Vol. XX Nr. 2
Oana Niculescu
An acoustic and articulatory description of the Romanian vocalic system
Abstract: This paper presents an acoustic and articulatory description of the seven standard Romanian vowels /i, ɨ, u, e, ə, o, a/. By revisiting previous instrumental studies (Avram 1963, Şuteu 1963, Teodorescu 1985, Renwick 2012), we offer a new interpretation of the material, a complementary statistical analysis, and a modern visualization of the data facilitated by R through the ggplot2 package (Wickham 2009). Another key point of this study is the ultrasound experiment conducted at ILPGA on the seven monophthongs. Finally, the acoustic data are correlated with the results obtained from the ultrasound study.
Keywords: phonetics, Romanian vowels, formant frequencies, ultrasound
Gabriela Brozbă and Roxana Ungureanu
The phonological adaptation of loanwords in Italian
Abstract: The focus of this article is the phonological adaptation of loanwords in Italian, accounted for in terms of the phonological processes employed. It looks at the underlying forms in the source language and analyzes the changes that have led to the output words in our target language. It also looks at the type of lexical fields in which the borrowings are predominant, which reflect the socio-economic contacts between the languages at issue. An overview of the phonological processes which are encountered is offered in an attempt to provide a theoretical framework of their behaviour, by using the generative phonology rules.
Francesca Volpato and Silvia D’Ortenzio
Ask a question! How Italian children with cochlear implants produce subject and object wh-questions
Abstract: Syntax is impaired in individuals with cochlear implants (CIs). Several studies have shown that Italian speaking children fitted with CIs have troubles with relative clauses (Volpato and Adani 2009, Volpato 2010, Volpato 2012, Volpato and Vernice 2014), sentences containing clitic pronouns (Guasti et al. 2014), and wh-questions (Volpato and D’Ortenzio 2017). The aim of this study is to provide a detailed analysis of the production of wh-questions by a group of 13 Italian-speaking children fitted with CIs, and to compare their performance with a group of 13 typically developing children matched on comparable chronological age. Accuracy is lower in the group of children with CIs than in controls, but no significant difference was found between the two groups. However, much individual variability was observed. Some children with CIs showed good competence of Italian. Other children produced ungrammatical sentences, which is evidence of the linguistic delay associated to hearing impairment, even when they are fitted with CIs.
Keywords: children with cochlear-implants, wh-questions, elicited production, Italian
Adina Camelia Bleotu
The acquisition of root NN compounds in Romanian
Abstract: The paper investigates the comprehension and production of root NN compounds by Romanian children (mean age: 5;6) and adults. Given that endocentric root NN compounds are not productive in Romanian, a Romance language, the main goal of the study was to see to what extent children manage to ascribe an interpretation to or produce such compounds. The results show that, unlike in English, where head-final endocentric compounds are the most frequent ones, both Romanian monolingual children and adults tend to understand and produce much more blend compounds than endocentric ones (which, in Romanian, are head-first).
Keywords: root NN compounds, blends, Romanian, L1 acquisition
Andrei A. Avram
The diffusion of Atlantic English-lexifier creoles: Evidence from Belizean Creole
Abstract: The paper analyzes the attestations in Belizean Creole of the diagnostic features of English-lexifier contact languages proposed by Baker and Huber (2001). It compares the distribution of these features in Belizean Creole and the seven Atlantic English-lexifier pidgins and creoles considered by Baker and Huber (2001). The features identified serve for quantitative measures of the affinity between Belizean Creole and two varieties, Jamaican and Miskito Coast Creole, which contributed to its emergence. A number of selected diagnostic features found in Belizean Creole are also discussed.
Keywords: English-lexifier creoles, Belizean Creole, diagnostic features, origin, classification
Christine Mallinson, Becky Childs, Gerard van Herk (eds.) Data Collection in Sociolinguistics (Reviewed by Costin Oancea)