This study investigated the lenition of the segment /dʒ/ to [j] in Rijal Alhajir dialect of Arabic in different initial, medial, and final phonological environments. A sample of 20 Rijal Alhajir Arabic speakers (10 male and 10 female) was divided into two groups based on the social factor of age: 20-25 (the younger group) and 45-above (the older group). All participants were interviewed individually by the researcher to record the production of the target sound. Forty-eight Classical Arabic words containing the segment /dʒ/ were selected for this investigation. Forty-one words were elicited by showing the participants pictures, and seven words were elicited through casual conversation due to their representing abstract concepts. The results showed the process of lenition in Rijal Alhajir dialect to occur in all phonological environments of interest, except when the target sound occurred in word-final position and was preceded by high long vowels [i:] and [u:]. The results revealed that age was indeed a factor influencing the presence of lenition. The participants from the older group had a significantly higher percentage of lenition in their speech compared to the younger group.

abstract: This dissertation investigates the precise degree to which prosody and syntax are related. One possibility is that the syntax-prosody mapping is one-to-one (“isomorphic”) at an underlying level (Chomsky & Halle 1968, Selkirk 1996, 2011, Ito & Mester 2009). This predicts that prosodic units should preferably match up with syntactic units. It is also possible that the mapping between these systems is entirely non-isomorphic, with prosody being influenced by factors from language perception and production (Wheeldon & Lahiri 1997, Lahiri & Plank 2010). In this work, I argue that both perspectives are needed in order to address the full range of phonological phenomena that have been identified in English and related languages, including word-initial lenition/flapping, word-initial segment-deletion, and vowel reduction in function words, as well as patterns of pitch accent assignment, final-pronoun constructions, and the distribution of null complementizer allomorphs. In the process, I develop models for both isomorphic and non-isomorphic phrasing. The former is cast within a Minimalist syntactic framework of Merge/Label and Bare Phrase Structure (Chomsky 2013, 2015), while the latter is characterized by a stress-based algorithm for the formation of phonological domains, following Lahiri & Plank (2010). / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation English 2019

Essa pesquisa tem como principal objetivo observar como seis consoantes oclusivas: (p), (b), (t), (d), (k), (g), e três consoantes fricativas: (f), (v) e (r), da língua dinamarquesa se comportam em dados de fala espontânea com relação a diferentes variáveis linguísticas que possam apresentar efeitos sobre a variação. Serão feitas duas análises principais. A primeira partirá da comparação entre as formas fonológicas e as formas fonéticas de ocorrência. Essa primeira parte será dividida em 3 subpartes, na primeira subparte será tratado o conjunto de dados de monólogos, na segunda subparte será tratado o conjunto de dados de diálogos e na terceira subparte será tratado o conjunto de dados da variável (r) e seus apagamentos. Na segunda análise serão tratados dados estritamente fonéticos das 6 oclusivas em questão. Além disso, será feita uma descrição do sistema fonológico da língua, suas características segmentais e suprassegmentais, e o percurso histórico e social das mudanças nessa língua, de modo a prover ao leitor uma introdução aos estudos de língua dinamarquesa. Uma descrição do conceito de lenição também será apresentada juntamente com seu percurso histórico. Isso será feito de modo a auxiliar a forma de seleção dos dados. A metodologia adotada seguirá as análises quantitativas. E para todos os conjuntos de dados gerados será apresentado dois modelos, um modelo de efeitos fixos e um modelo de efeitos mistos, das variáveis estatísticas que melhor explica a variância. / This research has as its main goal to observe how do six plosive consonants: (p), (b), (t), (d), (k), (g), and three fricatives: (f), (v) e (r), of the Danish language behave in spontaneous speech data, relating with different kinds of linguistic variables that could have an effect on their variation. Moreover in this work, two main analyzes will be carried out. The first one will compare phonological forms and phonetic forms of occurrence. This first analysis will be divided into three sub parts, the first part will treat the monologue data set, the second part will treat the dialogue data set and the third part will treat the data set of the variable (r) and its deletions. In the second analysis, the treatments will be with strictly phonetic data set, and it will counts only with observations of the behavior of the six plosive consonants. The Danish phonological system, its segmental and suprasegmental characteristics, and the historical and social course of changes in language will be described, to give the reader an introduction to the studies of the Danish language. A description of the concept of lenition will also be presented along with its historical path. This helped to improve the selection of data to be analyzed. The methodology is based on quantitative analyses. Finally, for all the groups generated at the selection step, it will be presented two statistical models; one of fixed effects and one of mixed effects, of variables that could better explain the variance at the data.

Essa pesquisa tem como principal objetivo observar como seis consoantes oclusivas: (p), (b), (t), (d), (k), (g), e três consoantes fricativas: (f), (v) e (r), da língua dinamarquesa se comportam em dados de fala espontânea com relação a diferentes variáveis linguísticas que possam apresentar efeitos sobre a variação. Serão feitas duas análises principais. A primeira partirá da comparação entre as formas fonológicas e as formas fonéticas de ocorrência. Essa primeira parte será dividida em 3 subpartes, na primeira subparte será tratado o conjunto de dados de monólogos, na segunda subparte será tratado o conjunto de dados de diálogos e na terceira subparte será tratado o conjunto de dados da variável (r) e seus apagamentos. Na segunda análise serão tratados dados estritamente fonéticos das 6 oclusivas em questão. Além disso, será feita uma descrição do sistema fonológico da língua, suas características segmentais e suprassegmentais, e o percurso histórico e social das mudanças nessa língua, de modo a prover ao leitor uma introdução aos estudos de língua dinamarquesa. Uma descrição do conceito de lenição também será apresentada juntamente com seu percurso histórico. Isso será feito de modo a auxiliar a forma de seleção dos dados. A metodologia adotada seguirá as análises quantitativas. E para todos os conjuntos de dados gerados será apresentado dois modelos, um modelo de efeitos fixos e um modelo de efeitos mistos, das variáveis estatísticas que melhor explica a variância. / This research has as its main goal to observe how do six plosive consonants: (p), (b), (t), (d), (k), (g), and three fricatives: (f), (v) e (r), of the Danish language behave in spontaneous speech data, relating with different kinds of linguistic variables that could have an effect on their variation. Moreover in this work, two main analyzes will be carried out. The first one will compare phonological forms and phonetic forms of occurrence. This first analysis will be divided into three sub parts, the first part will treat the monologue data set, the second part will treat the dialogue data set and the third part will treat the data set of the variable (r) and its deletions. In the second analysis, the treatments will be with strictly phonetic data set, and it will counts only with observations of the behavior of the six plosive consonants. The Danish phonological system, its segmental and suprasegmental characteristics, and the historical and social course of changes in language will be described, to give the reader an introduction to the studies of the Danish language. A description of the concept of lenition will also be presented along with its historical path. This helped to improve the selection of data to be analyzed. The methodology is based on quantitative analyses. Finally, for all the groups generated at the selection step, it will be presented two statistical models; one of fixed effects and one of mixed effects, of variables that could better explain the variance at the data.

No description available.