The theory of language change has worked primarily with four basic language change profiles: generational change, age-grading, communal change, and stability. This paper focuses primarily on age-grading, the process whereby each generation undergoes a specific language change at the same age-related stage within their lifespan. Despite the necessary influence of biological change on the ageing body, the explanations put forward to explain why and how age-grading occurs have been primarily social. Previous work also often relies on the study of adolescents. Following the distinction between chronological, social, and biological ageing, this study provides an overview of biological factors which may also provide explanatory power, with a focus on phonetic variation. Considering biological factors can be important in order to avoid interpreting cases of biological age-grading as (solely) social in nature, and as cases of generational change rather than age-grading.

Age is one of the key variables in the field of language variation and change (LVC). The vast majority of experimental work generally views a speaker's date of birth—chronological age—as a good reflection of both their social age, for example, which generation they identify with and how strongly and their biological age, that is, the physiological age of their body. This paper aims to provide the reader with tools to tease apart these three ways of conceptualising the variable of age. It reviews qualitative and quantitative methods from fields adjacent to LVC that will enable linguists of different theoretical interests to tap into biological and social aspects of ageing. In doing so, it provides a practical manual for linguists wishing to work from a more multifaceted understanding of one of the key variables in many linguistic subfields.

Det danske sprog anses af mange lørnere som svært at lære, og især anses det som svært at blive flydende i. Dette bliver ofte tilskrevet den svære danske udtale. Artiklen her viser, at sprogskolernes håndtering af udtaleundervisning kan bidrage til voksne andetsprogstaleres udtaleproblemer. Her undersøges voksne lørneres og underviseres iagttagelser omkring det svære danske sprog, og undervisningen af det. I denne undersøgelse inddrages en analyse af undervisningsmateriale brugt ved voksenundervisning i dansk som andetsprog, og en diskussion af danskeksamener for andetsprogstalere. Vores resultater indikerer at udtale, og især vokaler, anses af både lørnere og undervisere som særligt svære at mestre. Samtidig undervises der ifølge vores informanter ikke nok i vokaludtale på de danske sprogskoler. Selvom de to informantgrupper generelt er relativt enige er især mængden af undervisning i udtale et kontrastpunkt mellem lørnere og undervisere. Vi diskuterer denne forskel, samt betydningen af meget lidt undervisningsmateriale der fokuserer på udtale efter DU-modul 1, og et manglende fokus på udtale i danskeksamenerne.

Most of our knowledge of Danish f0 variation and intonation is based on the work of Grønnum and colleagues, who developed an a-phonological model in which a series of repeated “default” contours are superpositioned onto an overarching f0 slope. The current paper tests a range of predictions stemming from this model, most importantly the adequacy of analysing f0 modulations as a string of repeated contours differing in range but not in shape. To facilitate comparison with earlier work in the area, our material is based on read speech, 45 speakers of Jutland Danish participated in the experiment. Analyses of f0 in sentences of differing complexity supplied little evidence in favour of the existence of default contours. Instead, our acoustic data revealed an array of f0 shapes associated with various prosodic anchor points, which are influenced in both range and shape by positional context and the presence or absence of focus.

Models of second language (L2) speech learning are designed to account for phonological acquisition in the L2. Both the Perceptual Assimilation Model of L2 speech learning (PAM-L2; Best & Tyler, 2007) and the Speech Learning Model (SLM; Flege, 1995, 2003) have based their predictions on L2 acquisition by immersion in a predominantly L2 environment. However, many second languages are learned via formal instruction in a foreign language (FL) classroom, often in the learner’s native language environment. Piske (2007) outlined how the principles of SLM might apply to the FL classroom, concluding that formal instruction should begin at an early age, there should be intensive foreign language use over an extended period of time, learners should have exposure to high quality input, and there should be training focused specifi cally on perception and production. The aim of this paper is to explore how the princ iples of PAM-L2 might complement those suggestions. The paper provides a thorough overview of PAM-L2, before outlining key characteristics of FL learning in the classroom that are likely to impact on L2 category acquisition, either positively or negatively. It also discusses methodological factors to be taken into consideration for any study investigating L2 category acquisition from a PAM-L2 perspective. Applying PAM-L2 to the FL classroom, the paper concludes that FL students need learning experiences that provide opportunities for them to discover the phonetic differences that signal phonological contrast in the L2. These experiences need to be provided at the earliest possible stages of learning, prior to the establishment of a large L2 vocabulary. A range of suggestions is provided for how PAM-L2 principles might be incorporated into FL learning curricula to maximise the opportunity for acquiring sensitivity to L2 phonological distinctions. Anne Mette Nyvad, Michaela Hejná, Anders Højen, Anna Bothe Jespersen & Mette Hjortshøj Sørensen (Eds.), A Sound Approach to Language Matters – In Honor of Ocke-Schwen Bohn (pp. 607-630). Dept. of English, School of Communication & Culture, Aarhus University. © The author(s), 2019.

