Phorum

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 Lindsay Hatch. Our emails are respectively "kai_schenck" and "lindsaykhatch" @berkeley.edu.

Schedules from previous semesters can be found here.

Spring 2025

January 31

Maksymilian Dąbkowski (UC Berkeley): The unpredictable but expected deglottalization in some former A'ingae derivatives

I describe and analyze the phonological form and historical trajectory of nominal derivatives in A’ingae (ISO 639-3: con), an underdocumented Amazonian isolate (Dąbkowski 2021). Some words historically derived with otherwise preglottalized nominalizers have lost their glottalization over time. I propose that these “exceptions” are reflexes of originally glottalized words, which underwent semantic shift and lost glottalization due to contamination from the plain (i.e., non-glottalized) majority. This paper thus documents a rare case in which non-productive morphological patterns represent innovation rather than retention.

February 7

Katie Russell (UC Berkeley): Local nasalization in Atchan, a language without nasal consonants

In this talk, I investigate patterns of local nasalization in Atchan (ISO: ebr), a Kwa language spoken by the Tchaman people in and around Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire. Atchan displays a typologically unusual phonemic inventory: the language has three phonemic nasal vowels, but lacks underlying nasal consonants altogether (Bôle-Richard 1984, Russell 2023). Nasalization is pervasive in Atchan, at the level of the syllable as well as across syllable and morpheme boundaries, resulting in surface nasal consonants as allophones of sonorant consonants. I present phonetic and phonological data collected through recent primary fieldwork with Atchan speakers in Abidjan, including measurements of nasal and oral airflow. In this talk, I also discuss implications for representations of nasality and diachronic considerations for how such a system may have originated.

February 14

Anna Macknick (UC Berkeley): Teaching Phonetics in Introductory Linguistics Using Universal Design for Learning

Phonetics and phonology units of introductory courses are frequently students' first experiences with the field of Linguistics. This content can pose particular challenges due to its reliance on exclusively auditory content at times, and exclusively visual content at others. In this talk, I use the framework of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) to consider how accessibility can be built into the curriculum itself. I highlight access barriers from previous iterations of the LING100 course and propose ways to minimize these barriers before the semester even begins. I argue that such changes can improve student experiences and reduce the gatekeeping effect of introductory coursework.  

February 21

Julianne Kapner (UC Berkeley): Ի՞նչ ու եւ ինչո՞ւ ("Which 'u', and why"): Varying vowels in Bay Area Armenian

This talk, based on my second qualifying paper, presents results from the first study of the Armenian language as spoken in the Bay Area, focusing on acoustic sociophonetic analysis of the vowel system. I find that Eastern and Western Armenian speakers exhibit generally similar vowel spaces; instead, gender is a more significant predictor of the placement of certain vowels. This is also the first statistically robust analysis of variation in Western Armenian speakers’ production of /ʏ/. I find that speakers’ choice of variant is predicted by a combination of linguistic and social factors, including the nature of their multilingualism: speakers with more dominance in English use [ʏ] less frequently, while speakers who also know Turkish are more likely to use [ʏ]. Finally, this study uses the metric of Formant Trajectory Length to explore diphthongization in Bay Area Armenian as a potential effect of extended contact with English, finding no evidence for this. Overall, this study points to the Bay Area Armenian population as a promising context to explore vocalic variation and uncover variables that have not yet been widely explored.

February 28

Exploring Boundaries practice talks:

Talk: Maksymilian Dąbkowski & Katie Russell - Wordhood at the heart of Paraguayan Guaraní morphology (Katie is one of the authors but unfortunately will not be present).
Poster presentation: Kai Schenck - Morphological domains in Yurok rhotic vowel harmony

March 14

Cooper Bedin (UC Santa Barbara): Towards participant-driven analyses in sociolinguistic studies of gender and sexuality

In this talk I present two new analyses of data originally collected for my Berkeley undergraduate thesis (Bedin, 2022). This data includes production data (recordings of 14 speakers reading aloud a list of sentences) and perception data (presenting these recordings to 23 listeners and asking them to numerically evaluate how “queer/gay” the speaker sounds to them).

