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Swedish has a contrast between two so-called tonal word accents: accent 1 and accent 2. In central standard Swedish, for example, compound words generally have accent 2 and primary stress on the first element. In contrast, traditional Scanian dialects exhibit both a high occurrence of accent 1 in compounds and dialect geographic variation between accent 2 and second element stress. This dissertation argues in favour of four diachronically oriented hypotheses pertaining to the word accent distribution in compounds with monosyllabic first elements in these dialects: (1) compounds emanating from syntactic juxtapositions have accent 1; (2) compounds formed by way of compounding proper (stem compounds and comparable formations) have accent 2 or second-element stress; (3) compounds of either of these two types do, however, have accent 1 if the first element was originally disyllabic and has lost its posttonic syllable through syncope; (4) West Germanic loanwords have accent 1. This permits the generalisation that postlexical accent 2, which applies generally in compounds in central standard Swedish, for example, only applies in (non-syncopated) compounds proper in Scanian dialects, while in the other categories the word accent follows from the first element. The larger dialect geographical picture in Sweden is discussed, and it is concluded that the system found in Scanian and many other dialects represents the original state of affairs in Scandinavia as a whole, while the central standard Swedish system with general accent 2 in compounds is an innovation. The dissertation also gives a dialect geographical account of second-element stress, which, in agreement with previous research, is found to be primarily a south Scanian but to some degree also a north-west Scanian phenomenon. It is further proposed that Scanian second-element stress originated in an accent-2 curve with the floating prominence tone H (entailing the curve’s F0 maximum) timed with the posttonic syllable, by way of association of the prominence tone to the posttonic syllable. This curve is documented in south­-east Scania and is hypothesised to have earlier been spread throughout southern and western Scania.

The aim of this study is to investigate the process of accent levelling in the Regional French of Alsace and its relationship with the social variables of age, gender, social class, urban or rural origin of speakers and feelings of regional attachment. Accent levelling, which can be defined as the process of speakers abandoning local phonological forms in favour of supralocal variants, has been the focus of much recent sociolinguistic research on British English, French and other languages. Since knowledge of Alsatian (a Germanic language spoken in Alsace) is decreasing, it is possible that the resulting lack of interference between Alsatian and French is leading to levelling of the traditional accent features of Alsatian Regional French. In order to provide data for this research project, sociolinguistic interviews were conducted and written questionnaires used in Strasbourg and in the village of Helsheim (a fictional name used for reasons of confidentiality) with 56 informants. The data obtained were then subjected to quantitative analysis with regard to the linguistic variables of aspirate h (which can be realised as a supralocal zero variant or as a regional [h] variant) and the devoicing of canonically voiced plosives and fricatives (for example, sage pronounced [saʃ]). The results of the data analysis revealed that the regional variants of both linguistic variables are used more frequently by older than younger, working class than middle class, rural than urban speakers and that level of regional attachment correlates with use of the linguistic variables, as predicted in the research hypotheses. However, the relationship between levelling and gender proved to be more unexpected, with no clear pattern emerging for the (h) variable and a complex one involving the acquisition of supralocal patterns of sociolinguistic variation as well as the supralocal phonological variant in the case of consonant devoicing.

This thesis examines the processing of accented speech in both infants and adults. Accents provide a natural and reasonably consistent form of inter-speaker variation in the speech signal, but it is not yet clear exactly what processes are used to normalise this form of variation, or when and how those processes develop. Two adult studies use ERP data to examine differences between the online processing of regional- and foreign-accented speech as compared to a baseline consisting of the listeners’ home accent. These studies demonstrate that the two types of accents recruit normalisation processes which are qualitatively, and not just quantitatively, different. This provided support for the hypothesis that foreign and regional accents require different mechanisms to normalise accent-based variation (Adank et al., 2009, Floccia et al., 2009), rather than for the hypothesis that different types of accents are normalised according to their perceptual distance from the listener’s own accent (Clarke & Garrett, 2004). They also provide support for the Abstract entry approach to lexical storage of variant forms, which suggests that variant forms undergo a process of prelexical normalisation, allowing access to a canonical lexical entry (Pallier et al., 2001), rather than for the Exemplar-based approach, which suggests that variant word-forms are individually represented in the lexicon (Johnson, 1997). Two further studies examined how infants segment words from continuous speech when presented with accented speakers. The first of these includes a set of behavioural experiments, which highlight some methodological issues in the existing literature and offer some potential explanations for conflicting evidence about the age at which infants are able to segment speech. The second uses ERP data to investigate segmentation within and across accents, and provides neurophysiological evidence that 11-month-olds are able to distinguish newly-segmented words at the auditory level even within a foreign accent, or across accents, but that they are more able to treat new word-forms as word-like in a familiar accent than a foreign accent.