This paper investigates the perception of rising and falling F0 in statements and questions in Belfast English. This variety is known for its statement rises, realised as rise-plateaux, but recently, younger speakers have begun producing another statement rise, namely uptalk. This study presented 20 listeners of two age groups with stimuli stepwise manipulated to form high and low falls, as well as rises with different elbow and peak heights, and corresponding either to simple rises or rise-plateaux. Listeners were asked to identify stimuli as statements or questions. Results show that listeners primarily used rise shape and peak height to differentiate between statements and questions: simple rises with high peaks were more likely to be rated as questions. However, younger listeners exhibited signs that this distinction is blurring, with more simple rises interpreted as statements and less clear-cut distinctions between low, medium and high peaks.

The Natural Referent Vowel framework makes strong, testable predictions that have already provided fruitful directions for new research. Largely undiscussed, however, is the role that vocal tract normalization plays in the perception of vowels by infants. Two issues arise: First, when presented with a single vowel, how does the infant know whether it is truly a referent vowel or not? Second, if, unlike in all previous studies, vowels attributable to different vocal tracts are perceived, does the infant normalize or not? The fi rst might be answerable with neural imaging. The second can be tested behaviorally, though the design is diffi cult both mechanically and

This study adopts an experimental approach to the Conrad Phenomenon, i.e. the phenomenon that second language (L2) learners can perform remarkably better in some aspects of their L2 while performing poorly at others. L2 performance in syntax, phonetics and phonology, and the lexicon in four L2 learner groups differing in L2 experience and native language background was examined and correlations between L2 performance in the three domains revealed a general trend of positive relations between domains, thus suggesting that the Conrad Phenomenon is uncommon. The strongest between-domain relation was observed between the lexicon and phonetics and phonology, thus supporting the notion of lexical facilitation in L2 speech acquisition.

The contributions in this Festschrift were written by Ocke’s current and former PhD-students, colleagues and research collaborators. The Festschrift is divided into six sections, moving from the smallest building blocks of language, through gradually expanding objects of linguistic inquiry to the highest levels of description - all of which have formed a part of Ocke’s career, in connection with his teaching and/or his academic productions: “Segments”, “Perception of Accent”, “Between Sounds and Graphemes”, “Prosody”, “Morphology and Syntax” and “Second Language Acquisition”. Each one of these illustrates a sound approach to language matters.

This article introduces student readers to the realm of the interdisciplinary, with a primary focus on the humanities. We first introduce interdisciplinarity and other related terms as concepts. We then present eight specific examples, on which we illustrate interdisciplinary research. Finally, we address the question of when one should be interdisciplinary.

This paper presents work in progress on the phonetic realization of uptalk rises in Northern Irish English, a variety which is well-known for another type of rising intonation, the rise-plateau(-slump) (Cruttenden 1997; Grabe 2002; Ladd 2008). However, a recent pilot study has shown that the steeper and more steadily rising uptalk rise, which is mainly associated with American and Antipodean Englishes, is now found not only in Southern British English (cf. Arvaniti and Atkins 2016), but also in Northern Ireland. For this study, 6 female speakers were recorded while taking part in a Map Task and approximately 3 minutes of speech was examined. Intonational rises were labeled using the IViE guidelines (see Grabe et al. 2000; Grabe 2002) and f0 measurements were taken at 10 intervals between the low starting points and peaks of each rise. Rises were then assigned to either the rise-plateau or uptalk categories according to the phonological label assigned and the steepness, height and steadiness of the rise. This study thus provides confirmation that Northern Irish English speakers really use uptalk rises, and acoustic evidence of how these differ from the variety’s traditional rise-plateaux.

This paper investigates the differing distributions and phonetic properties of declarative rises in the English of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australian speakers from Sydney. Declarative rises in both varieties can be divided into 5 broad contour types based on f0 trajectory. It is shown that Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal speakers use very similar amounts of declarative rises, both overall and within the 5 rise types. However, there is a robust difference in the height of the rises, with Aboriginal speakers consistently producing rises 2 semitones below the standard Australian English speakers. This makes declarative rises a potential marker of ethnicity for the Aboriginal speakers, and highlights the need to look beyond linguistic features that are stereotypically associated with a variety when determining group differences.

Listeners of different languages have been reported to vary significantly in prominence perception tasks. We know very little, however, about which exact cues different listeners use in these tasks. In this study, we examined the role of duration in the perception of prominence in both typologically different and related languages. The stimuli consisted of the disyllabic logatome for which the durations of the first and second syllable were systematically manipulated. 80 listeners (8 varieties*10 listeners/variety) judged the relative prominence of the two syllables. We found that differences in the sensitivity to duration cues between varieties of the same language can be equal in magnitude to those found for typologically unrelated languages. Results are discussed in light of prosodic typology and speech perception.