The Syllable in Optimality Theory

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The Syllable in Optimality Theory The syllable has always been a key concept in generative linguistics: the rules, representations, parameters, or constraints posited in diverse frameworks of theoretical phonology and morphology all make reference to this fundamental unit of prosodic structure. No less central to the field is Optimality Theory (OT), an approach developed within (morpho)phonology in the early 1990s, which at this point is the dominant paradigm in the field and recently has made significant inroads in syntax and even semantics. This book thus combines two themes of central importance to linguists and their mutual relevance in recent research. It provides an overview of the role of the syllable in OT and ways in which problems that relate to the analysis of syllable structure can be solved in OT. Not only do the contributors to the book show that the syllable sheds light on certain properties of OT itself, they also demonstrate that OT is capable of describing and adequately analyzing many issues that are problematic in other theories. The analyses are based on a wealth of languages.

Author of German Intonational Patterns (1993), Caroline Féry is a professor of linguistics at the University of Potsdam, Germany. Her many papers have appeared in Linguistiche Berichte and the Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics, among other publications. Ruben van de Vijver is author of The Iambic Issue: Iambs as a Result of Constraint Interaction as well as several papers for Lingua.

The Syllable in Optimality Theory

Edited by CAROLINE FÉRY University of Potsdam, Germany

RUBEN VAN DE VIJVER University of Potsdam, Germany

   Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge  , United Kingdom Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521772624 © Cambridge University Press 2003 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in print format 2003 - isbn-13 978-0-511-06885-0 eBook (EBL) - isbn-10 0-511-06885-9 eBook (EBL) - isbn-13 978-0-521-77262-4 hardback - isbn-10 0-521-77262-1 hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of s for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

List of Contributors Preface

page vii ix

part one. introduction 1 Overview Caroline Féry and Ruben van de Vijver

3

part two. syllable structure and prosodic structure 2 Sympathy, Cumulativity, and the Duke-of-York Gambit John J. McCarthy

23

3 The Controversy over Geminates and Syllable Weight Stuart Davis

77

4 The Syllable as a Unit of Prosodic Organization in Japanese Haruo Kubozono

99

5 Prosodic Weight Draga Zec

123

part three. nonmoraic syllables and syllable edges 6 Syllables and Moras in Arabic Paul Kiparsky

147

7 Semisyllables and Universal Syllabification Young-mee Yu Cho and Tracy Holloway King

183

8 Onsets and Nonmoraic Syllables in German Caroline Féry

213

9 Extrasyllabic Consonants and Onset Well-Formedness Antony Dubach Green

238

v

vi

10 Beyond Codas: Word and Phrase-Final Alignment Caroline R. Wiltshire

contents

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part four. segments and syllables 11 On the Sources of Opacity in OT: Coda Processes in German Junko Ito and Armin Mester

271

12 Ambisyllabicity and Fricative Voicing in West Germanic Dialects Marc van Oostendorp

304

13 The CiV-Generalization in Dutch: What Petunia, Mafia, and Sovjet Tell Us about Dutch Syllable Structure Ruben van de Vijver

338

14 The Relative Harmony of /s+Stop/ Onsets: Obstruent Clusters and the Sonority Sequencing Principle Frida Morelli

356

part five. how concrete is phonotactics? 15 The Independent Nature of Phonotactic Constraints: An Alternative to Syllable-Based Approaches Juliette Blevins

375

Author Index

405

Languages Index

410

Subject Index

413

Contributors

Juliette Blevins Department of Linguistics, University of Luton Young-mee Yu Cho Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, Rutgers University Stuart Davis Department of Linguistics, Indiana University Caroline Féry Institut für Linguistik/Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Universität Potsdam Antony Dubach Green Institut für Linguistik/Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Universität Potsdam Junko Ito Department of Linguistics, University of California, Santa Cruz Tracy Holloway King NLTT/ISTL, Xerox PARC, Palo Alto, California Paul Kiparsky Department of Linguistics, Stanford University Haruo Kubozono Department of Linguistics, Kobe University John J. McCarthy Department of Linguistics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst Armin Mester Department of Linguistics, University of California, Santa Cruz Frida Morelli Department of Linguistics, University of Maryland Marc van Oostendorp Meertens Instituut vii

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contributors

Ruben van de Vijver Institut für Linguistik/Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Universität Potsdam Caroline R. Wiltshire Program in Linguistics, University of Florida, Gainesville Draga Zec Department of Linguistics, Cornell University

Preface

This book presents 15 chapters that are all concerned with the role of the syllable in Optimality Theory. The idea for this book arose during a conference with the same theme held from June 30 to July 2, 1998 in Tübingen, Germany. During this conference it was felt that a book about the role of the syllable in a relatively new theory of grammar was necessary. Apart from the participants of the conference a number of phonologists were invited to contribute to the book to do justice to the many different aspects of the syllable. The financial support of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and the Seminar für Sprachwissenschaft at the University of Tübingen, which made the conference possible, is gratefully acknowledged. We want to thank Christine Bartels sincerely for her help and encouragement. Many thanks are also due to Kay Steinmetz and Helen Wheeler. Regine Eckardt made the illustrations, sacrificing much of her free time. Her efforts are greatly appreciated by the editors. This book would not have been possible without the help of anonymous reviewers and many Studentische Hilfskräfte. We want to thank them all. Caroline Féry Ruben van de Vijver

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The Syllable in Optimality Theory

part one INTRODUCTION

1 Overview Caroline Féry and Ruben van de Vijver

The syllable has (nearly) always played a central role in phonological theory, but with the recent advent of Optimality Theory (OT), its role has become crucial. The first papers on OT, as well as numerous papers written since, are based on the syllable. It is no exaggeration to say that syllabification has played a pivotal role in establishing OT and, in turn, that OT has contributed to our understanding of the role of the syllable, since many issues concerning this prosodic constituent have been reconsidered in the light of this theory (McCarthy and Prince 1993, Prince and Smolensky 1993). The present book provides insights into the syllable and into OT in three respects. First, it underlines the continuing interest in the syllable. Second, it shows that OT is capable of providing answers to old issues that have been problematic in procedural analyses, as well as shedding light on new issues and giving fresh perspectives. Third, the syllable helps reveal and solve problems within OT. Several aspects of syllabification have proved hard to solve within OT and have forced phonologists to come up with original solutions. The first section of this introduction gives an overview of the three issues just mentioned. Since it is impossible to give a detailed account of all the numerous aspects of the syllable that phonologists are concerned with, we focus on the points that we consider as central in the volume. In the second section, we concentrate on the individual chapters and offer summaries of their contents.

1.1. The Central Role of the Syllable in Phonology In the seventies, several phonologists, such as Vennemann (1974), Hooper (1976), and Kahn (1976), proposed including the syllable as a prosodic unit in generative phonological theory. The relevance of the syllable for linguistic theory has increased ever since. The syllable is connected with both segmental Many thanks to Kirsten Brock, Gisbert Fanselow, and Ede Zimmermann for helpful comments.

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and suprasegmental levels. It allows a succinct formulation of many phonological generalizations (see Blevins 1995 for a summary of the role played by the syllable in phonological theory). Let us briefly illustrate these observations. The connection with segments is apparent in various processes, such as the well-known glottalization of voiceless stops in the coda of English syllables or the aspiration of the same voiceless stops in the onset of (stressed) syllables. The first [t] in the English word Atlanta is glottalized; [p] in applause is aspirated. In both words stress is on the second syllable. Words may start with [pl], such as in play, but no word starts with [tl]. An intuitive way to describe the distribution of the glottalization and aspiration of stops is to say that syllable-initial stops are aspirated while syllable-final stops are glottalized. The consonant cluster [pl] in applause is syllable-initial, while [t] in Atlanta is syllable-final. It is much more difficult to formulate the distribution of aspiration and glottalization if no reference is made to the syllable. The distribution of aspiration must be expressed by a statement along the following lines: before stressed vowels voiceless stops are aspirated if they are wordinitial or are part of a possible word-initial consonant cluster. At higher prosodic levels, syllable shape determines which syllables are most likely to be stressed in many languages: heavy syllables are more prone to be stressed than light ones. In Latin, for example, stress is on the penultimate syllable if it contains a long vowel (amíicus ‘friend’) or a closed syllable (agénda ‘things that have to be done’). If the penultimate syllable has a short vowel, stress is on the antepenultimate syllable (Cícero name). Both long vowels and closed syllables have a branching rhyme and differ in this respect from syllables with just a short vowel in their nuclei. Syllables with a branching rhyme are called heavy and those with a nonbranching rhyme are light. Thus, the stress distribution can be stated in the following terms: stress is on the penultimate syllable if it is heavy; otherwise it is on the antepenultimate syllable. Again, a formulation of the distribution of stress without the aid of the syllable would fail to point out the structural equality of syllables with long vowels and closed syllables in Latin. To sum up, the syllable allows the formulation of generalizations both at the segmental level and at higher prosodic levels, which are awkward to express without referring to this constituent. Of primary concern for the goals of this book, however, is the way OT can be used to account for different aspects of syllabification and, conversely, how different aspects of syllabification tell us more about OT.

1.1.1 How OT Sheds Light on the Syllable With the recent rise of OT, the theoretical emphasis has shifted away from representations and toward constraints and their interactions. One of the main

overview

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insights of OT is that markedness generalizations, as expressed in the form of constraints on surface forms, are part of phonological theory in the most direct way. These constraints are grounded in phonetics: they are justified by general considerations of acoustics or articulation.These constraints conflict with faithfulness constraints. An example is hiatus avoidance. Hiatus is the phonetic result of the immediate adjacency of vocalic syllable peaks. In languages that resolve hiatus, resolution can be attained by different means, such as insertion of a consonant between the two vowels, glide formation, deletion of one of the vowels with or without compensatory lengthening, and so on. OT assumes that a constraint against hiatus (*Hiatus) is part of Universal Grammar and thus that such a constraint is part of the grammar of every language. However, the way in which individual languages choose to resolve hiatus depends on the ranking of this markedness constraint with respect to faithfulness constraints. Languages that do not resolve hiatus have high-ranking faithfulness constraints on the vowels involved in the hiatus, whereas languages that eliminate hiatus rank the relevant faithfulness constraints lower than the constraint against hiatus. In other words, typological variation is the direct consequence of the interaction of constraints. The result of different interactions can be summed up with the help of (a simplified account of) three languages. In Hawaiian, hiatus is freely allowed; in German and French, it is not or at least not in all morphosyntactic and/or prosodic environments. In Hawaiian, the markedness constraint *Hiatus is ranked below all other constraints; in German and French, *Hiatus is high ranking. In German, hiatus is resolved by inserting a glottal stop as the onset of the second syllable (Beamte ‘civil servant’ is realized as [bəʔamtə]), whereas in French, the first vowel of a two-vowel sequence is deleted in a Det + N context (le amour ‘the love’ is [lamur]). In terms of constraint interaction, the difference between the three languages is expressed in the following way. In Hawaiian, *Hiatus is ranked below constraints prohibiting consonant epenthesis (called Dep(C)) and vowel deletion (Max(V)), as in (1a). In German, where a consonant is inserted to avoid hiatus, both Max(V) and *Hiatus are higher ranking than Dep(C), as shown in (1b). Hiatus must be avoided, but vowels may not be deleted. In French, hiatus is avoided as well, but in this language it is better to delete a vowel than to epenthesize a consonant. This is expressed by ranking both Dep(C) and *Hiatus above Max(V), as in (1c). (1)

a. Ranking in Hawaiian: hiatus is allowed. Max(V), Dep(C) >> *Hiatus b. Ranking in German: hiatus is avoided by inserting a consonant. Max(V), *Hiatus >> Dep(C) c. Ranking in French: hiatus is avoided by deleting a vowel. Dep(C), *Hiatus >> Max(V)

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In the older derivational approach to phonology, hiatus resolution takes the form of (ordered) rules whose common purpose is not deducible from the rules themselves. This hidden common goal of different kinds of processes has been called “the conspiracy of the rules” by Kenstowicz and Kisseberth (1977). Compare the rules in (2), which have the effect that a glottal stop is inserted between two vowels (in German) or that a vowel is deleted (in French). From the format of the rules, it must be interpreted as a coincidence that vowel deletion in one language and consonant epenthesis in another both lead to the elimination of hiatus. (2)

Derivational rules a. Consonant epenthesis (German) Ø_C/V_V b. Vowel deletion (French) V_Ø/_V

Although both rules result in the avoidance of a sequence of two heterosyllabic vowels, this outcome is not immediately apparent from the rules themselves. The target, avoidance of hiatus, is not mentioned in the rules, whereas in OT it is a direct component of the constraints. Syllable typology can also be elegantly accounted for in OT. It has been repeatedly observed that all languages have syllables of the form CV but not necessarily other forms (Jakobson 1962, Prince and Smolensky 1993, Blevins 1995), which follows from certain typological generalizations. First, if a language has syllables without onsets (V), it also has syllables with onsets (CV). Second, if a language has closed syllables (CVC), it also has open ones (CV). Furthermore, if a language has syllables with complex onsets (CCV), it also has CV syllables. And finally, if a language has syllables with complex codas (CVCC), it also has CVC syllables and therefore also CV ones. These generalizations can be accounted for by constraint interaction between markedness and faithfulness constraints. The markedness constraint Onset requires that syllables have onsets, and NoCoda prohibits codas. Faithfulness constraints, such as the ones used for hiatus, state that underlying material must be parsed as such. As shown, there are at least two kinds of faithfulness constraints, one against epenthesis (Dep) and one against deletion (Max). These two constraints are joined together here under the cover term Faith. Consider several rankings standing for different types of languages in (3)–(5). In the first Tableau 1 in (3) the markedness constraints dominate the faithfulness constraints. Whatever the input, if the constraints are ranked as shown, the language allows only the most unmarked CV syllables to emerge as optimal.

overview (3)

7

Tableau 1: Onset, NoCoda >> Faith (No epenthesis, no deletion) /cv/ ☞ cv cvc v

Onset

NoCoda

Faith

*!

* *

*!

/cvc/ ☞ cv cvc v

* *! *!

*

/v/ ☞ cv cvc v

*!

* *

*!

/vc/ ☞ cv cvc v

*! *!

* * *

If Faith is ranked above NoCoda but below Onset, as in (4), the language has the syllable types that win in this tableau. The ranking in (4) allows both CV and CVC syllables. (4)

Tableau 2: Onset >> Faith >> NoCoda /cv/ ☞ cv cvc v

Onset

Faith

NoCoda

*! *

*

*!

/cvc/ cv ☞ cvc v

*! * *!

*

/v/ ☞ cv cvc v

* * *!

/vc/ cv ☞ cvc v

*!

**! * *

*!

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Caroline Féry and Ruben van de Vijver

In (5) the consequences of the ranking Faith >> Onset >> NoCoda are illustrated. This ranking allows the syllable types CV, CVC, V, and VC. (5)

Tableau 3: Faith >> Onset >> NoCoda /cv/ ☞ cv cvc v

Faith *! *!

Onset

NoCoda *

*

/cvc/ cv ☞ cvc v

*! * *!*

*

/v/ cv cvc ☞ v

*! *!*

* *

/vc/ cv cvc v ☞ vc

*!* *! *!

* * *

*

The tableaux in (3)–(5) illustrate that all languages, irrespective of their constraint ranking, allow CV syllables. More complex types of syllables, in contrast, are only allowed in some constraint rankings. The ability of OT to explain typological patterns as a result of the interaction of markedness and faithfulness constraints is the core of the theory, and it is to a great extent responsible for its success.

1.1.2 How the Syllable Sheds Light on OT As mentioned in section 1.1, syllable structure has played a prominent role in the conception and development of OT, not only because it can neatly illustrate simple factorial typologies, but also because it involves different interacting modules, such as segments, sonority, moras, syllabification, edges, and stress. There are, however, cases in which constraints on surface structure do not seem to make the right predictions. For example, certain types of alternations involving syllable structure are not recoverable from surface forms alone but seem to need an intermediate form between input and output to which both

overview

9

are in some sense more faithful than they are to each other. Such cases have been called “opaque” by Kiparsky (1973). Opacity is illustrated here with palatalization of [s] in Swabian, an Alemannic Germanic dialect spoken in the southwest of Germany. In Swabian, [s] and [∫] are distinctive, as can be observed in the pair vermi[∫]en ~ vermi[s]en ‘to mix ~ to miss’. However, when coronal [s] is followed by an obstruent, it is palatalized to [∫], as shown in (6), and thus becomes indistinguishable from underlying [∫]. (6)

Palatalization in Swabian Konstanz Kon[∫]tanz name of a city Aspekt A[∫]pekt ‘aspect’

Standard German Kon[s]tanz A[s]pekt

In addition to palatalization, Swabian has a process of word-final obstruent cluster simplification, illustrated in (7). In contrast, the standard Northern pronunciation involves a nonpalatalized [s] and complete realization of the cluster. (7)

Swabian bist bi[∫]

‘are, 2 sg.’

Standard German bi[s]t

In the Swabian examples in (7), [s] is palatalized, although the reason for the palatalization is not present on the surface. The more transparent candidate *[bis] is expected, since in standard OT this candidate is always more faithful to the input [bist] than [bi∫]. [bi∫] incurs a violation of a faithfulness constraint called Ident(anterior), requiring featural identity between input and [bis] output that does not have. Opaque interactions such as these have proved difficult to express in OT. Certain generalizations are not statable in terms of the usual surface constraints, simply because these generalizations are not surface true. The success of OT in other areas, however, forces phonologists to find a solution to this problem. To make a definition of opacity possible, it needs to be established whether all known cases of opacity are due to the same kind of effects. Another important question is whether opacity always necessitates the assumption of a so-called sympathetic candidate that is neither the input nor the output (see the different proposals by McCarthy [this volume] and Ito and Mester [this volume]). Thus the opacity problem is an example of how the syllable can shed light on issues pertaining to OT, or, viewed less parochially, pertaining to the phonological system.

1.2. Overview of the Content This volume is further organized into the following parts: part two deals with syllable structure and prosodic structure, part three concerns semisyllables and edges of syllables, part four focuses on segmental alternations, and part

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Caroline Féry and Ruben van de Vijver

five considers the interface between phonetics and phonology. Even though most of the chapters touch upon several of these issues and thus could justifiably be included in several parts of the book, we have assigned every chapter to a part based on its main focus.

