Jesse Stewart
I'm a Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Saskatchewan, located on Treaty 6 Territory, Canada. I have been collaborating with speakers of Media Lengua (ISO 639-3 mue) in the Community of Pijal (Imbabura, Ecuador) for over a decade in an effort to document their language. Together, we have compiled the first Media Lengua dictionary, and complied a storybook containing 30 oral stories and traditions from Pijal, written in Media Lengua. We're currently working on a cookbook with 30+ recipes, written in Media Lengua, and archival material for AILLA.
My primary area of academic research explores questions pertaining to the production and perception of phonemic conflict sites (conflicting areas of phonological convergence) in mixed languages (and language contact in general); specifically relating to Media Lengua (Ecuador). As of late, I have been working in collaboration with Dr. Sky Onosson to further expand on these questions in Media Lenuga and with numerous other colleagues to expand these questions to other mixed languages; specifically Michif (Canada, ISO 639-3 crg), Gurindji-Kriol (Australia, ISO 639-3 gjr), and Ma'a (Tanzania, ISO 639-3 mhd). In addition, I've been working in collaboration on a number of other languages to document nasality phenomena (Dr. Martine Bruil, Dr. Olga Lovick, Kristy Reyes Herrera) using a new method developed by Dr. Martin Kohlberger and myself, which provides an effective means of gathering nasal data from the field. I also have past projects that explore discourse phenomena in ASL; namely, sign lengthening and the identification of disfluencies in the visual-gestural modality). All my publications are available online on my personal website.
Additionally, I help promote a community tourism project called Sumak Pacha located in Pijal, Imbabura, Ecuador where Media Lengua is spoken. Sumak Pacha is a grassroots effort to promote Kayambi culture and help build a more sustainable economy to combat outmigration. The project offers a homestay program and various activities including: Organic agricultural growing techniques, music, dance, national foods, hiking trails, horseback riding, bike trips, and rural lodging. If you're interested in visiting Pijal let me know.
Supervisors: Kevin Russell
My primary area of academic research explores questions pertaining to the production and perception of phonemic conflict sites (conflicting areas of phonological convergence) in mixed languages (and language contact in general); specifically relating to Media Lengua (Ecuador). As of late, I have been working in collaboration with Dr. Sky Onosson to further expand on these questions in Media Lenuga and with numerous other colleagues to expand these questions to other mixed languages; specifically Michif (Canada, ISO 639-3 crg), Gurindji-Kriol (Australia, ISO 639-3 gjr), and Ma'a (Tanzania, ISO 639-3 mhd). In addition, I've been working in collaboration on a number of other languages to document nasality phenomena (Dr. Martine Bruil, Dr. Olga Lovick, Kristy Reyes Herrera) using a new method developed by Dr. Martin Kohlberger and myself, which provides an effective means of gathering nasal data from the field. I also have past projects that explore discourse phenomena in ASL; namely, sign lengthening and the identification of disfluencies in the visual-gestural modality). All my publications are available online on my personal website.
Additionally, I help promote a community tourism project called Sumak Pacha located in Pijal, Imbabura, Ecuador where Media Lengua is spoken. Sumak Pacha is a grassroots effort to promote Kayambi culture and help build a more sustainable economy to combat outmigration. The project offers a homestay program and various activities including: Organic agricultural growing techniques, music, dance, national foods, hiking trails, horseback riding, bike trips, and rural lodging. If you're interested in visiting Pijal let me know.
