Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, Linguistics

Sociolinguistic variationism has contributed much to our understanding of identity and identity construction, including with respect to gender, showing that identity is not simply one's self-identification but constructed through sociolinguistic elements including indexicality and style. However, much research on sociolinguistic style and indexicality within variationism has studied fairly homogenous populations of language users, and even variationist language and gender research has focused primarily on speakers with only one degree of separation from the unmarked white, straight, middle class, cisgender norm (i.e., gay, cisgender white men), leaving open questions about the application of the social meaning of variables to those whose identities place them more than one degree outside of this norm. Though it is known that social meaning is shaped in the interface between production and perception within variationist sociolinguistics, little work has integrated the two, especially for marginalized speakers. Since racialized and gender non-conforming speakers must rely in large part on normative social meanings of sociolinguistic variables in order to construct their non-normative identities, ideology, power, and identity at the production-perception interface impact how these individuals navigate the sociolinguistic landscape. This dissertation thus explores how ideology and power manifest in the sociolinguistic identity construction of Black and white nonbinary speakers through both qualitative and quantitative analyses of both sociolinguistic production and perception, questioning the semiotic tools that these individuals use for resistance to hegemonic gender norms, with a focus on fronted /s/, a variable robustly tied to gender in previous work. The first study uses qualitative, grounded theory analyses of interviews with twenty Black and white nonbinary speakers to develop a picture of the styles that these individuals orient to, situating them within grea (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Kathryn Campbell-Kibler (Advisor); J Calder (Committee Member); Donald Winford (Committee Member); Anna Babel (Committee Member) Subjects: Gender; Gender Studies; Linguistics; Sociolinguistics

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2019, Linguistics

Non-binary speech is understudied in the realm of sociolinguistics. Previous studies on non-binary speech (Kirtley 2015; Gratton 2016; Jas 2018) suggest that non-binary speakers are able to make use of linguistic variables that have been tied to binary gender in novel ways, often dependent on social context and goals, though these studies are limited in scope, considering eight or fewer non-binary talkers in their studies. Research into sociolinguistic style (Eckert 2008; Campbell-Kibler 2011) emphasizes the ways that multiple linguistic and extralinguistic variables can be employed simultaneously to construct coherent styles, leaving room for speaker race to be included in the stylistic context (Pharao et al. 2014). Zimman's (2017) study on transmasculine speakers showed that speakers can employ binary gendered linguistic variables in speech styles to position themselves towards or against normative binary gender. The current study considers how twenty non-binary speakers, stratified by sex assigned at birth and race, use /s/ and f0, variables which tied to gender in previous research, alongside clothing to construct non-binary gendered styles. Results further support that race is an important construct in understanding gendered speech, as Black non-binary speakers produce /s/ differently with respect to self-identified masculinity than do white non-binary speakers. Overall, non-binary speakers align with other speakers who position themselves with non-normative gender expressions through their use of /s/ and f0.

Committee: Kathryn Campbell-Kibler (Advisor); Cynthia Clopper (Committee Member) Subjects: Gender; Linguistics

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2018, East Asian Languages and Literatures

The thesis draws upon both quantitative and qualitative approaches to linguistic variation. Specifically, for the quantitative study, the thesis conducts a sociophonetic case study of an LGBT talk show in Taiwan, with a focus on one gay speaker's variation in pitch range. In this quantitative approach, statistically significant differences are found across the subject's various speaking situations. The subject, HY, exhibits a considerable cross-situational variation: When HY participates in the talk show both as a guest and as a host his average maximum f0 is higher than as an applicant. More crucially, when HY is attending the talk show as a guest, his f0 pitch range is significantly wider than as an applicant and a host. To explain the phonetic variation, the thesis proposes that the sociophonetic variation in pitch range is motivated by interactional personas that are subject to specific speaking situations. However, the sociophonetic variation observed in the talk show is just part of the story of HY's stylistic performance. In order to tell the entire story, the study also includes a qualitative study via the analysis of discourse to examine two conversational excerpts where HY participates in the talk show as a guest. HY uses some linguistic and gestural features that have been ideologically associated with Chinese women, such as the female term of reference laoniang 'old woman' or a typical feminine gesture, such as tucking hair behind the ears. In this thesis, I seek an explanation for the relationship between these semiotic features observed in the talk show and HY's gay identity. Adopting the social constructionist paradigm, the study demonstrates that the form-meaning relationship is not a one-to-one mapping, but is mediated through stance-taking. According to the notion of indexicality, the linguistic and gestural features take on their semiotic value through HY's stance in the LGBT talk show and these interactional stances are ideologically re-a (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Chan Marjorie K.M. (Advisor); Xie Zhiguo (Committee Member) Subjects: Asian Studies; Language; Linguistics; Sociolinguistics

