Papers by Rosey Billington
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (Special issue: “Phonetics of under-documented languages”), 2020
Oceanic languages are often described as preferring primary stress on penultimate syllables, but ... more Oceanic languages are often described as preferring primary stress on penultimate syllables, but detailed surveys show that many different types of prominence patterns have been reported across and within Oceanic language families. In some cases, these interact with segmental and phonotactic factors, such as syllable weight. The range of Oceanic prominence patterns is exemplified across Vanuatu, a linguistically diverse archipelago with over 130 languages. However, both impressionistic and instrumentally-based descriptions of prosodic patterns and their correlates are limited for languages of this region. This paper investigates prominence in Nafsan, an Oceanic language of Vanuatu for which previous observations of prominence differ. Acoustic and durational results for disyllabic and trisyllabic Nafsan words show a clear pattern of higher fundamental frequency values in final syllables, regardless of vowel length, pointing towards a preference for prominence at the right edge of words. Short vowels also show centralisation in penultimate syllables, providing supporting evidence for right-edge prominence and informing the understanding of vowel deletion processes in Nafsan.
[forthcoming] Italian Journal of Linguistics (Special issue: “The dynamics of vowel reduction and loss: Phonetic mechanisms and phonological outcomes”), 2020
Nafsan, an Oceanic language of central Vanuatu, is notable for the complex phonotactic structures... more Nafsan, an Oceanic language of central Vanuatu, is notable for the complex phonotactic structures it exhibits compared to languages spoken further to the north, and compared to the general preference for CV syllables among Oceanic languages. Various types of heterorganic consonant clusters are found in syllable onsets, and are thought to have arisen from the loss of selected medial vowels. Medial vowel deletion is suggested to be a process of change which has been underway for some time in the language, but the details of how this process operates have not been fully clear. Unresolved questions relating to the status of length in the vowel system and the location of lexical prominence have posed a challenge to arriving at a detailed description of vowel deletion and its consequences. Drawing together recent phonetic analyses and previous work, this paper provides an overview of phonotactic structures in contemporary Nafsan and outlines the main factors which lead to the deletion of medial vowels and result in the complex syllable onsets observed today.
Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Melbourne, Australia 2019, 2019
This paper investigates a merger-in-progress of /e/-/ae/ in prelateral contexts for speakers of A... more This paper investigates a merger-in-progress of /e/-/ae/ in prelateral contexts for speakers of Australian English in Victoria. Twelve participants (7F, 5M) were recorded producing a wordlist resulting in acoustic and concurrent articulatory data via stabilised mid-sagittal ultrasound tongue imaging. Focusing on a subset of the data comprising short front vowels /ɪ, e, ae/ in /hVt/ and /hVl/ contexts, findings show that there are robust acoustic differences between /e/ and /ae/ preceding /t/, as anticipated. However, individual differences emerge for /e/ and /ae/ preceding /l/, with highly gradient production patterns across the speakers, ranging from speakers who exhibit merger behaviour to those who maintain categorical distinctions. The evidence for merging behaviour across speakers is similar, but does not map directly, across both the acoustic and articulatory data, and illustrates the value of incorporating a range of data types in investigating a merger-in-progress.
Proceedings of the 17th Australasian International Speech Science and Technology Conference, 2018
Though Oceanic languages are often described as preferring primary stress on penultimate syllable... more Though Oceanic languages are often described as preferring primary stress on penultimate syllables, many different patterns have been noted across and within language families, and may interact with segmental and phonotactic factors. This is exemplified across linguistically diverse Vanuatu. However, both im-pressionistic and instrumentally-based descriptions of prosodic patterns and their correlates are limited for languages of this region. This paper presents preliminary acoustic and durational results for Nafsan, an Oceanic language of Vanuatu, which suggest a preference for prominence at the right edge of words, with fundamental frequency as a primary correlate.
Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Melbourne, Australia 2019, 2019
Languages use a variety of means to realise informational structure categories like topicalisatio... more Languages use a variety of means to realise informational structure categories like topicalisation and focus. The interaction between prosody and focus realisation strategies was examined in Nafsan, a Southern Oceanic language of Vanuatu, in a series of tasks that were designed to explore prosodic realisation of informational and contrastive focus on nouns that were subjects or objects in mini-dialogues where word-order was manipulated. All speakers produced utterance-initial or utterance-final focal elements with a major pitch movement associated with the focused noun (subject or object). Focused nouns were also realised with a wider pitch and often realised in their own prosodic phrase compared to the same item in non-focal contexts. There was also significant syllable lengthening at the right edge of in-focus words. In utterance-initial contexts, post-focal material in Nafsan was almost always produced in a relatively compressed pitch range and there was evidence of de-phrasing of non-focal nouns regardless of utterance position, suggesting prosodic phrasing patterns similar to other languages with edge-marking prominence.