1.2.1 Syllable Structure and Prosodic Structure Part two groups together the chapters dealing with syllabic and prosodic structure. Several issues are raised in this section: the relation between the structure of the syllable and its position in the foot, the role of syllable weight in morphology, the role of syllables in a language that has traditionally been described as a mora language, and the relation between sonority and weight at various levels of the prosodic hierarchy. In his chapter “Sympathy, Cumulativity, and the Duke-of-York Gambit,” John McCarthy deals with syllables, phonological opacity, and the intersection of these two topics. He focuses on a problem in the syllabic and metrical phonology of Bedouin Arabic. According to traditional analyses, a stressed vowel deletes, its stress shifts to a following vowel, and then the deleted vowel is replaced: ʔákalat Æ ʔkálat Æ ʔakálat. This is a Duke-of-York derivation in the sense of Pullum (1976), because it contains an A Æ B Æ A mapping. McCarthy presents a reanalysis of Bedouin Arabic in OT terms, eliminating the Duke-of-York derivation by making crucial use of the semisyllable, a concept also used by many other contributors to this book. One part of the analysis of Bedouin Arabic involves an opaque alternation, which McCarthy proposes to treat using Sympathy Theory (McCarthy 1998). In Sympathy Theory, a particular failed output candidate exercises an indirect influence over the actual output form. Sympathy can accommodate the opaque alternation in Bedouin Arabic, but it raises a broader typological question: is it possible to eliminate Duke-of-York derivations entirely? McCarthy suggests that it is, if the indirect influence of the sympathetic candidate over the output is reckoned in terms of shared unfaithful mappings, which he calls “cumulativity.” At the conclusion of his chapter, McCarthy returns once again to the topic of the syllable, showing that, if cumulativity is correct, there cannot be constraints demanding faithfulness to syllable affiliation. This, he argues, is how OT must construe the familiar observation that syllable structure is never contrastive. Stuart Davis’s “The Controversy over Geminates and Syllable Weight” focuses on the relation between geminates and weight and gives a positive answer to the recurrent question as to whether geminates are underlyingly moraic (see the chapters by van Oostendorp and by van de Vijver in this volume, which also come to the conclusion that consonant length can be specified underlyingly). Davis’s chapter illustrates how OT allows new analyses of

overview

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old problems by giving an elegant analysis of the formation of the inanimate plural in Sinhala. Davis shows that, although much discussed in the phonological literature, it is a moot question whether the singular of the Sinhala inanimate noun is derived from the plural or the plural is derived from the singular. The difference between the singular and the plural is determined by the constraint hierarchy of the language. Moreover, he shows that constraint ranking can provide answers to questions about representations, in particular, whether geminates are represented moraically or nonmoraically. He also explains that Leti and Ngalakan, which have been used in the literature to argue against the moraicity of geminates, do not, in fact, present serious counterevidence: the patterning of word-initial clusters in Leti motivates the view that word-initial geminates can be partly extraprosodic, and the Ngalakan stress data do not really bear on the issue of the underlying moraicity of geminates. Haruo Kubozono’s “The Syllable as a Unit of Prosodic Organization in Japanese” shows that even in a so-called moraic language like Japanese, the syllable is an indispensable prosodic constituent. His argument for the syllable is based on preferred foot structures. In a whole series of word formations, there is a tendency toward the trochaic feet HL and HH, and an avoidance of LH and LL forms. The word formations that Kubozono discusses are based on the syllable and not on the mora. Evidence for his analysis comes from phenomena like word accent, babies’ language or motherese, loanword truncation, zuzya-go (a secret language used by Japanese jazz musicians), and chanting phrases used by Japanese baseball fans when cheering for their favorite players. The last chapter in part two, Draga Zec’s “Prosodic Weight,” proposes that weight is a property of prosodic constituents in general. The syllable, the foot, and possibly the prosodic word all impose their own minimal sonority thresholds. She proposes that Sonority is a family of constraints that govern the sonority relations within the prosodic hierarchy. Sonority interacts with the family of Faithfulness constraints. Three case studies provide evidence for positing a sonority threshold constraint external to the syllable. To give one example here, in English, syllables with l or a nasal in the nucleus (CL(C)) exhibit a highly restricted distribution: CL and CLC syllables are never stressed, nor are there any monosyllabic CLC words or disyllabic CLCL words. In contrast, [r] in the nucleus (CR(C)) has the same distribution as a full vowel. Thus, English prohibits syllabic liquids and nasals as heads of feet. An interesting conclusion of this chapter is that prosodic heads have their own phonotactic requirements, and it can be hypothesized that nonheads may have different phonotactic requirements. In this way, Zec’s contribution can be linked to several other chapters in this volume, namely, those of Cho and King, Féry, Green, Kiparsky, and Wiltshire, which all deal with segments that

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cannot be syllabified straightforwardly. These segments are usually analyzed as syllables without moras or, alternatively, as moras without syllables. Apparently, that a constituent is the head of a higher prosodic level determines much of its phonotactics; however, the absence of a head also seems to be relevant for the phonotactics. To sum up, the chapters in part two touch upon several aspects of weight. They illustrate that syllable structure and other prosodic structures are closely intertwined.

1.2.2 Nonmoraic Syllables and Syllable Edges Part three of this book centers around the best characterization of edges of words and syllables. It has been assumed that whatever sequence is allowed to begin or end a syllable is also allowed to begin or end a word. Although this is usually accepted (but see Wiltshire, this volume), the reverse is not true. Words can begin or end in longer sequences than syllables. The common perspective of this section is that the Strict Layer Hypothesis (SLH) can be violated, but in keeping with the economy property of OT it can be violated only minimally. The SLH requires that each unit of the prosodic hierarchy, shown in (8), dominates a unit at the immediately lower level. (8)

Prosodic hierarchy Prosodic word Foot Syllable Mora

All four chapters in this section reject the strong interpretation of the SLH, which says that the prosodic hierarchy is nonrecursive (a node at level n should not dominate another node at level n) and exhaustive (each constituent of level n - 1 is exhaustively dominated by a node of level n). This has been replaced by a view in which Nonrecursivity and Exhaustivity are violable constraints, like the other principles of phonology (see Selkirk 1995). In a weak interpretation of the SLH it would be possible, for example, to attach a mora directly to a foot or a prosodic word. In agreement with the principle of economy of OT, violations are kept to a minimum. The violations of Exhaustivity considered here involve semisyllables in three of the five chapters; the authors of this section conclude that only syllables that are not prosodic heads and that lack a head themselves can violate the SLH.

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The first chapter of part three is Paul Kiparsky’s “Syllables and Moras in Arabic,” which deals with a number of topics (semisyllables, initial geminates, superheavy syllables) as part of a larger issue: the status of moras that are unaffiliated with syllables. Also, it is a defense of Lexical Phonology against parallelism. In Lexical Phonology, phonology and morphology are organized serially; for example, all phrase-level phonology applies after all lexical phonology. In more radical versions of OT, the whole phonology applies simultaneously. Kiparsky argues that such a view is incompatible with the facts of stress and syllabification in Arabic. Kiparsky discusses syllabification in various dialects of Arabic and claims that they differ in whether they license semisyllables, which are unsyllabifiable consonants he analyzes as moras adjoined to the prosodic word. This licensing of unsyllabified consonants by moras can take place at the lexical level or at the postlexical level, which makes a strictly parallel version of OT unlikely. Three types of dialects syllabify their final consonant in different ways. First, the so-called C-dialects freely allow semisyllables both at the word level and postlexically, as exemplified by [yíktbu] ‘they write’ from Maltese (the boldfaced [t] is the semisyllable). Second, the so-called VCdialects allow semisyllables at the word level only. Postlexically semisyllables are not allowed, and epenthesis takes place at the phrase level to make the relevant consonant part of a syllable. Compare [yíkitbu] ‘they write’ from Upper Egyptian, with epenthetic [i] preceding the potential semisyllable. Third, in the so-called CV-dialects, no semisyllables are allowed at any level of the prosodic hierarchy, and lexical epenthesis takes place to make syllabification of a stray consonant possible. An example from this third type of dialect is [yiktíbu] ‘they write’ from Cairo Egyptian, with epenthetic [i] following the potential semisyllable. The three dialects thus differ in two respects: in the constraint ranking and in the level at which semisyllables are allowed. Young-mee Yu Cho and Tracy Holloway King’s “Semisyllables and Universal Syllabification” introduces semisyllables in the phonology of Georgian, Polish, and Bella Coola to account for apparent violations of the sonority hierarchy. According to Cho and King, semisyllables have the following properties: they have no nucleus, no coda, and no stress/accent/tone, and they are found only at the edge of a morpheme. Cho and King show that the interaction of faithfulness constraints, such as Dep and Max, with certain markedness constraints, such as the one requiring all syllables to contain a mora, can account for the variation found among languages in the admission of semisyllables. Principles like the Sonority Sequencing Principle and Exhaustive Syllabification are then assumed to be universal. However, contrary to Kiparsky, they define semisyllables as typically nonmoraic. Kiparsky conceives of semisyllables as moras adjoined to prosodic words, while Cho and

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Caroline Féry and Ruben van de Vijver

King assume they are segments adjoined to syllable nodes without an intervening mora. Semisyllables in their analysis, too, violate the SLH. In “Onsets and Nonmoraic Syllables in German,” Caroline Féry also argues for semisyllables, sharing a nonmoraic view with Cho and King. Her study of German shows that consonants added to heavy syllables at the edges of words, which are sometimes analyzed as a third mora, are best analyzed as the onsets of nonmoraic semisyllables. Maximal bimoraicity can then be guaranteed, and the unmarked foot pattern of German, the syllabic trochee, can be extended to the class of words traditionally analyzed as having superheavy final syllables. Féry’s chapter presents an analysis of onsets in German and shows that, while feet and prosodic words require an onset, nonmoraic syllables try to get rid of their onsets, at least if ambisyllabic segments are not considered to be onsets. Laryngeals, which are consonants with low sonority, are never pronounced as the onsets of semisyllables, even though [h] (but not [ʔ]) is present in the input. Another segment that can be analyzed in this way is the dorsal nasal [ŋ], an allophone of the sequence [ŋg], which is chosen as the realization when no onset is required. In sum, the higher the prosodic constituent, the stronger the requirement for the presence of an onset. Some consonants, like the laryngeals, are realized only when they begin such a high prosodic constituent. Antony Dubach Green’s “Extrasyllabic Consonants and Onset WellFormedness” focuses on onsets. In line with the other authors of this section, he observes that not all consonants are straightforwardly assigned a position within a syllable. Green argues that each level of the prosodic hierarchy determines which onset clusters, if any, it tolerates. In Munster Irish, for example, higher prosodic levels tolerate more onset clusters than lower levels do. The consonants that cannot be licitly incorporated into a syllable are attached directly to higher-level structure. To account for the facts, he proposes a universally ranked set of constraints against specific onset clusters. Constraints against onset clusters with falling sonority are ranked above those against onset clusters with shallow-rising sonority, which in turn are ranked above those against onset clusters with steep-rising sonority. Recognizing that languages may differ, the Syllable Contact Law (SCL) is invoked. The SCL states that in a sequence A$B, where A and B are consonants and $ is a syllable boundary, B should be less sonorous than A. In OT, this is conceived of as a violable constraint. This constraint can be ranked with respect to the onset constraints, thus yielding the ranking determines the differences between languages. In this chapter, too, extrasyllabic consonants violate the SLH. The last chapter of this part, “Beyond Codas: Word and Phrase-Final Alignment,” by Caroline Wiltshire, considers the syllabification of final consonants. Wiltshire observes that words and phrases can end in segments that

overview

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cannot be syllabified without violating the Sonority Sequencing Principle. Unsyllabified consonants do not add weight to the syllable. Word and phrasefinal edges can impose additional restrictions beyond those imposed on syllable-final segments, so that the full typology of the right side of the syllable need not always be the same as the typology of the right side of the word. She proposes to account for these facts with the help of alignment constraints, such as Align-R(word,C), Align-R(word,V), Align-R(phrase,C), and Align-R(phrase,V). Like the other authors in this section, she allows edge segments to violate the SLH. Such violations are seen in languages like Kamaiurá and Cairene Arabic, which allow additional segments that do not fit into the canonical coda positions of these languages. In part three, then, issues raised in part two are pursued further. The prosodic hierarchy can be minimally violated, in the sense that constituents can “skip” a level. The precise nature of the constituents that violate the prosodic hierarchy, however, still needs further study, mostly of a typological nature. At this point it is hard to decide what the prosodic structure of the semisyllable looks like. Is it a mora without a syllable, as in the analysis of Kiparsky, or is it a syllable without a mora, as in the analyses of Cho and King and Féry? The final decision will have to be made on the basis of empirical considerations. Some of the properties shared by all segments that have been called semisyllables, not only by the authors of this volume but also by other phonologists, are mentioned by Cho and King (this volume) (and also by Kiparsky [this volume]): semisyllables are usually toneless or have a limited tonal contrast; they have a restricted segmental inventory; they can have a lower sonority than the nucleus of a plain syllable, or, conversely, they can be subject to a minimum sonority requirement; they have simpler syllable shapes; and they generally occur at word edges. One property that might be decisive for the final analysis of these consonants has to do with their influence on the metrical structure. Semisyllables that appear to make a syllable heavy and those that do not might have different representations.

1.2.3 Segmental Properties of Syllables Part four of this volume consists of four chapters dealing with the relation between syllable structure and segment quality. Ito and Mester argue that opacity is a fact of phonological life and illustrate this with data from German. They maintain that opacity may arise in only one particular instance of constraint conjunction: when faithfulness constraints are conjoined with markedness constraints. Van Oostendorp and van de Vijver in their respective chapters examine facts from Dutch, in particular the role of the head of the syllable (the nucleus) in determining properties of the shape of the syl-

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Caroline Féry and Ruben van de Vijver

lable. Morelli examines the quality of obstruent clusters at syllable edges and shows that in this position sonority can be turned off. Although all the chapters in this part concentrate on segmental quality, they do so in different ways. The first chapter, Junko Ito and Armin Mester’s “On the Sources of Opacity in OT: Coda Processes in German,” is a discussion of opacity in German codas. In Northern German, the final stop in wenig [ve:niç] ‘few’, with an input /g/, is spirantized, while there is no spirantization with Derrick name [derik] (*[deriç]), with an input /k/. An input /k/ always emerges unchanged. In wenige [ve:ngə] ‘few pl.’, /g/ remains a voiced stop as well. Descriptively, it seems that /g/ in wenig is devoiced because it is syllable-final and subject to Final Devoicing and that the spirantization crucially only affects a devoiced segment. It does not affect segments that are already voiceless in the input, such as the final [k] of [derik]. To account for the opaque context of spirantization, Ito and Mester invoke an optimality-theoretic strategy called “Local Conjunction of Constraints” (Smolensky 1995). In their proposal, markedness constraints, such as the constraint against voiced dorsal segments in the coda of a syllable, are crucially conjoined with faithfulness constraints. The difference between [ve:niç] and [derik] amounts to the fact that the final segment in wenig violates a high-ranking constraint conjoining markedness and faithfulness constraints, whereas the final segment of Derrick does not. It is the conjunction of faithfulness and markedness constraints that makes it possible to distinguish formally between underlying and derived segments. In the case of spirantization, there is a constraint against voiced codas, which forces the final /g/ in wenig to devoice. Ito and Mester’s solution amounts to the postulation of a constraint conjoining a markedness constraint against codas, another against dorsal plosives, and a faithfulness constraint requiring identity of [voice] in input and output. This final constraint is violated by a dorsal plosive coda segment that has a voice specification different from its input. The candidate [ve:nik] violates this constraint, but the candidate [derik] does not. To test the predictions made by their analysis, they study final devoicing, postnasal g-deletion, velar spirantization, dorsal fricative assimilation, and r-vocalization, both in Standard German and in the Northern dialect. Marc van Oostendorp’s “Ambisyllabicity and Fricative Voicing in West Germanic Dialects” deals with the relationship between the feature [voice] in fricatives and syllable structure. Van Oostendorp discusses facts from Frisian, Thurgovian German, Roermond Dutch, and Standard Dutch and concludes that the feature [voice] is not contrastive in fricatives in the first three languages and is only marginally so in the last one. Whether a fricative is voiced or not depends on whether it is underlyingly short or long (monosyllabic or ambisyllabic). Van Oostendorp’s key assumption is that a consonant occurring between two vowels can be affiliated to syllable structure in

overview

17

two ways: either it belongs only to the onset of the following syllable, in which case it is voiced, or, alternatively, it is ambisyllabic, belonging both to the coda of the preceding syllable and to the onset of the following syllable. In the latter case, it is voiceless. This paper thus argues for underlying syllable structure (or at least for the existence of underlying geminates) and against underlying specification of voice. The voicing facts are a consequence of the length of the fricative. Another major point is that OT, including the Richness of the Base Hypothesis, can successfully account for the variation we find between dialects. In van Oostendorp’s chapter, as well as in the one by van de Vijver (discussed next), it is the length of a segment that is underlying, and particular phonotactic constraints on length make sure that long segments are always syllabified in a certain way. Ambisyllabicity is then just a consequence of segmental length. The third chapter of this part, “The CiV-Generalization in Dutch: What Petunia, Mafia, and Sovjet Tell Us about Dutch Syllable Structure” by Ruben van de Vijver, deals with the relation between the structure of the syllable and the quality of the vowel. A vowel preceding a CiV-sequence is usually tense (or long), although it may also be lax (or short). The i is usually realized as a vowel, although it is realized as a glide in a few cases. These two facts are related, and they are accounted for by appealing to vowel markedness. Lax vowels are argued to be marked and tense vowels, unmarked. Following the logic of OT, if a vowel is not somehow forced to be lax, it will be tense. This has immediate consequences for the following consonant, since tense vowels occur only in open syllables. The following consonant will therefore be an onset. Complex onsets of the form Cj are avoided in Dutch, and, again, if nothing forces the creation of such a complex onset, the i will surface as a vowel. In this way segments determine the structure of syllables (petunia). The reverse situation, in which syllable structure determines vowel quality, is seen when a consonant occupies a coda position and an onset position simultaneously. The vowel in the syllable preceding this ambisyllabic segment is in a closed syllable and must therefore be lax, but the i following the consonant will still be a vowel, since it is preceded by an onset. In this case, the prosodic structure of the word determines the quality of its vowels (mafia). Finally, a vowel can be forced to be lax by faithfulness constraints, in which case the following consonant must be a coda. The i is therefore not preceded by an onset and is realized as a glide (sovjet). This chapter illustrates the way in which segment structure relates to syllable structure and vice versa. Finally, Frida Morelli’s “The Relative Harmony of /s + Stop/ Onsets: Obstruent Clusters and the Sonority Sequencing Principle” argues against the view that s + stop clusters are ill-formed onset clusters because of their

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violation of the Sonority Sequencing Principle and different phonological behavior in comparison to other onset clusters. She argues that within obstruent clusters a system of markedness constraints, which is sonority independent, evaluates the relative harmony of the different types of obstruent clusters. Within her system, s + stop clusters are the most harmonic obstruent clusters. She argues that because these clusters are unmarked within their own dimension, rather than being marked with respect to the Sonority Sequencing Principle, it is easy to explain why they frequently occur across languages. Going deeper into the substance of the syllable structure, the chapters in part four look at segments, the ingredients of the syllable, and show that not all melodies can be associated with all syllable positions but that the choice between allophones is determined by position.

