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Changes in articulation accompanying functional changes in word usage

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 July 2010

Mária Gósy  and
Viktória Horváth
Mária Gósy
Affiliation:
Department of Phonetics, Research Institute for Linguistics, Hungarian Academy of Sciencesgosy@nytud.hu, horviki@nytud.hu
Viktória Horváth
Affiliation:
Department of Phonetics, Research Institute for Linguistics, Hungarian Academy of Sciencesgosy@nytud.hu, horviki@nytud.hu
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Abstract

Two words in present-day Hungarian, the conjunction tehát ‘that is’ and ‘consequently’ and the pronoun ilyen ‘like this’ seem to be undergoing a functional change, acquiring the function of fillers, while retaining their former lexical function, too. Twenty narratives were drawn from the Hungarian Spontaneous Speech Corpus (BEA), to analyze the acoustic-phonetic patterns of these words. Both words showed significant differences in duration depending on function. The first and second formant values of the conjunction tehát showed significant differences depending on whether it was used as a filler or in its original function as a conjunction. The formants of the stressed vowel in the pronoun ilyen did not show any differences with either males or females, but the second formant of the unstressed vowel, depending on function, showed significant variations with male subjects. Apparently, females make an unconscious distinction between the two functions only by varying the time structure of the word. Our data confirmed that these words are indeed undergoing a functional change, which is manifested in changes of their temporal patterns and, to some extent, in the articulation of their vowels.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the International Phonetic Association , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , August 2010 , pp. 135 - 161
Copyright
Copyright © International Phonetic Association 2010

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