Tag: Tyler Kendall

Exploring sibilants and gender: A le/s/on from transgender speakers

Presenter: Jaidan McLean – Linguistics

Faculty Mentor(s): Tyler Kendall

Session: (In-Person) Oral Panel—Diversity and Analysis

Sibilant consonant variation is a well-studied topic in linguistics research to examine multiple social axes. Regarding gender, Zimman (2017) raised questions about the social patterning of sibilants in transgender speaker’s /s/ production since previous literature has only examined sibilant variation through a binarily cisgender lens. Focusing on transgender men and transmasculine people, Zimman found the social implications of gender identity and expression influence /s/ production in complex ways. As part of an undergraduate honors thesis, this study attempts to address the following two questions regarding /s/ production among a sample of transgender women and transfeminine people: How does speaker identity influence the patterns for /s/ variation found among the speakers? How do intraspeaker variations differ across speech, gender identities and expressions? Sociolinguistic interviews were used to elicit natural /s/ production, followed by a reading passage and word list task to elicit scripted speech. Focusing on center of gravity (COG) frequencies, this study finds its speaker productions to vary greatly with one’s expression and in certain linguistic conditions, both across the group’s and within individual speech. Such drastic variation complicates binarily established COG frequency ranges from previous literature and parallels Zimman’s (2017) findings. These data demonstrate the importance of considering all aspects of social identities as everyone is complex.

Acquisition of Articles by Chinese Learners of English

Presenter: William Leroux

Mentor: Tyler Kendall, Linguistics

Oral Presentation

Major: Linguistics 

The English article system presents one of the most challenging obstacles to learners of English hoping to obtain native-like fluency. This difficulty is in spite of its pervasiveness; the, a, and an are some of the most used words in English. However, ungrammatical phrases such as “I went to store,” and “I like the English” show up in all levels of learner speech. In order to better understand the acquisition of articles, our research examined interviews with high proficiency Chinese learners of English. We transcribed all cases where articles could possibly occur and examined the environments in which speakers produced native-like uses of articles and when they do not. We compared this to data from the ICNALE (International Corpus Network of Asian Learners of English), which has a more stratified sample of learners at various levels of English ability. This allowed us to better understand the language acquisition process of a complex variable so that we can better help English learners to attain native-like fluency and improve their communication with native-speakers.

Twentieth Century Sound Change in Washington D.C. African American English

Presenter: Shelby Arnson

Faculty Mentor: Tyler Kendall, Charlie Farrington

Presentation Type: Oral

Primary Research Area: Social Science

Major: Linguistics

African American English (AAE) is the most extensively researched and discussed dialect of American English. AAE, like other minority ethnic dialects, is often compared to the local benchmark European American English (EAE) varieties (Fought 2013). As such, there remain important questions about sound change within AAE. In the present study, I examine vowel differences, which are perceptually salient for judgments about speakers (Purnell et al. 1999). I pay special attention to Thomas’s (2007) African American Vowel Shift configuration (AAVS), which has been identified in a number of regions across the country and affects different vowel classes. The data come from a unique corpus of African Americans in Washington, D.C., comprised of both legacy data, recorded in 1968, as well as modern data recorded in 2015. I explore the full vowel systems of 20 speakers born between 1890 and 2002.

Over 4000 vowels were extracted for analysis. Phonetic correlates of pronunciation, notably the first and second formants, were used to quantify variation. Results indicate some change over time, including the retraction of the high back vowels, suggesting a movement toward the AAVS configuration. Additionally, we see the emergence of front vowel centralization before /r/, highlighting the role of regionality in Washington D.C. AAE speech. While traditional analyses often use EAE as a comparison, this study demonstrates the complex nature of sound change occurring within AAE.