1.2.4 How Concrete Is Phonotactics? One motivation for the introduction of syllables into phonological theory is the claim that certain regularities in the sequential distribution of segments (phonotactics) are best stated as syllable-based constraints. Part five of this book includes a chapter questioning this claim. Blevins argues that stringbased phonotactics are primary in phonological systems and that syllabifications and syllable-based constraints are secondary properties defined with respect to these phonotactics. She bases her arguments on phonetic explanations underlying broad typological generalizations about featurebased phonotactics, on the occurrence of near-identical phonotactics in languages with distinct syllable structures, and on the variability of native speaker syllabification judgments in many languages. The major finding of this contribution is that the majority of phonotactic constraints are best stated as feature-sensitive, string-based constraints independent of syllable structure. Juliette Blevins’s contribution, “The Independent Nature of Phonotactic Constraints: An Alternative to Syllable-Based Approaches,” presents evidence for string-based phonotactics in the cross-linguistic distribution of laryngeal features, place features, manner features, and consonant clusters. In many cases, syllable-based constraints are shown to be inadequate. Furthermore, the string-based phonotactic constraints proposed are shown to stem from well-understood cases of phonetic sound change. Though the phonetic bases of string-based phonotactics may no longer be transparent due to phonologization, in the majority of cases, they remain surface true and reflect the “unmarked” sound pattern. Blevins suggests that, where surface true, these string-based phonotactics should be encoded in terms of languagespecific inviolable constraints. With this encoding, OT will move closer to establishing a theory of phonotactic markedness.

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In this discussion of the content of the chapters we have identified several issues that still need to be clarified, even though there is also much that is already understood. This book testifies to the crucial role that the syllable still plays in the phonological debate.

references Blevins, J. (1995). The syllable in phonological theory. In Handbook of Phonological Theory, ed. J. Goldsmith, 206–244. Oxford: Blackwell. Hooper, J. L. (1976). An Introduction to Natural Generative Phonology. New York: Academic Press. Jakobson, R. (1962). Selected Writings. Vol. 1: Phonological Studies. The Hague: Mouton. Kahn, D. (1976). Syllable-Based Generalizations in English Phonology. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Kenstowicz, Michael, and Charles Kisseberth. (1977). Topics in Phonological Theory. New York: Academic Press. Kiparsky, P. (1973). Abstractness, opacity and global rules. In Three Dimensions of Linguistic Theory, ed. O. Fujimura, 57–86. Tokyo: TEC. McCarthy, J. (1998). Sympathy and phonological theory. Ms., University of Massachusetts, Amherst. [ROA-252, Rutgers Optimality Archive, http://roa.rutgers.edu] McCarthy, J., and A. Prince. (1993). Prosodic Morphology 1: Constraint Interaction and Satisfaction. Technical Report No. 3. Amherst: University of Massachusetts and New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University. [To appear, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.] Prince, A., and P. Smolensky. (1993). Optimality Theory: Constraint interaction in generative grammar. Ms., Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J., and University of Colorado, Boulder. [To appear, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.] Pullum, Geoffrey. (1976). The Duke of York gambit. Journal of Linguistics 12: 83–102. Selkirk, E. (1995). Sentence prosody: Intonation, stress and phrasing. In The Handbook of Phonology, ed. J. Goldsmith, 550–569. Oxford: Blackwell. Smolensky, P. (1995). On the internal structure of the constraint component of UG. Ms., colloquium presented at University of California at Los Angeles, April 7, 1995. [ROA-86, Rutgers Optimality Archive, http://roa.rutgers.edu] Vennemann, T. (1974). Words and syllables in natural generative grammar. In Papers from the Parasession on Natural Phonology, ed. A. Bruck et al. Chicago: CLS.

part two SYLLABLE STRUCTURE AND PROSODIC STRUCTURE

2 Sympathy, Cumulativity, and the Duke-of-York Gambit John J. McCarthy

Oh, the grand old Duke of York, He had ten thousand men; He marched them up to the top of the hill, And he marched them down again. An English Nursery Rhyme

2.1. Introduction Serial derivations have been a central idea in the theory of generative phonology throughout its history, but scant attention has been paid to a key question: is any serial derivation possible in human languages? More precisely, can any independently licit rule coexist with any other licit rule, and can the rules apply in any order? The rule coexistence question has, to my knowledge, never been raised in the literature. The rule ordering question was investigated intensively during the early 1970s (see Iverson 1995 for a review), but often just a pair of rules was studied in isolation from the broader derivational context. Since about 1975, research in generative phonology has mostly dealt with the form of rules and the nature of representations – subjects that are interesting in themselves but do not help advance the theory of derivations. I am grateful to the participants in the Tübingen workshop, particularly the organizers, Caroline Féry and Ruben van de Vijver. I am also grateful to the UMass weekly phonology group (Patrik Bye, Nancy Hall, Heli Harrikari, Caroline Jones, Ed Keer, Cecilia Kirk, Paul de Lacy, Meredith Landman, Anna L ¢ ubowicz, Steve Parker, and Jen Smith) and to audiences at the University of California, Santa Cruz (especially Junko Ito, Armin Mester, Jaye Padgett, and Geoff Pullum), Indiana University (especially Stuart Davis, Dan Dinnsen, and Ken de Jong), and the University of Connecticut (especially Andrea Calabrese). Special mention: Paul Kiparsky forced me to reexamine my ideas about sympathy with his example (16); Junko Ito and Armin Mester sent me very useful comments based on discussion in their seminar; Ed ¢ ubowicz, Alan Prince, and Colin Wilson commented on an earlier Keer, Paul de Lacy, Anna L draft; additionally, Alan Prince heard me out and offered many excellent suggestions.

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A rare contribution to this neglected topic is Pullum’s (1976) study of the “Duke-of-York gambit.” Duke-of-York (DY) derivations have the general form A Æ B Æ A, where underlying A passes through a B stage before returning to surface A again. For example, in some analyses of r-dropping and rintrusion in various English dialects, final r is first deleted and then reinserted before a vowel: Homer is Æ Hom[ə ] is Æ Homer is (cf. Hom[ə ] saw). Pullum addresses this case and others like it, asking whether DY derivations are required by the facts and how they might be ruled out generally. Optimality Theory (OT – Prince and Smolensky 1993) offers a novel perspective on process coexistence and interaction. It is to be expected, therefore, that OT can yield new insights into DY derivations and, by extension, into the questions posed at the outset of this chapter. I propose to revisit the topic of DY derivations within the context of OT. There are two main types of DY derivations, and they turn out to have very different implications for linguistic theory. In the first type, which I call vacuous, the intermediate stage of the A Æ B Æ A derivation has a somewhat artifactual status, as in the hypothetical example in (1). (1)

Vacuous DY derivation Underlying /CAD/ ➜ A Æ B/__D CBD ➜ B Æ A/C__ CAD

cf.

/ZAD/ ZBD –

/CBW/ – CAW

The last two columns show that both rules are independently motivated; the focus is on the column headed by /CAD/. The DY derivation /CAD/ Æ CBD Æ CAD is vacuous because nothing else depends on the intermediate stage CBD. The theory-internal assumptions of strict serialism, rather than some empirical argument, motivate this intermediate stage.1 In feeding DY derivations like (2), the intermediate stage is crucial for conditioning some further process. That is, the rule changing A to B feeds some other rule, which applies before B changes back into A. (2)

Feeding DY derivation Underlying /CAD/ ➜ A Æ B/__D CBD C Æ E/__B EBD ➜ B Æ A/__D EAD

A Æ B sets up environment for next rule. Now B conditions C Æ E change. B Æ A, undoing effect of first rule.

In derivations like this, the intermediate stage is independently motivated, since it supplies the context for the change from C to E. Vacuous DY derivations like (1) are abundantly attested; in fact, all of Pullum’s examples are like this, as are many others in the literature. As the vacuity of the intermediate stage suggests, there is no need here for a serial der-

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ivation. Rather, the vacuous DY case involves blocking under constraint domination, a well-understood mode of interaction in OT (Prince and Smolensky 1993: chapter 4). The goal of section 2.2 is to demonstrate this result. In contrast, feeding DY derivations have scarcely ever been reported in the literature, and Pullum cites no actual examples. Several possible cases are discussed and reanalyzed in section 2.3, with a particular concentration on the best-documented example, the interactions of syllabic and metrical processes in Bedouin Arabic. The conclusion I reach is that, in general, feeding DY derivations do not exist. This typological result demands an explanation, and in the following sections of this chapter I offer one. One element of the explanation is sympathy theory (McCarthy 1999b), which is summarized in section 2.4. Sympathy is a general model of opaque interactions within OT. It assumes that, in addition to the actual output form, there may be a sympathetic candidate, which is the most harmonic candidate that obeys some specified faithfulness constraint. The output form is required to resemble the sympathetic candidate in some respect, and in this way the sympathetic candidate, even if not the winner itself, may exercise an indirect influence over the outcome. The other element of the explanation is a refinement of sympathy theory, called cumulativity. In a DY derivation, later steps do not accumulate the results of earlier steps, since some later step literally undoes the effect of an earlier step. In non-DY derivations, later steps do reliably accumulate the mappings made earlier. A definition of cumulativity in terms of shared unfaithful mappings is proposed in section 2.5, and this definition is incorporated into the theory of sympathy, replacing an earlier approach based on intercandidate faithfulness constraints. The resulting theory is one that can deal with opaque interactions generally but that cannot accommodate the unattested feeding DY type. The cumulativity property has implications for the theory of syllabification, and these are explored in section 2.6. It is not uncommon to find serial derivations in which a segment is syllabified one way, triggers some phonology, and then is resyllabified another way – a seemingly noncumulative derivational path. The hypothetical example in (3) is a good illustration, closely paralleling the feeding DY case in (2). (3)

Derivation with resyllabification Underlying /apia/ ➜ Syllabification a.pi.a One syllable for each vocoid. a Æ i/__. i.pi.a Raise a to i in nonfinal open syllable. ➜ Resyllabification ip.ya Resolve hiatus by devocalizing and resyllabifying.

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I claim that cumulativity is defined in terms of faithfulness, and so any property that is not governed by faithfulness – arguably including syllabification – is irrelevant to determining whether a derivation is cumulative. Therefore, mappings like (3) are cumulative, appearances to the contrary, and so they can be simulated with the revised theory of sympathy.

2.2. Vacuous Duke-of-York Derivations 2.2.1 The Core Cases There is no shortage of real DY derivations of the vacuous type. Some examples, most of which were originally collected by Pullum (1976), appear in (4). (4)

Vacuous DY cases a. Nootka rounding/unrounding (Campbell 1973, Sapir and Swadesh 1978). b. Vedic Sanskrit glide/vowel alternations (Kiparsky 1973a). c. Dutch devoicing/voicing assimilation interactions (Lombardi 1991, Booij 1995). d. English r-deletion/intrusion (McCarthy 1991, 1993, Halle and Idsardi 1997, Bakovic 1998). e. English trisyllabic shortening/CiV lengthening (Kenstowicz 1994, Halle 1995, Prince 1996). f. Bedouin Arabic vowel raising/lowering (Al-Mozainy 1981, Irshied and Kenstowicz 1984). g. Anglian breaking/smoothing (Hogg 1978, Dresher 1993).

These cases share certain characteristic properties: there are two (or more) rules that produce opposite mappings (A Æ B and B Æ A); these rules apply in environments that sometimes overlap; and the rules are ordered with the A Æ B rule applying before the B Æ A rule. This constellation of properties will yield a DY derivation in any word that happens to match the environment of both rules. I am using the term vacuous to describe these cases because the intermediate stage serves no independent function, beyond its obvious role in negotiating a path between the two contradictory rules. Nootka nicely illustrates these observations. In Nootka, dorsal consonants (velars and uvulars) become labialized after round vowels ((5a)). Nootka also has underlying labiodorsal consonants, and these delabialize syllable-finally ((5b)). Now consider the situation where a dorsal consonant is both preceded by a round vowel and followed by a syllable boundary (indicated by “.”), so it meets the structural conditions of both rules. In fact, Delabialization takes precedence ((5c)).

sympathy, cumulativity, and the duke-of-york gambit (5)

27

Nootka Labialization and Delabialization a. Dorsals become labialized after round vowels ‘making it’ K Æ Kw / o__ ʔo.kwi cf. ki ‘making’ b. Syllable-final labiodorsals delabialize ak.sˇi ‘to take pity on’ Kw Æ K / __. w cf. a.k iqnak ‘pitiful’ c. Interaction: Delabialization wins  moq. ‘throwing off sparks’  ‘phosphorescent’ cf. mo.qwak

The problem, then, is to account for the interaction of these two processes in situations where their environments intersect. Under the assumptions of strict serialism, the only way to ensure that Delabialization takes precedence is to order it after Labialization. The result is a DY derivation in just those cases where the ordering matters, such as the input /moq/ in (6). (6)

Serial derivation for Nootka  Underlying /m  oq/ w ➜ Labialization m  oq . ➜ Delabialization moq.

cf.

/ʔoki/ ʔo.kwi –

/akwsˇi / – ak.sˇi

Nootka, then, has exactly the characteristics of a vacuous DY derivation: two rules that produce contradictory mappings in overlapping environments are ordered so that one undoes the effect of the other. Cases like Nootka have a straightforward nonderivational interpretation in OT, with no need for the vacuous intermediate stage. The interaction between the labialization and delabialization processes is a matter of conflicting markedness constraints, and this conflict is resolved, like all constraint conflicts, by ranking. The constraints themselves are universal; their interaction through ranking is language particular and learned. Here I will focus on just the interaction, glossing over details of constraint formulation that are not relevant in this context. Two markedness constraints are visibly active in Nootka. One asserts that plain dorsals cannot occur after round vowels, as in (7a). The other prohibits rounded dorsals syllable-finally, as in (7b). (7)

Markedness constraints for Nootka a. Rounding *oK b. Unrounding *Kw.

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John J. McCarthy

These markedness constraints dominate the faithfulness constraint Ident(round), as shown in the tableaux (8)–(9).2 (8)

Rounding >> Ident(round) /ʔoki/

Rounding

a. ☞ ʔo.k i w

b. (9)

Ident(round) *

ʔo.ki

*!

Unrounding >> Ident(round) /akwsˇi( )/

Unrounding

a. ☞ ak.sˇi( ) b.

ak .sˇi( ) w

Ident(round) *

*!

This much is the basic phonology of (de)labialization in Nootka. Now we turn to the cases of interest, where the ranking between the two markedness constraints is decisive. If Unrounding dominates Rounding,  then the output will be unrounded in situations of conflict like /moq/ (see (10)). (10) Unrounding >> Rounding >> Ident(round)  /moq/ Unrounding Rounding  a. ☞ moq. *  w b. moq . *!

Ident(round) *

Obviously, there is no need for an intermediate derivational stage or kindred notion. (See Dresher 1993: 238, where a similar point is made for a mixed rule-and-constraint theory.) As usual in OT, ranking permutation predicts a range of permitted interlinguistic variation. So, if the ranking of the two markedness constraints were reversed, then moqw would be the output. Before we continue, it is necessary to consider and dismiss two alternatives that might seem like reasonable ways to sidestep the DY problem within a rule-based derivational framework. One approach, advocated by Halle and Idsardi (Halle 1995, Halle and Idsardi 1997; cf. Prince 1996, 1997, Bakovic 1998), involves disjunctive ordering under the Elsewhere Condition (EC – Kiparsky 1973a, Anderson 1974, Hastings 1974, Koutsoudas et al. 1974, Sanders 1974). Halle and Idsardi propose to eliminate DY derivations by giving the B Æ A rule disjunctive precedence over the A Æ B rule. For example, Nootka would be analyzed by applying Delabialization before Labialization, as in (11), with Labialization blocked, in EC fashion, from applying to the output of Delabialization.

sympathy, cumulativity, and the duke-of-york gambit (11) Nootka with disjunctive ordering3  Underlying /m cf.  oq/ Delabialization moq. Labialization blocked by EC

/ʔoki/ – ʔo.kwi

29

/akwsˇi / ak.sˇi –

This proposal, if successful, would eliminate the need for the vacuous intermediate stage in DY derivations. There is, however, a significant problem with this idea: the characteristics of DY cases are not in general the same as the characteristics of EC cases, and so the EC does not always have the desired effect. All versions of the EC require that the two rules stand in a specific/general relation in order for them to be disjunctively ordered. But to produce a DY derivation, the two rules only need to overlap in their applicability. Therefore, the conditions that trigger the EC are more stringent than the conditions that produce a DY derivation. This means that the EC can address only a proper subset of DY derivations. Nootka illustrates this point, since Delabialization and Labialization are not in a specific/general relation. (To be at the end of a syllable is not in any way more specific than to be after a round vowel.) This observation means that the EC does not produce disjunctive application in Nootka, and so this DY case is not eliminated, nor is the more general problem solved.4 The second way to avoid the in Nootka involves skirting  DY problem  the intermediate stage of the /moq/ Æ mo qw Æ moq derivation by  enforcing the effect of Labialization in the underlying representation: /m oqw/ Æ  moq. But this means that Labialization must function as a morpheme struc ture constraint ruling out */moq/ and as a regular rule heteromorphemically, as in (5a). This is an instance of the Duplication Problem (Clayton 1976, Kenstowicz and Kisseberth 1977): the same rule appears twice in the grammar, in both static and dynamic roles. OT solves the Duplication Problem by denying the existence of morpheme structure constraints or other language-particular restrictions on underlying forms. OT derives all linguistically significant patterns from constraints on outputs interacting with faithfulness constraints (“Richness of the Base” in Prince and Smolensky 1993). Because faithfulness is bottom  ranked in (10), the choice of input –   w /, or archisegmental /m oQ/ – does not matter, since all map /moq/, /moq  to surface mo q. There is no need to restrict the inputs and no Duplication Problem.5 All of the vacuous DY cases cited in (4) can be understood, as Nootka is, in terms of conflict among markedness constraints resolved by ranking. The purely artifactual status of the intermediate derivational stage is revealed by this analysis. In serial theories, precedence relations among processes must be analyzed in terms of rule ordering (unless auxiliary principles like the EC

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intervene); the last rule to get its hands on the representation has precedence, in the sense that it reliably states a surface-true generalization. If two rules perform contradictory mappings in overlapping environments, some DY derivations are unavoidable, since there is no other way to specify the precedence relation between them. In OT, however, precedence relations among constraints are accounted for by ranking: the highest-ranking constraint has precedence, in the same sense that it reliably states a surface-true generalization.6 By decoupling precedence from serial ordering, OT permits vacuous DY derivations to be analyzed without positing a spurious intermediate stage.

