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Event: Linguistics Circle Event
Date:  Wednesday 7 May 2025
Time:  12:00-13:00
Venue: Campus Hub Block O Room 411

The Linguistics Circle Seminar entitled Observing a sound change in progress and its implications for language processing will be taking place face-to-face on Wednesday 7 May 2025 at 12:00-13:00 in Campus Hub Block O Room 411.

The speaker is  (, University of Malta).

Abstract:
Traditional descriptions of the Maltese language suggest that the /r/ sound is pronounced as an alveolar trill, similar to how it is spoken in neighbouring Italian and Arabic. This means the tongue tip rapidly taps against the area just behind the upper front teeth. This is a challenging sound to produce as the tongue is moved passively by the so-called Bernoulli effect. However, many languages have shifted away from this trilled /r/ over time.

For example, German and French moved to a uvular /r/ (produced further back in the mouth), while Standard British English gradually replaced the trill with a smoother sound, called an approximant, likely starting during the Renaissance.

We investigated whether Maltese is undergoing a similar change, particularly since Italian (using the alveolar trill) has become less influential with the rise of satellite TV, while English (which uses the approximant) has grown in influence. To explore this, we recorded 60 speakers pronouncing words with /r/ in different positions—at the beginning, middle, and end of words.

Our findings support the idea of an ongoing shift: younger speakers were more likely to use the English-style approximant, while older speakers favoured the traditional trilled /r/. However, even older speakers did not consistently use the trill, especially at the ends of words, where approximants were common. This suggests that producing a trill at the end of a word is particularly challenging, making it a likely area for change in the language.

We also investigated how this variation in pronunciation affects how listeners recognize spoken words. If different speakers produce /r/ in different ways, does one version make words easier to recognize?

Or do listeners better understand words when they match their own pronunciation? To answer this, we used eye-tracking, a technique that measures where and when people look while listening to speech.

Our results showed that listeners—regardless of how they pronounce /r/ themselves—were slightly better at recognizing words when they were spoken with a trill. This latter finding may help explain why the trilled /r/, despite being difficult to pronounce, remains widespread across the world's languages.