GLOW Workshop on Phonology and Phonetics

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GLOW Workshop on Phonology and Phonetics
Positional Phenomena in Phonology and Phonetics
(Organised by Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Berlin)

Date: 13 April 2010
Organisers: Marzena Zygis, Stefanie Jannedy, Susanne Fuchs

Invited Speakers:
Taehong Cho (Hanyang University, Seoul) confirmed
Grzegorz Dogil (University of Stuttgart) confirmed

Venue: Instytut Filologii Angielskiej, ul. Kuznicza 22, 50-138 Wroclaw

Abstracts due November 1, 2009.

2nd Call for Papers

Positional effects found cross-linguistically at the edges of prosodic constituents (e.g. final lengthening, final lowering, strengthening effects, or final devoicing) have increasingly received attention in phonetic-phonological research. Recent empirical investigations of such positional effects and their variability pose, however, a great number of questions challenging e.g. the idea of perceptual invariance. It has been claimed that acoustic variability is a necessary prerequisite for the perceptual system to parse segmental strings into words, phrases or larger prosodic units.

This workshop will provide a forum for discussing controversies and recent developments regarding positional phenomena. We invite abstracts bearing on positional effects from various perspectives. The following questions can be addressed, but are not limited to:

– What kind of variability is found in the data, and how does such variability need to be accounted for?
– What positional effects are common cross-linguistically and how can they be attributed to perceptual, articulatory or aerodynamic principles?
– How does positional prominence (lexical stress; accent) interact with acoustic and articulatory realizations of prosodic boundaries?
– What are the positional (a)symmetries in the realizations of boundaries, and what are the mechanisms underlying them?
– How does left- and right-edge phrasal marking interact with the acoustic and articulatory realizations at these prosodic boundaries?
– How are these interpreted in phonetics and in phonology?
– What are the necessary prerequisites for the interpretation of prosodic constituents? Which auditory cues are essential for the perception of boundaries and positional effects? Are such cues language-specific?
– To what extent do lexical frequency, phonotactic probability, and neighbourhood density contribute to the production and recognition of prosodic boundaries in (fluent/spontaneous) speech?
– How are positional characteristics exploited during the process of language acquisition? How are they learned during the process of language acquisition? Are positional effects salient enough for L2 learners?

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