Jesse Stewart

University of Saskatchewan | U of S · Department of Linguistics

This dissertation explores the phonetics and phonology of language contact, specifically pertaining to the integration of Spanish voiced stops /b/, /d/, and /g/ into Quichua, a language with non-contrastive stop voicing. Conflicting areas of convergence of this type appear when two or more phonological systems interact and phonemes from the target...

This study presents a comparative analysis of F1 and F2 vowel frequencies from Pijal Media Lengua (PML) and Imbabura Quichua. Mixed-effects models are used to test Spanish-derived high and low vowels against their Quichua-derived counterparts for statistical significance. Spanish-derived and Quichua-derived high vowels are also tested against Spani...

Pijal Media Lengua (PML) is a mixed language described as having Quichua morphosyntactic and phonological systems where nearly every content word (89%), including pronouns and determiners, is replaced by its Spanish-derived counterpart through the process of relexification. PML speakers however, often regard their language as intonationally distinc...

Stories and traditions from Pijal is a collection of narrations from the community of Pijal, Ecuador. This is the first published document in Media Lengua, a rare mixed language spoken in the Ecuadorian highlands. What makes this language so unique is its genesis. ML has a split ancestry where nearly all (90%) root words (nouns, verbs, adjectives,...

In spoken languages, disfluent speech, narrative effects, discourse information, and phrase position may influence the lengthening of segments beyond their typical duration. In sign languages, however, the primary use of the visual-gestural modality results in articulatory differences not expressed in spoken languages. This paper looks at sign leng...

This study describes a rather rare nasal voicing contrast in Upper Tanana (Dene/Athabascan). The language has a rich inventory of nasal segments, distinguishing oral and nasal vowels and three phonemic consonants /m/, /n/, /n̥ /. The voicing status of the coronal nasal (/n/ vs. /n̥ /) is morphologically conditioned and surfaces as marking the contr...

This study investigates a phenomenon of morphemespecific vowel raising that occurs in some Ecuadorian dialects of Quichua as well as the associated mixed language Media Lengua, where certain forms of /a/ are pronounced as [u]. Our data reveal that this process is region-specific, occurring in the Quichua dialect spoken in Cotopaxi province, but not...

Although Media Lengua was first documented by linguists in Ecuador’s Cotopaxi province, this study represents the first phonetic account of Media Lengua vowel production in that region, as subsequent research on Media Lengua has focused exclusively on the variety spoken in Imbabura province. This preliminary case study reveals that Cotopaxi speaker...

The goal of this chapter is to summarize the scientific literature on Media Lengua, focusing especially on the last 15 years, since Pieter Muysken’s pivotal work on the language in the 1980s and 90s. It specifically centers on recent advancements in psycholinguistic, phonological, and sociolinguistic work and highlights some of the controversies th...

On a 2022 fieldtrip to Ecuador, we encountered a large community of Media Lengua speakers in the province of Cotopaxi where the language was thought to be dormant. This is the same region where Pieter Muysken had first documented this ‘mixed language’ in the 1970’s. However, subsequent fieldwork thereabout by several linguists had failed to turn up...

This study describes the nasal system in Ecuadorian Siona, an endangered Western Tukanoan language spoken in the Ecuadorian province of Sucumbíos, using the Earbuds Method to analyze nasal events acoustically. This method provides a visual representation of the timing and duration of velum gestures through intensity (dB) and amplitude (Pa) fluctuat...

El Cantado Cuencano “Cuencano singing” constitutes the hallmark of Cuencano Spanish: a widely spoken Andean dialect in the Ecuadorian province of Azuay. This colloquially described “singing” makes Cuencano Spanish one of the most distinct dialects of Ecuador. The aim of the present study is to provide a preliminary analysis of intonation patterns f...

This study of Media Lengua examines production differences between mid and high vowels in order to identify the major correlates that distinguish these vowel types. The Media Lengua vowel system is unusual in that it incorporates lexical items originating in Spanish's five-vowel system into a three-vowel system inherited from Quichua, resulting in...

Este texto es la recopilación de un conjunto de recetas tradicionales únicas. El objetivo es ilustrar la selección de productos, la preparación desde lo sencillo hasta lo laborioso y en el fondo la preservación de la cultura a través de la cocina. Este libro no solo expone la gastronomía de una comunidad, sino que la documenta en uno de los idiomas...

Traditional phonological analyses and theoretical accounts of mixed languages suggest that their phonologies can be predicted based on their morpho-syntactic arrangements. While such analyses may reflect certain impressionistic aspects of the surface-level phonologies of mixed languages, they fall short of predicting the actual phonetic production...

