Frequency and Vowel Lenition in (ING)
Transcript of Frequency and Vowel Lenition in (ING)
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
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%
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)
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