Research Groups: Friday, October 30

9:30 AM - 11:00 AM
Phonetics/Phonology Group
Mayuki Matsui (National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics): "Phonological symmetry but phonetic asymmetry: Some observations on voicing contrast."

The aim of this talk is to advance our understanding of how voicing contrast in phonology is phonetically implemented in two subclasses of obstruents (i.e., [-sonorant]) — stops and fricatives — in a case study of Russian.

Like English, Russian stops and fricatives have a so-called voicing contrast, and they behave symmetrically in phonological voicing processes, for instance, in regressive assimilation and word-final devoicing. However, because of their aerodynamic conditions, voiced fricatives cause more difficulty in maintaining vocal fold vibrations than voiced stops do (Ohala (1983)). This suggests that voicing in stops and fricatives may be phonetically asymmetric.

In this talk, I examine the phonetic details of voicing contrast in stops and fricatives, and how the contrasts are perceived by native listeners in quiet and noisy conditions. The results in general support the idea that voicing in stops and fricatives is phonetically asymmetric. The results are in line with studies of the other languages (e.g., Kochetov (2014) for Japanese, Davidson (2016) for American English).

In relation to this topic, I will also refer to the phonetic implementation of voicing contrast in word-final position, where the contrast is claimed to be incompletely neutralized.

11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Language Variation and Change Group
Lee Murray (Monash University): "Stylistic variation in a rural speaker of Australian English." And a discussion about how NWAV 44 went.

12:30 PM - 2:00 PM
Semantics Group
Angelika Kiss (Ph.D.) will be giving a presentation.