2.2.2 Variations Certain other examples of DY derivations, though not strictly of the vacuous type, are also reanalyzable in terms of conflicting constraints. Consider first the interaction of coda devoicing and voicing assimilation in Harris’s (1993) analysis of Catalan: (12) Catalan (after Harris 1993: 185f.) From lexical stratum sub.lu.nar Devoicing sup.lu.nar Spirantization does not apply Voicing Assimilation sub.lu.nar

‘sublunar’

This is a bleeding DY derivation: Devoicing bleeds Spirantization, which only affects voiced stops, but then the intermediate p is re-voiced by Voicing Assimilation. (Compare su.[b]lim ‘sublime’, where Spirantization applies, as expected, to onset b.) A more direct analysis is possible, however, in terms of constraint conflict. Language typology shows that Universal Grammar (UG) contains a constraint barring continuants from codas – Korean is a well-known example where this constraint is undominated and produces alternations; similar facts in Kiowa lead Zec (1995: 111f.) to posit precisely this constraint. In Catalan, its activity is more limited: it dominates the markedness constraint responsible for the spirantization process, blocking spirantization of codas. (This is similar to Mascaró’s [1984] account of Catalan.) With the markedness constraint responsible for voicing assimilation ranked above the constraint responsible for devoicing, the Catalan DY derivation reduces to vacuous status.7 This discussion of Catalan suggests a general approach to bleeding DY derivations, where the intermediate stage waits out a third rule. The general form of such derivations is shown in (13).

sympathy, cumulativity, and the duke-of-york gambit (13) Bleeding DY derivation Underlying /CAD/ ➜ A Æ B/__D CBD C Æ E/__A does not apply ➜ B Æ A/__D CAD

31

A Æ B to escape next rule. No A there to condition C Æ E change. B Æ A, undoing effect of first rule.

Descriptively, the effect of this derivation is to change /C/ into E before A, except when A is followed by D. This is just the familiar blocking pattern obtained by ranking markedness constraints, as in Nootka or Catalan. The constraint *CA can compel the unfaithful mapping of /C/ to E, but *CA is crucially dominated by another markedness constraint, *EAD, which effectively blocks that mapping. So, in the general case, bleeding DY derivations can be reduced to vacuous status.8 Another variation on the DY theme can be found in Rubach’s (1993: 266ff.) analysis of depalatalization in Slovak (or Polish [Rubach 1984: 101ff., 199f.]). The rule of Anterior Depalatalization affects palatalized t¢, d¢, and n¢ when they precede coronals: kost¢ ‘bone’, kostny´ ‘bony’. In addition, Anterior Depalatalization “undoes the effect of Coronal Palatalization whenever Coronal Palatalization has applied before a yer-initial suffix containing a coronal consonant and the yer has not been vocalized” (Rubach 1993: 267): (14) Palatalization and Depalatalization in Slovak Underlying /let+En+y´/ Palatalization let¢Eny´ Yer Vocalization does not apply Yer Deletion let¢ny´ Depalatalization letny´ ‘summer-like’

The yers E and O are abstract vowels posited in most analyses of Slavic languages. When followed by another yer in the next syllable, a yer “vocalizes” to e or o; otherwise, as in (14), it deletes. Before it deletes, the front yer E causes palatalization of a preceding consonant (cf. mliek/mliecˇ ny´ ‘milk’/‘milky’). Once the yer has deleted, though, the t¢ in (14) is followed by a coronal, and so it must depalatalize. This too is a vacuous DY derivation, though with the added complication of an opaque interaction between Palatalization and Yer Deletion. In OT, the opaque interaction can be accounted for using sympathy theory (as in ¢ ubowicz’s [1999] analysis of similar facts in Polish). The sympathy constraint L is, however, crucially dominated by a constraint against clusters like t¢n. Schematically, except for the opacity, the interaction here is no different than in Nootka or Catalan.

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2.2.3 Summary I have now reviewed vacuous DY derivation and variations on it. I have shown that the vacuous DY pattern is an expected consequence of the core premises of OT, constraint ranking and constraint violation under domination. Significantly, cases of this type are well attested and uncontroversial, indicating that the typological claim implicit in OT fits the facts. But when we turn to the feeding DY interaction in the next section, the situation is quite different.

2.3. Feeding Duke-of-York Derivations 2.3.1 Introduction In feeding DY derivations like (2), the intermediate stage is crucial. A rule changing A into B feeds some process that applies at the intermediate stage, before a rule changing B back into A wipes out its environment. Plausible-looking examples are not difficult to concoct. The first, given in (15), is modeled after a postvocalic spirantization process in Tiberian Hebrew, but with a twist. In this hypothetical case, rules epenthesizing and later deleting ə are wrapped around a process of postvocalic spirantization: (15) Quasi-Hebrew (hypothetical feeding DY derivation) ➜ ➜

Underlying Epenthesis Spirantization Syncope

/qarbi/ qarəbi qarəvi qarvi

Insert ə after any syllable coda. Stops become fricatives postvocalically. Delete ə in two-sided open syllable (VC__CV).

In feeding DY fashion, the ə is inserted, hangs around long enough to cause spirantization,and then deletes,leaving a fricative behind as evidence of its passage. A more complex hypothetical example, shown in (16), was brought to my attention by Paul Kiparsky (e-mail, July 7, 1998). At the first step, trimoraic CVC syllables are repaired by i epenthesis (cf. Mekkan Arabic in AbuMansour 1987). The vowel i, whether underlying or epenthetic, then triggers palatalization of a preceding coronal. A process of apocope deletes final vowels, including epenthetic i, and finally the CVC syllable is re-repaired by shortening. Because it shares some rules with the real Yokuts language, I call this hypothetical system quasi-Yokuts. (16) Quasi-Yokuts (hypothetical feeding DY derivation) Underlying /mat/ ➜ Epenthesis mati To repair trimoraic syllable. Palatalization macˇi ti Æ cˇ i generally. ➜ Apocope macˇ Final vowels delete. Shortening macˇ To repair trimoraic syllable.

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The vowel i is epenthesized, triggers palatalization, and later deletes. The condition that originally produced i epenthesis, a trimoraic syllable, is subsequently repaired by other means. In quasi-Hebrew and quasi-Yokuts, some crucial phonological business occurs at the intermediate stage of the derivation – unlike the vacuous DY cases of section 2.2. In quasi-Hebrew, the intermediate stage allows the temporary ə to condition postvocalic spirantization, and in quasi-Yokuts, the intermediate stage is the point at which temporary final i triggers palatalization. These cases are particularly interesting because each process individually is quite plausible and natural. The peculiar thing is not the rules themselves but their coexistence and interaction in a single system.

2.3.2 Review of Putative Examples Examples of feeding DY derivations are not exactly thick on the ground, or even thin. Pullum’s (1976) survey contains none, and I am aware of just four putative cases: (i) Insertion and removal of coda moras in Tübatulabal (Crowhurst 1991). (ii) Harmony and disharmony of neutral vowels in, for example, Finnish (Bach 1968 and others). (iii) Epenthesis and syncope of ə in (real) Tiberian Hebrew (Prince 1975). (iv) Syncope and epenthesis in Bedouin Arabic (Al-Mozainy 1981).

I will pass over (i) and (ii) fairly quickly, since there are equally good and possibly superior alternatives to the DY derivations. I will then show that Hebrew involves an output-output faithfulness effect (iii). Finally, I will turn to a close examination of the Bedouin Arabic case (iv) in section 2.3.3, asking whether it is an authentic instance of the feeding DY type. I will argue that it is not, concluding that feeding DY interactions do not in general occur – an observation for which linguistic theory needs to supply an explanation. (i) Coda moras in Tübatulabal. Crowhurst (1991) argues that an early rule, Reduplication, treats CVC syllables as bimoraic, while a later rule, Stress Assignment, treats CVC syllables as monomoraic. A feeding DY derivation is apparently required: codas are assigned a mora by Weight-by-Position (Hayes 1989), Reduplication applies, coda moras are deleted, and then Stress Assignment applies. Reduplication crucially relies on the intermediate stage where coda moras are temporarily present. This chain of reasoning relies on the assumption (which Crowhurst shares with several contributors to this volume) that stress assignment processes are reliably diagnostic of the mora count of CVC syllables. That assumption has been called into question in recent years. Research on syllable weight (e.g., Hayes 1995, de Lacy 1997, Gordon 1999) has shown that stress is also

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conditioned by factors, such as sonority, that are not reified in the moraic representation. Arguably, Tübatulabal is just such a case: stress is attracted to certain syllables because they contain prominent long vowels, not because they are the only bimoraic syllables at the derivational instant when stress is assigned. On the strength of the reduplicative evidence, then, and with no remaining impediments from the stress evidence, it is reasonable to suppose the CVC syllables in Tübatulabal are bimoraic tout court. (ii) Neutral vowels in harmony systems. Ever since Bach (1968), a common analytic strategy for dealing with neutral vowels has been to assume that they temporarily undergo the harmony process: for example, Finnish /tuoli-llA/ Æ tuoli-lla Æ tuolilla ‘on the chair’. (See Ní Chiosáin and Padgett 1997 and Walker 1998 for a similar approach within OT.) This too is a feeding DY interaction, since the intermediate stage is required to support a strictly local, iterative harmony process. This idea is not lightly dismissed. There is a concern, however: the principal motivation for strict locality in current thinking (see also Archangeli and Pulleyblank 1994, Gafos 1996, 1998, Pulleyblank 1996) is a kind of phonetic realism, and this is difficult to reconcile with the fact that the phonetically real representations like tuolilla do not actually respect strict locality. There are alternatives to strict locality, summarized with references in Bakovic 2000: 266ff., including an approach, proposed by Bakovic, that is strictly local but without DY derivations, based on an extension of Wilson’s (1999) “targeted constraints.” (iii) Spirantization in Tiberian Hebrew. A process of postvocalic spirantization in Hebrew is rendered opaque by syncope: /katab(+u)/ Æ ka qablka qbu ‘he/they wrote’. According to Prince (1975), there is one particular morphological situation where a vowel is inserted, remains around long enough to trigger spirantization, and then is syncopated. This happens when the infinitival stem /ktob/ bears a prepositional prefix like /bi#/ ‘in’:9 (17) Tiberian Hebrew feeding DY derivation (after Prince 1975) Underlying /bi#ktob/ ➜ Epenthesis bi#kətob Spirantization bi#xəqob ➜ Syncope bi#xqob Other rules bixqob

Unlike the invented example in (15), though, real Hebrew has no general process epenthesizing schwa in a context that will later trigger syncope. In fact, the infinitive lixtob ‘to write’ supplies a near-minimal pair, with the expected stop t and no ghost of a prior epenthesis process. Derivations like (17) are limited to words that bear the syntactically independent prefixes /bi#/ and /ki#/ ‘like’, as Prince indicates with the # boundary. With ordinary inflec-

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tional prefixes (lixto b) or morpheme-internally (malki ‘my king’), there is no Ø Æ ə Æ Ø DY derivation. The morphology is obviously the key to understanding this restricted DY effect. In the theory of Lexical Phonology, one would say that Epenthesis and Spirantization apply to /ktob/ at a stratum when /bi/ is not yet present, producing the freestanding word kə .qo b ‘writing’. Only later is /bi/ added, triggering syncope of ə . Words with inflectional prefixes like lixto b and tautomorphemic cases like malki are derived in the earlier stratum, so Epenthesis never applies. In OT, an approximation to the Lexical Phonology analysis is possible using output-output correspondence. The spirantized q in bixqo b is faithful to its correspondent in the freestanding word kə .qo b in obedience to OOIdent(cont). The difference in strata is modeled by allowing different affixes to assign different output-output correspondence relations (Benua 1997a, 1997b). In this way, a restricted feeding DY effect – limited to circumstances where the intermediate stage is another independent word – can and should be reconstructed in OT. Of course, standard serial phonology is subject to no such restriction; it allows feeding DY derivations even morpheme-internally, where there is no evidence for cyclic or stratal organization.

2.3.3 A Feeding Duke-of-York Interaction in Bedouin Arabic The standard analysis of Bedouin Arabic incorporates a feeding DY interaction between stress and syllabically conditioned rules of vowel deletion and epenthesis. Words like /ʔ akal-at/ ‘she ate’ are said to get initial stress ʔ ákalat, followed by deletion of the stressed vowel with concomitant shift of the stress to the following syllable ʔ kálat, and later epenthesis to restore the deleted vowel ʔ akálat. As we will see in section 2.3.3.1, the evidence in support of this DY derivation is quite compelling. Nevertheless, there is a better analysis that avoids the need for the stress Æ deletion Æ stress-shift Æ epenthesis DY derivation. The problem in traditional accounts lies with the deletion rule, which purportedly deletes a vowel in a light syllable that is itself followed by a nonfinal light syllable (section 2.3.3.2). This rule’s complex, nonlocal environment amounts to nothing more than a redescription of the facts. But an explanation is possible in terms of prosodic theory. This deletion process, I will argue, is an instance of the well-documented tendency of iambic feet to maximize quantitative differences between their head and dependent syllables. This analysis, in common with several other contributions to this volume, relies on positing moraless semisyllables in the output of vowel deletion. The analysis explains all properties of the deletion process, and it eliminates the need for the DY derivation.

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In section 2.3.3.3, this analysis is formalized within OT. One aspect of stress/deletion interaction turns out to involve phonological opacity. Opacity is intimately connected with the DY problem, because DY derivations are by their very nature opaque (pace Pullum 1976: 89–90). Sections 2.4–2.6 then go on to address the general problem of opacity and DY in OT.

2.3.3.1 Overview of Traditional Analysis To understand the DY derivation, it is first necessary to have a good deal of background in Bedouin Arabic phonology. The plan is first to present the core processes of vowel raising and deletion, and then turn to their interaction with stress, which has DY character. The partial paradigms in (18) illustrate the main points.10 (18) Bedouin Arabic core data /katab/ ‘wrote’ ‘he__’ + Ø kítab ‘we__’ + na kitábna ‘she__’ + at ktíbat

/samiʕ/ ‘heard’ símiʕ simíʕna sámʕat

/kitib/ ‘was written’ ktíb ktíbna kítbat

Descriptively, underlying /a/ raises to i in an open syllable, while underlying /i/ deletes in the same environment – a typical chain-shift. But observe that even underlying /a/ has deleted in the form k_tíbat (from /katab-at/).11 Starting with Al-Mozainy (1976, 1981) and continuing through Al-Mozainy et al. (1985), Hayes (1995), and Irshied and Kenstowicz (1984), most analysts have agreed on approximately the rule system in (19) to deal with the data in (18). (19) Core rules for Bedouin Arabic a. Syncope i Æ Ø /__. s Delete short i in a nonfinal light syllable. b. Trisyllabic Deletion V Æ Ø /__. L s Delete a short vowel from an open syllable that is followed by a nonfinal light syllable. c. Raising a Æ i /__. s Raise short a to i in a nonfinal open syllable.

The rule of Syncope is necessary to account for alternations like samiʕ / sam_ʕ at. Raising is exemplified by forms like kitab. Trisyllabic Deletion will be discussed in detail in section 2.3.3.2. These rules have several crucial ordering relations, which are illustrated by the derivations in (20).

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(20) Rule interaction Underlying /katab/ /katab-at/ /samiʕ/ Initial syllabification ka.tab ka.ta.bat sa.miʕ Syncope iÆ Ø / C__ s Trisyllabic Deletion kta.bat V Æ Ø / C__ L s Raising ki.tab ki.tab kti.bat a Æ i / C__ s

/samiʕ-at/ /kitib/ sa.mi.ʕat ki.tib sam.ʕat ktib

/kitib-at/ ki.ti.bat kit.bat

si.miʕ

After an initial round of syllabification, Syncope first applies, deleting all is that occur in open syllables. (To handle /kitib-at/, right-to-left iteration of Syncope has to be assumed.) Syncope crucially precedes Trisyllabic Deletion, since otherwise the first vowel of /samiʕ-at/ would be deleted. Syncope must also precede Raising, since otherwise the first vowel of /samiʕ-at/ would raise to i. This ordering – Syncope, then Raising – is responsible for the /a/ Æ i, /i/ Æ Ø chain-shift that can be observed in these examples. The interaction of Trisyllabic Deletion with Stress is the source of the DY derivation. Standard accounts posit a Latin-type stress rule, as in the sedentary Arabic dialects discussed by Kiparsky (this volume) and Wiltshire (this volume): stress the penult if heavy, otherwise the antepenult.12 Formally, a moraic trochee is assigned right to left, subject to extrametricality of the final syllable: kítab, sámʕ at, kitábna, maktú fah ‘tied (f. sg.)’, má lana ‘our property’, arábtukum ‘I hit you (m. pl.)’, yˇsu fú nukum ‘they (m.) see you (f. pl.)’. But in words that are subject to Trisyllabic Deletion, the traditional analysis posits an early stress rule followed by stress shift when the stressed vowel deletes (Al-Mozainy 1981, Al-Mozainy et al. 1985, Hayes 1995: 228–238): (21) Interaction of Stress and Trisyllabic Deletion in standard analysis a. /katab-at/ b. /ʔinkasar-at/ c. /ʔakal-at/ Stress (káta)bat ʔin(kása)rat (ʔáka)lat ➜ Trisyllabic Deletion (kta)bat ʔin(ksa)rat (ʔka)lat Stress Shift (ktá)bat ʔin(ksá)rat (ʔká)lat ➜ Epenthesis (#ʔ _C) (ʔaká)lat Other rules ktíbat ʔinksárat ʔakálat

Deletion of a vowel out from under the stress forces stress to shift to the other syllable of the foot. The derivation in (21a) is provided for comparison purposes; the interesting cases are (21b) and (21c). In (21b), Latin-type trochaic stress is applied at an early stage of the derivation, but then it is obscured by the subsequent effects of Trisyllabic Deletion and concomitant stress shift. In (21c), this much also happens, plus the effect of Trisyllabic Deletion is undone, in classic DY fashion, by an epenthesis rule that repairs the initial #ʔ C cluster.