Proceedings of Interspeech 2018, 2018
We present an exploratory analysis of several long-term distributional measures of f0 range in th... more We present an exploratory analysis of several long-term distributional measures of f0 range in the speech of university-educated speakers of Indian English from four L1 backgrounds (Telugu, Tamil, Hindi and Bengali). The aim of this study is to investigate the degree of homogeneity in Indian English prosody and any similarities between the speakers' productions in English and their L1. Following recent studies, we examine three aspects of f0 range: pitch level (relative height of habitual f0), pitch span and pitch dynamism. Overall, across varieties, pitch level measures reveal individual speaker differences and only weak L1 effects on max f0 and median f0. Some speakers show higher f0 in their L1 productions compared to their English productions. More robust patterns were found for pitch span and dynamism: for all measures (maximum-minimum f0, pitch dynamism quotient and standard deviation), significant differences were found between L1 and English (p<0.001) for Bengali and Telugu L1 speakers. The relative weakness of L1 effects would suggest a degree of homogeneity in Indian English, at least for the prosodic parameters investigated. Evidence of a shift in pitch span when talking in English, regardless of L1, further suggests a convergent speech variety.
Proceedings of 9th Language & Technology Conference, May 17-19, 2019, Poznań, Poland, published by Wydawnictwo Nauka i Innowacje
Close collaboration between community members and visiting researchers offers mutual benefits, in... more Close collaboration between community members and visiting researchers offers mutual benefits, including opportunities for new research insights and an expanded scope for supporting language maintenance and developing practical materials. We discuss a collaboration in Erakor, Vanuatu aiming to build the capacity of community-based researchers to undertake and sustain language and cultural documentation projects. We focus on the technical and procedural skills required to collect, manage, and work with audio and video data, and give an overview of the outcomes of a community-led project after initial training. We discuss the benefits and challenges of this type of project from the perspective of the community researchers and the external linguists. We show that the community-led project in Erakor, in which data management and archiving are incorporated into the documentation process, has crucial benefits for both the community and the linguists. Two most salient benefits are: a) long-term documentation of linguistic and cultural practices calibrated towards community's needs, and b) collections of large quantities of data of good phonetic quality, which, besides being readily available for research, have a great potential for training and testing emerging language technologies based on machine learning.
Proceedings of the 16th Australasian International Speech Science and Technology Conference, 2016
Length contrasts among glides are typologically uncommon , and argued to be crosslinguistically d... more Length contrasts among glides are typologically uncommon , and argued to be crosslinguistically dispreferred. Nevertheless , such contrasts are attested in various languages around the world, though phonetic explorations remain very limited. This paper presents selected findings pertaining to glides in Lo-pit, an Eastern Nilotic language for which a length distinction has been proposed for palatal and labiovelar glides. Duration values are compared for intervocalic tokens of putative gemi-nates /w:/ and /j:/ and singletons /w/ and /j/, and for vowels preceding them, and indicate that in Lopit, duration is a major correlate distinguishing glides at the same place of articulation.
Language and Linguistics Compass, 2013
Speakers of creole languages experience educational disadvantage in schools that teach in the sta... more Speakers of creole languages experience educational disadvantage in schools that teach in the standard language of their region, but there remain many misconceptions about why this is the case and how best to facilitate academic improvement, despite research demonstrating that actively using creoles in the classroom leads to a range of positive outcomes for these students. This paper reviews how attitudes towards creoles influence their place in educational contexts, some of the challenges for research on creoles in education, approaches to teaching creole-speaking children with particular reference to bilingual programs, and the ramifications of standardized testing for creole-speaking students.
Multilingua, 2013
Indigenous children growing up in the remote regions of Australia live in multilingual communitie... more Indigenous children growing up in the remote regions of Australia live in multilingual communities which are often undergoing rapid language shift. In these communities, children are exposed to a range of language input, including the traditional language of the area, a local creole and Standard Australian English. The extent to which the different languages are used may vary by age of interlocutor as well as other factors. In this paper we examine the input to five children between the ages of two and four living in a small remote community. Recordings were made of each child interacting with caregivers of different ages to identify the range of language the children are exposed to. The majority of the input was in the local creole. This represents a rapid shift from the traditional language, Walmajarri, which was widely spoken when the community was established in the late 1980s. The majority of input in the traditional language came from the older interlocutors, suggesting that the language is severely endangered. Standard Australian English was used only minimally, although once they enter the formal school system, SAE will be the only language used for their education.