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2018, Spanish and Portuguese

This dissertation focuses on variable vowel reduction in Mexico City Spanish, a salient feature of the pronunciation of this dialect in which a word like tomates “tomatoes” may be variably realized with a shortened, voiceless, or weakened final vowel. My research builds on studies of vowel reduction in other languages and varieties, and places Mexican Spanish within the typology of languages and varieties that variably reduce vowels in this way. My investigation of the phenomenon is the first to examine acoustic data to (i) understand the acoustic properties of these reduced vowels, (ii) describe and categorize them, and (iii) analyze their patterning with regard to linguistic and social factors. To investigate this issue, I conducted fieldwork onsite in Mexico City in 2015 and 2016, and recorded speech samples with 73 native speakers, women and men from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, between the ages of 21 and 81. The recordings include a sociolinguistic interview designed to elicit spontaneous informal conversational speech. Approximately 160 vowel tokens were acoustically analyzed for each of 40 of those participants using Praat (Boersma & Weenink 2016). For all vowels not adjacent to another vowel or glide, I measured the segment duration as well as the duration of full modal voicing within the segment, for a total of 6,504 tokens. Along with the results from the acoustic analysis, each token was coded for target vowel, surrounding segmental context, stress, position relative to lexical stress, syllable type, word position, speaker age, gender, and socioeconomic status, in order to execute statistical models that test the relationships between linguistic and social factors and vowel reduction. My findings from the acoustic analysis indicate that various types of reduction in the articulation of vowels occur, including a range of voice weakening, including devoicing, and weakened/breathy voicing, as well as extreme shortening. The findings from the i (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Rebeka Campos-Astorkiza (Advisor); Terrell Morgan (Committee Member); Fernando Martínez-Gil (Committee Member) Subjects: Linguistics

Artium Baccalaureus (AB), Ohio University, 2018, French

This study examines the history of the French and German languages in the context of Alsace, a region in northeastern France. Alsatian is a unique variety in that it represents a community of speakers of a dialect that has been both repressed and supported in turn by the state. This study begins by examining the earliest known roots of both French and German, and gradually narrows in scope to a sociophonetic analysis of French among native Alsatian speakers.

Committee: Lois Vines (Advisor) Subjects: Linguistics

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2015, Spanish and Portuguese

