Workshop: Methods in phonological data collection and analysis, San Diego, CA, Fall 2018

University Of California-San Diego, La Jolla CA

Investigators

Abstract

This workshop will highlight the importance of experimental methods and corpora to the study of linguistic sound systems (phonology). Theoretical research results in phonology are often based on relatively sparse data from works that are themselves based on impressionistic phonetic transcriptions of native speaker utterances. Relatively recent technological advances, coupled with more sophisticated experimental methods, provide more accurate, extensive, and quantifiable information on the nature of sound systems. Phonologists are increasingly employing these methods, and have also begun investigations with large-scale corpora and databases. Such research has already had an impact on the field, and it is imperative that graduate students be familiar with, if not specifically trained in, a variety of such methods. To this end, the workshop will feature talks, posters, and tutorials on the workshop theme, and presents a unique opportunity to share methods, and insights into their use, among fellow phonologists. For students, it is an opportunity to learn about these methods from some of the top researchers in the field. Our emphasis on under-documented and endangered languages, including signed languages, will highlight the importance of diverse language communities and encourage students to become involved in fieldwork. This not only has the benefit of contributions to the study of diverse languages, but is also beneficial to the career prospects of graduate students: many recent offers of tenure-track phonology positions have been made to fieldworkers. The importance of new data-collecting methodologies for phonological theory is highlighted here with very brief descriptions of phenomena that have been illuminated by some of these methodologies. All of these examples rely on data from under-documented and/or endangered languages, and this will be a major emphasis of the workshop. (1) Careful acoustic and articulatory analysis has revealed that speech sounds that have long been thought to be inert to phonological processes may actually participate in those processes, creating distinctions that are difficult to distinguish impressionistically. This illustrates the importance of conducting experimental phonetic research to inform phonological theory. (2) Acoustic analysis of pitch contours based on data collection with a number of native speakers of relevant languages has established that lexical and grammatical tone alignment can be contrastive irrespective of phonological structure. Such a result has important ramifications for the analysis of tonal systems, but would have gone unnoticed without detailed acoustic research that helps inform phonological representations. (3) Recent articulatory studies of nasal sounds have shown that they may be characterized by lingual, pharyngeal, and/or voice quality changes in addition to characteristic velum lowering, implying that the phonetic implementation of nasality is multidimensional. Such results could only be definitively found using articulatory measurements. (4) As spoken corpora of under-documented and endangered languages are constructed and become available, phonologists are able to employ computational tools to mine these data for phonological information and generalizations. Researchers now have the potential to combine both approaches, and indeed many field phonologists are making significant contributions in both domains. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.