Past Event! Note: this event has already taken place.
Speaker Series: Dr. Andrew Carnie (phonology)
February 2, 2012 at 4:00 PM
| Location: | 240 Tory Building |
| Cost: | Free |
| Audience: | null |
Experimental Investigations on Scottish Gaelic
Phonetics and Phonology
Dr. Andrew Carnie
Professor of Linguistics ; Faculty Director, Graduate College and Graduate Interdisciplinary Programs
(University of Arizona, Tucson)
In this talk I present some of the results of a series of perceptual, psychophonology and phonetic studies done in the summer of 2010 on the Isle of Skye in Scotland. We performed 11 experiments on some unique phonetic and phonological properties of Scottish Gaelic. Using acoustic and perceptual gated speech methodologies we investigated whether or not the language has nasalized fricatives, and investigated where in the speech stream the appearance or illusion of nasalized fricatives is created. Using ultrasound, gating, and phonological judgment studies we also looked at the articulation, perception, and phonological status of svarabhakti (epenthetic) vowels. We saw that in many ways these vowels, while often phonetically longer, and bearing such hallmarks of a phonological real vowel as vowel harmony, are perceived by many speakers as not forming full syllabic nuclei.
About the Speaker
Dr. Andrew Carnie is a professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona Tucson. His research areas include the syntax, phonology and phonetics of Modern Scottish Gaelic, and various topics within the Minimalist Principles and Parameters approach to syntactic theory. He is the author of numerous books and articles, including Syntax: A Generative Introduction.