The Washo language, one of the most critically endangered and poorly documented of languages of North America, is now only used by a few elderly speakers who live in several townships near the California Nevada border southeast of Lake Tahoe. Washo is only minimally documented, with no comprehensive grammar or dictionary, except for William Jacobsen’s 1964 doctoral dissertation from the University of California, Berkeley, which contains mainly a phonological and morphosyntactic description of the language. The main objective of this project is a detailed study of the phonetics and phonology (at both the allophonic and morpho-phonological levels) of the Washo language since a solid understanding of the phonetics and phonology of the language is paramount to understanding the other components of the language (e.g., the morpho-syntax, syntax, and discourse). Another priority for this project is the creation of a web-accessible digital archive to make Washo data accessible to scholars and, of equal or greater importance, to the native community itself.

Publications:

• Yu, Alan C. L. To appear. The phonetics of quantity alternation in Washo. Journal of Phonetics.
• Yu, Alan C. L. 2006. Prosodically-conditioned segmental fission in Washo. In Rebecca Cover & Yumi Kim (eds.) The Proceedings of the 31st Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society. 513-524.
• Yu, Alan C. L. 2005 Quantity, stress, and reduplication in Washo. Phonology 22(3): 437-475.
• Patrick Midtlyng & Alan C. L. Yu. 2005. Phonetic structures of Washo. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 117, 2490.
• Midtlyng, Patrick. 2005. Washo Morphophonology: Hiatus resolution at the edges –or- Let them be vowels. In C. Jany and L Harper (eds.) Proceedings from the 8th Workshop on American Indigenous Langauges. Santa Barbara Working Papers in Linguistics 16: 50-62.

• Laryngealized resonants in Washo (Robert Peachey & Alan Yu)
• The Interaction between stress assignment and suffix ordering in Washo (Eric Morley & Alan Yu)
• Pitch anchoring in Washo (Justin Murphy and Alan Yu)
• Switch reference marking in Washo (Kjersti Stensrud & Robert Peachey)

Why are some phonological patterns common, while others are rare or nonexistent? Two factors are commonly identified as the main culprits of differential phonologization (cf. Moreton To appear): pattern selectivity, where cognitive biases make certain patterns difficult or impossible to acquire even from perfect training data; and phonetic precursor robustness, where the intrinsic frequency and subtlety of a phonetic precursor play a decisive role in the likelihood of phonologization. In the final analysis, an adequate theory of phonological typology and phonologization will likely have to recognize the contributions of both factors. One main focus of investigation at the Phonology Lab is the elucidation of the contribution of these factors and their inter-dependencies. Two such projects are currently underway:

Differential normalization => differential phonologization: How should phonetic precursor robustness be measured? While systematic variation in speech production and perception may be commonplace, the mapping from variation in speech to the emergence of sound patterns is not at all trivial. This project investigates the hypothesis that differential normalization in speech perception and production may explain the fact of differential phonologization. In particular, we argue that the robustness of a phonetic precursor must be measured in both articulatory and perceptual terms. That is, if a phonetic precursor is observed in the articulatory domain, then the effect of perceptual normalization must be taken into account. Similarly, if a phonetic precursor has its origin in speech perception, then potential articulatory compensatory measures must be considered as well. The nature of the normalization effect may ultimately determine how likely a phonetic precursor to a sound pattern will prevail. If normalization, be it perceptual or articulatory, is robust, then the chances of a phonetic precursor becoming phonologized should be considerably undermined.

Publications:

• Yu, Alan C. L. To appear. Tonal effects on perceived vowel duration. In Laboratory Phonology 10. Mouton de Gruyter.
• Yu, Alan C. L. 2005. Deriving speaking rate effects on tonal realization without varying the speech rate. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 117, 2543.
• Yu, Alan C. L. 2005. Some methodological issues in phonetic typology research: Cantonese contour tone revisited. In Pawel Nowak & Corey Yoquelet (eds.) The Proceedings of the 29th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society.
• Yu, Alan C. L. 2003. Contour tone induced lengthening in Cantonese. In M. J. Solé, D. Recasens, and J. Romero (eds.) The Proceedings of the 15th International Congress of Phonetic Science, Barcelona. 2381-2384.

On-going projects:

• Explaining differential phonologization with differential normalization in speech perception and production.
• The phonetics and phonology of Cantonese contour tone induced lengthening

The role of gradient phonotactic effects in phonologization: When language changes, new patterns emerge and old patterns are replaced. Much research has focused on the source of change and the systemic effect on the language after the change. Little is known about the mechanism that propels a change to progress in one direction over another, however. Speakers’ knowledge of the phonotactics of their language has been implicated as a potential arbiter in the direction of change. It has been suggested that phonotactics may influence the selection of a prevailing variant when multiple phonetic variants are available at the moment of sound change (Blevins' CHOICE). Similarly, in the situation of loanword adaptation, the method of adaptation may depend on language-specific phonotactics as well. The goal of this project is to investigate the link between speakers’ knowledge of phonotactics and sound change.

Upcoming presentation:

• Kirby, James and Alan Yu. “Hidden knowledge of syllable gap well-formedness.” To be presented at the Workshop on Experimental Approaches to Optimality theory, May 18-20, 2007.