Search Results (4)

An important set of sound changes affected the South Bantu languages through the impact of front vowels on following consonants, most notably under the form of the class 5 nominal prefix *i-. These consonant changes are well known, but their extent has been underestimated, as the substantial data in this paper show. There is not even a standard name for these changes, which are here called “Preceding-I effects”. This paper offers a detailed study of the relevant conditioning factor, calling attention to the understudied category of hiatus resolution in the history of Bantu languages. Although the reflexes in individual languages vary and levelling often reduced the number of surviving examples, indications of systematic PI-effects in all the subgroups of the South Bantu branch contrast with other Bantu branches and suggest a common conditioning factor was present in Proto-South-Bantu. Full article

COVID-19 is an infectious disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. During and after COVID-19, audiovestibular symptoms and impairments have been reported. Objectives: This study aimed to investigate the impacts of COVID-19 on the peripheral and central auditory systems of children and adolescents following the acute COVID-19 phase based on behavioral, electroacoustic, and electrophysiological audiological assessments. Methods: This is a primary, prospective, observational, and cross-sectional study of 23 children aged 8 to 15 years who acquired confirmed COVID-19 and who, before infection, had not had any auditory complaints or school complications. The results were compared with pre-pandemic data collected from a similar group of 23 children who had normal peripheral and central hearing and good school performance. Each participant answered a questionnaire about child development, school, and health history and underwent tests including pure-tone audiometry and high-frequency audiometry, imitanciometry, transient evoked otoacoustic emissions, and distortion product otoacoustic emissions. They also received tests of Brainstem Auditory Evoked Potentials, Long Latency Auditory Evoked Potentials, Dichotic Digits Test, Sentence Identification Test, Dichotic Consonant–Vowel Test, Frequency Pattern Test, and Gaps-In-Noise Test. Results: Significant differences were observed between the groups, with the study group showing worse thresholds compared to the control group at both standard audiometric frequencies and at higher frequencies, although both groups were still within normal limits (p ≤ 0.05). In addition, the study group had a higher prevalence of absent responses, as identified by otoacoustic emissions and acoustic reflexes. In terms of central auditory performance, the study group showed ABRs with significantly longer latencies of waves I, III, and V compared to the control group. The study group also performed less well on the Dichotic Digits and Pediatric Speech Identification tests. Conclusions: COVID-19 appears to alter the auditory system, both peripherally at the level of the outer hair cells and more centrally. Full article

The relationship between culture and the individual is a central focus of social scientific research. This paper examines motivations that mediate between shared culture norms and individual actions. Inspired by the works of Leon Festinger and Melford Spiro, we posit that social network conformation (the perceived adherence of one’s social network with norms) and internalization of cultural norms (incorporation of cultural models with the self-schema) will differentially shape behavior (cultural consonance) depending on the domain and individual characteristics. For the domain of gender roles among Brazilian men, religious affiliation results in different configurations of the individual and culture. Our findings suggest that, due to changing and competing cultural models, religious men are compelled to reflexively “think” about what masculinity means to them, rather than subconsciously conform to social (hegemonic) expectations. This study demonstrates the importance of considering the impetus of culturally informed behaviors and, in doing so, provides a methodological means for measuring and interpreting such motivations, an important factor in the relationship between culture and the individual. Full article

Attempts to classify spoken Arabic dialects based on distinct reflexes of consonant phonemes are known to employ a mixture of parameters, which often conflate linguistic and non-linguistic facts. This article advances an alternative, theory-informed perspective of segmental typology, one that takes phonological properties as the object of investigation. Under this approach, various classificatory systems are legitimate; and I utilize a typological scheme within the framework of feature geometry. A minimalist model designed to account for segment-internal representations produces neat typologies of the Arabic consonants that vary across dialects, namely qāf,ǧīm,kāf, ḍād, the interdentals, the rhotic, and the pharyngeals. Cognates for each of these are analyzed in a typology based on a few monovalent contrastive features. A key benefit of the proposed typologies is that the featural compositions of the various cognates give grounds for their behavior, in terms of contrasts and phonological activity, and potentially in diachronic processes as well. At a more general level, property-based typology is a promising line of research that helps us understand and categorize purely linguistic facts across languages or language varieties. Full article