Supervisors: Kevin Russell
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Papers by Jesse Stewart
includes the use of mid-vowels, which are phonetically realized in ML as largely overlapping with the high-vowels in acoustic space. We analyze and compare production of vowel sequences by speakers of ML, Quichua, and Spanish through the use of generalized additive mixed models to determine statistically significant differences between vowel formant trajectories. Our results indicate that Spanish-derived ML vowel sequences frequently differ significantly from their Spanish counterparts, largely occupying a more central region of the vowel space and frequently exhibiting markedly reduced trajectories over time. In contrast, we find only one case where an ML vowel sequence differs significantly from its Quichua counterpart—and even in this case the difference from Spanish is substantially greater. Our findings show how
the vowel system of ML successfully integrates novel vowel sequence patterns from Spanish into what is essentially Quichua phonology by markedly adapting their production, while still maintaining contrasts which are not expressed in Quichua.
includes the use of mid-vowels, which are phonetically realized in ML as largely overlapping with the high-vowels in acoustic space. We analyze and compare production of vowel sequences by speakers of ML, Quichua, and Spanish through the use of generalized additive mixed models to determine statistically significant differences between vowel formant trajectories. Our results indicate that Spanish-derived ML vowel sequences frequently differ significantly from their Spanish counterparts, largely occupying a more central region of the vowel space and frequently exhibiting markedly reduced trajectories over time. In contrast, we find only one case where an ML vowel sequence differs significantly from its Quichua counterpart—and even in this case the difference from Spanish is substantially greater. Our findings show how
the vowel system of ML successfully integrates novel vowel sequence patterns from Spanish into what is essentially Quichua phonology by markedly adapting their production, while still maintaining contrasts which are not expressed in Quichua.
(1) kurapepẽ (2) [kũɾ̃ãpẽpẽ] ‘pumpkin/ gourd’
It has been noted, however, that nasality is not at its full strength at the start of the nasal span but rather builds up, or fades in, as the nasal sound approaches (Gregores and Suárez 1967, Lunt 1973). We offer a systematic description of this nasality fade in. We measured the degree of nasality on four segment types throughout Guaraní words: vowels, voiceless stops, prenasalized stops and fricatives. We used the A1-P0 method established in Feng and Castilli (1996), Chen (1996), and Styler (2011) to measure the degree of nasality on vowels. This method subtracts the difference between two harmonics; A1 being the highest harmonic near the first formant and P0 being a low frequency harmonic, typically H1 or H2 (depending on the speaker), which corresponds to a lower resonance in the nasal passage. For voiceless stops we used the durational measures found by Walker (1999) to correspond to nasality in Guaraní, namely a longer voicing time during the stop closure and a longer VOT. For prenasalized stops we used the percentage of the consonant that was nasal as a degree of nasality measure. For fricatives we used a combination of duration, intensity and voicing as no one measure correlated by itself.
Regressions done on degree of nasality with segments from the nasal sound as the predictor came out significant for each of vowels, voiceless stops and prenasalized stops. By the third syllable from the nasal sound, the degree of nasality is not significantly different than in an oral span. These findings demonstrate nasal harmony fading in Guaraní.
References
Chen, M (1996). Acoustic Correlates of Nasality in Speech. Ph.D. Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Feng, G., & Castelli, E. (1996). Some acoustic features of nasal and nasalized vowels: A target for vowel nasalization. Acoustical Society of America., 99(6), 3694-3707.
Gregores, Emma and Jorge A. Suárez. (1967). A description of colloquial Guaraní. The Hague and Paris: Mouton.
Hart, George W. (1981). Nasality and the organization of autosegmental phonology. Indiana University Linguistics Club. Bloomington, Indaina.
Lunt, H. (1973). Remarks on Nasality: the case of Guaraní. A Festschrift for Morris Halle (pp. 131-138). New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Styler, W. (2011). Using Praat for Linguistic Research. Document Version: 1.0.2 (for the LSA Institute’s Praat workshop). Lasted accessed on: 4.Jan.2012. Retrieved from: http://savethevowels.org/praat.
Tonhauser, J. (2006). The temporal interpretation of noun phrases: Evidence from Guaraní, Ph.D. Thesis, Stanford University.
Walker, R. (1999). Guaraní Voiceless Stops in Oral versus Nasal Contexts: An Acoustical Study. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 29, 63–94.