NOW OPEN-ACCESS PUBLISHED IN LABORATORY PHONOLOGY; PLEASE REFERENCE THE PUBLISHED VERSION: https://doi.org/10.5334/labphon.291 This study of Media Lengua examines production differences between mid and high vowels in order to identify the major correlates that distinguish these vowel types. The Media Lengua vowel system is unusual in that it incor...

Media Lengua (ML), a mixed language derived from Quichua and Spanish, exhibits a phonological system that largely conforms to that of Quichua acoustically. Yet, it incorporates a large number of vowel sequences from Spanish which do not occur in the Quichua system. This includes the use of mid-vowels, which are phonetically realized in ML as largel...

NOW OPEN-ACCESS PUBLISHED IN LANGUAGE AND SPEECH; PLEASE REFERENCE THE PUBLISHED VERSION: https://doi.org/10.1177/00238309211014911 Media Lengua (ML), a mixed language derived from Quichua and Spanish, exhibits a phonological system that largely conforms to that of Quichua acoustically. Yet, it incorporates a large number of vowel sequences from S...

This is the first dictionary of the Media Lengua Language. Media Lengua is a rare mixed language spoken in the Ecuadorian highlands by approximately 2,000 people in various communities on the south end of Lago San Pablo. This collection comes from the community of Pijal. This dictionary is based on the peer-reviewed version published by Dictionaria...

Michif, a severely endangered language still spoken today by an estimated 100-200 Métis people in Western Canada, is generally classified as a mixed language, meaning it cannot be traced back to a single language family (Bakker 1997, Thomason 2001, Meakins 2013). It has been claimed to maintain the phonological grammar of both of its source languag...

This paper uses a 2AFC identification task experiment to test listener perception of voiceless fricative-stop contrasts with minimal pairs modified along a 10-step continuum. Here, we focus on the uniqueness and near-uniformity of the phonological systems found in Australia. The languages involved in this study include: Roper Kriol (an English-lexi...

VOT in Michif was examined in 446 stops across 10 speakers taken from a collection of semi-directed Pear Stories. Michif is a critically endangered Plains Cree-French mixed language spoken in parts of Canada and the US. The source language for each stop was labelled to test whether French-source and Cree-source stops patterned differently, as has b...

Ecuadorian Siona (Western-Tukanoan) shows a rather distinct prosodic system from that described in other Tukanoan languages. Because of flat monotone responses produced during eliciting sessions in the field, we developed an on-the-spot method for data collection through loosely structured role-playing events involving the use of a script with line...

This chapter examines acoustic data from six speech communities in the northern Andean region of Ecuador to describe allophonic variation in the Spanish rhotics /r, ɾ/ and approximants /ʎ, j/, as well as their relationship to the Quichua fricatives /ʐ, ʒ/. Data were collected from four dialects of Spanish, Imbabura Quichua, and Media Lengua, a mixe...

Mixed languages are a category of contact language, which emerges in bilingual contexts where a common language is already present but drastic social change is underway. In this respect, they do not serve a communicative function, but rather as markers of an in-group identity. Mixed languages combine the vocabulary and grammar of both languages to...

This study explores mid and high vowel perception in and across Ecuadorian Spanish, Quichua, and Media Lengua (a mixed language containing Quichua systemic elements and Spanish lexicon). Quichua and Media Lengua were originally considered three vowel systems comprised of /i, u, a/. However, recent production results reveal that mid vowels /e, o/ ma...

This study tests the effect of multilingualism and language contact on consonant perception. Here, we explore the emergence of phonological stratification using two alternative forced-choice (2AFC) identification task experiments to test listener perception of stop voicing with contrasting minimal pairs modified along a 10-step continuum. Here, we...

In Ecuador there exists a dynamic language contact continuum between Urban Spanish and Rural Quichua. This study explores the effects of competing phonologies with an analysis of voice onset time (VOT) production in and across three varieties of Ecuadorian highland Spanish, Quichua, and Media Lengua. Media Lengua is a mixed language that contains Q...

Existing methods for collecting and analyzing nasality data are problematic for linguistic fieldworkers: aerodynamic equipment can be expensive and difficult to transport, and acoustic analyses require large amounts of optimally-recorded data. In this paper, a highly mobile and low-cost method is proposed. By connecting low impedance earbuds into a...

Existing methods for collecting and analysing nasality data are problematic for linguistic fieldworkers: aerodynamic equipment can be expensive and difficult to transport, and acoustic analyses require large amounts of optimally-recorded data. In this paper, a highly mobile and low-cost method is proposed. By placing low impedance earbuds immediate...

This study presents a comparative analysis of F1 and F2 vowel frequencies from Pijal Media Lengua (PML) and Imbabura Quichua (IQ). Mixed effects models are used to test Spanish-derived high- and low-vowels against their Quichua-derived counterparts for statistical significance. Spanish-derived and Quichua-derived high-vowels are also tested against...