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This is a perfect exemplar of a feeding DY derivation, because the intermediate stage is crucial to obtaining the stress-shift effect.

2.3.3.2 The Prosodic Basis of Trisyllabic Deletion There is good reason to be skeptical of Trisyllabic Deletion and the DY derivation based on it. Trisyllabic Deletion has a complex, nonlocal, and highly arbitrary environment – why should deletion be limited to a light syllable that is followed by a light syllable that is itself nonfinal? The conditioning factors don’t seem to make sense. This situation is strongly reminiscent of trisyllabic shortening in English. Pairs like serene/serenity, grateful/gratitude, and derive/derivative show that, descriptively, a long vowel is shortened when followed by an unstressed syllable that is itself nonfinal. The standard analysis (Chomsky and Halle 1968) uses a rule with a complex, nonlocal environment, much like Trisyllabic Deletion. Again, the conditiong factors don’t seem to make sense. The explanation for the English case (and its Arabic counterpart) comes from higher-level prosodic structure. According to Myers (1987) and Prince (1990), trisyllabic shortening is conditioned by foot structure, in topdown fashion. The typical English pattern is a trochaic foot over penult and antepenult, with final syllable extrametricality: se (réni)Ft ·tyÒ. Shortening improves the well-formedness of the trochaic foot, replacing a HL (heavylight) trochee with a more harmonic LL (light-light) trochee (Prince 1990). This approach has answers to the whys of trisyllabic shortening, as Prince (1996) emphasizes. Why shortening and not, say, lengthening? Because shortening improves the match with the preferred bimoraic foot. Why a following unstressed syllable? Because a following unstressed syllable is a descriptive artifact of the real foot-based condition. And why, in nonlocal fashion, must there be another syllable after that? Because of the regular extrametricality rule. The answers to these questions emerge once the role of trochaic foot structure in English is properly understood, while they remain mysteries under the standard analysis. Similarly, I propose that the key to understanding trisyllabic deletion in Bedouin Arabic is to place it in the context of an iambic stress system. Iambic feet are subject to strong quantitative requirements. According to the Iambic/Trochaic Law (Hayes 1987, 1995: 80) or Grouping Harmony (Prince 1990) (cf. also McCarthy and Prince 1986, Kager 1993), iambic feet tend to favor quantitative reinforcement of the prominential contrast, so a LH (lightheavy) iamb is better than a LL one. For concreteness, I will assume the formulation of Grouping Harmony in (22). (22) GrpHarm In an iambic foot (x ¢y), |y| > |x|.

(|a| ∫ weight of a in moras)

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Because of GrpHarm, many languages have iambic lengthening processes, which improve LL iambs by lengthening the second syllable. Another logically possible consequence of GrpHarm is reduction of unstressed syllables in iambic feet, enhancing the quantitative contrast by weakening the weak rather than strengthening the strong. Hayes (1995: 213) reports that this occurs in Delaware, and it is an element of Kager’s (1997) analysis of Macushi Carib. Trisyllabic deletion, I will show, is exactly this: reduction of the unstressed syllable in a LL iambic foot to enhance the quantitative contrast. First, though, we must establish that the stress system of Bedouin Arabic is indeed iambic. Traditionally, the Arabian Bedouin Arabic dialects have been assumed to have trochaic stress, like all sedentary dialects, and AlMozainy, among others, adopts that assumption. But Hayes (1995) shows that two non-Arabian Bedouin dialects, one spoken in eastern Libya and the other in the Negev, are actually iambic. I will now show that Al-Mozainy’s Arabian dialect is also iambic. The analysis of words like ʔ akálat is tortuous under trochaic assumptions, but if stress is left-to-right iambic, then the analysis is straightforward: (ʔ aká)lat. Moreover, the examples usually cited in support of the trochaic analysis – kítab, sámʕ at, kitábna, maktú fah, má lana, arábtukum, yˇsu fú nukum – are also compatible with left-to-right iambic feet. In words with heavy penults like kitábna, trochaic footing (ki(táb)na) and iambic footing ((kitáb)na) produce descriptively equivalent results. In disyllables like kítab, iambic Ft-Form yields to Nonfinality, which is a near-universal accompaniment to iambic stress (Prince and Smolensky 1993, Hung 1994). Thus, disyllables do indeed have trochaic stress – as in (kítab) – but only when higher-ranking Nonfinality compels violation of Ft-Form(Iambic). Words with heavy antepenults and light penults, such as arábtukum, follow the “foot extrametricality” pattern identified by Hayes (1995: 232). The actual output form is ( aráb)tukum, and its most important competing candidate is * arab(túkum), which also satisfies Nonfinality but violates Ft-Form. In contrast, the actual output form satisfies Nonfinality and Ft-Form at the price of inferior rightward alignment of its main stress (Align-Head-R [McCarthy and Prince 1993a]). We, therefore, have the ranking Nonfinality >> Ft-Form >> Align-Head-R, as the tableau in (23) certifies. (23) Iambic stress in ( aráb)tukum Nonfinality a. ☞ (ð.aráb)tukum b. ð.arab(túkum) c. d.

ð.a(rábtu)kum ð.arab(tukúm)

Ft-Form

Align-Head-R **

*!

*!

*

*!

**

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The two threads of analysis, GrpHarm and iambic stress, can now be combined to supply an explanation for the trisyllabic deletion process. Without trisyllabic deletion, a word like /ʔinkasar-at/ would be parsed with a LL iambic foot: *ʔ in(kisá)rat. Trisyllabic deletion improves the quantitative structure of this iamb. According to GrpHarm, iambic feet optimally match their weak-strong prominence with short-long quantity. Many languages have iambic lengthening, where a LL iambic foot becomes LH by lengthening the vowel of the second syllable. In Bedouin Arabic, I claim, a LL iamb becomes DL, where D denotes a moraless syllable, called a semisyllable. (24) The DL iamb in trisyllabic deletion cases a. ktíbat Ft sw

ss m

k t i bat b. ʔinksárat Ft sw

ss m

ʔin k s a rat

The idea, then, is that loss of the pre-stress vowel in ʔ in(k.sá)rat brings this word into conformity with GrpHarm, in a way that closely parallels iambic lengthening effects in other languages. There are several reasons to think that this account of trisyllabic deletion is essentially correct. First, it offers a complete, strictly local explanation for the peculiar contextual conditions on trisyllabic deletion: (25) Observation a. Trisyllabic deletion only affects a light syllable. b. The affected syllable must be followed by another light syllable.

Explanation Only a light syllable can be the weak branch of an iambic foot. If the following syllable is heavy, then the iamb is already LH, satisfying GrpHarm without further ado: (ki.táb)na, ( aráb)tukum.

sympathy, cumulativity, and the duke-of-york gambit c. The syllable following the affected syllable must itself be nonfinal.

41

If the following syllable is final, then the foot is trochaic, not iambic, because Nonfinality dominates Ft-Form ((23)): /rama/ Æ (ríma) ‘he threw’.

Second, this analysis explains a significant correlation in the history of Arabic dialects. The sedentary dialects have trochaic stress, and they never have trisyllabic deletion. The Bedouin dialects have iambic stress, and many (though not all) have trisyllabic deletion. Historically, then, trisyllabic deletion appears to be a secondary development in those dialects that first changed to iambic stress – exactly as the synchronic analysis predicts. Third, this analysis also accords well with processes affecting iambic feet in other languages, as documented by Hayes (1995) and Kager (1997). Kager’s analysis of Macushi Carib is a close parallel in many respects. Fourth, this analysis makes sense syllabically. What appear to be tautosyllabic clusters arise only as a result of vowel deletion, supporting the claim that they actually involve semisyllables: (k.tí).bat, ʔ in.(k.sá).rat.13 This too is closely paralleled in Kager’s analysis of Macushi Carib. And overall, there is ample precedent for semisyllables or similar notions in Arabic (Aoun 1979, Selkirk 1981, McCarthy and Prince 1990a, 1990b, Broselow 1992, Farwaneh 1995, Kiparsky, this volume), in other languages (e.g., Cho and King, this volume, Féry, this volume), and in analyses of epenthesis (Hyman 1985, Piggott 1995). Finally, this analysis accounts for words like ʔ inksárat without the problematic stress-shift process. There is instead iambic stress, with optimization of the quantitative relations in the iambic foot. In short, trisyllabic deletion is actually iambic deletion – a local process, motivated by foot well-formedness, much like the Myers-Prince approach to trisyllabic shortening in English.

2.3.3.3 OT Analysis of Bedouin Arabic These ideas can be incorporated into a fuller OT analysis of Bedouin Arabic, which also deals with the reduction and syncope processes. The first order of analytic business is to dispose of the /a/ Æ i, /i/ Æ Ø chain-shift. The insight behind the analysis of chain-shifts in OT is relative faithfulness (Kirchner 1996, Gnanadesikan 1997): if /A/ Æ B and /B/ Æ C in the same environment, ¥ C, then the prohibited /A/ Æ C mapping must be categorically less but /A/ Æ faithful than the permitted /A/ Æ B and /B/ Æ C mappings.14 Then the markedness constraint that drives these alternations can be ranked so that it can compel the “shorter” mappings but not the “longer” one.

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John J. McCarthy

Gnanadesikan (1997) proposes that this distinction in relative faithfulness is defined on universal phonological scales, such as consonantal stricture, voicing and sonorancy, or vowel height.15 All scales are ternary, by her hypothesis, and positions on a scale can be referenced by markedness and faithfulness constraints. The key is to recognize two distinct faithfulness constraints, one that precludes any movement on a scale and another that prohibits only longer movements on the scale: (26) Stay(S) and Stay-Adj(S) a. Stay(S) Input and output have the same position on the scale S. b. Stay-Adj(S) Input and output have the same or adjacent positions on the scale S.

If there is a universal phonological scale S = A > B > C, then the mappings /A/ Æ B, /B/ Æ C, and /A/ Æ C all incur violations of Stay(S). But the mapping /A/ Æ C also incurs a violation of Stay-Adj(S), and so it is categorically less faithful than the other two mappings. Following Kirchner (1996), I assume that the scalar dimension relevant to the Bedouin Arabic a/i/Ø alternations is intrinsic duration (Lehiste 1970): the low vowel is longest, the high vowel is intermediate, and, of course, Ø is shortest: (27) The Duration Scale Dur a>i>Ø

Kirchner proposes that the markedness constraint driving the chain-shift is Reduce: (28) Reduce (after Kirchner 1996: 347) A short vowel in an open syllable has zero duration. Assign one violation mark for each increment of duration above Ø on the scale Dur.

So the vowel i receives one mark from Reduce, while a gets two. Ranked between Stay-Adj(Dur) and Stay(Dur), Reduce is responsible for the /a/ Æ i and /i/ Æ Ø chain-shift, and it is correctly unable to compel the /a/ Æ Ø mapping: (29) Raising: /a/ Æ i in open syllable /katab/

Stay-Adj(Dur)

Reduce

a. ☞ ki.tab

*

b.

ka.tab

**!

c.

k.tab

*!

Stay(Dur) * *

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43

(30) Syncope: /i/ Æ Ø in open syllable /kitib/

Stay-Adj(Dur)

Reduce

Stay(Dur)

a. ☞ k.tib

*

b.

ki.tib

*!

c.

ka.tib

**!

*

In (29), the candidate with raising of /a/ to i triumphs over the faithful candidate by virtue of its better performance on the markedness constraint Reduce. Perfect performance on Reduce is available from the remaining candidate, (29c), but the cost is too high: fatal violation of top-ranked StayAdj(Dur), which bars the /a/ Æ Ø mapping. In (30), however, perfect performance on Reduce is possible: the /i/ Æ Ø mapping only violates the low-ranking faithfulness constraint Stay(Dur), since i and Ø are adjacent on the Dur scale. In this way, the shorter mappings (/a/ Æ i, /i/ Æ Ø) are permitted, but the longer mapping (/a/ Æ Ø) is not. Of course, /a/ does delete when GrpHarm is at stake. To compel deletion of underlying /a/, GrpHarm must therefore be ranked above Stay-Adj(Dur): (31) Application to trisyllabic deletion case /kata-at/

GrpHarm

a. ☞ (k.tí).bat b.

(ki.tí).bat

Stay-Adj(Dur)

Reduce

Stay(Dur)

*

*

**

**

**

*!

The failed candidate (31b) contains a LL iambic foot, violating GrpHarm. The alternative in (31a) contains an iamb of properly unequal weight, obtained by deleting the first vowel, leaving only a weightless semisyllable behind. Alternative candidates like *(ktí).bat (with a complex onset), *(tí).bat (with consonant deletion), or *(kitá ).bat (with lengthening instead of shortening) violate undominated constraints, so they need not distract us further. The DY case (ʔ aká)lat is analyzed in much the same way, except that it shows the effect of an undominated constraint against a semisyllable with onset ʔ . (This replaces the special post-ʔ epenthesis rule of the traditional analysis.) Ranked above GrpHarm, that constraint effectively blocks trisyllabic deletion in words with initial ʔ . (32) Application to /ʔakal-at/ /ʔakal-at/

*ʔ D

a. ☞ (ʔa.ká).lat b.

(ʔ.ká).lat

GrpHarm

Stay-Adj(Dur)

* *!

*

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John J. McCarthy

In short, this DY case is analyzed in terms of conflicting markedness constraints, just like the vacuous DY examples discussed in section 2.2. There is no need for stress shift under deletion; stress is iambic in conformity with the general pattern of the language. We now have a reasonably complete picture of the trisyllabic deletion phenomenon. Trisyllabic deletion can be explained in terms of known quantitative properties of iambic stress systems. There is no evidence for a DY derivation; instead, there is a blocking effect by virtue of one markedness constraint dominating another, as in Nootka. One detail remains, and it introduces the issue of opacity, which intersects in important ways with the analysis of DY derivations. Consider the effect, shown in (33), of adding the candidate *(kát).bat to the tableau in (31): (33) Tableau in (31) with *(kát).bat Added /katab-at/ Opaque

GrpHarm Stay-Adj(Dur) a. ☞ (k.tí).bat b.

(ki.tí).bat

Transparent c. ☞ (kát).bat

* *! *

Reduce

Stay(Dur)

*!

**

**

** *

This additional candidate harmonically bounds the intended output (k.tí).bat, a problematic condition I have indicated with the reversed pointing hand.16 To get the right result here, there must be some further constraint, ranked above Reduce, that (k.tí).bat satisfies better than *(kát).bat does.17 This is a case of opacity. Two phonological processes interact opaquely if one hides the results or environment of the other: (34) Opacity (after Kiparsky 1973b) A phonological rule V of the form A Æ B / C__D is opaque if there are surface structures with any of the following characteristics: a. instances of A in the environment C__D. b. instances of B derived by V that occur in environments other than C__D.

Intuitively, the idea is that a rule is opaque if there are surface forms that look like they should have undergone it but did not ((34a)) or surface forms that underwent the rule but look like they should not have ((34b)). In rule-based phonology, the output of Trisyllabic Deletion, (k.tí).bat, is opaque with respect to Syncope, because it contains surface i in an open syllable ((34a)-type opacity). In OT, the hallmark of opacity is unexplained markedness or faithfulness violation by the actual output form (McCarthy 1999b). In (33), as was already noted, the intended output (k.tí).bat has unexplained violations of

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45

both the markedness constraint Reduce and the faithfulness constraint Stay(Dur). These violations are unexplained because there is another candidate, *(kát).bat, that fares better on both of these constraints and equally well on all higher-ranking constraints. Opaque interactions demand some revision of the basic theory, and that is the subject of the next section.

2.4. Sympathy and Opacity The problem identified in (33) is that the actual output form (k.tí).bat has all of the violation marks of the failed candidate *(kát).bat, and more. Some higher-ranking constraint must compel these violations. According to sympathy theory (McCarthy 1999b), the responsible constraint is one that is sensitive to relations between candidates – specifically, the relation between all other candidates and one particular candidate, called the sympathetic candidate (which is notated with the symbol ❀). The sympathetic candidate is chosen by faithfulness to the input: it is the most harmonic candidate that obeys some designated faithfulness constraint, called the selector (which is notated by the symbol ✯). A ranked, violable sympathy constraint (also notated by ❀) assesses candidates for their similarity, in a sense to be made precise in section 2.5, to the sympathetic candidate. A sympathy constraint is responsible for compelling (k.tí).bat’s seemingly supererogatory constraint violations. Even without the details of how the sympathy constraint works, we can still get a reasonably good picture of sympathy theory in action. A little bit of the logic of sympathy starts the ball rolling. If the effects of sympathy are to be nonvacuous, the sympathetic candidate must be distinct from both the actual output (k.tí).bat and its transparent competitor *(kát).bat. And since the sympathetic candidate is chosen for obedience to a faithfulness constraint (the selector), it follows that it must be more faithful, on some dimension, than either (k.tí).bat or *(kát).bat. This reasoning leads to Stay-Adj(Dur) as the selector, since it is the only faithfulness constraint violated by both (k.tí).bat and *(kát).bat. The most harmonic candidate that obeys ✯StayAdj(Dur) is ❀(ki.tí).bat. It obeys the selector because no /a/s have been deleted. It is the most harmonic candidate, given this restriction, because the /a/s in open syllables have reduced to i, maximally satisfying Reduce. The sympathy constraint, here temporarily designated by ❀Sym, evaluates candidates for similarity to the sympathetic candidate. The actual output form (k.tí).bat ((35a)) is more similar to ❀(ki.tí).bat than *(kát).bat ((35b)) is, and so (k.tí).bat performs better on ❀Sym. Obviously, ❀(ki.tí).bat is maximally similar to itself, and so it performs perfectly on ❀Sym, but it is not optimal because of its fatal GrpHarm violation. The tableau in (35) adds the sympathy constraint to (33).

