1,720,971 research outputs found
Assimilation, antigemination, and contingent optionality: the phonology of monoconsonantal proclitics in Polish
No full textBakovic (2005) analyzes the avoidance of 'sufficiently similar' adjacent consonants as the interaction of independent antigemination and assimilation processes. We present evidence from the phonology of monoconsonantal proclitics in Polish in support of the primary consequence of this analysis, that any conditions on antigemination or assimilation will also be conditions on 'sufficient similarity' avoidance. These conditions concern the segmental contexts in which geminates are disallowed in Polish and the variability of one of the assimilation processes involved. The analysis is further corroborated by the coincidence of two changes in progress: as the rate of variable assimilation has gone down, so has the rate of 'sufficient similarity' avoidance.Pająk, Bożena; Bakovic, Eric; Assimilation, antigemination, and contingent optionality: the phonology of monoconsonantal proclitics in Polish. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 28 (3): 643-680, August 2010. DOI: 10.1007/s11049-010-9099-8Peer-reviewe
Strong Onsets and Spanish Fortition
No full textThis paper examines the well-known alternation between voiced stops and spirants in Spanish. The alternation is standardly analyzed as spirantization of underlying stops; following arguments originally made by Lozano (1979) against this treatment, I propose an OT analysis that treats the alternation as fortition of underlying approximants.Employing Steriade's (1993) Aperture Theory, I propose that a constraint called Strong Onset, demanding that all syllables begin with oral closure, is high-ranked in Spanish, crucially dominated only by Contiguity. This analysis leads to a unified account of this alternation with the similar distribution of the tap and trill in Spanish. The paper concludes with some discussion of issues related to 'underlying form' in Optimality Theory.This version of the paper is slightly different from the definitive version that was published in Proceedings of SCIL 6 (1995), also published as MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 23, and is available at http://web.mit.edu/mitwpl/wpl/MWPL23.htm
Foot Harmony and Quantitative Adjustments
No full textFoot structure can affect syllable weight, as is well known from the analysis of minimal word effects (McCarthy & Prince 1986, 1993ab, 1994 inter alia). Other examples of lengthening or shortening processes that are sensitive to foot structure (henceforth, quantitative adjustments) are quite common as well. In Yupik, for instance, LL sequences lengthen when footed iambically to become (L H'). This process, known as iambic lengthening, is one of the cornerstone pieces of evidence for what I will here call "the standard theory" of foot typology, as exemplified by Hayes 1985, 1987, 1995 and McCarthy & Prince 1986.(1) Iambic lengthening/qayani/ --> [(qaya':)(ni)] 'his own kayak'The standard theory takes the asymmetric (L H') iamb to be the perfect iamb, and iambic lengthening is taken to be a rule that strives for this ideal. In Hayes 1995, iambic asymmetry is built into the universal foot inventory in accordance with the Iambic/Trochaic Law, which states that iambic groupings naturally contrast in duration while trochaic groupings naturally contrast in intensity. Without further elaboration, this type of approach cannot account for dialectal variation in the quantitative adjustment of LH sequences in Yupik. One dialect, Chaplinski, behaves as expected: LH sequences are not adjusted and are footed as (L H'), as shown in (2a). Another dialect, St. Lawrence Island, foots LH sequences as (L S'), as shown in (2b). Finally, Central Alaskan Yupik dialects unexpectedly foot LH sequences as (H')(H'), as shown in (2c).(2) Quantitative adjustments of LHa. /qaya:ni/ --> [(qaya':)(ni)] 'in his kayak'b. /qaya:ni/ --> [(qaya'::)(ni)] 'in his kayak'c. /qaya:ni/ --> [(qa'y)(ya':)(ni)] 'in his kayak'To account more uniformly for all of the quantitative adjustments in (1) and (2), I adopt a slightly modified version of the theory of foot typology proposed in Prince 1990, recast within Optimality Theory (OT; Prince & Smolensky 1993).Bakovic, E. (1996). Foot harmony and quantitative adjustments. In Second qualifying paper. New Brunswick, NJ: Department of Linguistics, Rutgers University
