Phonology & Phonetics

Outline

TopicsMembersResultsFuture

Phonology & PhoneticsThe focus of the Phonology and Phonetics group of the CLCG is on the structure and contents of the sounds of languageAreas of special interest:

Phonetics and Ethnolinguistics Constraint-based phonologyLaboratory phonologyAcquisitionComputational dialectology

Meetings

The group members meet each other on an irregular basis about once every two months

Aims: presentation of current researchpractising for conferencesreviews

The group is joined by members of other CLCG groups whose work is related to Phonology(Támás Bíro; Wilbert Heeringa; Dirk-Bart Den Ouden)

Tjeerd de Graaf

• Co-ordinator of the group (1993 - 2002)

Co-promotor of Rogier Nieuweboer; Hidetoshi Shiraishi & Markus

Bergmann

Visiting Professor and honorary doctor at the University of St. Petersburg.Tjeerd de Graaf is a phonetician whose main interest is in Ethnolinguistics (endangered languages)At the moment, he works on the project Voices of Tundra and Taiga (NWO). He formally retired in February 2003 but remains active as a scholar

Ethnolinguistics• Rogier Nieuweboer (aio 1992-1996)• Markus Bergmann (NWO 2000-2005)

• Hidetoshi Shiraishi (Ubbo Emmiusbursaal 2002-2006)

Studies language contacts in the Russian North. He published a CDR with spoken Nenets data and added data to the website on the Languages of Russia

Accounts for phonological phenomena in Nivkh within the framework of Optimality Theory. Published two books on Nivkh in the Japanese ELPR series (Endangered Languages of the Pacific Rim)

Dicky Gilbers

• Co-ordinator of the group since February 2003

Co-promotor of Wouter Jansen & Maartje Schreuder, Referent of Klarien

van der Linde

Research involves the application of constraint-based approaches to sound patterns in language and music (together with Maartje Schreuder)Also interested in the combination of phonetic and phonological influences on speech realizations, e.g. in first language acquisition data

Phonology• Wouter Jansen (NWO 1998-2002)

• Maartje Schreuder (Faculty 2000-2004)

Jansen provides acoustic studies of voicing assimilation in obstruent clusters in English, Hungarian and Dutch. His work is exemplary for so-called ‘Laboratory Phonology’

Schreuder studies the structural similarities between language and music. The focus is on rhythmic variability and phrasing (together with Dicky Gilbers)

Phonology & Acquisition• Klarien van der Linde (aio 1991-1995)• Angela Grimm (Ubbo Emmiusbursaal 2002-2006)

• Wander Lowie (associated member)

Studies the acquisition of phonology in monolingual German children. Special focus is on the developmental pattern children show during the acquisition of word stress

Studies the didactics of pronunciation education from a contrastive phonetic and phonological point of view(topic: second language acquisition)

Charlotte Gooskens

Project: Linguistic and extra-linguistic predictors for inter-Nordic communication

She uses the Levenshtein method to measure distances between language varietiesTogether with Wilbert Heeringa (Computational Linguistics)

Research on how well Scandinavians understand each other’s languages by means of linguistic distances between the languages and language attitudes and amount of contact between the speakers of the languages

Nanne Streekstra

One of the first members of the group who is interested in the phonology-phonetics interface.In the last decade his research has more and more shifted towards literary issuesHe wrote a dissertation on Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687) translations of poems by John Donne (1672-1631)

The Results 1998-2004

50 Academic Publications3 Linguistic Symposia

3 Dissertations5 PhD-projects

Linguistic Symposia• Groningen July 1997: Conflicting constraints (Gilbers; de

Hoop) (special issue Lingua 104 1/2 1998)

• Groningen 25-26 November 1999: Languages in Contact(Gilbers; Nerbonne; Schaeken) (special issue Slavic and General Linguistics Vol. 28 2000)

• Sakhalin 20-25 October 2003: New methods in documenting endangered languages in Russia (De Graaf; Odé; Shiraishi)

• Groningen 30 January 2004: On the boundaries of Phonology and Phonetics (Gilbers; Schreuder; Knevel) (proceedings 2004)

Dissertations• March 1998: Rogier Nieuweboer -

The Altai Dialect of Plautdiitsch (West-Siberian Mennonite Low German)

• March 2001: Klarien van der Linde - Sonority Substitutions

• May 2004: Wouter Jansen - Laryngeal Contrast and Phonetic Voicing a laboratory phonology approach to English, Hungarian and Dutch

Projects & AwardsPhD-Projects:

NWO: The PhD-Projects by Wouter Jansen and Markus Bergmann (oio)Faculty: The Project by Maartje Schreuder (aio)The Projects by Angela Grimm; Hidetoshi Shiraishi (bursaal)

Other Projects:NWO: The Voices of the Shtetl: the Yiddish Language in Russia (1999-2002)The Voices of Tundra and Taiga (2002-2005)INTAS: Sound archives on the world wide web (1999-2001)A full-text Database on Balto-Finnic Languages and Russian Dialects (2001-2003)Gramata-Stichting: Project by Charlotte Gooskens

Awards: Tjeerd de Graaf received an Honorary doctorate at the University of St. Petersburg in 1998; in 2003 he was guest professor at this university

Co-operationsThere are close co-operations with

Jrn Almberg (Trondheim University)Lars-Olof Delsing (Lund University)Cecilia Odé (Amsterdam and Leiden University)Liya Bondarko (St. Petersburg University)

Vincent van Heuven (Leiden University)Carlos Gussenhoven (Nijmegen University)John Harris (London University College)

Guests in Groningen: Roberto Bolognesi (Grotius postdoc); Roland Noske

Involved in the supervision of several of our PhD-projects

The FutureGooskens and Gilbers are still active in fund raising for future projects Possible future projects will be interdisciplinary e.g. a project on computational dialectology (Gooskens) and a project on the processing of rhythm and melody (Gilbers, Schreuder)

The group will continue organizing workshops on a regular basis

The Future

Since Tjeerd de Graaf formally retired in February 2003, the group lacks a linguist who is primarily concerned with phonetics. To ensure continuity and sufficient expertise, it is crucial for the group that De Graaf will have a successor

The FutureThe CLCG identified several groups as most important CLCG-groups. Since the Klankleer-group does not belong to this élite, we fear that our chances on future PhD-projects in Groningen are very limited

This is a pity, since the group showed that it is very active in fund raising and it contributes for an important part to the number of CLCG PhD-students

Phonology & Phonetics