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John J. McCarthy

(35) Sympathy applied to /katab-at/ Æ (k.tí).bat, *(kát).bat /katab-at/

GrpHarm ❀Sym ✯Stay-

a. ☞ (k.tí).bat

*

Reduce

Stay(Dur)

Adj(Dur) Opaque

Sympathetic b. ❀ (ki.tí).bat

*!

Transparent c. ☞ (kát).bat Faithful

d.

(ka.tá).bat

**! *!

*

*

**

✓

**

**

* ✓

* ****

The numbers of violation marks in the ❀Sym column should not be taken literally, but the relative harmony of candidates with respect to this constraint should be. It is *(kát).bat’s inferior resemblance to the sympathetic candidate that explains why it is not optimal, thereby accounting for (k.tí).bat’s otherwise unexplained violations of Reduce and Stay(Dur).18 To complete this sketch, we need to check that sympathy has no untoward consequences for the rest of the language. No effects of sympathy are expected if the actual output form obeys the selector constraint, because in that case the selector and normal harmonic evaluation will converge on the same candidate, and so ❀Sym will be vacuously satisfied by a candidate that would have been optimal in any case. Some perusal of the core data in (18) shows that deletion of /a/, which translates into violation of ✯Stay-Adj(Dur), only occurs in derivations like /katab-at/ Æ (k.tí).bat, and so that is the only circumstance where sympathy is relevevant.19

2.5. Sympathy and Cumulativity 2.5.1 The Problem The issue to be addressed now is the nature of the sympathy constraint ❀Sym. In the earliest, unpublished work on sympathy theory (McCarthy 1998), the role of ❀Sym is fulfilled by a family of intercandidate faithfulness constraints, specifying the exact way in which the candidate under evaluation must match the sympathetic candidate. For instance, intercandidate faithfulness constraints requiring corresponding vowels to match in height or stress would correctly favor (k.tí).bat over *(kát).bat in (35), since the former better matches ❀(ki.tí).bat’s vowel height and stress than the latter does. This framework of sympathetic intercandidate faithfulness constraints is very rich, because it brings with it the full expressive power of correspondence theory (McCarthy and Prince 1995). In fact, it is too rich, because it permits unattested patterns of opacity to be described, such as the feeding DY type. In this section, I will argue against intercandidate faithfulness constraints and in favor of an alternative that is based on comparing the unfaithful mappings that produce candidates.

sympathy, cumulativity, and the duke-of-york gambit

47

Perhaps the clearest example of the excessive descriptive power of intercandidate faithfulness is the quasi-Yokuts example in (16). This DY case reflects an unattested and presumably impossible type of rule interaction. Yet, as Kiparsky (e-mail, July 7, 1998) points out and as I will now show, quasi-Yokuts is analyzable in sympathy theory, if information is transmitted from the sympathetic candidate to the rest of the candidate set by intercandidate faithfulness constraints. The basic phonology of quasi-Yokuts is given by the rankings in (36). (36) Constraint rankings for Quasi-Yokuts Trimoraic syllables are repairable by epenthesis.20 a. *[mmm]s >> Dep-V b. *[mmm]s >> Max-m Trimoraic syllables are repairable by shortening. c. Dep-V >> Max-m Shortening is preferred to epenthesis. d. *ti >> Ident(high) There is palatalization.

Under the assumption that codas contribute to weight, CVVC syllables run afoul of *[mmm]s. This constraint is able in principle to compel both epenthesis and shortening; which one actually occurs is determined by the ranking in (36c), which favors shortening over epenthesis. The last ranking, by deploying the ad hoc constraint *ti above Ident(high),accounts for the palatalization process. To simulate the feeding DY pattern, the sympathetic candidate must be ❀ma cˇ i, like the intermediate stage of the serial derivation in (16). This sympathetic candidate is chosen if the selector constraint is ✯Max-m, favoring the most harmonic candidate that does not show the effects of vowel shortening. And to transmit the effects of palatalization from the sympathetic candidate to the actual output form, we can call on the correspondence-based sympathy constraint ❀Ident(high). By dominating its input-output counterpart Ident(high), the sympathy constraint ❀Ident(high) ensures that palatalization in the sympathetic candidate is repeated in the actual output form, even if not present in the input. The tableau in (37) confirms the details of the analysis. (37) Quasi-Yokuts in Sympathy Theory with intercandidate faithfulness constraints /mat/

*[mmm]s

*ti

Transparent a. ☞ mat

❀Ident

Ident

(high)

(high)

*!

Sympathetic b. ❀ macˇi Opaque

mat

e.

mati

f.

macˇ

*!

* *!

*!

✓ * ✓

*! *!

✯Max-m *

*

c. ☞ macˇ d.

Dep-V

*!

* *

✓ ✓

48

John J. McCarthy

The actual output form is macˇ . Its transparent competitor *mat lacks the sympathetic effect of palatalization, and it is not optimal, because of high-ranking ❀Ident(high). The sympathetic candidate ❀ma cˇ i is chosen for its obedience to the selector ✯Max-m; of all the candidates that obey the selector, it is the most harmonic, since it contains no trimoraic syllables and has palatalization before i. Other candidates incur fatal violations of undominated markedness constraints, so they require no further attention. This analysis pretty effectively simulates a feeding DY derivation. The input /mat/ is mapped onto the output macˇ through sympathetic attraction to ❀ma cˇ i. On the assumption that such cases are not merely nonexistent but actually impossible, we have to conclude that the original faithfulness-based theory of sympathy is too powerful. What is the source of this problem? The theory’s excessive richness comes from the existence of intercandidate faithfulness constraints like ❀Ident(high). These constraints allow essentially any information about the sympathetic candidate to be transmitted to the actual output form. Palatalization in quasi-Yokuts is a mere side effect of a spurious epenthesis process, yet sympathetic faithfulness constraints have no difficulty in transmitting the result of palatalization from the sympathetic candidate to the actual output form. I therefore reject the whole notion of intercandidate faithfulness constraints and here propose a more restrictive alternative.

2.5.2 The Solution As the earlier discussion of ❀Sym emphasized, the point of sympathy theory is to require some sort of resemblance between the output form and the sympathetic candidate. The flawed approach based on intercandidate faithfulness involves checking this resemblance directly, using specific constraints on candidate-to-candidate correspondence. The alternative I explore here compares candidates indirectly, in terms of the unfaithful input Æ output mappings that created them.21 If a candidate C has a superset of the sympathetic candidate ❀C’s unfaithful mappings, then C and ❀C stand in a relation of cumulativity: C accumulates all of ❀C’s unfaithful mappings and may add some more of its own. DY derivations, including quasi-Yokuts, are noncumulative – macˇ does not have a superset of ❀ma cˇ i’s unfaithful mappings. To implement this idea formally, we require a definition of what an “unfaithful mapping” is, and we need a metric for comparing the sets of unfaithful mappings incurred by two candidates (one of which is the sympathetic candidate) derived from the same input. Each of these prerequisites will be addressed in turn. Unfaithful mappings are a tokenized version of faithfulness, specifying the type and locus of unfaithfulness more precisely than constraints do. In some

sympathy, cumulativity, and the duke-of-york gambit

49

cases, faithfulness constraints may disregard differences in type of unfaithfulness. For example, the epenthetic mappings from /ai/ to a.ʔ i versus a.ti are distinct, but both simply incur a violation of Dep. And except for certain prominent positions (Beckman 1997, 1998), faithfulness constraints are indifferent to the locus of violation. For example, the same type of faithfulness violation – deletion of a segment, a violation of Max – is involved in mapping /pap/ to pa or ap, but the loci of violation are different. Unlike faithfulness per se, a fully characterized unfaithful mapping specifies exactly how input and output differ, resolving all potential ambiguities. In the case of constraints like Dep, the resolution is obvious: Dep(ʔ ) and Dep(t) are two distinct unfaithful mappings, but they are presumably not distinct constraints. To distinguish the locus of each unfaithful mapping, I will index elements of the input. We can therefore talk about two distinct unfaithful mappings affecting /p1a2p3/: Max@1, which yields ap, and Max@3, which yields pa. In this way, the locus of faithfulness violation is always relativized to the input, and thus it is commensurable across candidates.22 The locus of epenthesis is usually defined on the output; to keep things simple, it would be convenient to have a way of talking about the locus of epenthesis relative to the input. Assume that the input XY is equivalent to XeY, where “e” is the null character. An output epenthetic segment stands in correspondence with an input e, with one or more es supplied as needed for epenthetic correspondence to a set of input-equivalents. The e symbols will be indexed relative to the segment on their left, if any: for example, input /a/ is equivalent to /e0–1a1e1–1e1–2/, which underlies the output candidate ʔ 0–1a1ʔ 1–1i1–2. Any output candidate from a given input is almost fully characterized by the set of unfaithful mappings that yield it. “Almost” fully characterized, because candidates can differ in properties that are not governed by faithfulness and thus do not involve unfaithful mappings. The most obvious such property is syllabification, discussed in section 2.6. Apart from this, though, Gen could be thought of as emitting various sets of unfaithful mappings qua candidates. Distinct candidates will be associated with distinct sets of unfaithful mappings, and these sets provide the basis for a metric of similarity between candidates – a metric that can replace intercandidate faithfulness constraints in sympathy theory. Let UCand stand for the set of unfaithful mappings that relate some input to the output candidate Cand. We are interested in comparing the sets of unfaithful mappings UCand1 and UCand2 associated with the candidates Cand1 and Cand2, respectively. There are four situations to consider: • UCand1 = UCand2. In this case, Cand1 = Cand2 (except for properties like syl-

labification, as noted). Each is trivially cumulative with respect to the other. • UCand1 † UCand2. In this case, Cand1 and Cand2 are different but compara-

50

John J. McCarthy

ble.23 Cand2 is nontrivially cumulative with respect to Cand1; that is, Cand2 accumulates Cand1’s unfaithful mappings and adds some more of its own. • UCand1 ° UCand2. Cand1 and Cand2 are likewise comparable, and, symmetrically, Cand1 is cumulative with respect to Cand2. • UCand1 À UCand2 and UCand1 UCand2. Then Cand1 and Cand2 are noncomparable, and there is no relationship of cumulativity between them. À

In short, cumulativity is defined in terms of a subset relation over unfaithful mappings. The theory of partial orderings provides a more perspicuous way of looking at these intercandidate relations. The candidate that is most faithfully mapped – identical to the input – stands at the top of a partial ordering, and below it is a rank of candidates each of which has a single unfaithful mapping. Below that is a rank of candidates each of which combines two of the unfaithful mappings from the first row, and so on. Partial orderings are best seen diagrammatically, as in (38), a fragment of the Hebrew deˇse example from McCarthy 1999b. Underlying /desˇʔ/ is mapped onto surface deˇse by two unfaithful mappings, epenthesis of e and deletion of ʔ . Interesting candidates include sympathetic ❀deˇseʔ and the transparent competitor deˇs, where ʔ was deleted without the seemingly superfluous epenthesis process. (38) Partial ordering diagram for Hebrew /d1e2sˇ3ʔ4/ desˇʔ Faithful ☞ desˇ

❀desˇeʔ ☞desˇe

Max@4

Dep@3–1 Both

Obviously, this is just a tiny portion of the candidate set. Standing at the top of the partial ordering is the most faithful candidate (see Moreton 1996/1999 on why such a candidate must exist). Below it, on the first tier, are candidates with a single unfaithful mapping, including deletion of /ʔ/ or epenthesis of /e/. At the next level down is the candidate deˇse, the actual output, which has suffered both of these unfaithful mappings. The candidate standing at the top, deˇsʔ , is comparable with all other candidates, and all other candidates accumulate its unfaithful mappings. (That is because the fully faithful candidate has no unfaithful mappings, and every set is a superset of the null set.) The actual output deˇse is comparable with all of the candidates shown (though not with all possible candidates), and so it is cumulative with respect to the sympathetic candidate ❀deˇseʔ . Significantly, deˇse’s transparent competitor *deˇs is not cumulative with respect to the sympathetic candidate ❀deˇseʔ . This noncumulativity proves to be fatal. A similar diagram can be constructed for another of the examples in

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51

McCarthy 1999b, the failure of open-syllable vowel raising to occur in Bedouin Arabic words like ba.du, derived by glide vocalization from underlying /badw/: (39) Partial ordering diagram for Bedouin Arabic /b1a2d3w4/ ❀badw. Faithful bidw.

☞ba.du

☞ bi.du

Ident(high)@2

Dep-m@4 Both

The sympathetic candidate is one in which the underlying glide has not vocalized, and so raising, which occurs in an open syllable, is not motivated. In this case, then, the sympathetic candidate is faithfully mapped from the input. The actual output form has glide vocalization but not raising; it competes with *bi.du, which transparently has both. As usual, the faithfully mapped candidate ❀badw is comparable with all other candidates, and moreover, all other candidates vacuously accumulate its empty set of unfaithful mappings. The difference between the actual output badu and its transparent competitor *bidu is that badu is closer, in terms of shared unfaithful mappings, to the sympathetic candidate. These examples give a pretty good idea of how the revised sympathy system will work: only candidates that accumulate the unfaithful mappings of the sympathetic candidate are in sympathy with it, and among those candidates it is best to be closest, in terms of shared unfaithful mappings, to the sympathetic candidate. There are various ways to implement this system formally, and here I will take an approach suggested to me by Alan Prince. Replacing the diverse intercandidate correspondence constraints in the earlier theory, there are just two sympathy constraints per selector. They compare a candidate’s accumulated unfaithful mappings to those of the sympathetic candidate: (40) Cumulativity24 Given a sympathetic candidate ❀-Cand from a selector ✯F, to evaluate a candidate E-Cand: a. ❀CumulF E-Cand is cumulative with respect to ❀-Cand.That is,U❀-Cand Õ UE-Cand. b. ❀DiffF25 Every unfaithful mapping incurred by E-Cand is also incurred by ❀-Cand. That is, assign one violation mark for every member of the set UE-Cand\U❀-Cand. c. Fixed universal ranking ❀CumulF >> ❀DiffF

❀Cumul evaluates each candidate categorically for whether it accumulates

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John J. McCarthy

all of the sympathetic candidate’s faithfulness violations. (See the appendix of this chapter for a refinement of this definition.) ❀Diff evaluates candidates gradiently for how far they are from the sympathetic candidate in terms of unshared faithfulness violations. The fixed ranking places the more stringent test universally higher. Because of this fixed ranking, evaluation by ❀Diff will only be relevant when ❀Cumul is not decisive, thereby ensuring that only comparable candidates (in the technical sense) are actually compared by ❀Diff. Here is a shortcut that uses a diagram like (38) or (39). If there is a purely downward path from ❀-Cand to E-Cand, then E-Cand satisfies ❀Cumul, and the number of links in that path is the number of marks on ❀Diff that E-Cand incurs. If there is no purely downward path from ❀-Cand to E-Cand, then E-Cand violates ❀Cumul, and so its performance on ❀Diff is of no consequence. In (38), ❀Cumul correctly favors deˇse over its transparent competitor *deˇs, relative to the sympathetic candidate ❀deˇseʔ . And in (39), both ba.du and *bi.du are cumulative with respect to the sympathetic candidate ❀badw, but ba.du is closer, in terms of shared unfaithful mappings, so ba.du receives one “*” from ❀Diff to *bi.du’s two “*”s. Intuitively, these two notions, cumulativity and distance in terms of shared faithfulness violations, are analogous to criteria that have sometimes been imposed on serial derivations. The requirement that derivations be monotonic (as in Declarative Phonology; see Scobbie 1993, and references there), meaning that they take a steady path away from the input, never backtracking, is roughly equivalent to saying that later steps of the derivation are cumulative, in the sense just described, with respect to earlier steps. And derivational economy, meaning that the length of the derivational path is minimized (Chomsky 1995: 138ff.), approximates the effect of checking the number of unshared faithfulness violations. The difference, of course, is that these notions have not previously been couched in terms of faithfulness, which is unique to OT. Back to Bedouin Arabic. Recall that sympathy must favor (k.tí).bat over transparent *(kát).bat relative to the sympathetic candidate ❀(ki.tí).bat. The definition of ❀Cumul in (40) does exactly that. Consider the sets of unfaithful mappings associated with these three candidates:26 (41) Unfaithful mappings relative to input /k1a2t3a4b5a6t7/ Candidate UCand ☞ (k.tí).bat {Stay-Adj(Dur)@2, Stay(Dur)@2, ❀ (ki.tí).bat { Stay(Dur)@2, ☞ (kát).bat {Stay-Adj(Dur)@4,

Stay(Dur)@4} Stay(Dur)@4} Stay(Dur)@4}

The desired output form (k.tí).bat has a proper superset of the sympathetic

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candidate’s unfaithful mappings, so it obeys ❀Cumul. The transparent competitor *(kát).bat has a partly disjoint set of unfaithful mappings from the ❀candidate’s. They are noncomparable or, equivalently, noncumulative, and so *(kát).bat violates ❀Cumul. The tableau in (42) updates (35) to reflect these developments.

(42) ❀Cumul applied to /katab-at/ Æ (k.tí).bat, *(kát).bat /katab-at/

GrpHarm ❀Cumul ✯Stay-

Reduce Stay(Dur)

Adj(Dur) Opaque

a. ☞ (k.tí).bat

Sympathetic b. ❀ (ki.tí).bat Transparent c. ☞ (kát).bat

*! *!

