On a 2022 fieldtrip to Ecuador, we encountered a large community of Media Lengua speakers in the province of Cotopaxi where the language was thought to be dormant. This is the same region where Pieter Muysken had first documented this 'mixed language' in the 1970s. However, subsequent fieldwork thereabout by several linguists had failed to turn up…

This research paper explores the morphophonemic variations of the morpheme {N} in the Javanese language, a member of the Austronesian language family. The study aims to comprehensively analyze the various phonological and morphological processes that affect the realization of the {N} morpheme in different linguistic contexts. The research employs…

Speech is extremely variable along many different dimensions. One source of variability listeners often encounter is accented speech, in which phonological units can systematically differ from the listener's native categories. This dissertation presents five experiments testing how listeners adapt to accent-based phonological variability,…

This study seeks to uncover the theoretical bases for the production of the classical Arabic phonetic terms and their elements in the means of generating terms for both lexical semantics and conceptual semantics. The research problem is concerned with examining the roots of generating these phonetic terms and determining the categories of their…

Iterated learning models of language evolution have typically been used to study the emergence of language, rather than historical language change. We use iterated learning models to investigate historical change in the accent classes of two Korean dialects. Simulations reveal that many of the patterns of historical change can be explained as…

The paper presents the results of a complex study of ?onsonantal phonemes' syntagmatics, registered at the beginning, in the middle and at the end of the word throughout the historical development of the English language. The analysis of frequencies of consonantal clusters' actualization allowed the author to characterize the regularities of their…

This study aimed to explore the linguistic factors that influence the development and diversification of World Englishes along with implications for language teaching, learning, and policy, and to examine the trends in research related to WEs. Using a systematic review process with MAXQDA 20.2.1, the findings indicate that research on World…

The present paper addresses the study of non-arbitrariness in language within a deep learning framework. We present a set of experiments aimed at assessing the pervasiveness of different forms of non-arbitrary phonological patterns across a set of typologically distant languages. Different sequence-processing neural networks are trained in a set…

All languages change over time. English has undergone continuous change throughout its three major periods: Old English (roughly from 450 to 1100 AD), Middle English (from 1100 to 1500), and Modern English (from 1500 to the present). Sound is one of the most easily influenced parts of language to be subject to different changes. Sound change is…

Wisconsin Walloon is a heritage dialect of a threatened language in the langue d'oïl family that originated in southern Belgium and expanded to northeastern Wisconsin, USA in the mid-1850s. Walloon-speaking immigrants formed an isolated agricultural community, passing on and using the language for the next two generations until English became the…

This study is concerned with comparing the pronunciation in Southern Welsh, a Celtic language, and Cockney, an English dialect, regarding the place of articulation. The study uses a comparative method to shed light on the similarities and differences between the two accents. The data were collected from YouTube videos of speakers of Southern Welsh…

Automated alignment of transcriptions to audio files expedites the process of preparing data for acoustic analysis. Unfortunately, the benefits of auto-alignment have generally been available only to researchers studying majority languages, for which large corpora exist and for which acoustic models have been created by large-scale research…

While tonal systems have typically been classified as "pitch accent" or "true tonal", there is growing evidence that systems instead have a variety of features which vary across languages, rather than falling into discrete categories. These category labels have been used widely in literature about the languages of New Guinea,…

This dissertation is concerned with how elliptical sentences are generated. To be specific, I investigate when and in what module ellipsis occurs, and what is elided as a result of ellipsis. With regard to the first research question, I propose that XP ellipsis occurs as soon as all the featural requirements of the licensor of XP ellipsis are…

A great deal of the research on cross-linguistic phonetic influence demonstrates that a speaker's knowledge of their first language (L1) significantly affects their ability to perceive and produce sounds in any other language. While current studies show that cross-linguistic transfer occurs at the L3 level, some research suggests that properties…