Matching Items (5)
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- All Subjects: sociolinguistics
- All Subjects: Spanish
- Creators: Pruitt, Kathryn
Description
This study analyzes the Spanish of native speakers from Northern Mexico in order to ascertain the presence of the voiced labiodental fricative segment [v] when the sound is orthographically represented with the letter `v'. The study examines some of the internal and external factors that predict the labiodental fricative pronunciation of the letter `v'. This study is based on the theoretical framework of phonology as described by Piñeros (2009) and Hualde (2005). The study examined all instances in the data when a sound is written with the letter `v' to investigate if the sound is pronounced as the faithful voiced plosive bilabial allophone [b] of the phoneme /b/, the spirantized allophone [β], or the voiced labiodental fricative allophone [v]. Four speakers, a male and a female with an incomplete secondary education, and a male and a female with a graduate level education participated in the study. All participants were interviewed for one hour, read a word list, and read a paragraph provided by the researcher. The researcher coded the data using the phonetic analysis software Praat and all data were statistically analyzed using the multivariate software analysis program Goldvarb X in order to investigate the presence of the voiced labiodental fricative allophone [v] and predict what internal and external factors most influence its production. From this study it is obvious that the most influential factor favoring the realization of the labiodental fricative allophone [v] is orthography. When the phonetic segment was represented with the grapheme , the phonetic realization was more likely to be the labiodental fricative [v]. The level of education of the speaker and the formality of the stylistic setting were also determined to be influential factors. Speakers with a higher degree of education and stylistic settings with a higher degree of formality favored the realization of the labiodental fricative [v]. With regards to the internal factors, rather than external factors, a preceding phonological segment of a vowel or fricative dental [s] also favored the realization of the labiodental fricative [v].
ContributorsTakawaki, Shannon Leigh (Author) / Cerron-Palomino, Alvaro (Thesis advisor) / Shepherd, Michael (Committee member) / Beas, Omar (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
The purpose of this thesis is to identify the ways neurodivergent people engage with tone and intent, in spaces where the expression of such things is missing the audible and visual cues that exist in face-to-face communications. Interviews were conducted with four participants who self-identify as neurodivergent, with each of the interviews seeking to understand their experiences with the written expression of tone and intent. The interviews shed light on how direct, semi-direct, and indirect tone indicators are used as tools for understanding the intent and tone of a message, as well as which of the three types of tone indicators are the most helpful in practice. The interviews also touched on how social interactions in digital spaces are often viewed through a neurotypical lens, and thus make understanding the sociolinguistic rules of digitally-based interactions difficult for neurodivergent individuals who are expected to know said rules without being told. Through the course of the interviews, participants expressed a desire for people as whole to be clearer about their tone and intent when communicating in digital spaces, and that tone indicators are vital for communicating such things.
ContributorsHadden, Sydney (Author) / Pruitt, Kathryn (Thesis advisor) / Adams, Karen (Committee member) / Peterson, Tyler (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023
Description
Southern United States English (SUSE) is North America’s most stigmatizedregionalized dialect, leading to generational decline and underrepresentation from
characters in primetime television. This study explores the representation of SUSE
features by 80 local news broadcasters in eight Southern affiliates, all outside major
metropolises. This sociophonetic study surveys the PIN-PEN merger and Stages I and II
of the Southern Vowel Shift (SVS) — /aɪ/ glide weakening and /e/-/ɛ/ proximity. The PIN-PEN merger was found to be widespread among broadcasters, with
49/80 (61%) having a PIN-PEN Pillai score less than 0.3, considered “merged”. /aɪ/ glide
weakening was subtly present, despite being a marked SUSE feature: /aɪ/ was
overwhelmingly diphthongal, but the median and Q3 variants (measured in Euclidean
distance from 20% to 80% duration) ended in the lower half of the vowel space, showing
a general lack of glide raising. Lastly, /e/-/ɛ/ proximity had marginal representation: Only
11/80 (14%) broadcasters had a non-sonorant /e/-/ɛ/ Pillai score less than 0.45, and the
median Pillai score was 0.664, establishing that an advanced SVS is not typical. The best predictors for the PIN-PEN merger were attending a Southern college,
being African American, and being male — all factors of socialization. Contrastingly, the
(mutually exclusive) best predictors of /aɪ/ glide weakening were more products of
stylization — occupational role and the subregion that hired the broadcaster (whether the
audience was a ‘Deep South’ market). For /e/-/ɛ/ proximity, the interaction of gender and
Southern college attendance was statistically significant, as only men with Southern
college backgrounds generally had this apparently stigmatized feature. Age was not found to be significant for any feature, subverting expectations that
younger speakers keep SUSE at ‘arm’s length’. TV market size was impactful for each
feature but repeatedly (narrowly) missed the p=0.05 threshold for statistical significance.