*

*

**

✓

**

**

*

*

Because ❀Cumul is decisive, performance on ❀Diff is irrelevant, and so the latter constraint is not shown in the tableau. This is a good point at which to summarize the discussion. The original implementation of sympathy theory posited a set of intercandidate faithfulness constraints that permit any property (as long as it can be named in a correspondence constraint) to be transmitted from the sympathetic candidate to the actual output form. Here I have proposed a more restrictive alternative, in which the only information that can be transmitted from the sympathetic candidate is the set of its unfaithful mappings. The central role of cumulativity in this revised theory of sympathy is the key to explaining the impossibility of DY derivations, particularly the quasiYokuts case in (37). DY serial derivations are, by their very nature, noncumulative; rather than monotonically increasing the unfaithful mappings relative to the input, they proceed nonmonotonically, introducing an unfaithful mapping at one stage and then undoing it at a later stage, as in (16). Noncumulativity makes a simulation in terms of the revised sympathy theory impossible – a welcome result, since the need for DY derivations is not supported empirically, as I argued in sections 2.2 and 2.3. To see this concretely, consider the diagram in (43), which organizes the quasi-Yokuts candidates in (37) according to their unfaithful mappings. (43) Partial ordering diagram for Quasi-Yokuts /m1a2a3t4/ mat Faithful mati

macˇ

☞ mat

❀macˇi ☞macˇ

Dep-V@4–1 Both

Ident(high)@4 Both

Max-m@3

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It is immediately evident that the intended output macˇ does not accumulate the unfaithful mappings of the sympathetic candidate ❀ma cˇ i. Top-ranked ❀Cumul extinguishes all noncumulative candidates, leaving only ❀ma cˇ i as a viable candidate. Thus, ❀Cumul is equally fatal to macˇ and its transparent competitor *mat. This means that the quasi-Yokuts DY derivation cannot be simulated under the revised sympathy theory. The quasi-Yokuts example highlights a general result. Under the revised theory of sympathy, the relation between the output and the sympathetic candidate is one of cumulative unfaithful mappings. DY derivations, whether implemented serially or simulated with an underlying–sympathetic–surface triplet, are inherently noncumulative. The revisions to sympathy theory have made it more restrictive, by limiting the kinds of information that can be extracted from the sympathetic candidate. One indication of this greater restrictiveness is the impossibility of reproducing DY derivations; others, no doubt, remain to be discovered.

2.6. Cumulativity, Faithfulness, and Syllable Structure 2.6.1 Overview of the Issue Cumulativity is defined in terms of shared unfaithful mappings. In fact, the candidates themselves can be described in terms of the unfaithful mappings that produced them – up to a point. Candidates may also differ in properties that are phonologically relevant but not governed by faithfulness constraints. Here’s the difference. Any phonological property that is independently contrastive in the phonology of some language must be protected by faithfulness constraints provided by UG, and each breach of a faithfulness constraint will count as an unfaithful mapping for the purposes of assessing cumulativity. But properties that are never contrastive in the phonology of any language are not subject to faithfulness constraints. For example, Keer (1999) argues, from the observation that tautomorphemic true and fake geminates are never contrastive (Hayes 1986, McCarthy 1986), that fusion of two adjacent identical segments exacts no cost in faithfulness. Any such faithfulness-free mappings will be irrelevant to determining how well a candidate performs on ❀Cumul and ❀Diff. It is virtually a truism that syllabification is never contrastive in any language. (This claim has some subtleties, to be discussed later, involving juncture effects and distinctions of quantity or syllabicity.) No language is known to contrast tautomorphemic pa.ta with pat.a or pa.kla with pak.la (though see van Oostendorp, this volume, for a possible counterexample.) This observation is usually taken to mean that syllabification is absent from underlying representations (e.g., Clements 1986b: 318, Hayes 1989: 260, Blevins 1995:

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221). It is, however, more in keeping with OT’s thesis of richness of the base (Prince and Smolensky 1993) to assume that underlying representations may be syllabified or not and in diverse ways – freely but pointlessly, since no constraints of UG lobby for the conservation of underlying syllabification: (44) Faithfulness-free syllabification No constraints of UG demand faithfulness to syllables per se.

This section explores the implications of (44) for cumulativity and opacity. A derivation is cumulative if it monotonically increases its unfaithful mappings. Cumulative derivations are in general permitted, but noncumulative derivations are not, for the reasons given in section 2.5. If the thesis of faithfulness-free syllabification is correct, then syllabification is irrelevant to cumulativity, and so it should be possible to find real derivations where syllabification changes, nonmonotonically. These derivations will have something of the look and feel of the unattested feeding DY derivations, but they will involve nonmonotonicity only in faithfulness-free syllabification.27 The example back in (3) is a hypothetical, though undoubtedly authenticappearing, instance of this. A genuine case comes from Clements’s (1986a) analysis of quantity in Luganda (cf. Wiltshire 1992, Rosenthall 1994). In Luganda, vowels are always long before prenasalized consonants: ku-li nda ‘to wait’, mu-le nzi ‘boy’, mu -ntu ‘person’, ba -ntu ‘people’. Clements argues that this is an effect of compensatory lengthening: the nasal is first syllabified as a weight-bearing coda and then is joined to the following consonant, leaving a stray weight-unit to be filled by spreading from the preceding vowel. Here is a derivation, substituting moras for the CV weight-units that Clements uses: (45) Luganda derivation with resyllabification m m ➜

➜

Syllabification

mun.tu mm m

Weight-by-position

mun.tu mm m

Prenasalization

mu.ntu mm m

Spreading

mu.ntu

Just like the feeding DY cases, the intermediate stage plays a crucial role, since it supplies the context for Weight-by-Position (Hayes 1989), which assigns a mora to the nasal.

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This derivation is cumulative, even though it has the DY-like step of Prenasalization undoing the effects of earlier Syllabification. To show that formally, it is necessary to sketch a partial account of Luganda within OT, using the revised theory of sympathy to deal with the opaque interaction between the process assigning positional weight and the process creating prenasalized consonants.28 There are no (nongeminate) codas in Luganda. Potential nasal codas, such as the n in /muntu/, are disposed of by coalescence with a following consonant, in violation of the faithfulness constraint Uniformity (McCarthy and Prince 1995; but cf. Keer 1999). These observations motivate the ranking in (46). (46) NoCoda, Max >> Uniformity /muntu/

No-Coda

Max

a. ☞ mu. tu n

b.

mun.tu

c.

mu.tu

Unif *

*! *!

Rankings like this, where a markedness constraint and Max together dominate Uniformity, are typical of coalescence phenomena (Gnanadesikan 1995, 1997, Lamontagne and Rice 1995, McCarthy and Prince 1995, Causley 1997, Pater 1999, McCarthy 2000b). This analysis is not sufficient, however, because there is an element of opacity in Luganda coalescence, as I have noted. The mapping /muntu/ Æ mu .ntu involves a seemingly gratuitous violation of Dep-m, a violation that the transparent output form *mu.ntu would have avoided. This is a sympathy effect, induced by the sympathetic candidate ❀muN.tu (where capitalization marks the N as moraic). The selector constraint is ✯Uniformity, which is obeyed by ❀muN.tu and violated by the actual output form mu .ntu. And to ensure that the sympathetic form is the most harmonic candidate among those that obey the selector, certain additional rankings among as-yet unranked constraints are necessary. One of these is Max >> NoCoda, so that ❀muN.tu is more harmonic than *mu.tu. Another deploys Weight-by-Position (WxP) above Dep-m, so that ❀muN.tu, with a moraic coda, is more harmonic than *mun.tu, with a nonmoraic coda. This much establishes the essential background for discussing the sympathy effect. Sympathy must favor opaque mu .ntu over transparent *mu.ntu relative to the sympathetic candidate ❀muN.tu. To check whether it does, the first step is to assemble the sets of unfaithful mappings for these candidates:29 (47) Unfaithful mappings relative to input /m1u2n3t4u5/ Candidate UCandidate ☞ mu.ntu {Dep-m@1–1, Unif@3&4} ❀ muN.tu {Dep-m@1–1 } ☞ mu.ntu { Unif@3&4}

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The intended output form has a superset of the sympathetic candidate’s unfaithful mappings; they are therefore in a relationship of cumulativity. But the transparent competitor does not accumulate the sympathetic candidate’s unfaithful mappings. Therefore, ❀Cumul will favor mu .ntu over *mu.ntu, exactly as desired. The tableau in (48) completes the argument at the level of formal detail. (48) Luganda /muntu/ Æ mu.ntu /muntu/

Max

WxP

NoCoda

❀Cumul

a. ☞ mu. tu n

b. ❀ muN.tu

*!

n

c. ☞ mu. tu

*!

✯Unif

Dep-m

*

*

✓

*

*

d.

mu.tu

*!

✓

e.

mu.tu

*!

✓

f.

mun.tu

*!

*

*

*

✓

Several candidates obey the selector constraint ✯Uniformity; of those, ❀muN.tu is most harmonic, so it is chosen as the sympathetic candidate. Through the constraint ❀Cumul, the sympathetic candidate bestows its favor on mu .ntu, which accumulates its unfaithful mappings, over *mu.ntu, which does not.30 This analysis succeeds under the assumptions that (i) cumulativity is defined in terms of shared unfaithful mappings and (ii) syllabification is not an unfaithful mapping – that is, (44). If syllabification were to be counted as an unfaithful mapping, then the record of unfaithful mappings for each candidate would have to be augmented as shown in (49). (Ons, Nuc, and Cod stand for the mappings that assign segments to syllabic positions.) (49) Unfaithful mappings relative to /m1u2n3t4u5/ under wrong assumption about syllabification ☞ ❀ ☞

Candidate UCandidate mu.ntu {Ons@1, Dep-m@1–1, Nuc@2, Unif@3&4, Ons@3, Ons@4, Nuc@5} muN.tu {Ons@1, Dep-m@1–1, Nuc@2, Cod@3, Ons@4, Nuc@5} mu.ntu {Ons@1, Nuc@2, Unif@3&4, Ons@3, Ons@4, Nuc@5}

Observe that the sympathetic candidate and the intended output differ on the syllabification of /n/: Cod@3 versus Ons@3. Thus, there is no cumulativity relation between these candidates, if syllabification is reckoned in the determination of cumulativity. This means that the intended output and its transparent competitor *mu.ntu both violate ❀Cumul. This tie is disastrous; since they also tie on ❀Diff (each incurs two marks), the decision falls to

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low-ranking Dep-m (see (48)), which mu .ntu fatally violates. That is the wrong result. This argument shows why, as a matter of descriptive necessity, syllabification cannot be reckoned as an unfaithful mapping. What remains is to fill in the details, hinted at earlier, of how this premise fits into phonology generally. As I noted, saying that syllabification is not governed by faithfulness constraints entails that no contrast in syllabification can be preserved in the mapping from underlying to surface representations. The main challenges to noncontrastive syllabification are these: Grammatically conditioned contrast. Morphemic juncture can produce syllabificational contrasts, as in well-known examples like lightning/lightening or nitrate/night-rate. Phonologically derived contrast. In Barra Gaelic, CV sequences derived by epenthesis are syllabified differently from underlying CV sequences. Contrast in quantity or syllabicity. Consonant gemination has obvious consequences for syllabification. And contrasts between glides and vowels have been reported for Berber, Ilokano, and Spanish, inter alia (Levin 1985, Guerssel 1986, Harris 1987, Hayes 1989, Rosenthall 1994).

When none of these conditions obtain, syllabification does appear to be reliably noncontrastive, as in the examples of tautomorphemic pa.ta/pat.a and pa.kla/pak.la that were cited earlier. I will take each of these conditions in turn, briefly showing how they are compatible with the thesis in (44) that syllabification is not regulated by faithfulness constraints.

2.6.2 Grammatically Conditioned Contrast Grammatically conditioned contrasts in syllabification have been extensively studied within OT. One important source of grammatically conditioned syllabification contrast is alignment (McCarthy and Prince 1993a). Alignment constraints can require that a segment standing at the edge of a morphological constituent, such as the stem, also stand at the edge of a prosodic constituent, such as the syllable. In English, for example, Align-Left dominates NoCoda, to ensure that the stem-initial r of rate is also word- and syllableinitial in night-rate. Where Align-Left is irrelevant, though, as in tautomorphemic nitrate, the ranking of NoCoda above *Complex-Onset will force onset maximization. A surface syllabification contrast is the result, but it does not require constraints demanding faithfulness to syllabification. Output-output faithfulness constraints need to be considered as another potential source of grammatically conditioned contrasts in syllabification. A central thesis of Transderivational Correspondence Theory (Benua 1997b) is

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that output-output faithfulness constraints have the same formal properties as input-output (or base-reduplicant) faithfulness constraints. So if there are no constraints enforcing faithfulness to syllabification in input Æ output mappings, then there can be no such constraints on output Æ output mappings either. English phonology is a good place to look for potential counterexamples to this thesis. The challenge comes from syllabic “closure” cases like lightning/ lightening or siren/siring, where the sonorant is syllabic only before a Level II suffix (see, among others, Mohanan 1985, Harris 1990, Borowsky 1993, Benua 1997b). But even in these cases, it does not seem to be necessary to invoke faithfulness constraints on syllabification per se. Alignment constraints are one possible line of attack; another is moraic faithfulness. In section 2.6.4, I argue that faithfulness to moras, rather than syllables, is the basis of contrasts in syllabicity. The syllabic n of lighten bears a mora, under one view of syllabification. Faithfulness to this mora in the output-output dimension (i.e., OO-Max-m) will ensure its preservation in the derived form lightening. Moraic faithfulness is here a partial surrogate for syllabic faithfulness, and surrogacy appears to be enough for known cases. Of course, this surrogate also opens the possibility of introducing illegitimate syllabic contrasts through the moraic back door; that issue is also discussed in section 2.6.4. A final grammatical circumstance that is relevant to syllabic faithfulness is reduplication. Reduplication never copies syllables (Moravcsik 1978, Marantz 1982, McCarthy and Prince 1986, 1990a). That is to say, no known language has a single reduplicative morpheme that copies the initial ta of ta.pi and the initial tak of tak.pi. A necessary (but not sufficient) condition for excluding this possibility is that UG contains no constraints enforcing faithfulness to syllables on the base-reduplication dimension. Again, this correlation between base-reduplicant faithfulness and input-output faithfulness is expected under correspondence theory (McCarthy and Prince 1995, 1999).

2.6.3 Phonologically Conditioned Contrast In Barra Gaelic, the sequence V˘1CV2 is said to be syllabified differently depending on the provenance of V2 (Borgstrøm 1937, 1940, Kenstowicz and Kisseberth 1979, Clements 1986b, Bosch 1991, Bosch and de Jong 1997, 1998, Green 1997: 230–231, Beckman 1998): if V2 is underlying, then the syllable boundary falls after C, but if V2 is epenthetic, then the syllable boundary falls before C. As a consequence there are surface near-minimal pairs differing in syllabification, like ar.an ‘bread’ (from /aran/) and a.ram ‘army’ (from /arm/). Following Clements, Blevins sketches a plausible derivational analysis:

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(50) Derivational analysis of Barra Gaelic (after Blevins 1995: 231) Underlying /aran/ /arm/ Syllabification a.ran a.rm Attraction ar.an – Epenthesis – a.ram

The source of the surface contrast is the counterfeeding order between Attraction and Epenthesis. Attraction makes the stressed initial syllable heavy by drawing in the following consonant as a moraic coda. Because Epenthesis applies later, the onset of the epenthetic syllable cannot be attracted away. A surface contrast in syllabification is the result. Clearly, Barra Gaelic does not depend on syllabic faithfulness in the input Æ output mapping, so it presents no difficulties for my main premise. And in any case, there is good reason to doubt that the story in (50) is correct and complete. New phonetic evidence developed by Bosch and de Jong (1997, 1998) shows that epenthesis leads to a difference in stress: ár.an versus a.rám. It may be that this difference in stress is directly responsible for the reported syllabification difference (see also Beckman 1998).

2.6.4 Contrasts in Quantity and Syllabicity It is widely though not universally accepted that contrasts of quantity and syllabicity are represented by deploying moras in underlying representation (see McCarthy and Prince 1988, Hayes 1989, Rosenthall 1994, Sherer 1994, Davis, this volume). Faithfulness to underlying moras, thanks to constraints like Dep-m and Max-m, ensures that these underlying distinctions are maintained faithfully at the surface. Indeed, the analysis of Luganda in section 2.6.1 shows that insertion of a mora does constitute an unfaithful mapping, a result that is consistent with the role of moras in representing contrasts. To complete the picture, though, it is necessary to show that faithfulness to underlying moras does not offer a back door into the nonoccurring pa.ta/pat.a or pa.kla/pak.la contrasts. This is not an easy undertaking: in its most general form, the claim is that no arrangement of underlying moras on the tautomorphemic string /pata/ will map onto a surface pa.ta/pat.a distinction under any permutation of the constraints of UG (and likewise for pa.kla/pak.la). Rather than solve this problem in its most general form, I propose here to address a modest-sized piece of it: the impossibility of having a language with the mappings in (51). (51) Moraic faithfulness as surrogate for syllabic faithfulness a. /pata/ Æ pa.ta b. /paTa/ Æ paT.a

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(Recall that capital T stands for t associated with a mora.) A language with mappings like these would be one in which faithfulness to moras in underlying representation produces contrast in syllables in surface representation. To account for the impossibility of tautomorphemic syllabic contrast, it is necessary (though not sufficient) to universally rule out the system with these mappings. In OT, with Richness of the Base, the way to rule out a mapping is to find a more harmonic mapping. The way to rule out a mapping universally is to make sure that there is always a more harmonic mapping, under any permutation of the constraints of UG. Suppose that UG consists of only the constraints in (52). (52) A limited UG constraint set a. Onset *[sV b. NoCoda *C. c. *mCons (Sherer 1994: 26) *[C]m (Consonants may not be parsed as moraic.) d. WxP If Ci., then [Ci]m (Coda consonants must be parsed as moraic.) e. Faithfulness constraints Max Max-m Dep-m

This constraint set will map input /pata/ onto output pa.ta under any ranking (cf. Prince and Smolensky 1993). But it will also map input /paTa/ onto geminate paT.ta or simplex pa.ta, depending on the disposition of Max-m relative to the structural constraints. No permutation will produce paT.a or pat.a from input /paTa/, because there is no antagonistic constraint to offset their violations of Onset. Therefore, the illicit syllable structure contrast is not obtainable from these inputs under this theory of UG.31 Other theories of UG may have other consequences. For instance, if UG contains a constraint that specifically militates against geminate or ambisyllabic consonants (as in Rosenthall 1994 or Beckman 1998), then the illicit contrast is easily obtained simply by ranking the antigeminate constraint above Onset. But the absence of geminates from some phonemic inventories does not necessarily mean that UG has a constraint against geminates specifically. The theory in (52) can rule out geminates indirectly, under the ranking permutations in (53).32

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John J. McCarthy

(53) Some geminateless permutations of (52) a. No geminates, no codas whatsoever All others >> Max, Max-m b. Moraic codas, but no geminates Onset, WxP, Max >> *mCons, Dep-m, NoCoda >> Max-m c. Nonmoraic codas and no geminates Onset, Max, *mCons, Dep-m, >> Max-m, NoCoda, WxP

The source of geminatelessness under (52) is the ranking *mCons >> Max-m, and this ranking will never aid and abet the illicit mapping /paTa/ Æ paT.a. For further discussion, see Keer 1999: 48ff.

