LIN COLLOQUIUM

This Friday, May 26th, at 2:40pm in Humanities 2, Room 259, there will be a colloquium by Susan Lin (Berkeley). Her talk is entitled “Gradience from variation in articulatory magnitude and timing,” and the abstract is given below:

Gradient synchronic variation in speech has long been proposed to be at the root of most sound change, whether through the generation of phonemically ambiguous speech or the creation of phonological innovations available to language learners. However, there exists a disconnect between this form of gradient variation and its typically discrete resulting phonological form. In this talk, I examine two articulatory factors thought to contribute to gradient variation: the magnitude and relative timing of articulations. Using ultrasound data, I focus on the relationship between articulatory magnitude and timing in post-vocalic laterals in English, while exploring some of the factors, including lexical frequency and speech speed, which contribute to that relationship.