The Phonetics and Phonology of Contrast: The Case of the Romanian Vowel System

Description

This book proposes that phonological contrast, in particular the robustness of a phonemic contrast, does not depend solely on the presence of minimal pairs, but is instead affected by a set of phonetic, usage-based, and systemic factors. This perspective opens phonology to a more direct interpretation through phonetic analysis, undertaken in a series of case studies on the Romanian vowel system. Both the synchronic phonetics and morpho-phonological alternations are studied, to understand the forces that have historically shaped and now maintain the phonemic system of Romanian. A corpus study of phoneme type frequency in Romanian reveals marginal contrasts among vowels, in which a sharp distinction between allophones and phonemes fails to capture relationships among sounds. An investigation of Romanian /Ɨ/ provides insight into the historical roots of marginal contrast, and a large acoustic study of Romanian vowels and diphthongs is a backdrop for evaluating the phonetic and perceptual realization of marginal contrast. The results provide impetus for a model in which phonology, phonetics, morphology and perception interact in a multidimensional way.     Foreword 1 Introduction 1.1 Goals of this book 1.2 Phonological contrast: Categorical or gradient? 1.3 Romanian as a focus of study 1.4 Romania and Romanian: A brief historical sketch 1.4.1 History and its linguistic consequences 1.4.2 Vowels: From Latin to Romanian 1.5 Romanian phonemes 1.6 Romanian: Typological considerations 1.7 Structure of the book 2 Relative frequency of Romanian phonemes 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Frequency of vowels in Romanian 2.2.1 Type frequency analysis 2.2.2 Relative frequencies of vowels 2.2.3 Type frequency analysis of consonants 2.2.4 Romanian vowels and their following segments 2.3 The distribution of vowels in Romanian 3 On the origins of /ɨ/ in Romanian 3.1 Introduction 3.1.1 Vowels: from Latin to Romanian 3.1.2 A brief history of Romanian /?/ 3.2 Historical sources for /ɨ/ : Latin 3.2.1 Latin /a/ ? Romanian /?/ 3.2.2 Latin non-low vowels ? Romanian /?/ 3.2.3 Other sources for /?/ in native Romanian words 3.3 Historical sources for /ɨ/: Words from Old Slavic etymons 3.3.1 Old Slavic nasalized vowels 3.3.2 Romanian treatment of Old Slavic liquid-jer metathesis 3.3.3 Other Old Slavic sources for Romanian /?/ 3.3.4 /?/ in Romanian infinitives 3.4 Historical sources for /ɨ/: Modern Slavic loanwords 3.4.1 Bulgarian sources for Romanian /?/ 3.4.2 Serbian sources for Romanian /?/ 3.4.3 Summarizing the effect of Slavic on Romanian /?/ 3.5 Hungarian loanwords in Romanian 3.6 Turkish loanwords in Romanian 3.7 Etymological sources for Romanian /ɨ/ 3.8 Conclusions: /ɨ/ 4 The distribution of /e̯a/ and /o̯a/ in Romanian 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Phonological status 4.3 Type frequency 4.4 Acoustics of /e̯a/ and /o̯a/ 4.5 Frequency of diphthongs by context 4.6 Frequency of /e̯a/ by context 4.6.1 Morphologized /e?a/ 4.6.2 Lexical /e?a/ 4.7 Frequency of /o̯a/ by context 4.7.1 Morphologized /o̯a/ 4.7.2 Lexical /o̯a/ 4.8 Summary: Consequences for contrastiveness 5 Distributional evidence for marginal contrast 5.1 Introduction 5.2 The phonemic status of /ɨ/ 5.2.1 Minimal pairs: /ɨ/ vs. /ʌ/ 5.2.2 Roles reserved for /ɨ/ 5.2.2.1 /?/ in personal pronouns 5.2.2.2 /?/ in Romanian onomatopoeias 5.3 Synchronic distribution and role of /ɨ/ 5.3.1 Non-minimal contrasts: Evidence from frequency 5.3.2 /?/ vs /i/ in word-initial position 5.4 Conclusions 6 Acoustics of Romanian monophthongs 6.1 Introduction 6.2 Experimental methodology 6.2.1 Stimuli 6.2.2 Data labeling 6.2.3 Data extraction and analysis 6.2.4 Participants 6.2.4.1 Preliminary analysis of speaker dialect 6.3 Results 6.3.1 The vowel space of stressed monophthongs 6.3.2 The vowel space of unstressed monophthongs 6.3.3 Summarizing the vowel space: Mean formant values 6.3.4 The effects of stress on vowel quality 6.3.5 Assessing /?/ and /?/ 6.4 Duration of vowels 6.5 Conclusions: Basic acoustics of Romanian vowels 7 Acoustics of Romanian diphthongs 7.1 Introduction 7.2 Methodology 7.2.1 Stimuli and participants 7.3 Results 7.4 Discussion and conclusions 8 Perception of vowels in Romanian 8.1 Introduction 8.2 Methodology 8.2.1 Materials 8.2.2 Procedures 8.3 Perceptual study 1 8.3.1 Results and discussion 8.4 Perceptual study 2 8.4.1 Results and discussion 8.5 Conclusions and further study 9 A multidimensional model of contrast 9.1 Overview 9.2 Perspectives on marginal contrast 9.3 Sources of contrastiveness in Romanian 9.3.1 Phonological conditioning 9.3.2 Relative frequency of phonemes 9.3.3 Lexical contrast 9.3.4 Morphology 9.3.5 Acoustics 9.3.6 Perception 9.4 A new model of phonemic contrast 9.4.1 Previous approaches to phonemic contrast 9.4.2 The Multidimensional Model of Phonemic Robustness 9.5 Modeling the relationship between phonetics and phonology References Index