Feb 2
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Jannedy/Weirich:2014
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What reasons could there be for Berlin speakers to have a larger age
spread?
   
(Page 4) Which individual sound classes in the obstruent group have
greater potential to carry the functional load of the raising effect?

(clarifying question) Jannedy and Weirich (2014) cite Labov (1972) as
a point of comparison. In the Introduction section, they state that
Labov found that local fisherman centralized diphthongs in the context
of following obstruents, but in the Discussion and conclusion section,
they say that Labov found that preceding liquids, glides, and nasals
facilitated centralization. Which one is it, or are both of these
conditions the case?

It's interesting that there is an increased vowel duration in closed
syllables than open syllables for women. What kind of prosodic marker
specifically could this indicate? (pg. 216)

What factors were considered in the durational analysis of the
diphthongs /OI/ in the study, and why were only stressed instances of
/OI/ considered?

How did syllable structure and corpus interact to affect diphthong
duration differently for female speakers of Berlin German compared to
Hood German?


Jannedy/etal:2015
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Are there any common properties of the different linguistic variations
and grammatical innovations introduced by young speakers from
multi-ethnic urban neighborhoods in European cities?

Why was the effect of local identity stronger than the effect of the
language background?

About how prevalent are minimal pairs that only differ with the
voiceless palatal fricative vs the voiceless postalveolar fricative in
German? I assume with more context, the word where there could
potentially be a merger can still be understood relatively well?

I'm not particularly surprised that local identification (Kreuzberg
vs. Berlin) had a main effect in the extent of the merger (in terms of
the subject's production).