The Berkeley Phonetics, Phonology and Psycholinguistics Forum ("Phorum") is a weekly talk and discussion series featuring presentations on all aspects of phonetics, phonology, and psycholinguistics. We meet on Fridays from 4(:10)-5pm (unless specified otherwise below), in Dwinelle 1229 (Zoom link shared upon request). Phorum is organized by Kai Schenck and Amber Galvano. Our emails are respectively "kai_schenck" and "amber_galvano" @berkeley.edu.
Schedules from previous semesters can be found here.
Fall 2024 Schedule
September 6
Introductions & round robin!
We'll share about our summers, then share any interesting puzzles or piece of data we've been working with. You are welcome to attend without presenting in the round robin.
September 12 (irregular time)
Martin Krämer (UiT, The Arctic University of Norway): Sonority, markedness and the OCP
In this talk, data from a wide range of languages as well as language acquisition are presented that cast serious doubt on the role of sonority and sonority sequencing in syllable phonotactics. These data show that cross-linguistic apparent sonority effects must be coincidental. The theoretical challenge is thus not how to incorporate a universal multi-level scale into a theory of phonology with otherwise binary categorical distinctions (features are generally assumed to be binary or privative, not scalar), but to explain the fuller empirical picture, including alleged sonority effects, without any phonetically motivated hierarchy. I argue here that some of the apparent sonority effects emerge from a more abstract principle of syntagmatic contrast maximization, which is at least a close relative of the Obligatory Contour Principle.
September 13
No regular meeting -- please check out the Phonological Domains workshop, hosted by the Linguistics department in Dwinelle 370.
September 20
Niko Schwarz-Acosta (UC Berkeley): “Al Cʉɐntu da Penuchu”: Perceptual Learning of a Vowel Shift in Mexican Spanish
In perceptual adaptation literature, vowel chain shifts are employed to test perceptual learning (e.g. Maye et al., 2008; Weatherholtz, 2015). These experiments found that listeners shift their perceptual boundaries when exposed to a novel accent for sufficient time. Both experiments had an exposure phase where participants would hear a story with the phonetic shift being investigated followed by a lexical decision task assessing the lexical adaptation to the new speech patterns. After exposure, listeners endorsed shifted items as words at around a rate of 60%, compared to the endorsement rates of nonshifted items at 90-100%. Importantly, these studies were done in English. Recent research has highlighted potential language-specific processes in psycholinguistics (Clapp & Sumner, 2024). The question still remains as to whether a listener’s first language affects their perceptual adaptation to novel speech. This study investigates the perceptual learning of Mexican listeners in a familiarization task. To my knowledge, Spanish has no attested vowel chain shift across all dialects. Moreover, Spanish has a 5-vowel system, whereas English can have around a 10-vowel system (varying by dialect).
A familiarization task was employed to assess the perceptual adaptation of Mexican Spanish listeners to novel speech patterns. Listeners were asked to listen to a story containing a vowel chain shift and complete a lexical decision task containing both shifted and nonshifted words. Vowels were shifted using Praat by separating the source and filter of the speaker, then manipulating the speaker’s filter properties. There were 6 possible conditions that the listeners were exposed to: 2 vowel conditions (unshifted vs. shifted) x 3 exposure times (10, 5, and 2 minutes). 120 participants were recruited through Prolific, which was then filtered down to 109 based on performance on the control words and nonwords.
Results suggest that familiarization may not play a big role in the endorsement rates of critical items. Additionally, I analyze vowel-specific endorsement rates which reveal that certain vowel shifts are significantly less likely to be endorsed than others. The results of this study imply some language-specific processes, as well as how some vowels are more strict in their endorsement rates. A Bayesian model was then fit to the data to evaluate these findings.
September 27
Alexia Hernandez (Stanford PhD graduate): The role of experience on the cognitive underpinnings of linguistic bias: An interdisciplinary investigation of Miami-based Cuban American speech [Virtual talk]
In this talk, I’ll investigate the cognitive processes and architectures that underlie speech-based linguistic bias. Ultimately, I argue that linguistic and social experiences mediate category structure, and that differently structured categories modulate speech production, perception, and bias patterns.
Speech-based bias is associated with linguistic variation in production. Thus, I first inquire about the cognitive systems behind speech variation by analyzing the acoustic patterns of TRAM, TRAP, /l/, (DH), and rhythm realizations within the Cuban American community in Miami, FL. I show that social factors can reflect differences in experience, which shape individual speakers’ cognitive representations and make speech variation in production possible.
Building on these production patterns, I study how listeners use variation in Miami-based Cuban American speech for person construal. I find that listeners’ social and linguistic experiences structure their racial/ethnic perception of speakers. Both Miami-based Cuban American and General American listeners display a range of ethnic/racial perception, though they attend to different social and linguistic cues. Moreover, listeners’ perceptions were tied to linguistic patterns, not individual speakers, such that the same speakers were perceived variably across phrases.
Finally, I ask how two listener groups make stereotyped associations based on perceived speaker identity in a speeded association task. While both Miami-based Cuban Americans and Midwestern listeners exhibited a whiteness bias, quickly associating perceived non-Hispanic white speech with white stereotypes, Midwestern listeners exhibited more biased responses. This study again underscores that experience impacts the implicit biases listeners hold about speakers.
Across all three studies, the role of experience emerges as an important force in shaping language production, perception, and bias. The results support a cognitive architecture that integrates social information pre-comprehension via a socioacoustic memory. This architecture suggests that experience with diverse populations and their speech has the potential to decrease linguistic bias and discrimination.
October 4
Marko Drobnjak (Univeristy of Ljubljana): TBA
October 11
Kai Schenck (UC Berkeley): Yurok rhotic harmony domains
October 18
Richard Wang (UC Santa Cruz): TBA
October 25
TBA
November 1
Santiago Barreda (UC Davis): TBA
November 8
Yin Lin Tan (Stanford): TBA
November 15
TBA
November 22
Suyuan Liu (University of British Columbia): TBA
November 29
No meeting -- Academic and Administrative Holiday
December 6
Meg Cychosz (UCLA): TBA
December 13
TBA