Abstract
English aspiration is influenced by word structure: in general, a voiceless stop following s is unaspirated (des[t]royed), but it can be aspirated if a prefix-stem boundary intervenes (dis[th]rusts) (Baker et al. 2007). In a production study of 110 words prefixed with dis- or mis-, we show that even in prefixed words, there is variation (dis[k]laimers ∼ dis[kh]laimers), and that aspiration in such words is correlated with word and stem frequency. The more frequent the word, the less likely aspiration, but the more frequent the stem, the more likely aspiration. This contrasting frequency effect is characteristic of the type of competition Hay posits between whole-word lexical access and morphologically decomposed lexical access (Hay 2003): frequent words will tend to be accessed as wholes (and therefore behave as though there is no prefix-stem boundary), but frequent stems will encourage decomposed, prefix + stem access. In order to test whether there is active online competition, as opposed to simply frequency effects that are somehow lexicalized, we also conduct a priming experiment. We find that exposing participants to other prefixed words encourages them to aspirate target words, as compared to when they have been exposed to similar but non-prefixed words. These results provide evidence for active online competition.
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Notes
The Baker/Smith/Hawkins experiment, with only sixteen words (from fourteen lemmas) was not designed to investigate frequency effects systematically, but the researchers note that the pseudoprefixed words were more frequent and less semantically decomposable, and conjecture that they are treated as single units.
One additional participant was excluded for learning English at age 9, and another for equipment failure.
For example, Zue 1976 found an average VOT of about 25 msec. for English /t/ in utterances like /həˈstɑt/, a non-aspirating environment, and about 35 msec. in utterances like /həˈstɹɑt/, though this was still far less than the VOT for aspirated /t/ in an utterance like /həˈtɑk/, about 70 msec. Similarly, Klatt 1975 found that /t/’s VOT in English words beginning with /stV/ was on average 23 msec, and in words beginning /stɹV/ it was 35 msec (vs. 65 msec for words beginning with /tV/).
Because we added SUBTLEX-us frequencies to our data and performed model selection anew, the regression models reported here are not the same as those reported in Zuraw & Peperkamp 2015, but overall the results are very similar.
There were no random slopes included. Exploratory plots showed that slopes were very similar across participants for all variables except the interaction of word and stem frequency, but adding a random slope for that interaction produced non-convergence.
We added 1 to all frequencies before taking the log, to avoid taking the log of 0.
We used the vif() function in R’s car package (Fox and Weisberg 2010) to check the model’s degree of multicollinearity. VIF (variance inflation factor) values of 10 or larger are generally considered problematic. The largest VIF value in our model was 2.2, indicating that multicollinearity was not a serious problem for this model.
The highest VIF value found was 1.73, indicating that multicollinearity was not a serious problem in the model. (See footnote 7.)
In a pilot experiment, we used unproductively prefixed primes (conjugate) instead of totally unprefixed primes. Moreover, we did not separate the prime types into two blocks, but instead mixed unproductively and productively prefixed primes within both blocks, to test whether the immediately preceding prime influenced pronunciation. (We also did not include the meaning-judgement task described below.) The results showed that it was indeed possible for the same speaker, in the same experimental session, to pronounce the same word both ways (aspirated and unaspirated). Yet, there was no clear correlation between pronunciation and immediately preceding prime type. In this experiment we therefore strengthened the design: the two prime types are maximally different (productively prefixed vs. completely unprefixed) and occur in separate blocks, and a meaning-judgement task was added to ensure participants paid attention to the primes.
An additional three participants were recorded but excluded because their variety of English was non-U.S. (UK or South Asia).
The remaining participant reported beginning to learn English at age 15, which we take to be an error (perhaps 15 months was intended).
