When Minimal Pairs

Meet SOFChelsea Fink

Overview

• Motivation: Previous work with focus shows that in its

second-occurrence, a word generally lacks the pitch

accent found in the first-occurrence. However, other

phonetic correlates (i.e. duration) can indicate focus on

the SO.

• Question: What affect (if any) does SO have on

minimal pairs?

• Method: Measure the VOT of minimal pairs in FO and

SO

• Results: VOT actually got shorter in SOF

• Conclusion: Test this out with more subjects, and see if

this is a consistent result

Background

• Focus in Phonology

• Hayes and Lahiri (1991): Looked at Bengali and found

that focus plays a role in determining the structure of

phonological phrases.

• Kenesei & Vogel (1995): Expanded on H&L work with

Bengali, and also looked at several other languages

(English, Italian, etc.).

• If an element in a sentence is focused, it either interrupts

the phonological rules, or causes them to extend beyond

their usual limits.

• Confirmed what H&L stated: Phonological Phrases are

the domain for focus.

Background

• The Semantics

• What is second-occurrence focus? “An expression

that is in the scope of a focus-sensitive operator, is the

semantic focus of that operator, and which is a repeat of

an earlier focused occurrence” (Beaver et al. 2007)

• Focus-sensitive operators, such as only or even, need an

element that is prosodically prominent within their scope

(Partee 1999)

• If that is the case, then the SO of an element should

have the same prominence as its FO. (Which is doesn’t.)

• Why are semanticists so interested in the phonology of

SOF?

Background• The Semantics: Continued…

• According to Partee, if these second-occurrences are

able to lack some sort of prosodic prominence (such as

pitch accent), it would force semanticists to accept one of

two options:

• 1. Words like only can sometimes be associated with

focus, and sometimes not. This is the worst scenario

• 2. Take a pragmatic approach, and deal with items in

their context. Sometimes, items lack pitch accent

because of their surroundings. (Ex: “There is no

sunshine” doesn’t mean that the entire planet is blacked

out.)

Motivation

• Beaver et al. (2007)

• Studied SOF and found that phrasal stress is key in

marking focus.

• Pitch accent is optional on items in SOF

• Phrasal stress is still there when pitch accent is not.

• When pitch accent is suppressed in SO, other elements,

such as duration and vowel quality can help determine

where the focus is.

Hypothesis

• All of this talk about SOF lacking a pitch accent has me

wondering…

• How does VOT compare for minimal pairs in FO and

SO?

• Because focus is generally determined by pitch accent, it

is common to look at peak F0, F0 range, duration, and

intensity. In the SO, it’s common to rely on longer

duration and higher intensity.

• That being said, I anticipate that VOT would lengthen on

minimal pairs in their SO.

Method

• Subject: 25 y/o male with English as his L1

• Stimuli: 4 sets of minimal pairs – zoo/sue, time/dime,

pun/bun, beach/peach

• The 8 words were presented randomly in a list of 25

words. Subject was instructed to say each word two

times before moving on to the next one.

• This list was presented first, in order to get an isolated

recording of the minimal pairs.

Methodtime

peach

bun

sue

pun

dime

Method• After reading the list, the subject read through a mixed

list of sentences and discourse sets containing the min pairs. Each sentence or set was read twice before moving on to the next one.

• Example:

• 1a. Where did John go?

• 1b. John went to the beach party.

• 2a. Julie said she wanted to see the bun book, but James only brought a pun book.

• 2b. Even Josh only brought a pun book.

• Discourse like 2a & 2b were set up in a way that the operator in the subject NP of 2b “leads the sentence to be uttered with a nuclear pitch accent in the initial NP, while the fact that the post-nuclear material is repeated seems to lead to an unaccented realization” (Beaver 2007).

Analysis

• Used waveforms and spectrograms to determine the

VOT for each of the words.

• Environments: Isolated, Embedded (Q&A), FOF, and

SOF

• Took the averages of the 1st and 2nd recording from all of

the environments.

Results: Isolated

-190

216

83

-15

93

-11

74

-11

-250

-200

-150

-100

-50

0

50

100

150

200

250

zoo

sue

time

dime

pun

bun

peach

beach

Results: FOF vs SOF

-124

190

82

-14

-100

149

80

-15

-150

-100

-50

0

50

100

150

200

250

FOF

SOFzoo

sue time

dime

VOT got shorter on the SO!!!

Results: FOF vs SOF

97

-11

75

-12

69

-13

70

-11-20

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

pun bun peach beach

FOF

SOF

Results:

FOF, SOF, Iso, Embed

92

-19

68

-10

97

-11

75

-12

69

-13

70

-11

93

-11

74

-11

-30

-10

10

30

50

70

90

110

EMB

FOF

SOF

ISO

pun bun peach beach

Results:

FOF, SOF, Iso, Embed

-131

184

85

-17

-124

190

82

-14

-100

149

80

-15

-190

216

83

-15

-200-175-150-125-100

-75-50-25

0255075

100125150175200225

EMB

FOF

SOF

ISO

zoo

sue time

dime

Results

• After seeing that the VOT got shorter, I went back and

looked at the absolute duration for the minimal pairs in

first and second-occurrence…

• peach: FO = 418 ms SO = 292 ms

• beach: FO = 310 ms SO = 338 ms

• time: FO = 339 ms SO = 325 ms

• dime: FO = 256 ms SO = 294 ms

• pun: FO = 339 ms SO = 278 ms

• bun: FO = 308 ms SO = 262 ms

• sue: FO = 345 ms SO = 292 ms

• zoo: FO = 291 ms SO = 266 ms

Conclusions

• As mentioned earlier, phrasal stress is often determined

with F0 peak and range, duration, and intensity. In the

lack of a pitch accent, duration and intensity often

increase…

• Because of that, I wouldn’t anticipate that VOT alone

could determine whether or not an item is focused, but I

figured we could at least draw some conclusions on what

would happen to VOT in SOF. (Clearly, I missed the

mark on that one)

• What to do differently next time: get more subjects! I

would be interested in seeing if the shorter VOT is a

common thing, or if this one subject just happened to be

consistently faster.