DESCRIPTION Conference paper presented at 37th Language Testing Research Colloquium, Toronto, Can... more DESCRIPTION Conference paper presented at 37th Language Testing Research Colloquium, Toronto, Canada, March 2015.
Multilingua, 2013
Indigenous children growing up in the remote regions of Australia live in multilingual communitie... more Indigenous children growing up in the remote regions of Australia live in multilingual communities which are often undergoing rapid language shift. In these communities, children are exposed to a range of language input, including the traditional language of the area, a local creole and Standard Australian English. The extent to which the different languages are used may vary by age of interlocutor as well as other factors. In this paper we examine the input to five children between the ages of two and four living in a small remote community. Recordings were made of each child interacting with caregivers of different ages to identify the range of language the children are exposed to. The majority of the input was in the local creole. This represents a rapid shift from the traditional language, Walmajarri, which was widely spoken when the community was established in the late 1980s. The majority of input in the traditional language came from the older interlocutors, suggesting that the language is severely endangered. Standard Australian English was used only minimally, although once they enter the formal school system, SAE will be the only language used for their education.
Language and Linguistics Compass, 2013
Speakers of creole languages experience educational disadvantage in schools that teach in the sta... more Speakers of creole languages experience educational disadvantage in schools that teach in the standard language of their region, but there remain many misconceptions about why this is the case and how best to facilitate academic improvement, despite research demonstrating that actively using creoles in the classroom leads to a range of positive outcomes for these students. This paper reviews how attitudes towards creoles influence their place in educational contexts, some of the challenges for research on creoles in education, approaches to teaching creole-speaking children with particular reference to bilingual programs, and the ramifications of standardized testing for creole-speaking students.
Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 2015
This paper presents the results of an acoustic investigation of lexical tone in the Dorik dialect... more This paper presents the results of an acoustic investigation of lexical tone in the Dorik dialect of Lopit, an Eastern Nilotic language. Tonal phenomena in Nilotic languages are complex, and in many cases vastly underdescribed. In the limited descriptive work on Lopit, there is not yet a clear picture of the number of tones used for lexical contrasts, and the various grammatical functions of tone are only beginning to emerge. Acoustic results indicate that there are three distinct lexical tones: a High level tone, a Low level tone, and a Falling contour tone.
Proceedings of the 15th Australasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology, 2014
This paper presents the results of an acoustic and articulatory investigation of Advanced Tongue ... more This paper presents the results of an acoustic and articulatory investigation of Advanced Tongue Root (ATR) in Lopit, an Eastern Nilotic language. As a phonological feature, ATR is widely attested in African vowel systems, and is held to correlate with tongue root advancement as a corollary of pharyngeal expansion. In the limited descriptive work on Lopit, there are different views on the presence and nature of such a contrast. Acoustic results indicate that Lopit has a 9-vowel system with an ATR-type contrast. Pilot ultrasound results suggest that the gestural correlate of the contrast is one of tongue root advancement.
Sustainable data from digital research: Humanities perspectives on digital scholarship, 2011
Digital methods for recording information are now ubiquitous. In fieldwork-based disciplines, lik... more Digital methods for recording information are now ubiquitous. In fieldwork-based disciplines, like linguistics, musicology, anthropology and so on, recordings are typically of high cultural value and there is great benefit in the proper curation of these recordings, to the researcher, to the community in which they worked, and to the broader society.
What are the costs and benefits of these technologies?
How can we:
-ensure the longevity of the data we record
-access our own data over time
-provide public access to publicly funded research data (including dealing with ethical and IP issues)
-provide data to the people we record, especially to those who have little access to computers or the internet
-ensure that our research processes and analysis take maximum advantage of the access to data provided by digital methods
-embed our analysis in accessible data to allow verification of our claims
-enable research based on digital data from archival sources
-develop tools and processes that accumulate data in standards-conformant formats
Australian Journal of Linguistics, 2011
Evidence of Australian English vowel shifting has been found recently, in data primarily from Syd... more Evidence of Australian English vowel shifting has been found recently, in data primarily from Sydney and surrounding areas. Although regional variation in the Australian accent remains under-investigated, some signs of regional vowel differences have been found, suggesting that data from other regional centres must also be considered to accurately assess the nature and extent of vowel change. This study contributes to the ongoing re-assessment of Australian vowel characteristics by examining formant data of the /hVd/ vowels of 13 female and nine male adolescents from Melbourne, in relation to recent data from Sydney and Adelaide and earlier data from New South Wales. Results yield evidence of regional vowel differences, with signs that these interact with vowel innovation, and that the presence of regional and innovative vowel characteristics differs for males and females.
