Is is always is?Phonetic effects of grammaticalization in

English and German

Danielle Mathieu-Reeves

Prof. Melissa Redford

University of Oregon

Current Trends in Grammaticalization Research

University of Groningen

How are grammaticalized forms stored?

Stored as a polysemous meaning with the

source construction?

Stored separately as a homophonous form?

Heine, Claudi and Hünnemeyer (1991) found,

through a survey, that German speakers

consider different mit and an meanings as

unrelated homophones

Production differences in homophones

• Gahl (2008) finds that more frequent words

such as “time” are shortened more than their

less frequent homophones such as “thyme”

• However, sometimes homophones are so

frequent that there is not a production

difference: Bell et al. (2002) – looked at

different meanings of of, that, you, to

Is there a production difference in

grammaticalized and source

constructions/words.

• If grammaticalized constructions/words are stored separately

from source constructions/words, we should be able to detect

a difference in the same phonemic word when it is found in

different constructions (barring interference from extreme different constructions (barring interference from extreme

frequency).

• We do know that in English, auxiliary have can be reduced in

casual speech: I’ve seen the dog, but that lexical have cannot:

*I’ve a dog.

• However, we know that both copula and progressive auxiliary

be can be reduced: I’m a student and I’m walking to school.

• So only looking at reduction is not enough, need other, more

fine-tuned measures

Style effects on the same word:

• Fourkais (1991) tempo and stress affect vowel duration

• Hay et al. (2006) focus increases vowel space

• Grammar and style effects:

• van Bergem (1993) same syllable in a function • van Bergem (1993) same syllable in a function word is reduced more than in a lexical word (ie. can ~ candy) in its vowel space, stress also has effect

• Swanson et al. (1992) when mothers read to children (as opposed to adults), content words have significantly longer vowels. function words do not.

Research Results Summary

• Frequency/meaning has an effect on duration and vowel space, (unless a word is really

frequent)

• Style (focus, stress) has an effect on duration • Style (focus, stress) has an effect on duration and vowel space,

• Grammar (content vs. lexical) has an effect on duration and vowel space

• Style and Grammar interact – style has a greater effect on lexical words than grammatical words

English

• is

• copula

– he is a dancer

– he is a singer

• passive

• has

• possessive

– he has beer in the store

– he has ice in the store

• perfective• passive

– she is given tea

– she is given ice

• progressive

– he is buying gold

– he is drinking tea

• perfective

– he has given her ice

– he has given her tea

• modal

– he has to make the bread

– he has to go downtown

German

• gibt

• ‘give’

– es gibt ihm Tee

– es gibt Klaus Bier

• wird

• ‘become’

– sie wird Angestellte

– sie wird Professorin– es gibt Klaus Bier

• existential

– es gibt Tee hier

– es gibt Brot hier

– sie wird Professorin

• future

– sie wird heute gehen

– sie wird langsam gehen

German

• ist

• copula

– sie ist professorin

– sie ist sekretarin

• hat

• possessive

– er hat eis im lastwagen

– er hat tee im lastwagen– sie ist sekretarin

• past

– sie ist vor gegangen

– sie ist los gegangen

– er hat tee im lastwagen

• past

– es hat ihm Tee gegeben

– es hat Heinz Brog

gegeben

Styles

• Casual:

– Subjects instructed to speech normally, like talking with a friend

• Wide/VP focus:

– Subjects asked a question before they said the stimulus sentence as the answer, “what’s he doing?”

• Clear:

– Subjects instructed to speak very clearly, like to a person hard of hearing/foreigner.

– asked: wie bitte? nocheinmal, or what did you say? at intervals

“what’s he doing?”

• Narrow/contrastive focus:

– Subjects told to correct the experimenter with their voice, “he didn’t give her bread”

Measures• Duration:

– “Verb/Auxiliary Duration Percentage of Phrase” is the duration of is (etc) normalized by dividing it by the phrase duration, range: 9% to 23%

– “Percent of Vowel Duration of Phrase” is the duration of [I] (etc) normalized by dividing it by the phrase duration, range: 3% to 17%range: 3% to 17%

– Hypothetically, duration should be longer for the source verb than in the grammaticalized auxiliary. Duration should also be longer for clear and focused speech

• Vowel Space:

– Using measures of F1 and F2 from the vowel, range: 1000-1800 Hertz

– Hypothetically, vowel space should be larger (less reduced) for the source verb and in clear and focused speech.

Measuring F1 and F2

Statistical Analyses

• All statistical analyses presented here are two-way within subjects AOV’s with two qualitative variables: speech style and grammatical status.

• Speech style has 4 levels: casual, clear, broad/VP focus, and narrow/verb focus

• Grammatical status has 2 levels for German wird: lexical and grammatical (future auxiliary)

• Grammatical status has 3 levels for the English is analyses: copula, progressive aux, passive aux

• Bell, A., D. Jurafsky, E. Fosler-Lussier, C. Girand, M. Gregory, and D. Gildea. 2003.

Effects of disfluencies, predictability, and utterance position on word form

variation in English conversation. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 113,

1001–24.

• Fourakis, M. 1991. Tempo, stress, and vowel reduction in American English. Journal

of the Acoustical Society of America, 90, 4, 1, 1816-1827.

• Gahl, S. 2008. Time and Thyme are not homophones: the effect of lemma

frequency on word durations in spontaneous speech. Language. 84, 3, 474-496.

• Hay, J. M. Sato, A. E. Coren, C. L. Moran and R. L. Diehl. 2006. Enhanced contrast

for vowels in utterance focus: A cross-language study. Journal of the Acoustical

Society of America. 119, 5, 3022-3033.Society of America. 119, 5, 3022-3033.

• Heine, B., U. Claudi and F. Hünnemeyer. 1991. Grammaticalization. Chicago and

London: University of Chicago Press.

• Swanson, L., L. Leonard and J. Gandour. 1992. Vowel duration in mothers’ speech

to young children. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 35, 617-625.

• van Bergem, D. 1993. Acoustic vowel reduction as a function of sentence accent,

word stress and word class. Speech Communication, 12, 1-23.