Sports anchors led in SUSE forms for each feature, showing SUSE as an asset;
investigative reporters, however, had the least SUSE /aɪ/ and /e/-/ɛ/ variants. Gender had
strong explanatory power for each feature, inferring that men tended to ‘lean in’ to
SUSE’s positive solidarity traits, but women tended to incorporate SUSE less often due
to its negative competency traits.
ContributorsDekker, Ryan Michael (Author) / Adams, Karen (Thesis advisor) / Prior, Matthew (Committee member) / Pruitt, Kathryn (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2024
Description
Over the centuries, definite articles in Romance languages have expanded their use to include generic, collective, and abstract nouns, essentially becoming noun markers. This usage is not confined to just a few languages, either, but is found in most, if not all, Romance languages, major and minor. This thesis examines the question of how this came to be, whether through diffusion from one language to all others, or through independent parallel development. I first trace the history of definite articles in three major Romance languages, French, Spanish, and Italian, starting with the emergence of the definite article in Late Latin as it derived from Classic Latin demonstratives. It includes an analysis of the use of definite articles in six works of literature, one in each language from the late thirteenth century, and one in each language from around the year 1500. The results show definite articles were used more frequently than expected in the earlier Spanish work, perhaps hinting at diffusion from Spain. Nevertheless, placing these results in historical context, I argue that this use arose through independent parallel development through the process that gave birth to definite articles in the first place - grammaticalization.
ContributorsPerry, Mabry (Author) / Gelderen, Elly van (Thesis advisor) / Pruitt, Kathryn (Committee member) / Adams, Karen (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
Temporal features and frequency of pauses have been studied extensively in the literature, but the interest in the syntactic location of pauses is a more recent development. While previous research has studied the pause patterns of L1 and L2 speakers as well as the effects of pause location on perceptions of fluency, these studies have all utilized a binary approach the categorization of pauses as occurring either between or within clauses or major constituent boundaries. This research attempts to take a look at pause placement with a finer distinction of pause location, including junctures that occur between and within phrases. To accomplish this, two experiments were conducted. The first experiment gathered read-aloud speech samples from native, non-native, and heritage speakers of Mandarin Chinese, which were then manipulated in Praat to contain only a single pause that occurred either between or within phrases. The samples were presented to native Chinese speakers to assess for perceptions of fluency as affected by the pause location condition. Findings of this preliminary pilot study did not find a significant correlation between pause location and perceptions of fluency at the phrasal level. The second experiment gathered spontaneous speech samples from the same speaker population as Experiment 1. The pauses that occurred in the samples were coded according to a system developed by the author to account for eight different syntactic junctions, and the percentage of pause at each location was calculated. Analysis showed a significant correlation with pause location and percentage of pauses (p < 0.01), as well as a statistically significant interaction between the effects of speaker status and pause location on percentage of pause (p = 0.011). The findings of this study are limited due to the small population size, but research in this fine-grained analysis of pause location within a clause has implications in the fields of L2 acquisition, psycholinguistics, and natural language processing.
ContributorsKennedy, Mary Kathryn (Author) / Van Gelderen, Elly (Thesis advisor) / Pruitt, Kathryn (Committee member) / Prior, Matthew T (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021