This dissertation looks at motor control in speech production. Two specific questions emerging from the speech motor control literature are studied: the question of articulatory versus acoustic motor control targets, and the question of whether prosodic linguistic variables are controlled in the same way as segmental linguistic variables. In the first study, I test the utility of whispered speech as a tool for addressing the question of articulatory or acoustic motor control targets. Research has been done probing both sides of this question. The case for articulatory specifications is developed in depth in the Articulatory Phonology framework of Haskins researchers (eg. Browman & Goldstein 2000), based on the task-dynamic model of control presented by Saltzman & Kelso (1987). The case for acoustic specifications is developed in the work of Perkell and others (eg Perkell, Matthies, Svirsky & Jordan 1993, Guenther, Espy-Wilson, Boyce, Matthies, Zandipour & Perkell 1999, Perkell, Guenther, Lane, Matthies, Perrier, Vick,Wilhelms-Tricarico & Zandipour 2000). It has also been suggested that some productions are governed by articulatory targets while others are governed by acoustic targets (Ladefoged 2005). This study involves two experiments. In the first, I make endoscopic video recordings of the larynx during the production of phonological voicing contrasts in normal and whispered speech. I discovered that the glottal aperture differences between voiced obstruents (ie, /d) and voiceless obstruents (ie, /t) in normal speech was preserved in whispered speech. Of particular interest was the observation that phonologically voiced obstruents tended to exhibit a narrower glottal aperture in whisper than vowels, which are also phonologically voiced. This suggests that the motor control targets of voicing is different for vowels than for voiced obstruents. A perceptual experiment on the speech material elicited in the endoscopic recordings elicited judgements to see whether listeners could discriminate phonological voicing in whisper, in the absence of non-laryngeal cues such as duration. I found that perceptual discrimination in whisper, while lower than that for normal speech, was significantly above chance. Together, the perceptual and the production data suggest that whispered speech removes neither the acoustic nor the articulatory distinction between phonologically voiced and voiceless segments. Whisper is therefore not a useful tool for probing the question of articulatory versus acoustic motor control targets. In the second study, I look at the multiple parameters contributing to relative prominence, to see whether they are controlled in a qualitatively similar way to the parameters observed in bite block studies to contribute to labial closure or vowel height. I vary prominence by eliciting nuclear accents with a contrastive and a non-contrastive reading. Prominence in this manipulation is found to be signalled by f0 peak, accented syllable duration, and peak amplitude, but not by vowel de-centralization or spectral tilt. I manipulate the contribution of f0 in two ways. The first is by eliciting the contrastive and non-contrastive readings in questions rather than statements. This reduces the f0 difference between the two readings. The second is by eliciting the contrastive and non-contrastive readings in whispered speech, thus removing the acoustic f0 information entirely. In the first manipulation, I find that the contributions of both duration and amplitude to signalling contrast are reduced in parallel with the f0 contribution. This is a qualitatively different behaviour from all other motor control studies; generally, when one variable is manipulated, others either act to compensate or do not react at all. It would seem, then, that this prosodic variable is controlled in a different manner from other speech motor targets that have been examined. In the whisper manipulation, I find no response in duration or amplitude to the manipulation of f0. This result suggests that, like in the endoscopy study, perhaps whisper is not an effective means of perturbing laryngeal articulations.

Effective communication in English between its two billion users (Crystal, 2008), requires comprehension of others’ English and a willingness to accept differences in English. While some studies have attempted to measure the attitudes of Inner Circle (IC) (Kachru, 1985) respondents towards IC Englishes, and other studies have focused on attitudes of Outer Circle (OC) and Expanding Circle (EC) respondents to IC English, there is a dearth of research on OC and EC respondents’ attitudes to non-IC English. Therefore, this study addressed the need for further research focusing on OC respondents’ attitudes to EC users’ English. Specifically, this study of 31 Singaporeans attempted to gain an understanding of their attitudes towards Expanding Circle Accents of English (ECAE). This study drew on direct and indirect approaches in language attitude research, involving a verbal-guise task using semantic differential scales to elicit attitudes to speakers on a range of solidarity and status traits, and interviews. Descriptive statistics derived from mean scores were used for quantitative analysis of the data from the verbal-guise task, while coding procedures were used for qualitative analysis of the interview data. The findings show the respondents displayed predominantly negative attitudes to eight of the eleven ECAE and slightly positive attitudes to three. Phonological features common to the ECAE, notably mispronunciation of particular phonemes and vowels added to consonant clusters, affected the respondents’ attitudes. Moreover, certain prosodic features and the perceived degree of attractiveness and assertiveness affected attitudes to the ECAE. These findings indicate accent can affect listeners’ attitude to speakers. The implications of this study have relevance to the discussions on World Englishes and English as an International Language to the extent that notions of attitude and intelligibility are central to both. Furthermore, the findings suggest attitude might be of greater significance than intelligibility when evaluating others’ English.

