Spirantization mostly refers to the first consonant shift in Grimm's law, occurs as the side of synchronic, not just as of diachronic. Synchronic spirantization has been ignored in the phonetics or phonology. This paper will study the current spiran ...
Spirantization mostly refers to the first consonant shift in Grimm's law, occurs as the side of synchronic, not just as of diachronic. Synchronic spirantization has been ignored in the phonetics or phonology. This paper will study the current spirantization; Liverpool English, Florentine Italian, Taiwanese, and Uradhi.
The paper will answer the following questions:
1) does the spiratnization universal phenomenon?
2) what is the relation between spirantization and other classes of phonological patterns, such as assimilation?
3) what factors lead the spirantization in both fields of articulatory and perception?
4) why does spirantization overwhelmingly produce weak fricatives or approximants, rather than strident fricatives, which otherwise appear to be the unmarked fricatives?
5) in Korean which exist only one fricative [s], what sound can be obtained from spiratization?
6) what's the realtionship between spiratnization and prosody?
For answering these questions, I will adopt phonological knowledge as well as phonetic experiment. The hypothesis of the paper is to reveal that not only the sound in stressed syllable position change easily rather than one in unstressed syllable, but also the stops in the position changes to afficates because of the energy load to the sound rather than ones in unstressed position to flaps. For proving the hypothesis, both optimality theory and energy experiment using Pitchworks, Prrat, and SPSS statistics.
I will argue that phonological spirantization is driven by conflict between minimizing articulatory effort and maximizing perceptual distinctiveness, resolved through Optimality Theoretic constraint ranking. In the process, I will use the phonetic experiment to support my argument. I will draw the conclusion that whether the spirantisation changes to affricate, fricative, flaps depends on the phonetic cues like [energy level](production), or [onset boost](perception). This conclusion will connect to the notion of Steriades' "Licensing by Cue", in which features are licensed only by their cues. It means that the degree and direction of the sound change depend on the characteristics of features supported by various cues. For example, onset non-coronal stops in Old High German easily change to affricates because the degree of feature [spread glottis] is maximum(or active) in the onset position, in which cues like [energy level] and [onset burst] are most active.
I will extend Steriade's concept of Licensing by Cue to the study of sound change. I will draw the conclusion that sound change may be licensed by cues, not by prosodic position. My study will deny many scholars' conclusion (Iverson 1996, 2001, 2002. Salmons 1996, 2000, Holsinger 2001, Kim 2002) that the High German Consonantal Shift primarily is based on prosodic influence. Furthermore, I will extend to Liverpool English (Wells, 1982. Honeybone, 2001), Floretine Italian (Giannelli & Savoia, 1979), Taiwanise (Hsu, 1995), and Uradhi (Dixon, 1979) that the sound change by "licensing by cue" is universal.
For the study, I will experiment the energy scale. I measure energy scale depending on syllable position, sound place, and manner. Unlike Kirchner Energy measurement(= intensity (db) * times (ms)) measurement, because it cause the mistake that the logarithm scale multiplies the linear scale (duration), I will set up the new approach to the energy measurement.
Energy = intensity(Fletcher-Munson scale(watt)) * times (ms)
First, I will draw the Fletcher-Munson scale(watt) just because of transferring the linear level,
Second, I will use pitchworks experiment for measuring the energy level depending on syllable position, consonant place and manner.
Third, I will use SPSS 12.0 for descriptive statistics.
Fourth, I will convert the scores into the Energy Level.
This study will reveal why prosodic onset sound changes to the affricate in Old High German, post-v