Language and Linguistics Compass, 2013
Speakers of creole languages experience educational disadvantage in schools that teach in the sta... more Speakers of creole languages experience educational disadvantage in schools that teach in the standard language of their region, but there remain many misconceptions about why this is the case and how best to facilitate academic improvement, despite research demonstrating that actively using creoles in the classroom leads to a range of positive outcomes for these students. This paper reviews how attitudes towards creoles influence their place in educational contexts, some of the challenges for research on creoles in education, approaches to teaching creole‐speaking children with particular reference to bilingual programs, and the ramifications of standardized testing for creole‐speaking students.
Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 2013
There are now significant numbers of children who speak a language other than English when they e... more There are now significant numbers of children who speak a language other than English when they enter the formal school system in Australia. Many of these children come from a language background that is entirely different from the school language. Many Indigenous children, however, come from creole-speaking backgrounds where their home language may share features with the school language whilst remaining substantially different in other ways. What often makes this situation more challenging is the tendency to view creole, rather than as a different language, as a kind of deficient version of the standard language. Children entering the school system with a creole thus often encounter considerable difficulties. In addition, teachers who are not trained in teaching creole-speaking children may not recognise these difficulties. This paper explores some of these issues in the Australian context with reference to home languages such as Kriol and Torres Strait Creole (TSC) as well as minority dialects such as Australian Aboriginal English (AAE), and discusses possible resolutions.
Multilingua, 2013
Indigenous children growing up in the remote regions of Australia live in multilingual communitie... more Indigenous children growing up in the remote regions of Australia live in multilingual communities which are often undergoing rapid language shift. In these communities, children are exposed to a range of language input, including the traditional language of the area, a local creole and Standard Australian English. The extent to which the different languages are used may vary by age of interlocutor as well as other factors. In this paper we examine the input to five children between the ages of two and four living in a small remote community. Recordings were made of each child interacting with caregivers of different ages to identify the range of language the children are exposed to. The majority of the input was in the local creole. This represents a rapid shift from the traditional language, Walmajarri, which was widely spoken when the community was established in the late 1980s. The majority of input in the traditional language came from the older interlocutors, suggesting that the language is severely endangered. Standard Australian English was used only minimally, although once they enter the formal school system, SAE will be the only language used for their education.
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Papers by Rosey Billington
What are the costs and benefits of these technologies?
How can we:
-ensure the longevity of the data we record
-access our own data over time
-provide public access to publicly funded research data (including dealing with ethical and IP issues)
-provide data to the people we record, especially to those who have little access to computers or the internet
-ensure that our research processes and analysis take maximum advantage of the access to data provided by digital methods
-embed our analysis in accessible data to allow verification of our claims
-enable research based on digital data from archival sources
-develop tools and processes that accumulate data in standards-conformant formats
What are the costs and benefits of these technologies?
How can we:
-ensure the longevity of the data we record
-access our own data over time
-provide public access to publicly funded research data (including dealing with ethical and IP issues)
-provide data to the people we record, especially to those who have little access to computers or the internet
-ensure that our research processes and analysis take maximum advantage of the access to data provided by digital methods
-embed our analysis in accessible data to allow verification of our claims
-enable research based on digital data from archival sources
-develop tools and processes that accumulate data in standards-conformant formats
1. Diskin, Chloé. 2020. New speakers in the Irish context: Heritage language maintenance among multilingual migrants in Dublin, Ireland. Frontiers in Education, 4, 163.
2. Corrigan, Karen & Diskin, Chloé. 2019. ‘Northmen, Southmen, comrades all’? The adoption of discourse like by migrants North and South of the Irish border. Language in Society, 1–29.
3. Diskin, Chloé & Levey, Stephen. 2019. Going global and sounding local: Quotative variation and change in L1 and L2 speakers of Irish (Dublin) English. English World-Wide, 40(1), 53–78.
4. Diskin, Chloé. 2017. The use of the discourse-pragmatic marker ‘like’ by native and non- native speakers of English in Ireland. Journal of Pragmatics, 120, 144–157.
5. Diskin, Chloé & Regan, Vera. 2017. The attitudes of recently-arrived Polish migrants to Irish English. World Englishes, 36(2), 191–207.
Edited books
6. Regan, Vera; Diskin, Chloé, Martyn, Jennifer (eds.) 2016. Language, Identity and Migration: Voices from Transnational Speakers and Communities. Oxford: Peter Lang.