This dissertation focuses on Highland Ecuadorian Spanish (HES), more specifically in the city of Loja, exploring how linguistic and social factors interact to condition a sound change in progress. While Lojano Spanish has many distinctive features, I examine intervocalic /s/ voicing, that is the variable pronunciation of /s/ as [s] or [z] (for example [masalto] ~ [mazalto] `taller'). This feature has been attested in a few modern dialects of Spanish, most prominently in HES (cf. Robinson 1979) and Catalonian Spanish (McKinnon 2012, Davidson 2014). The present work provides a comprehensive look at this feature in Lojano Spanish by investigating both production and perception. First, I analyze the production of this feature by carrying out a detailed acoustic analysis of 31 recordings with native Lojanos. The recordings include both sociolinguistic interviews, as well as a reading task. I measured over 2,969 tokens of /s/ for percent voicing and examined the influence of the following factors: word position, stress, speech rate, preceding/following vowel, and participants' age and gender. Voicing is analyzed as both a continuous dependent variable (percent voicing) as well as a categorical variable (voicing category). Following Campos-Astorkiza (2014), voicing category is considered a tripartite distinction: voiceless (0-20%), partially voiced (20-90%) and fully voiced (100%). Overall, the production results show that /s/ voicing in Lojano Spanish is not categorical, but rather is a gradient, variable process. Increasingly voiced realizations are more likely in faster speech; in word final and initial contexts as opposed to medial; when /s/ is between unstressed syllables; before non-high vowels; and in the speech of younger participants and male participants. Second, I explore the perception of /s/ voicing in Lojano Spanish by conducting an online experiment. Twenty-four native speakers of HES participated in two tasks, the design of which was adapted from B (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Terrell Morgan (Advisor); Rebeka Campos-Astorkiza (Advisor); Scott Schwenter (Committee Member); Anna Babel (Committee Member) Subjects: Linguistics; Sociolinguistics

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2015, Spanish and Portuguese

Dialects of Spanish in the Caribbean and southern Spain are described as "switching" liquids in syllable-final position, resulting in the neutralization of the two sounds. This dissertation considers liquid variation in San Juan Spanish (SJS), which is frequently cited as neutralizing /r/ to /l/ such that arma ('weapon') and alma ('soul') are both pronounced [al.ma]. In light of recent work suggesting that neutralization is often incomplete, i.e. small but significant differences exist between two sounds previous considered to be merged, this study examines the formant structure (F1, F2, F3, F4) and duration of rhotics and laterals in SJS to determine the neutralization status of /r/ and /l/. This dissertation also features a perception experiment which tests how well SJS listeners are able to hear acoustic differences between the liquids. Using twenty-four sociolinguistic interviews with SJS speakers, I extracted 2,212 vowel+/r/ and 728 vowel+/l/ sequences. The conditionings of word position, stress, vowel, preceding and following consonants, gender, and age are considered for two separate data analyses. The first analysis considers the conditioning on the manner of articulation of the liquid. Then, approximant liquids, which are the site of potential neutralization, were analyzed for formant structure and duration. In order to develop an understanding of the dynamic formant trajectories, seven equidistant points were sampled for all four formants. These measurements were submitted to both linear regression analyses and Smoothing Spline ANOVAs. To test liquid perception, an online survey with vowel+liquid audio clips with varying formant structure was presented to both SJS and northern Spain Castilian Spanish (CS) listeners. The results for approximant liquid production indicate that rhotics are far more variant in SJS than laterals and their realization depends on linguistic and social factors. Therefore, I propose viewing this dialect as possessing a liquid c (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Rebeka Campos-Astorkiza (Advisor); Scott Schwenter (Advisor); Terrell Morgan (Committee Member) Subjects: Foreign Language; Language; Linguistics

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2014, Linguistics

This study investigates and compares the long and short term flexibility of participants' production and perception, by looking at the relationship between topic-based shifting, and second dialect acquisition. 97 participants in London, UK, and Columbus, OH, were recruited to participate in this study, and belonged to one of six categories: English expatriates living in the US, American expatriates living in the UK, English fans of American football, American fans of the English Premier League, and English and American controls. The study consisted of an experimental task followed by an interview. In the experiment, participants rotated between a reading and a listening task. In the reading task, participants read words containing three variables of interest (intervocalic /t/, non-prevocalic /r/, and BATH), across American and English themed topics. In the listening task, participants were played English and American speakers in noise, and were asked to transcribe what they heard. In the production data, we find evidence of second dialect acquisition for all three variables in American participants, including non-migrants with substantial second dialect contact. English participants, however, only show effects of acquisition for intervocalic /t/. I suggest, based on comments in the interview data of my participants, that this asymmetry may at least in part be due to the relative prestige of British and American English, which motivates one group of speakers to maintain, and one group of speakers to lose, their native dialects. We find a robust effect of topic on rhoticity for all speaker groups, and weaker effects of topic on intervocalic /t/ and BATH, that are carried by American fans and controls. Short and long term shifts between dialects do not show signs of being related, and a case can be made that there is actually a negative relationship between experience and topic-based shifting: we see more topic-based shifting in participants with the le (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Kathryn Campbell-KIbler (Advisor); Cynthia Clopper (Committee Member); Mary Beckman (Committee Member); Donald Winford (Committee Member) Subjects: Linguistics

