The Centre for Celtic Studies and the Department of Contemporary English Language (DoCELu) are happy to announce a joint Celtic Reading Group / Phon&Phon meeting.
Jonathan Morris (Cardiff University)
Míša Hejná (Aarhus University)
The sociophonetics of pre-aspiration in Welsh
Abstract
Previous research has shown that pre-aspiration can be a phonemic and a variable linguistic feature susceptible to linguistic and extra-linguistic influences. In the case of Welsh, previous exploratory work has found the presence of pre-aspiration but the phonetic and phonological properties of this feature and its sociophonetic patterning in the language are not known. This paper is based on a recent study (Morris & Hejná, forthcoming) and presents analyses of the variety of Welsh spoken in Bethesda (Gwynedd). It reports the frequency of occurrence of pre-aspiration, its duration, and noisiness. As well as describing pre-aspiration, it attempts to ascertain the extent to which this feature is influenced by linguistic and extra-linguistic factors.
The results are discussed with reference to previous studies of pre-aspiration in other languages and work on phonetic variation in Welsh–English bilingual speech. Specifically, we comment on the extent to which pre-aspiration patterns identically across languages and how further work on different varieties of Welsh (and indeed Welsh Englishes) will provide a more detailed overiew of the sociophoentics of pre-aspiration in Welsh.
Thursday, 31 January 2019, 16:45, Room 109A (Collegium Novum)
Submitted by K Kaźmierski
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