The (non)-effect of predictability on agreement production Clara Cohen (University of Califronia, Berkeley)

The (non)-effect of predictability on agreement production

Speech units of many sizes---segments, syllables, words or even full clauses---tend to be phonetically reduced when they are more predictable. Vowels are more central, and duration of the word or syllable is shorter. Yet existing research on Dutch interfixes (Kuperman et al 2007) has shown that more predictable interfixes are phonetically enhanced: they are produced with longer, not shorter, duration. Why does probability have two opposite effects on pronunciation? Is it the case that morphemes simply behave differently from other speech units like words and syllables, or is the difference due to something else? 

 

In my work I investigate the hypothesis that there are in fact two different types of predictability. The first type is contextual predictability. Contextual predictability describes how probable a given speech unit is in its particular utterance. This type of predictability leads to frequently observed pattern of phonetic reduction. The second type is global predictability. Global predictability refers to patterns in the language as a whole. For example, how many words share a morpheme with the current word? How many sentences have similar syntax? The Dutch interfixes described by Kuperman et al were globally predictable, and that is why they showed phonetic enhancement. 

 

To test this hypothesis, I am carrying out two experiments, one in English, and one in Russian. In these experiments I investigate the production of subject-verb agreement suffixes in sentences where both singular and plural agreement are possible, but with varying contextual probabilities. In English, these are sentences like "The cleaning staff in the meeting rooms look/looks grumpy." In Russian, these are sentences like "На столе лежало/лежали четыре больших книги." In particular, I measure the duration of the agreement suffixes (singular -s in English, and both singular -ло and plural -ли in Russian). If it is the case that morphemes simply behave differently from other speech units, then the more probable agreement suffixes should show phonetic enhancement: they should be longer than the less probable suffixes, and the vowels in the Russian suffixes should be more peripheral. On the other hand, if it is the case that contextual probability consistently results in phonetic reduction, then the more probable suffixes should be shorter, and the Russian suffixes should have more centralized vowels.  In this talk I will present preliminary results for English, and describe the design for the Russian experiment, which I am in Moscow to carry out.

The open lecture will take place on March, 1  at the Faculty of Philology of the HSE (Khitrovskiy pereulok, dom 2/8, korpus 5, room 409, at 16.40)
If you are not affiliated with HSE, please contact (laboranty.vyshka@gmail.com) for an admission pass to enter the venue.