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2014, Linguistics

This study analyzes the origins and development of the phonology of Cavite Chabacano, focusing particularly on the role of superstrate and substrate influence on the history of the vowel system. This endangered language, spoken in Cavite City, Philippines, is a Spanish-lexified creole with Tagalog as the substrate. The study incorporates sociophonetic methodology, insights from second language phonological acquisition, and consideration of the language attitudes and ideologies of the speakers in order to describe the development of the phonological system. The data come from word list tasks, reading tasks, interviews, and perceptual dialectology tasks conducted during six months of fieldwork. The first part of the study describes the segmental and prosodic phonology of Cavite Chabacano, including synchronic and diachronic variation related to how the phonological system developed over time under input from the substrate and superstrate systems, particularly with respect to the vowel system. Modern Cavite Chabacano has a 5-vowel system like the superstrate Spanish and generally preserves Spanish forms faithfully, but there are some words that have vowels differing from the Spanish forms in ways that indicate early substrate influence from the Old Tagalog 3-vowel system. The second part of the study focuses on the sociophonetic analysis of the vowel system, arguing that it is at the phonetic rather than the phonological level where substrate/adstrate influence in the language is most evident. Stressed vowels and phrase-final vowels are significantly different from unstressed and nonfinal vowels in terms of vowel quality and duration. These phonetic patterns are more characteristic of the substrate Tagalog than of the superstrate Spanish. The results also confirm and expand upon previous claims (German 1932, Miranda 1956) about dialectal variation in the vowel system. The dialects of the Caridad and San Roque districts of Cavite City both have acoustic overlap b (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Donald Winford (Advisor); Mary Beckman (Committee Member); Cynthia Clopper (Committee Member) Subjects: Linguistics

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2012, Linguistics

The research in this dissertation focuses on the documentation and analysis of vowel variation and sound change in Columbus, OH. Columbus is a Midland speech community located in the Midwestern United States. Specifically, this work documents and analyzes vowel variation among 62 native-English speaking European American informants, who are divided into 4 generation cohort groups (speakers born 1896-1913; 1924-1938, 1945-1968, and 1976-1991), 2 social class groups (middle and working), and 2 sex groups (male and female), so that patterns of vowel variation and sound change can be measured quantitatively across a number of speakers' vowel systems which are representative of the Columbus vowel system throughout the course of the 20th Century. Some vowel system data, obtained from 19th Century Central Ohioans, is also analyzed for use in establishing an "initial state" for the Columbus vowel system, from which patterns of vowel variation and sound change observed in the data diverge over time. Although vowel variation and sound change across the entire vowel system is documented and analyzed, several specific patterns of vowel variation are given extensive focus for analysis, description, and discussion. These patterns include the parallel fronting of the back diphthongs /uw/ and /ow/; the conditioned tensing and raising of /ae/, also known as split short-a system raising; and the Third Dialect Shift, a pattern of covariant vowel movement in which the low vowels /a/ and /ae/ are involved in a backing chain shift, and the front vowels /E/ and /I/ are involved in a backing parallel shift. Each of these patterns of vowel variation are quantitatively analyzed using linear mixed effects regression (lmer) analyses. The data analyzed are vowel formant data normalized using Lobanov's (1971) z-score technique. The influence of the social factors sex, social class, and age on the social conditioning of vowel variation is analyzed using the lmers, as are the linguistic factors of (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Donald Winford (Committee Chair); Cythia Clopper (Committee Member); Brian Joseph (Committee Member) Subjects: Geography; History; Linguistics