Frequency Effects and Vowel Lenition in (ING)

Jon Forrest

LSA 2015

Introduction

• The role of frequency in linguistic variation and change

• Disagreement on the distinct character (and sometimes existence) of frequency effects and their role in variation

• (ING), specifically, has been argued to have no significant frequency effect

• Does a frequency effect exist in the variation between IN and ING?

Usage-Based Accounts of Phonology

• Physiologically-motivated sound changes affect more frequent words before less frequent words, and vice versa (Phillips 1984)

• Lexical frequency has an effect on the rate of lenition processes (Pierrehumbert 2001; 2002)

• More frequent words lead in sound changes (Bybee 2002)

Conflicting Findings of Frequency

• Philadelphia /aw/ (Labov 2003) and US fronting of /oh/ and /uh/ (Labov 2011) sound changes show no effect of frequency

• Further study of t/d deletion finds no frequency effect overall, only frequency in certain environments (Walker 2012)– Similar arguments for phonological environments over grammatical constraints (Tagliamonte and Temple 2005; Hazen 2011)

Lenition, Frequency, and (ING)

• Dinkin (2008) argues, following previous research (Phillips 1984) that only lenition processes, not all sound changes, favor lexically frequent items

• (ING) found not to have frequency effects (Abramowicz 2007) because it is not a lenition process (Dinkin 2008)

• However, F2 and duration of the vowel in (ING) plays a strong role in classification of tokens (Forrest 2014), suggesting that lenition may indeed play a role

Research Questions

• Does frequency play a role in the realization of (ING), as usage-based accounts suggest, or does frequency have no effect, as recent work suggests?

• Does the effect of frequency based on occurrence in certain grammatical and phonological environments for (ING), as with t/d deletion (Walker 2012)?

Data

• 110 speakers from Raleigh, NC– Roughly balanced for Sex and Occupation

– Dialect contact in the region, so Year of Birth controls put into models

• 10565 tokens of (ING) coded overall

Coding Methods

• Impressionistically coded as (IN) or (ING)

• Assimilated tokens (gonna, etc.), pronouns, and prepositions excluded

• In addition to realization, for two other categories:– Following Place of Articulation (coronal, velar, labiodental, bilabial, vowel, coda)

– Lexical Category (progressive, adjective, gerund, participle, noun)

Statistical Methods

• Logistic mixed-effects models with Speaker as a random factor and (IN) vs. (ING) as outcome variable

• Addition of frequency variables stepwise and compared to previous models to ascertain best-fitting models

• Model selection determined by AIC comparison

Coding of Frequency Variables

• Word frequency variable measured as raw token count in the corpus, then centered and scaled

• Two other scaled frequency variables for each word measuring occurrence in specific environments– Percent occurrence in high-IN grammatical environments (progressives or participles)

– Percent occurrence in high-IN phonological environments (pre-coronal)

• Multicollinearity– Max of .37, average of about .10 - .20– Correlation of Sex and Occupation from .20 - .45

Word Frequency Distribution

No inclusion of Word as a random factor as in Walker (2012)

Model Comparison Statistics

Model selection based on AICc :

K AICcDelta_AIC

cAICcW

t Cum.Wt LLFreq./Gram. Env./Phon. Env.

Interaction 23 8746.78 0 1 1-

4350.34

Frequency/Gram. Env. Interaction 20 8774.71 27.93 0 1-

4367.31Phonological Environment

Frequency 19 8787.56 40.78 0 1-

4374.74Grammatical Environment

Frequency 18 8825.17 78.39 0 1-

4394.55

Frequency 17 9083.76 336.98 0 1-

4524.85

Base Model 16 9400.87 654.09 0 1-

4684.41

• Base Model contains:– Internal Constraints (Lexical Category, Following Place of Articulation)

– Social Factors (Sex, Year of Birth, Occupation)

Final Model (Social Factors Removed)

Dependent variable: Realization as (ING) Final Model

Gerund 1.053*** (0.196)Participle 1.341*** (0.214)Noun 0.728*** (0.223)Progressive 1.523*** (0.208)Coda -0.947*** (0.120)Coronal -0.004 (0.096)Labiodental -0.044 (0.160)Velar -0.669*** (0.140)Vowel -0.144 (0.090)Frequency 0.153*** (0.046)Percent High-IN Grammatical 0.761*** (0.057)Percent High-IN Phonological -0.077 (0.079)Frequency/Grammatical 0.233*** (0.070)Frequency/Phonological -0.225** (0.094)Grammatical/Phonological 0.351*** (0.075)Frequency/Grammatical/Phonological 0.434*** (0.098)