Median SUBTLEX-us (Brysbaert and New 2009) frequency count of target items was 41 (minimum 2, maximum 138). Median for prefixed primes was 26 (range: 0-362), and for prefixed fillers 5 (0-85). Median for unprefixed primes was 24.5 (range: 3-475), and for unprefixed fillers 14.5 (0-674). T-tests on log frequencies show the following significant frequency differences among sets: targets > {prefixed primes, unprefixed primes}, prefixed fillers < all others.
Discards was hard to categorize, because to discard has both a transparent sense (when playing cards, to remove a card from one’s hand) and an opaque sense (to throw away).
Experiment 1 produced similar results: as shown in Appendix A, mistaken and mistakes were aspirated by 12% and 0% of participants, whereas mistook was aspirated by 88%.
Alternatively, we could take as the dependent variable whether the aspirated token is in the prefix-prime block versus the unprefixed-prime block, such that the coefficient of interest is the intercept, and add the counterbalancing factor of block order as a fixed effect. The result is the same: no effect of block order, but the intercept is significantly different from zero (p = 0.04), indicating that the aspirated member of a perfect pair is significantly more likely to be in the prefixed block, across both block orders.
With only 20 target words, Experiment 2 was not designed to test frequency effects, and probably lacks the statistical power to do so. At a reviewer’s suggestion we added frequency factors to our model (log word CD count, log stem frequency, whether the stem exists as a freestanding word), singly and in a group, and did not find them to have a significant influence. We also tried adding word class to our model (only noun and verb, since there were so few adjectives and adverbs in this model), but it did not contribute significantly either. This is not to say that frequency and word class don’t matter, but our experimental design makes it unlikely that we could detect their effect.
p = 0.80 for block order, using a linear mixed-effects regression model with VOT change from first to second block as the dependent variable
Hanique and Ernestus (2012) argue that studies do not support a role for morphological decomposability in the fine details of phonetic reduction. (More recently, Plag and Ben Hedia (2018) do find effects of decomposability on the durations of un- and dis-, though not in- and -ly, in English corpus data.) We focus therefore on studies that, like our own, deal with variation between discrete phonological categories.
While there would be many choices of productively prefixed primes, such as misremember, there are few choices of unprefixed primes beginning with the same strings for comparison (about twenty-five in CELEX, depending on what one includes), and nearly all of those still suggest the negative meaning of dis- or mis- even if they are not productively prefixed, such as disappoint or dismantle.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by Faculty Research grants from the UCLA Academic Senate’s Committee on Research, as well as by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-17-CE28-0007-01, ANR-17-EURE-0017). We are grateful to members of the UCLA Phonology seminar and the audience of the 2018 DGfS workshop on ‘Variation and phonetic detail in spoken morphology’ for comments and discussion. We especially thank the many undergraduate research assistants who processed sound files, coded data, and ran participants: Scarlet Yejin Cho, Peter Hee Hwan, Scott Boegeman, Abigail Carlson, Evan Davis-Palley, Liam Donohue, Jennifer Gethers, Patrick Ryan Kelly, Jessie Ng, Amy Tang, Zhuoren Tong, Zachary Thomas, Stephanie Wang, Chris Yang, and Michael Zandona.
