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This paper presents results of a phonetic analysis of instances of lexical self-repair drawn from a corpus of spontaneous Dutch speech. The analysis addresses questions concerning the phonetic details of prosodic marking in self-repair and its conditioning factors. In particular, it examines the relevance of semantic, temporal and frequency-related factors in modelling f0 and intensity measures and auditory judgements of whether repairs are prosodically marked. It addresses the extent to which observations made in studies using experimentally-elicited speech can be expected to generalise to repairs drawn from uncontrolled spontaneous speech. The results suggest that prosodic marking is rare in spontaneous lexical self-repair, and that semantic, temporal and frequency factors play a limited role only in conditioning speakers' choices for or against prosodic marking, although several weak tendencies can be observed., (© 2013 S. Karger AG, Basel.)

This paper presents the results of an investigation into the distribution of phonetic variants of the Dutch discourse marker eigenlijk, combining phonetic and conversation analytic methods. The paper shows that the phonetic form of eigenlijk depends to some extent on the sequential environment in which the item is used; moreover, it shows that in the case of two such environments, the forms of eigenlijk are representative of tempo and reduction patterns spanning entire turns or turn-constructional units. These patterns can be related to the interactive function of the turns; thus, the findings presented here contribute to our as yet limited knowledge of the phonetic correlates of communicative actions.

This paper describes the phonetic exponents of rhoticity in postvocalic position in the speech of 4 young adult speakers of Standard Dutch. In addition to describing aspects of the segmental realisation of /r/, the paper focusses on parametric differences between rhymes with and without postvocalic /r/ in the material under consideration, presenting both impressionistic observations and instrumental measurements. Results of the investigation suggest that parametric analysis is a crucial complement to segmental classification, in providing insights into the relation between segmental realisations and 'contextual effects' of /r/, the phonetics of /r/ deletion and similarities and differences between rhotics cross-linguistically., (Copyright 2003 S. Karger AG, Basel)

This paper presents a study of the temporal organization of lexical repair in spontaneous Dutch speech. It assesses the extent to which offset-to-repair duration and repair tempo can be predicted on the basis of offset timing, reparandum tempo and measures of the informativeness of the crucial lexical items in the repair. Specifically, we address the expectations that repairs that are initiated relatively early are produced relatively fast throughout, and that relatively highly informative repairs are produced relatively slowly. For informativeness, we implement measures based on repair semantics, lexical frequency counts and cloze probabilities. Our results highlight differences between factual and linguistic error repairs, which have not been consistently distinguished in previous studies, and provide some evidence to support the notion that repairs that are initiated relatively early are produced relatively fast. They confirm that lexical frequency counts are rough measures of contextual predictability at best, and reveal very few significant effects of our informativeness measures on the temporal organization of lexical self-repair. Moreover, although we can confirm that most repairs have a repair portion that is fast relative to its reparandum, this cannot be attributed to the relative informativeness of the two portions. Our findings inform the current debate on the division of labour between inner and overt speech monitoring, and suggest that, although the influence of informativeness on speech production is extensive, it is not ubiquitous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper presents a phonetic analysis of instances of self-initiated self-repair taken from a corpus of Dutch conversation, focusing on their temporal and articulatory characteristics. In particular, the paper investigates whether error repairs and appropriateness repairs, two subtypes of self-repair which differ in the degree of informational redundancy of the repair stretch, are different in terms of the phonetic relationship between reparandum and repair stretch. One might expect error repairs, whose repair stretch is more informative than that of appropriateness repairs, to be associated with local hyperarticulation in the repair stretch, while appropriateness repairs are more likely to be associated with phonetic reduction. Furthermore, the frequent presence of informationally redundant editing terms and repeated lexical items is expected to result in variation within the repair stretch along a hypo–hyper continuum. The paper reports on temporal measurements with controls for the internal structure of the repair, as well as auditory analysis and an attempt at quantifying a ‘reduction quotient’ for the stretches involved. The results show that local hyperarticulation is rare, and increased phonetic reduction in the repair stretch widespread. No significant differences between error and appropriateness repairs are observed. The findings are discussed with reference to the role of information status and pragmatic constraints in governing variation in speech production. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This article presents a sketch of the life and work of J. R. Firth, the first professor of general linguistics in Great Britain and President of the Philological Society from 1954 to 1957, based on a study of existing biographical literature and commentary, Firth’s publications, and various hitherto unpublished archive materials. The article sheds new light on matters such as Firth’s entry into the fledgling field of linguistics in Britain, his relationships with colleagues such as Daniel Jones and Arthur Lloyd James, and his alleged attempts to present a book-length exposition of his views on linguistics and phonetics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]