 
of Spanish stress. Hispanic Linguistics at the Turn of the Millennium, 
ed. by Héctor Campos, Elena Herburger, Alfonso Morales-Font and 
Thomas J. Walsh, 1-13. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press. 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Joaquín Romero is an Associate Professor in the Department of 
Anglogermanic Philology at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili, in 
Tarragona, Spain. He received his Ph.D. in Linguistics from the 
University of Connecticut in 1995. He is currently a research affiliate at 
Haskins Laboratories, in New Haven, Connecticut. He is interested in 
speech production and in the phonetics/phonology interface of 
segmental issues, with special concentration on the relevance of 
temporal aspects in processes of assimilation and articulatory 
reduction.





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