A dynamical definition of the syllable

Collaborators:

SPArK members: Caroline Crouch, Argyro Katsika

Collaborators: Ioana Chitoran, Louis Goldstein

This project focuses on Georgian, a South Caucasian language that defies current definitions of the syllable, in order to address the question of what a syllable is and/or can be. To do so, we bridge spatial and temporal dimensions of articulatory coordination and propose a dynamical definition of the syllable that allows for flexible sonority shapes and real-time fine-tuning.

Products:

Crouch, C., Chitoran, I. & Katsika, A. Imminent submission. “A mountain of tongues”: Georgian’s uncentered syllables.
Crouch, C., Chitoran, I., Goldstein, L. & Katsika, A. 2023. Intrusive vocoids and syllable structure in Georgian. Proceedings of the 20th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences 2023, Prague, Czech Republic.
Crouch, C., Chitoran, I. & Katsika, A. 2023. Sonority sequencing and its relationship to articulatory timing in Georgian. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, First View, 1-24.
Crouch, C., Katsika, A., Chitoran, I. 2022. Georgian syllables, uncentered?. Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Speech Prosody 2022, Lisbon, Portugal.
Crouch, C., Katsika, A., Chitoran, I. 2020. The role of sonority profile and order of place of articulation on gestural overlap in Georgian. Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Speech Prosody 2020, Tokyo, Japan.

This work has also been presented at the following venues:

Crouch, C., Katsika, A. & Chitoran, I. 2022. Time and space in the Georgian syllable. Atelier de Phonologie, November, 2022, Paris, France.
Crouch, C., Katsika, A. & Chitoran, I. 2022. “A mountain of tongues”: Complex onsets without c-centers in Georgian. The 96th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, 6-9 January 2022, Washington, DC, USA.
Crouch, C., Katsika, A. & Chitoran, I. 2021. Sonority and articulatory timing in complex onsets in Georgian. The 95th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, 7-10 January 2021, San Francisco, CA, USA.
Crouch, C., Katsika, A., & Chitoran, I. 2020. Sonority, order, and overlap in Georgian syllable onsets. The 12th international Seminar on Speech Production (ISSP), 14-18 December 2020, Providence, RI, USA.
Crouch, C., & Katsika, A. 2020. Order, sonority and overlap in Georgian syllable onsets. Laboratory Phonology 17, 6-8 July 2020, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
Crouch, C., & Katsika, A. 2019. Overlap and sonority in complex onsets in Georgian. The 178th meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, 2-6 Dec, 2019, San Diego, CA, USA, JASA: 146(4), 3081-3082.