In the first analysis, I examine the role of listener variation in perception of gay-sounding speech. I use hierarchical clustering to identify groups of speakers based on how they were perceived by different listeners, as well as groups of listeners based on how they perceive different speakers. I argue that a productive route to resolving inconsistent results in this line of research thus far (cf. Campbell-Kibler and miles-hercules, 2021) is to attend to variation in listener behavior, and to speakers of non- gay and straight sexualities.

In the second analysis, I approach the production data only, and test statistical models that measure the relationship between speaker self-identified gender and /s/ center of gravity—a sociophonetic variable whose indexical field is frequently linked with gender and sexual orientation (e.g., Calder, 2021). I argue that it is not speakers’ demographic categories (‘male’, ‘nonbinary’, etc.) that best explain /s/ variation, but the attitudes they show towards these categories in how they describe their genders.

Both of these analyses prioritize bottom-up categorization of speaker participants driven by how they described themselves in open-response questions on demographic forms. By approaching the data in this way, I was able to determine results that were more informative than by considering only normative identity categories such as “gay,” “straight,” “male,” and “female.” Ultimately, I aim to call into question the perceived dichotomy between inclusive research practices and effective quantitative analysis.

March 21

Rhosean Asmah (UC Berkeley): Coronal stop deletion in Megan Thee Stallion's rap and speech

Speakers use sociolinguistic variables to convey characteristics that relate to distinct social categories and styles. One style where this process occurs is hip-hop language (HHL), used in rap music and/or by those who participate in hip-hop culture. HHL was largely studied in the 2000s, with primary focus on the style’s syntax, vocabulary, and use by White men. Today, HHL’s phonetics remain unclear, along with its use by non-men, people of color, and other marginalized groups. To expand our understanding of HHL, I focus on Megan Thee Stallion, a contemporary Black woman rapper. I present her rate of coronal stop deletion (CSD), a phenomenon where word-final /t,d/ in consonant clusters is variably produced, as CSD correlates widely to differences across styles and dialects. I examine Megan’s CSD as it relates to phonological and morphological constraints, word frequency, and speech rate, finding evidence for phonetic differentiation between HHL and casual speech.

April 4

John Harris (University College London): Gauging segmental prominence

The notion of relative prominence or strength is often used to characterise phonological asymmetries within domains such as the word, foot, or stem. Domain-initial positions are typically strong in the sense that they support a greater array of phonological contrasts than elsewhere – positional prominence. One obvious sign that a syllable is strong is that, within its domain, it alone bears a stress accent or determines the tonal behaviour of following positions – prosodic prominence.

Relative prominence also influences the segmental content of domains. Here it is not just a matter of strong positions bearing heavier contrastive loads than weak positions. The segments themselves exhibit particular characteristics that reflect their position within a domain – segmental prominence. Consonants in initial position are characterised by more extreme and more tightly coordinated articulatory movements than consonants elsewhere – domain-initial strengthening. Non-initial consonants are often observed to form a rather small set that can be intuitively described as weak. Segmental asymmetries of this sort are at their most dramatic in languages where morphological domains are shaped by tight prosodic restrictions. Examples to be surveyed in this paper include the monosyllabic word in Sino-Tibetan and the prosodic stem in the genetically diverse languages of West Africa. In these languages, we find restricted and recurring sets of consonants in non-initial positions. Domain-final position favours unreleased stops, nasals, approximants, and consonants of indeterminate place. Typical domain-internal consonants include nasals, approximants, and spontaneously voiced stops.

The notion of relative consonant strength is hard to pin down using standard IPA or feature classifications. However, it can be captured by drawing on the model of speech as a modulated carrier signal: the stronger the consonant, the greater the extent to which it modulates the carrier. Weak non-initial consonants form a natural class in that they perturb the carrier to a relatively small extent. This definition of consonant strength provides us with a direct way of modelling how segmental effects, alongside prosodic effects, are fully integrated into the more general phenomenon of positional prominence.