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Appendices
Appendix A: Materials for Experiment 1, with results
Target words:
mean VOT (msec) | standard deviation | number unaspirated | number aspirated | number unsure | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
discards | 39.4 | 22.1 | 10 | 4 | 2 |
disclaimers | 61.3 | 26.2 | 5 | 10 | 1 |
disclosing | 50.9 | 18.1 | 5 | 7 | 4 |
disclosures | 47.9 | 17.3 | 6 | 5 | 4 |
disco | 24.8 | 8.3 | 16 | 0 | 0 |
discolorations | 60.2 | 19.3 | 2 | 12 | 2 |
discolored | 57.7 | 22.8 | 5 | 10 | 1 |
discoloring | 69.3 | 25.4 | 3 | 12 | 1 |
discomfort | 51.5 | 19.2 | 3 | 13 | 0 |
disconcerting | 46.1 | 15.8 | 1 | 12 | 1 |
disconcerts | 55.4 | 16.1 | 0 | 11 | 2 |
disconnect | 48.4 | 13.4 | 1 | 13 | 2 |
discontent | 48.9 | 18.8 | 2 | 14 | 0 |
discontinued | 45.2 | 11.8 | 1 | 14 | 1 |
discontinuity | 60.7 | 20.8 | 0 | 13 | 1 |
Filler words:
collapse | considerately | impairing | innovate | reduce | replaceable |
collapsed | consignment | impaling | inquired | reductions | replenished |
collated | consistencies | imparted | inscription | refinement | replenishments |
collating | consolidate | impatient | insecticide | refiner | replica |
collectors | conspired | impeached | insomnia | reflector | replicas |
collide | constrain | imperatives | inspects | refresher | reported |
collided | constraining | imported | inspiring | refrigerators | represses |
combined | constricted | imposed | installed | refunded | republicanism |
commanders | constrictions | impound | instilling | refute | repugnance |
commandment | constructed | impoverished | insulated | refuting | repulsed |
commissary | constructive | impregnate | insulted | regained | requesting |
commissioned | construing | imprisoned | insure | regalia | required |
commodities | consulates | improper | intention | regarded | rerunning |
communion | consultant | imprudence | intern | regatta | researching |
commuted | consultants | inaccuracies | interned | regattas | resemblance |
commuting | consummately | incisors | interning | regress | resembled |
compact | contacted | inciting | internment | regressed | reserving |
companion | contagiously | include | intimating | regressing | resettlement |
compartment | container | incompetency | intruded | regurgitate | resided |
compelled | contaminated | incongruous | invade | regurgitates | residual |
competitor | contemptible | inconsistencies | invading | rehearsals | resilience |
compile | contended | incurs | invariably | reinsuring | resistances |
compiles | contestants | indented | inversion | rejoice | resistors |
compiling | contextual | indestructibility | invested | rejoicings | resort |
Appendix B: Materials for Experiment 2
Target words and associated primes:
target word | prefixed prime | unprefixed prime |
|---|---|---|
discards | uproots | laments |
disclaimers | coequals | placebos |
disclosing | enriching | policing |
discolored | unfailing | harmonic |
discomfort | injustice | momentum |
Prefixed fillers:
befriend | enraged | indelicately | rearmament | unfathomably |
begrudging | enrapturing | inelegantly | redeploy | unflinching |
coexist | enriched | ineligibly | refashioning | unleashes |
coexistence | enriches | ingratitude | reforest | unlikelihood |
cohabit | enshrouding | inhabitant | refreshes | unravels |
derails | ensnare | insubordination | rehabilitation | unreasonably |
dethrone | enthroning | insufferable | reinsure | unseemly |
embittered | envenoming | maladjustment | reran | unsightly |
embodying | foreshadow | prearrange | subdivide | unswerving |
emboldened | foreshadowing | predigest | transforms | untiringly |
enable | foreshortening | prerecord | unalterably | unutterable |
encircle | forewarn | presuppose | unbeliever | unvarnished |
endanger | immoderately | reacts | undoubted | unzip |
endangers | immodesty | readjustment | unearthly | unzipped |
enfolding | inadequately | reaffirm | unending | upholds |
enlarges | indecency | reappear | unfalteringly | withhold |
Unprefixed fillers:
ballooning | cements | horizons | monastic | pollutes |
battalions | cocoons | hyphenation | negates | questionnaire |
benevolently | cultivation | idyllic | neglect | rapacious |
bombastic | facetious | imagines | nomadic | rumination |
bravado | fallacious | lamenting | nominee | salacious |
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Zuraw, K., Lin, I., Yang, M. et al. Competition between whole-word and decomposed representations of English prefixed words. Morphology 31, 201–237 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11525-020-09354-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11525-020-09354-6