Time: Monday 11/30, 5pm, 32-D461
Speaker: Sverre Johnsen (Harvard)
Title: Contrast maintenance effects in Norwegian retroflexion
Norwegian contrasts morpheme initial /s/ and /ʂ/ before a vowel (/sV-/
– /ʂV/), but not before a consonant (/sC-/ – */ʂC-/). Initial /s/
undergoes retroflexion to /ʂ/ when preceded by a morpheme ending in
/-r/. Before a vowel, the contrast between /s/ and /ʂ/ is then lost
(/sV-/, /ʂV-/ > /ʂV-/), but no contrast is lost before a consonant
(/sC-/ > /ʂC-/). I present data from two experiments showing that
Norwegian speakers apply this retroflexion significantly more often
before a consonant than before a vowel. The effect is that a contrast
is better maintained. Retroflexed /ʂV/-tokens have, however, more
lexical neighbors and a higher phonotactic probability than
retroflexed /ʂC/-tokens. Experiments in lexical access have shown that
items with a high lexical neighborhood and phonotactic probability are
more prone to be misidentified. I show that under an exemplar model of
speech perception/production, the asymmetry in retroflexion between
/sV-/ and /sC-/ is a direct consequence of such misidentifications.
Upcoming schedule:
| Dec 4 | Michael Tanenhaus (1:30-2:30pm, location TBA) |
| Dec 7 | Maria Giavazzi |
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