<p>An abundance of research in the social sciences has demonstrated a persistent bias against nonnative English speakers (Giles & Billings, 2004; Gluszek & Dovidio, 2010). Yet, organizational scholars have only begun to investigate the underlying mechanisms that drive the bias against nonnative speakers and subsequently design interventions to mitigate these biases. In this dissertation, I offer an integrative model to organize past explanations for accent-based bias into a coherent framework, and posit that nonnative accents elicit social perceptions that have implications at the personal, relational, and group level. I also seek to complement the existing emphasis on main effects of accents, which focuses on the general tendency to discriminate against those with accents, by examining moderators that shed light on the conditions under which accent-based bias is most likely to occur. Specifically, I explore the idea that people’s beliefs about the controllability of accents can moderate their evaluations toward nonnative speakers, such that those who believe that accents can be controlled are more likely to demonstrate a bias against nonnative speakers. I empirically test my theoretical model in three studies in the context of entrepreneurial funding decisions. Results generally supported the proposed model. By examining the micro foundations of accent-based bias, the ideas explored in this dissertation set the stage for future research in an increasingly multilingual world.</p> / Dissertation

Esta dissertação investiga o comportamento do acento nos compostos do idioma japonês. Os compostos do japonês falado em Tóquio apresentam apenas um acento, ou queda tonal H*L, por frase fonológica. Isso faz com que não se possa manter os acentos que estariam originalmente nas palavras simples. Apenas um acento sobrevive e seu local é de difícil determinação, porque, na maioria das vezes, não coincide com o local do acento anterior. Muitos linguistas já se debruçaram sobre esse tópico (McCAWLEY, 1965; SAITOU, 1997; KUBOZONO, 2001; TANAKA, 2001; LABRUNE, 2012) e com o auxílio dessas diferentes pesquisas, conseguimos estabelecer que diversos fatores influenciam no processo de acentuação dos compostos, especialmente aspectos morfológicos e fonológicos, como a fronteira de palavra e o pé fonológico. Assim, a acentuação do japonês não é determinada por cada membro do composto, mas pela distância em que a fronteira entre os membros está da margem direita da palavra. / This dissertation investigates the behavior of the accent of Japanese compounds. Compounds in Tokyo Japanese only have one accent, or pitch drop H*L, in a phonological phrase. Therefore, it cannot maintain the accent of the simple words which make it up. Only one accent survives and its location is hard to determine, because, most of the time, it does not coincide with the location of the previous accents. Many linguists have tackled this topic (McCAWLEY, 1965; SAITOU, 1997; KUBOZONO, 2001; TANAKA, 2001; LABRUNE, 2012) and with the help of these different analyses, we established that several factors influence the accentuation of a compound, especially morphological and phonological aspects, such as word boundary and phonological feet. Thus, the accentuation of Japanese compounds is not determined by each member of the compound in particular, but from the distance that the boundary between the compound \'s member is from the right margin of the word.

Esta dissertação investiga o comportamento do acento nos compostos do idioma japonês. Os compostos do japonês falado em Tóquio apresentam apenas um acento, ou queda tonal H*L, por frase fonológica. Isso faz com que não se possa manter os acentos que estariam originalmente nas palavras simples. Apenas um acento sobrevive e seu local é de difícil determinação, porque, na maioria das vezes, não coincide com o local do acento anterior. Muitos linguistas já se debruçaram sobre esse tópico (McCAWLEY, 1965; SAITOU, 1997; KUBOZONO, 2001; TANAKA, 2001; LABRUNE, 2012) e com o auxílio dessas diferentes pesquisas, conseguimos estabelecer que diversos fatores influenciam no processo de acentuação dos compostos, especialmente aspectos morfológicos e fonológicos, como a fronteira de palavra e o pé fonológico. Assim, a acentuação do japonês não é determinada por cada membro do composto, mas pela distância em que a fronteira entre os membros está da margem direita da palavra. / This dissertation investigates the behavior of the accent of Japanese compounds. Compounds in Tokyo Japanese only have one accent, or pitch drop H*L, in a phonological phrase. Therefore, it cannot maintain the accent of the simple words which make it up. Only one accent survives and its location is hard to determine, because, most of the time, it does not coincide with the location of the previous accents. Many linguists have tackled this topic (McCAWLEY, 1965; SAITOU, 1997; KUBOZONO, 2001; TANAKA, 2001; LABRUNE, 2012) and with the help of these different analyses, we established that several factors influence the accentuation of a compound, especially morphological and phonological aspects, such as word boundary and phonological feet. Thus, the accentuation of Japanese compounds is not determined by each member of the compound in particular, but from the distance that the boundary between the compound \'s member is from the right margin of the word.