April 11

Yi Ting Huang (University of Maryland): Measuring trust in research participation: A case study on SES variation in language development

Cognitive science’s convenience-sample problem is well documented (e.g., Nielsen et al., 2017; Prather et al., 2022; Doebel & Frank, 2024, inter alia). While past research has aggregated the field-level challenge, this may not offer the granularity to diagnose problems specifically or formulate solutions effectively. In this talk, I will describe recent work that wrestles with why individuals do or don’t participate in research by analyzing levels of participation in a project on socioeconomic variation in language development. Since 2022, the FamilyTalk project has recruited families of school-aged children in D.C. metro, and measured participation in: 1) interest surveys, 2) demographic questionnaires, 3) eye-tracking and standardized assessments, 4) qualitative interviews, 5) daylong home recordings. Building on a literature on cooperation in game theory and epistemic trust in philosophy, I argue that participants’ willingness and ability to provide data of each kind offers an implicit measure of trust in research. We find that families across many backgrounds partake in low-stakes research, but recruitment methods yield vastly different enrollment in longer-term interactions. Families were also fine with video recordings when reasons were transparent (e.g., webcam eye-tracking) and participation was convenient. However, they differed in relations to daylong home recordings, and this distinction primarily traced household income but not parental education or race/ethnicity. This suggests that barriers to research participation may be largely due to task logistics, and raises questions about whether failures to move beyond the convenience sample reflect limitations in developing procedures that scale to all participants.

April 18

Irene Yi (Stanford): Axes of Differentiation and Language Ideologies in Mountain vs. Town variation of /l/ alveo-palatalization in Ganguhua

Linguistic signs take on social meaning through semiotic processes, such as the forming of indexical links, whereby a linguistic form “points” to some social attribute that it co-occurs with. These meanings exist in systems of oppositions, as differences only arise in context with other contrasting meanings. From this, axes of differentiation—that is, constitutions of opposing qualities that emerge from a given sociohistorical context (Gal & Irvine 2019)—start to form, such that linguistic forms may start to index qualities, or social meanings, on opposing sides of a given axis of differentiation. Ganguhua (GGH), a dialect mutually unintelligible with Putonghua (Standard Mandarin), is spoken in rural Gangu county (Gansu province, northwestern China). Gangu contains a flat, town area and mountainous peripheries. Through conducting sociolinguistic and ethnographic fieldwork, I found that ideologies people held toward Ganguhua—and the different ways people speak—are mediated by the locally-relevant geographical distinction of Mountain vs. Town. This talk uses social and linguistic analysis to explore how an alternation in the phonological system of Ganguhua—the alveopalatal manner variation between the affricate [t͡ɕ] and nasal [ȵ], resulting from a place assimilation process of GGH /l/—emerged as part of an ethnographically relevant axis of differentiation, and what this means for people’s linguistic practices and social ideologies.

April 25

Antón de la Fuente (Stanford): Ideological Change and Phonological Variation in the Galician of O Grove

In post-Franco Galicia, the codification and dissemination of a new orthographic and literary standard was a politically significant process required by the Galician government’s adoption of Galician as its language of administrative operation. This effort required a considerable amount of ideological negotiation about what forms should be captured and deemed officially Galician, and what should be omitted or erased from orthographic and administrative representation. The Galician spoken in the town of O Grove contains many features that are not included in the official standard. I focus on three of these, called gheada, seseo, and rotacismoRotacismo is a phonological process that has not been extensively discussed historically. Seseo and gheada, on the other hand are significant sites of marginalizing ideologies and erasure in the Galician grammatical tradition. In O Grove, however, they are salient and often positively valued features of the local Galician. In this presentation I discuss data drawn from field work interviews in O Grove showing patterns of change in apparent time for all three variants. These changes, I argue, are best explained by the history of ideological contestation (or lack thereof) focused on gheada, seseo, and rotacismo. Over time, the social and political functions of Galician have changed in Galician society, at times highlighting the need for “neutral” or anonymous registers of Galician, and at other times highlighting the need for authentic linguistic practice in the context of increased language shift to Spanish. By comparing the patterns of change in apparent time for all three variables, we can observe how these changes in ideological regimes can affect language use.

May 2

Max Kaplan (UC Santa Cruz):

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