Whamit!

The Weekly Newsletter of MIT Linguistics

Colloquium 11/03 - Yoonjung Kang (UToronto)

Speaker: Yoonjung Kang (UToronto)
Title: Speech Rate Accommodation under Sound Change in progress: Case Studies from Daejeon Korean
Time: Friday, November 3rd, 3:30pm – 5pm
Location: 32-141

Abstract: Variation in speech rate is a common characteristic of speech and serves as a significant source of synchronic variation and potential sound change. During fast speech, segments tend to shorten compared to normal or slow speech, potentially blurring the distinctions between long and short segments. In this presentation, I will discuss the results of two recent perception studies conducted on Daejeon Korean. One study focuses on non-low back vowels, while the other explores stop laryngeal contrasts. These studies aim to shed light on how listeners adapt to changes in speech rate when ongoing sound changes potentially neutralize the duration-based cues related to the target contrasts.