(Intercept) -0.341 (0.688)

Observations 10,565Log Likelihood -4,350.338Akaike Inf. Crit. 8,746.676Bayesian Inf. Crit. 8,913.778Note: *p<0.1; **p<0.05; ***p<0.01

Blue = Grammatical Constraints

Red = Frequency Effects

Frequency/Grammatical Environment Interaction

• Frequency– Mean = 204– Standard Dev. =

238• Grammatical Environment– Mean = 50.93%– Standard Dev. =

30.60%

Interaction Conditioning by Phonological Environment

PhonMean = 29.63%SD = 22.01%

Skew of Phonological Environment

The high frequency word with high levels of occurrence pre-coronal is “trying”, which is nearly always in “trying to” and nearly always realized as (IN)

Most Frequent Words in Corpus

• Little evidence of skew from frequent words otherwise

Discussion

• First and foremost, frequency plays a role in the realization of (ING)

• Usage-based accounts seem to have some merit, as realization of (ING) is affected by frequency in certain environments

• What processes can explain the interaction of raw frequency and frequency in particular environments?– Back to exemplar theory and usage-based phonology (Pierrehumbert 2001; Bybee 2002)

Grammatical Constraints, Lenition, and Exemplars

• 3 processes at work:1. Grammatical constraints operate at all levels2. At 50% grammatical environments favoring deletion, vowel lenition for more frequent words, due to shorter duration (Phillips 1984; Bybee 2002)3. Exemplars exert strong effects as frequency becomes very high

Conclusion

• A frequency effect exists in (ING), though its character is complex– Combination of raw frequency and common occurrence within certain grammatical and phonological environments

• Unlike t/d deletion, the grammatical rules persist even with the addition of frequency

• Points towards a conception of variation as a combination of grammar constraint rules and procedural memory

References

• Abramowicz, Ł. (2007). Sociolinguistics meets exemplar theory: Frequency and recency effects in (ing). University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, 13(2), 3.

• Bybee, J. (2002). Word frequency and context of use in the lexical diffusion of phonetically conditioned sound change. Language variation and change, 14(03), 261-290.

• Bybee, J. (2006). From usage to grammar: The mind's response to repetition. Language, 711-733.

• Dinkin, A. J. (2008). The real effect of word frequency on phonetic variation. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics, 14(1), 8.

• Hazen, K. (2011). Flying high above the social radar: Coronal stop deletion in modern Appalachia. Language Variation and Change, 23(01), 105-137.

• Labov, W. (2011). Principles of Linguistic Change, Cognitive and Cultural Factors (Vol. 3). John Wiley & Sons.

• Pierrehumbert, J. B. (2001). lenition and contrast. Frequency and the emergence of linguistic structure, 45, 137.

• Pierrehumbert, J. (2002). Word-specific phonetics. Laboratory phonology, 7, 101-139.• Tagliamonte, S., & Temple, R. (2005). New perspectives on an ol'variable:(t, d) in British English. Language Variation and Change, 17(03), 281-302.

• Walker, J. A. (2012). Form, function, and frequency in phonological variation. Language Variation and Change, 24(03), 397-415.

Full ModelDependent variable: Realization as (ING)

Final Model

Gerund 1.053*** (0.196)Participle 1.341*** (0.214)Noun 0.728*** (0.223)Progressive 1.523*** (0.208)Coda -0.947*** (0.120)Coronal -0.004 (0.096)Labiodental -0.044 (0.160)Velar -0.669*** (0.140)Vowel -0.144 (0.090)Male 0.925** (0.412)DOB -0.695*** (0.221)Student -2.605*** (0.837)Unskilled White -0.653 (0.780)White Collar -1.956*** (0.629)Frequency 0.153*** (0.046)Percent High-IN Grammatical 0.761*** (0.057)Percent High-IN Phonological -0.077 (0.079)Frequency/Grammatical 0.233*** (0.070)Frequency/Phonological -0.225** (0.094)Grammatical/Phonological 0.351*** (0.075)Frequency/Grammatical/Phonological 0.434*** (0.098)(Intercept) -0.341 (0.688)

Observations 10,565Log Likelihood -4,350.338Akaike Inf. Crit. 8,746.676Bayesian Inf. Crit. 8,913.778Note: *p<0.1; **p<0.05; ***p<0.01