Book chapters
7. Diskin, Chloé. 2016. Standard Language Ideologies in Multicultural Ireland: A Case Study of Polish and Chinese Migrants in Dublin. In: Regan, Vera; Diskin, Chloé & Martyn, Jennifer (eds.) Language, Identity and Migration: Voices from Transnational Speakers and Communities. Oxford: Peter Lang, 287–326.
8. Martyn, Jennifer & Diskin, Chloé. 2016. Introduction. Sociolinguistic and discursive approaches to language and identity. In: Regan, Vera; Diskin, Chloé & Martyn, Jennifer (eds.) Language, Identity and Migration: Voices from Transnational Speakers and Communities. Oxford: Peter Lang, 1–16.
9. Diskin, Chloé & Regan, Vera. 2015. Migratory Experience and Second Language Acquisition among Polish and Chinese Migrants in Dublin, Ireland. In: Forsberg Lundell, Fanny & Bartning, Inge (eds.) Cultural Migrants and Optimal Language Acquisition. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters, 137–177.
Fully refereed conference proceedings
10. Diskin, Chloé, Loakes, Debbie, Clothier, Josh, & Volchok, Ben. 2019. A sociophonetic analysis of vowels produced by female Irish migrants: Investigating second dialect contact in Melbourne. In: Calhoun, Sasha; Escudero, Paola; Tabain, Marija; Warren, Paul (eds.) Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Melbourne, Australia, 1873–1877.
11. Diskin, Chloé, Loakes, Debbie, Billington, Rosey, Stoakes, Hywel, Gonzalez, Simón, Kirkham, Sam. 2019. The /el/-/æl/ merger in Australian English: Acoustic and articulatory insights. In: Calhoun, Sasha; Escudero, Paola; Tabain, Marija; Warren, Paul (eds.) Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Melbourne, Australia, 1764–1768.
12. Diskin, Chloé; Loakes, Debbie; Clothier, Josh. 2018. Varietal differences in categorisation of /ɪ e æ/: A case study of Irish and Australian English listeners in Melbourne. Proceedings of the 17th Australasian Speech Science and Technology Conference (SST), Coogee, Sydney, Australia, 105–108.
13. Diskin, Chloé. 2013. Integration and Identity: Acquisition of Irish-English by Polish and Chinese Migrants in Dublin, Ireland. Newcastle Working Papers in Linguistics, 19(1), 67–89.
Book reviews
14. Diskin, Chloé. 2017. Review of Heike Pichler (ed.) 2016. Discourse-Pragmatic Variation and Change in English. New Methods and Insights. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 21(2), 293–298.
This is first approached via analyses of phonological and morphological patterns in Lopit, using data collected during extended fieldwork with members of the Lopit community in Melbourne, Australia. A number of hypotheses regarding Lopit phonological contrasts and processes are put forward, including proposals for nine monophthongs, an inventory of 27 consonants, and three tones used for both lexical and grammatical distinctions. Some differences in the number and nature of contrasts are found compared to observations in the limited existing materials on Lopit.
Four production experiments are then undertaken to examine the acoustic and articulatory evidence for three phenomena of particular interest. The first is the phonological feature ‘Advanced Tongue Root’, widely attested in African languages and here suggested to distinguish monophthongs /i, e, o, u/, labelled [+ATR], from /ɪ, ɛ, a, ɔ, ʊ/, labelled [-ATR]. The results of an acoustic experiment reveal lower first formant frequencies as the primary correlate distinguishing [+ATR] from [-ATR] vowels, and a following ultrasound-based experiment shows that vowels in the [+ATR] set have a more anterior tongue root position than those in the [-ATR] set.
Length contrasts proposed for selected obstruents and sonorants include a contrast between singleton glides /w, j/ and geminate glides /wː, jː/, a typologically uncommon distinction which has received little phonetic attention crosslinguistically. The results of an acoustic investigation of Lopit glides show that duration is a robust correlate of glide contrasts at the same place of articulation, with the putative geminates being significantly longer. Furthermore, they have a more constricted articulation, as evidenced by lower first formant frequencies and lower root-mean square amplitude values.
An acoustic experiment testing the proposed contrast between High, Low and Falling tones confirms that these three tones are distinct, with higher fundamental frequency values for the High compared to Low tone, and a trajectory of high to low values for the Falling tone. It is also shown that the fundamental frequency and duration characteristics of these tones are sensitive to the tonal context in which they occur.
These experiments contribute the first phonetic data on Lopit, and, combined with the phonological and morphological analyses, significantly increase the level of description of an under-documented Nilo-Saharan language. This study also develops typological understandings of the phonetic implementation of ATR contrasts, the status of length distinctions among glides, and Nilotic tone systems, and demonstrates the value of incorporating phonetic data into the documentation of African languages.