Nasal Place Neutralization in Spanish
No full textI have two goals in this paper. One is to deconstruct the account of nasal place neutralization processes in Spanish given by Harris (1984ab), and to demonstrate that the typological predictions that it appears to make are falsified by neutralization patterns in languages other than Spanish. The spirit (if not the letter) of Harris's account is at the heart of a great deal of work on the autosegmental analysis of neutralization, and I follow Lombardi (1999) in the abandonment of this approach in favor of a typologically more accurate one involving Optimality Theoretic constraint interaction. My second goal is to provide a novel account of the distinct results of final nasal neutralization in different varieties of Spanish, one that satisfactorily explains the observed variation via the interaction of independently motivated constraints.Published in University of Pennsylvania Working papers in Linguistics (PWPL) available at http://www.ling.upenn.edu/papers/pwpl.html#OrderingBakovic, Eric (2000). Nasal place assimilation in Spanish. In M.M. Fox, A. Williams & E. kaiser (Eds.) Proceedings of the 24th Annual Penn Linguistics Colloquium. Philadelphia, Pa. Univ. of Pennsylvania
Unbounded Stress and Factorial Typology
No full textIn this paper I demonstrate how a small set of constraints independently motivated for the analysis of bounded stress systems within Optimality Theory (OT; Prince & Smolensky 1993) is sufficient to account for the gross characteristics of strikingly different unbounded stress systems (see also Tesar 1998). This sufficiency is an important factorial typological consequence of the ranking of violable universal constraints, the cornerstone assumption of OT, a fact that serves as the primary motivating force behind this line of investigation. The constraints involved in the analysis and the logic of their interactions with one another turn out to reveal some important properties of constraint (in)activity through ranking in OT, a topic to which I devote particular attention.This paper was originally published in RuLing Papers 1: Working Papers from Rutgers University (1998). A revised version was published in Optimality Theory in Phonology: A Reader (2004) and is available at http://works.bepress.com/ebakovic/14Bakovic, E. (2004). Unbounded stress and factorial typology. In J. J. McCarthy (Ed.) Optimality theory in phonology: A reader (pp. 202-214). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing
Transparency, Strict Locality, and Targeted Constraints
No full textThe claim that feature assimilation is strictly local, applying only between adjacent segments, appears to be contradicted by languages in which, descriptively speaking, vowel harmony passes through so-called 'transparent' vowels without affecting them.
We adopt the particular approach to vowel harmony developed within OT by Bakovic (2000), according to which agreement constraints require only articulatorily adjacent (Gafos 1996, Ni Choisain & Padgett 1997) vowels to harmonize with one another. Adopting strict locality seems to force us to incorrectly predict that non-assimilating vowels block harmony -- are opaque to it -- in all languages. Our proposal is that transparency is optimal in some languages because an output candidate with a transparent vowel diverges minimally from an output candidate with full assimilation. These languages highly value full assimilation, but they also highly value avoidance of certain types of (marked) vowels. These two value systems interfere with one another, resulting in a pattern that is an optimal blend of assimilation and avoidance: namely, transparency.
Formally, transparency arises from a targeted constraint (Wilson 2000; cited as Wilson, in preparation in the paper) that disprefers the full assimilation candidate relative to another candidate that is exactly the same except that one or more vowels (the transparent ones) have failed to assimilate. Because a potential candidate with opaque vowels is in turn disprefered relative to full assimilation by an agreement constraint, the end result is that transparency is optimal.
