FOS: Dr. Josef Fruehwald research talk Thursday, February 6th 4:30-6:00pm B-243 Wells Hall

[Wagner, Suzanne]

Dear Friends of Sociolinguistics,

Dr. Josef Fruehwald (University of Edinburgh) will be giving a research presentation titled "Is phonetic uniformity phonologically or socially grounded?" on Thursday, February 6th, from 4:30-6:00pm in B-243 Wells Hall. An abstract is below. We hope to see many of you there.

Suzanne Wagner

on behalf of the Sociolinguistics search committee

———

Dr. Josef Fruehwald

University of Edinburgh



4:30 - 6:00pm, B-243 Wells Hall



Is phonetic uniformity phonologically or socially grounded?



Diachronic Parallel Shifts are sound changes that fall outside the kind of naive physics models of chain shifts. Rather than vowels bumping and pulling against each other in a vowel space, sets of vowels all move together in parallel. At first, it is tempting to say that what unites these vowels is a common phonological representation, connecting parallel shifts with what Chodroff & Wilson (2017) have called "Target Uniformity." While this would be a victory for uniting inquiry into sound change and laboratory phonology, the situation is complicated by the fact that these vowels moving in parallel are also often correlated in their social evaluation (Watt 2000). At first glance, it is not clear how to disentagle these two sources of correlation. However, in this talk I will attempt to do just that, drawing upon data from the Philadelphia Neighborhood Corpus. By factoring out as many social influences as possible, I find that while strong correlations in some parallel shifts fall away, others remain just as strong, meaning a Target Uniformity account is a plausible one for some phonetic changes.





-----------------------
Suzanne Evans Wagner | she, her, hers
Associate Professor of Linguistics and Director of Graduate Studies
B-401 Wells Hall
Department of Linguistics and Languages
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824

Tel: +1 (517) 355-9739
wagnersu.msu.domains<https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://wagnersu.msu.domains__;!!HXCxUKc!mgGsDLZgGnuG-TWXxPQVx7SMArJ3VBofLTb3OxnM689u2wiJ9z0GXXbNq3fGPyY$>
sociolab.wagnersu.msu.domains<https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://sociolab.wagnersu.msu.domains__;!!HXCxUKc!mgGsDLZgGnuG-TWXxPQVx7SMArJ3VBofLTb3OxnM689u2wiJ9z0GXXbNdCgXsC4$>

Office hours: http://swagner.youcanbook.me<https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://swagner.youcanbook.me/__;!!HXCxUKc!mgGsDLZgGnuG-TWXxPQVx7SMArJ3VBofLTb3OxnM689u2wiJ9z0GXXbNu0CKWbs$>

Co-editor, Routledge Studies in Language Change<https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.routledge.com/books/series/RSLC/__;!!HXCxUKc!mgGsDLZgGnuG-TWXxPQVx7SMArJ3VBofLTb3OxnM689u2wiJ9z0GXXbNCFXNIyo$>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://mailman.egr.msu.edu/mailman/public/fos/attachments/20200131/cd3886a4/attachment-0001.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Fruehwald Research Presentation Flyer.pdf
Type: application/pdf
Size: 341625 bytes
Desc: Fruehwald Research Presentation Flyer.pdf
URL: <https://mailman.egr.msu.edu/mailman/public/fos/attachments/20200131/cd3886a4/attachment-0001.pdf>
-------------- next part --------------
An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed...
Name: ATT00001.txt
URL: <https://mailman.egr.msu.edu/mailman/public/fos/attachments/20200131/cd3886a4/attachment-0001.txt>