A new paper coauthored by Avery Ozburn (Faculty), Gianna Canavesi (PhD Student), and Samuel Akinbo (Faculty) has appeared in the Journal for the Association of Laboratory Phonology. The paper entitled "Perception of ATR in Dàgáárè" examines how well speakers of Dàgáárè (Mabia; Ghana) distinguish ATR contrasts and looks at the effects of harmony and disharmony on perception.
Here is the abstract:
This paper reports on two related perception studies about the property Advanced Tongue Root (ATR) in Dàgáárè (Mabia; Ghana). We examine how well native speakers are able to distinguish ATR contrasts as well as the effects of harmony and disharmony on perception, thereby testing hypotheses that have been made in the literature about the perceptual motivations of harmony systems. We find that, as expected, ATR mid vowels and Retracted Tongue Root (RTR) high vowels are the hardest to distinguish in Dàgáárè, but contrary to expectations, harmony does not improve accuracy in discriminating ATR contrasts. Nonetheless, we find the accuracy on disharmonic disyllabic forms is significantly worse than the accuracy in monosyllabic forms, which may indicate that disharmony hurts perception. We examine the implications for our understanding of the motivations of harmony systems and discuss how this paper contributes to the very minimal existing literature on perception in African languages.
Congratulations Avery, Gianna, and Samuel! We're excited to see so many wonderful collaborations within our department.