The substantive basis for this targeted constraint is bipartite: first, transparent vowels and their assimilated counterparts are perceptually similar, and second, the assimilated counterparts of transparent vowels are articulatorily marked. The example discussed in the paper concerns the transparency of high vowels to [ATR] harmony: [-ATR] high vowels are articulatorily marked, and are perceptually similar to [+ATR] high vowels (Archangeli & Pulleyblank 1994).The definitive version of this paper was published in WCCFL 19 : proceedings of the 19th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (2000) and is available at http://www.cascadilla.com/wccfl19.htmlBakovic, E. & Wilson, C. (2000). Transparency, Strict Locality, and Targeted Constraints. In R. Billerey & B.D. Lillehaugen (Eds.), WCCFL 19 : proceedings of the 19th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (pp. 43-56.). Somerville, MA : Cascadilla Press
Assimilation to the Unmarked
No full textIn this paper I explain how an apparent problem arises when one considers input forms with uneven ratios of the values of an assimilatory feature. If the usual positional considerations of assimilation are irrelevant, then an effect dubbed 'majority rule' emerges. Majority rule is a pathological consequence of the vertical symmetry of input-output faithfulness whereby an arbitrarily better- represented feature value overrules the other value, resulting in assimilation of the latter to the former rather than vice-versa. I propose to circumvent the majority rule effect by invoking the local conjunction of co-relevant markedness and faithfulness constraints. A local conjunction of this type is asymmetrically violated by a mapping from an unmarked feature value to a marked one, and is universally ranked above its conjuncts -- its faithfulness conjunct in particular -- thereby heading off the apparent problem induced by the symmetry of faithfulness. This solution yields the successful description of an attested pattern, assimilation to the unmarked, which is furthermore claimed to correspond to the pattern of dominant-recessive vowel harmony.The definitive version of this paper was published in University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics 6.1(1999) and is available at http://www.ling.upenn.edu/papers/v6.1-contents.htmlThis ROA version of the paper differs significantly from the published version that appeared in Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Penn Linguistics Colloquium, both in style (different page formatting) and in content.Bakovic, E. (1999). Assimilation to the unmarked. In Alexander, J. E., Han, N.-R. E., Fox, M. M. E., & Pennsylvania Univ., Philadelphia. Penn Linguistics Club (eds.) Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Penn Linguistics Colloquium. University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics (6.1). Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania
Have Faith in Syntax
No full textIn this paper we argue that syntactic optionality is best understood in Optimality Theory in terms of faithfulness constraints regulating input-output disparity with respect to purely formal properties of syntactic structures. Specifically, we propose that the three forms of object relative clause in English shown in (a-c) below are the result of high-ranking faithfulness to a formal property we call "operator type". Any structural output constraints violated by the three forms are overridden in the typical Optimality-theoretic way by higher-ranked faithfulness.a. the man who Bill sawb. the man that Bill sawc. the man Bill sawThe absence of the equivalent of (a) in Norwegian is then argued to be the result of lower-ranking faithfulness. We explore some consequences of this particular analysis, including the factorial typology of the constraints employed, and contrast this faithfulness approach to optionality with two other approaches in the OT Syntax literature. We conclude that the faithfulness approach is more satisfactory than other approaches, both empirically and theoretically
Harmony, Dominance and Control
No full textIn this dissertation I argue for a general model of assimilation within Optimality Theory, with vowel harmony processes serving as a specific empirical testing ground. The model centers around agreement constraints. I demonstrate that the interaction among agreement constraints and other well-established constraints (particular members of the general markedness and faithfulness constraint families) is sufficient to account for the various vagaries of vowel harmony, and that representational devices such as crucial underspecification and autosegmental feature-sharing are consequently unnecessary. Vowel harmony processes can be either stem-controlled or dominant-recessive. Stem-controlled vowel harmony processes are the more familiar kind, where the harmonic feature value of vowels in the stem determines the harmonic feature value of vowels in subsequent affixes. In a language with a dominant-recessive vowel harmony process, on the other hand, one harmonic feature value is 'dominant' and the other is 'recessive' such that any dominant-valued morpheme vowel, stem or affix, determines the harmonic feature value of all other (otherwise recessive-valued) morpheme vowels. I offer a novel analysis of the distinction between stem-controlled and dominant-recessive vowel harmony processes. I argue that the phenomenon of stem control is due to the relatively higher rank of faithfulness constraints on the correspondence relation between stems and their affixed forms; i.e., that stem-controlled vowel harmony is a cyclic process. Dominance, on the other hand, is due to the relatively higher rank of a constraint that specifically prevents dominant-valued (here understood as 'unmarked') segments from becoming recessive-valued ('marked'). I argue that this type of constraint, a local conjunction of markedness and faithfulness, is independently required in order to explain the fact that a larger number of segments with a particular value of the harmonic feature do not ever "gang up" on a smaller number of segments with the opposite value, a universal fact that has otherwise proven to be difficult to guarantee as a general result. The factorial typology of the constraints relevant to the proposed model is thoroughly investigated, and several challenging examples (Yoruba, Maasai, Turkana and Nez Perce) are given detailed attention and analysis. Taken together, these components of the dissertation confirm the descriptive and explanatory adequacy of the proposed model.Ph.D
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