Acoustic insights into the root-affix asymmetry across languages

• Applicant: Dr. Ludger Paschen
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 496083013

One of the most fundamental aspects of morphology is the distinction between lexical roots and grammatical affixes. And while there exists a considerable body of research devoted to the phonological side of this divide, there is a notable gap in understanding the phonetic consequences of this dichotomy. AIRAL fills this gap in light of recent findings that the acoustic properties of segments belonging to roots may have different properties than segments belonging to affixes. These findings, if they can be shown to extend beyond single idiosyncratic languages and follow a more general pattern, can generate new insights into the linguistic faculty in general. The AIRAL project will carry out research on a broad and diverse sample of 40 languages coming mainly from language documentation projects. It will describe cross-linguistic trends in the phonetic shape of roots vs. affixes with respect to durational and spectral characteristics. For selected languages, the project will examine predictions made by various grammatical theories on internal word structre using a triangulation of morphosyntactic, phonological and phonetic evidence. AIRAL thus bridges the gap between language documentation, corpus building and linguistic theory. AIRAL pursues an innovative approach to the use of speech corpora and contributes to a diversification of data discussed in comparative phonetics and morphology.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants