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

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 7 1 Introduction 13 1.1 Goals of this book 13 1.2 Phonological contrast: Categorical or gradient? 14 1.3 Romanian as a focus of study 18 1.4 Romania and Romanian: A brief historical sketch 21 1.4.1 History and its linguistic consequences 21 1.4.2 Vowels: From Latin to Romanian 23 1.5 Romanian phonemes 24 1.6 Romanian: Typological considerations 25 1.7 Structure of the book 27 2 Relative frequency of Romanian phonemes 29 2.1 Introduction 29 2.2 Frequency of vowels in Romanian 29 2.2.1 Type frequency analysis 30 2.2.2 Relative frequencies of vowels 33 2.2.3 Type frequency analysis of consonants 36 2.2.4 Romanian vowels and their following segments 37 2.3 The distribution of vowels in Romanian 43 3 On the origins of /ɨ/ in Romanian 45 3.1 Introduction 45 3.1.1 Vowels: from Latin to Romanian 47 3.1.2 A brief history of Romanian /?/ 48 3.2 Historical sources for /ɨ/ : Latin 50 3.2.1 Latin /a/ ? Romanian /?/ 51 3.2.2 Latin non-low vowels ? Romanian /?/ 53 3.2.3 Other sources for /?/ in native Romanian words 55 3.3 Historical sources for /ɨ/: Words from Old Slavic etymons 56 3.3.1 Old Slavic nasalized vowels 57 3.3.2 Romanian treatment of Old Slavic liquid-jer metathesis 59 3.3.3 Other Old Slavic sources for Romanian /?/ 60 3.3.4 /?/ in Romanian infinitives 63 3.4 Historical sources for /ɨ/: Modern Slavic loanwords 64 3.4.1 Bulgarian sources for Romanian /?/ 64 3.4.2 Serbian sources for Romanian /?/ 66 3.4.3 Summarizing the effect of Slavic on Romanian /?/ 67 3.5 Hungarian loanwords in Romanian 68 3.6 Turkish loanwords in Romanian 69 3.7 Etymological sources for Romanian /ɨ/ 72 3.8 Conclusions: /ɨ/ 73 4 The distribution of /e̯a/ and /o̯a/ in Romanian 75 4.1 Introduction 75 4.2 Phonological status 76 4.3 Type frequency 79 4.4 Acoustics of /e̯a/ and /o̯a/ 80 4.5 Frequency of diphthongs by context 81 4.6 Frequency of /e̯a/ by context 82 4.6.1 Morphologized /e?a/ 83 4.6.2 Lexical /e?a/ 85 4.7 Frequency of /o̯a/ by context 87 4.7.1 Morphologized /o̯a/ 88 4.7.2 Lexical /o̯a/ 90 4.8 Summary: Consequences for contrastiveness 92 5 Distributional evidence for marginal contrast 96 5.1 Introduction 96 5.2 The phonemic status of /ɨ/ 97 5.2.1 Minimal pairs: /ɨ/ vs. /ʌ/ 97 5.2.2 Roles reserved for /ɨ/ 102 5.2.2.1 /?/ in personal pronouns 102 5.2.2.2 /?/ in Romanian onomatopoeias 104 5.3 Synchronic distribution and role of /ɨ/ 106 5.3.1 Non-minimal contrasts: Evidence from frequency 106 5.3.2 /?/ vs /i/ in word-initial position 108 5.4 Conclusions 111 6 Acoustics of Romanian monophthongs 113 6.1 Introduction 113 6.2 Experimental methodology 116 6.2.1 Stimuli 116 6.2.2 Data labeling 120 6.2.3 Data extraction and analysis 121 6.2.4 Participants 121 6.2.4.1 Preliminary analysis of speaker dialect 123 6.3 Results 124 6.3.1 The vowel space of stressed monophthongs 125 6.3.2 The vowel space of unstressed monophthongs 129 6.3.3 Summarizing the vowel space: Mean formant values 130 6.3.4 The effects of stress on vowel quality 135 6.3.5 Assessing /?/ and /?/ 142 6.4 Duration of vowels 145 6.5 Conclusions: Basic acoustics of Romanian vowels 150 7 Acoustics of Romanian diphthongs 151 7.1 Introduction 151 7.2 Methodology 151 7.2.1 Stimuli and participants 151 7.3 Results 155 7.4 Discussion and conclusions 158 8 Perception of vowels in Romanian 162 8.1 Introduction 162 8.2 Methodology 162 8.2.1 Materials 163 8.2.2 Procedures 166 8.3 Perceptual study 1 167 8.3.1 Results and discussion 167 8.4 Perceptual study 2 171 8.4.1 Results and discussion 174 8.5 Conclusions and further study 178 9 A multidimensional model of contrast 183 9.1 Overview 183 9.2 Perspectives on marginal contrast 183 9.3 Sources of contrastiveness in Romanian 185 9.3.1 Phonological conditioning 186 9.3.2 Relative frequency of phonemes 187 9.3.3 Lexical contrast 187 9.3.4 Morphology 188 9.3.5 Acoustics 190 9.3.6 Perception 190 9.4 A new model of phonemic contrast 192 9.4.1 Previous approaches to phonemic contrast 192 9.4.2 The Multidimensional Model of Phonemic Robustness 194 9.5 Modeling the relationship between phonetics and phonology 197 References 201 Index 210 "Studies of both synchronic phonetics and morpho-phonological alternations are needed to understand the forces that historically shaped and now maintain the phonemic system of Romanian. Through a series of case studies on the Romanian vowel system, this book proposes that 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"--Provided by publisher