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.
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.
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