2.6.5 Summary To summarize the results of this section, I have argued that there are no constraints enforcing faithfulness to syllables per se. A theory-internal argument, based on applying revised sympathy to cases like Luganda, was supported by theory-external observations about nonoccurring contrasts and impossible reduplicative patterns. Several challenges to this thesis were also addressed: grammatically conditioned and phonologically derived contrasts, and distinctions of quantity and syllabicity. Finally, I showed that moraic faithfulness, which is necessary to maintain contrasts in quantity and syllabicity, need not lead to illicit syllabification contrasts.

2.7. Conclusion The serial derivation, although it is a central concept of generative phonology, has been little studied. A rare exception is Pullum’s (1976) work on the Duke-of-York gambit, a type of derivation where the output returns to the same place as the input. Though serial rule-based phonology predicts the existence of DY derivations, they do not seem to occur, except as descriptive artifacts of serialism’s commitment to rule prioritization through ordering. The principal goal of this chapter has been to explain the impossibility of DY derivations in their most general form. The argument here is embedded within OT, and more specifically within the extension to OT called sympathy, which addresses opaque interactions among processes. The key is a revision of sympathy theory, changing the means by which information is transmitted from the sympathetic candidate to the output form. Instead of intercandidate faithfulness constraints, I have argued for a considerably more restrictive hypothesis: candidates are compared for their faithfulness violations. The actual output must accumulate the faithfulness violations of the sympathetic candidate. This notion of cumulativity is what separates real derivations from nonexistent DY derivations.

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The chapter concluded with an examination of the role of syllabification in derivations. Syllabification, I argued, is not governed by faithfulness, and so it does not figure in the reckoning of cumulativity. Theoretical and empirical consequences of this view were presented. The results presented here suggest that familiar notions like the serial derivation, which might seem to have little or nothing left to offer, bear close study. It is perhaps significant that the questions raised by Pullum have not been much studied in the intervening decades; it is certainly significant that these questions still claim our attention.

appendix: sympathy, cumulativity, and harmonic ascent Classic OT grammars share a property of harmonic ascent (Moreton 1996/1999). A classic OT grammar, following Prince and Smolensky (1993), is a ranking of markedness and faithfulness constraints, and nothing else. Because violation is minimal, unfaithfulness is only possible to achieve markedness improvement relative to some language-particular ranking of the markedness constraints in UG. So, if a language has an unfaithful mapping /A/ Æ B, then B must be less marked, relative to that language’s hierarchy, than the fully faithful candidate A. (See Moreton 1996/1999 for a formal proof of this result and discussion of its empirical consequences, such as the impossibility of circular chain-shifts.)33 Elliott Moreton (personal communication, May 5, 1998) has shown that the harmonic ascent property also holds of classic OT grammars to which a single sympathy constraint has been added. To see why, assume that this claim is not true – that is, assume that input /A/ maps onto output B even though B is more marked than (output) A. Ex hypothesi, this mapping occurs by virtue of sympathy to some third candidate C, which is selected by the faithfulness constraint ✯F. The tableau in (54) shows the imagined situation, where A is less marked than B, yet B is the output. Observe too that C must be even less marked than A; since C and A both obey the selector ✯F, C must be less marked than A if it is to be the most harmonic candidate that obeys the selector. (54) Harmonic descent with one sympathy constraint (partial tableau) /A/ Faithful

a.

A

Harmonic Descent b. ☞ B Sympathetic

c. ❀ C

M

✯F

*

✓

**

* ✓

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John J. McCarthy

Any sympathy constraint that will ensure B’s victory must be ranked above M. It must also choose B over both A and C, since B is harmonically bounded by both. But no sympathy constraint can possibly do this: how could sympathetic resemblance to C somehow disfavor C itself? There is an obvious contradiction here, and so harmonic descent is impossible with a single sympathy constraint. This is a desirable result, since harmonic ascent is arguably a welcome consequence of OT. Moreton goes on to show, however, that harmonic descent is possible if there are two sympathy constraints with two sympathetic candidates and two selectors (for a worked-out example of opacity with two selectors, see McCarthy 1999b). The trick is that each sympathy constraint is called on to exclude the other’s sympathetic candidate, as in the schematic tableau in (55). (55) Harmonic descent with two sympathy constraints ❀SF1

/A/ Faithful

a.

A

Harmonic Descent b. ☞

❀SF2

*!

B

Sympathetic

c. ❀F1 C

Symapthetic

d. ❀F2 D

*! *!

M

✯F1

✯F2

*

✓

✓

**

*

*

✓

*

*

✓

The sympathy constraints ❀SF1 and ❀SF2 are indexed to the faithfulness constraints that serve as their selectors. Each rules out the other’s sympathetic candidate, and in addition ❀SF1 ensures that B is more harmonic than A, despite B’s worse performance on the markedness constraint M. The undesirable result in (55) cannot be avoided in the correspondencebased sympathy theory of McCarthy (1998), but it can be eliminated by refining the definition of cumulativity in (40). The faithfulness relationships among the various candidates are given by the diagram in (56) (cf. (38), (39), and (43)). (56) Partial ordering diagram for (55) A Faithful ❀C

❀D ☞B

F1

F2 Both

Under the definition in (40), only B accumulates all of the unfaithful mappings incurred by both ❀C and ❀D, so only B satisfies both ❀CumulF1 and ❀CumulF2. But suppose (40) is modified as in (57).

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(57) Cumulativity (revised) a. ❀CumulF E-Cand and ❀-CandF are comparable. That is, U❀-Cand Õ UE-Cand or U❀-Cand Õ UE-Cand. b. ❀DiffF Every unfaithful mapping incurred by E-Cand is also incurred by ❀-CandF, and vice versa. That is, assign one violation mark for every member of the set UE-Cand\U❀-Cand and every member of the set U❀-Cand\UE-Cand.

Revised in this way, ❀Cumul and ❀Diff will evaluate A and B in (56) as equally harmonic, since both stand in a super- or subset relation to the sympathetic candidates, and both are equidistant from the sympathetic candidates. This will leave the decision up to the markedness constraint M, which rules out candidate B. As a consequence of this revised definition, harmonic descent is impossible in OT with sympathy theory, just as it is in classic OT.

notes 1. Bleeding DY interactions, where the intermediate stage waits out another process, may be reducible to the vacuous type. See section 2.2. 2. To complete the analysis, it is also necessary to dispose of candidates where the vowel loses its rounding or the dorsal shifts to another place of articulation. I assume that such candidates are dealt  with by high-ranking faithfulness constraints. 3. If the underlying form /moq/ is assumed, the Delabialization rule applies only vacuously. Vacuous application is generally regarded as sufficient to trigger the EC, however. 4. The Bedouin Arabic vowel-height alternations present the same problem: a rule raising a to i when the next syllable contains i must take precedence over a rule lowering i to a after a guttural consonant (see note 11). Clearly, there is no specific/ general relation between these rules either.  5. According to Klokeid (1977), the word that Campbell (1973) writes as mo q in (5c)  is actually pronounced mo qw. This is unlikely to be correct – Campbell refers to his own fieldwork with Nootka, but Klokeid does not. In any case, it does not  evidently w  matter. Suppose the output is indeed m o q . It is then necessary to supply a grammar   w that will map both /m oq/ and /m oq / onto this output. From input /moq/, there   is a DY derivation: /moqw/ Æ mo q Æ mo qw. In OT, the ranking Rounding >> Unrounding >> Ident(round) accomplishes the same thing. 6. Even the highest-ranking constraint will be violated if Gen supplies no candidates that obey it. That situation probably never arises in phonology, where Gen meets the requirements of Inclusiveness (McCarthy and Prince 1993b: 5). 7. Merchant (1997) takes a different tack, reinterpreting the Catalan DY derivation a Æ b Æ a as a Æ b Æ g, where a and g are phonetically identical but structurally different. In his account, output sublunar has a single [+voice] specification shared by the bl cluster, but input /sublunar/ does not. Joan Mascaró (e-mail, February 24, 2000) informs me that Harris’s Catalan example sublunar in (12) is problematic. Except for the orthographic [b], there is

66

8.

9.

10.

11.

John J. McCarthy evidently no reason to assume that the final consonant of the prefix sub- is underlying voiced, since it also shows up as voiceless before a vowel. (The prevocalic behavior is analogous to compounds like sud-est.) Hence, it never occurs in a position where it could show a voicing contrast. This line of attack on bleeding DY derivations would be foreclosed in any case where either UG does not supply the equivalent of the constraint *EAD or where independent evidence proves that *CA dominates *EAD. The derivation puˇs Æ pi-ˇs Æ puˇs ‘push’ in Chomsky and Halle 1968: 294 is perhaps such a case, but the analysis is not worked out and seems dubious on its face (Zwicky 1974: 216). I am grateful to Morris Halle, Harry van der Hulst, and Bill Idsardi for bringing up the Hebrew example. Compare Idsardi 1998 for an approach to these alternations based on different assumptions about the underlying representation. The transcription has been simplified by suppressing indications of velar palataliza–arbi tion and contextual effects on the raised vowel. The data are drawn from the H dialect carefully described and analyzed by Al-Mozainy (1976, 1981) (see also AlMozainy et al. 1985). (A text dictated by Al-Mozainy has been published in Ingham 1982: 112–115.) Similar data can be found in other Saudi Bedouin dialects, such as those in Johnstone 1967a, 1967b, Abboud 1979, and Prochazka 1988. The Levantine and North African Bedouin dialects described in Mitchell 1960, Blanc 1970, Irshied 1984, and Irshied and Kenstowicz 1984, differ significantly. The more familiar sedentary dialects of Arabic, such as those discussed by Kiparsky (this volume) and Wiltshire (this volume), are even more different, reflecting an ancient split between two dialect groups. Al-Mozainy (1981) takes considerable care in establishing that the underlying forms given in (18) are correct. His most controversial claim is the vowel posited in the first syllable of /katab/ – underlying /a/, but always i or Ø on the surface. Three arguments support underlying /a/. First, a distinction between /a/ and /i/ is necessary to account for the different paradigms of /katab/ and its passive /kitib/. Observe that the presence or absence of a surface vowel between k and t is exactly complementary in these two paradigms. Second, there are paradigms where the initial a posited in /katab/ does show up, because there are conditions where raising is blocked (Al-Mozainy 1981, Irshied and Kenstowicz 1984, Gafos and Lombardi 1999, McCarthy 1999a): (i) Conditions that block raising Raising occurs in nonfinal light syllable: /katab/ Æ kitab Except a. Before a guttural consonant (ʔ , h, ʕ, , ʁ, X) or coronal sonorant (r, l, n) followed by a: /sa ab/ sa ab ‘he pulled’ /daras/ daras ‘he studied’ cf. /taʕib/ tiʕib ‘he got tired’ /sˇarib/ sˇirib ‘he drank’ b. After a guttural consonant: /ʔakal/ ʔakal ‘he ate’ Except before a high vowel: /Xasir/ Xisir ‘he lost’

Third, secret-language data demonstrate that the raising rule applies completely productively, with a or i in an open syllable depending on the blocking conditions just mentioned:

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(ii) External evidence for raising and conditions on it a. Root-consonant-permuting secret language: difaʕ ‘he pushed’ daʕaf, ʕadaf, faʕad, fidaʕ, . . . ðarab ‘he beat’ ðibar, ribað, barað, . . . ðribat ‘she beat’ rbiðat, bðarat, rðibat, . . . b. Invented ar-inserting secret language: kitab ‘he wrote’ Æ ka artab

12. As usual in Arabic, final superheavy syllables act like heavy penults and so receive stress: maktú b ‘written’, sa ábt ‘I pulled’. See Kiparsky, this volume, and Wiltshire, this volume, for discussion. 13. Al-Mozainy (1981) reports syllabifications like kti.bat and yak.tbin, based on his own intuitions. Since surface degenerate syllables were not an option in the theory of the time, he had no choice but to assign the extra consonant to one of the visible syllables. 14. “Categorically less faithful” means that there must be a distinct high-ranking faithfulness constraint against the /A/ Æ C mapping. It is not enough for /A/ Æ C simply to accumulate more violations of the same faithfulness constraint that /A/ Æ B and /B/ Æ C violate. 15. According to Kirchner (1996), relative faithfulness is established by locally conjoining faithfulness constraints (in the sense of Smolensky 1995). Since any two faithfulness constraints can in principle be conjoined, this is an inherently richer theory than Gnanadesikan’s scales. 16. See Morelli, this volume, for a fuller explanation of harmonic bounding under the rubric of “The Subset Strategy.” Harmonic bounding was introduced in SamekLodovici 1992 and also figures prominently in Prince and Smolensky 1993: chapter 9 and Samek-Lodovici and Prince 1999. 17. A natural idea is to attempt some sort of reformulation of GrpHarm to prefer the DL foot of (k.tí).bat over the monosyllabic H foot of *(kát).bat (cf. Black 1991). The problem is that any such move will interfere with the syncope process. Recall that the high vowel of /samiʕ-at/ deletes to yield (sám).ʕ at. This speculative reformulation of GrpHarm would instead favor *(s.mí).ʕ at. The table in (i) makes this problem clear. (i) Summary of the *(kát).bat problem Input: /katab-at/ Input: Actual output: (k.tí).bat Actual output: Failed candidate: *(kát).bat Failed candidate:

/samiʕ-at/ (sám).ʕ at *(s.mí).ʕ at

The failed candidate from /katab-at/ has exactly the shape of the actual output from /samiʕ-at/, and vice versa. This means that no markedness constraint(s) can successfully sort out these candidate comparisons. And the faithfulness system is not helpful either – the failed candidate *(kát).bat is in fact more faithful (because it preserves /a/) than the actual output (k.tí).bat. 18. Because sympathy allows a nonsurface candidate to influence the outcome, it is sometimes suggested that sympathy is basically a restatement of the rule-based serial derivation. The differences between sympathy and rule-based serialism are the topic of sections 3.2 and 7 of McCarthy 1999b, and the treatment of opacity in serialized OT (“harmonic serialism”) is covered in section 4 of McCarthy 2000a. 19. Other approaches to opacity in OT include local constraint conjunction (Kirchner 1996, Ito and Mester, this volume) and serially ordered levels (McCarthy and Prince

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20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

25. 26.

27.

28. 29. 30.

31.

John J. McCarthy 1993b: appendix, Cohn and McCarthy 1994, Potter 1994, Kenstowicz 1995, Booij 1996, 1997, Clements 1997, Kiparsky 1997a, 1997b, 2000, Noyer 1997, Paradis 1997, Roca 1997, Rubach 1997, 2000, Hale and Kissock 1998, Hale et al. 1998, BermúdezOtero 1999, Kiparsky, this volume). For discussion of these and other alternatives to sympathy, see sections 6.2 and 8 of McCarthy 1999b. This ranking is introduced solely to pick out the right ❀-candidate; it is otherwise unmotivated. I am greatly indebted to Alan Prince for discussion of this material. Though described here in segmental terms, this approach can be generalized in obvious ways to handle moras, tones, and other nonsegmental structure. The terms “comparable” and “noncomparable” come from the theory of partial orderings (see, e.g., Davey and Priestley 1990). These constraints are relativized to the selector constraint, to allow for systems with multiple sympathetic candidates. See McCarthy 1999b on opacity in Yokuts, for example. The notation A\B (or A–B) denotes the relative complement of B in A. It is the set of all elements of A that do not also belong to B. I have suppressed the violations of the faithfulness constraint Ident(stress), which are incurred when a vowel receives (or loses) a stress. Though stress is fully predictable in Bedouin Arabic, it is contrastive in some languages, and so there must be faithfulness constraints conserving it (McCarthy 1995, Pater 1995, Bye 1996, Ito et al. 1996, Alderete 1998, 1999, Inkelas 1999). Violations of Ident(stress), although they do not affect the outcome in (41), are part of the package of unfaithful mappings that each candidate brings with it. In fact, one can construct cases that have not only the look and feel but even the actual form of DY derivations. Under Richness of the Base, underlying representations may contain syllabic structure, allowing for the possibility of derivations like /pak.la/ Æ pa.kla Æ pak.la. For a comprehensive analysis of Luganda within OT, see Rosenthall 1994. In (47), I assume that epenthesis on the moraic tier is treated for indexation purposes like epenthesis on the segmental tier. Since *mu.ntu is literally impossible in Luganda, it is necessary to show that it cannot be attained from any input, not just /muntu/. Of particular interest is the fully faithful mapping /mu.ntu/ Æ *mu.ntu, which must somehow be excluded. In OT, prohibiting one mapping is a matter of ensuring that some other mapping from the same input is more harmonic. The more harmonic mapping then “occults” (Prince and Smolensky 1993) the less harmonic one. The seemingly easy task of occulting /muntu/ Æ *mu.ntu with /muntu/ Æ mu .ntu is actually the wrong way to go, though, since the lengthening of the vowel cannot be explained. Rather, the right move is to map /muntu/ unfaithfully onto mu.tu, simplifying the underlying prenasalized consonant. This reduces Luganda to a kind of chain-shift, with side effects on vowel length: /nt/ Æ nt and /nt/ Æ t. It is then a straightforward matter to apply the theories of chain-shifts reviewed in section 2.3.3.3. In fact, Gnanadesikan (1997: 139ff.) analyzes an exactly parallel case from Sanskrit, which she calls a coalescence “paradox.” These results were checked using the OTSoft package created by Bruce Hayes. It is available for download via http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/hayes/otsoft.

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32. This system does have some odd properties. Under some permutations, it will allow a contrast between moraic and nonmoraic preconsonantal consonants to emerge on the surface: /paTka/ Æ paTka versus /patka/ Æ pat.ka. Lexical contrasts like this do not seem to occur, perhaps because the evidence for them is so very indirect. And under some permutations, this system will map (only) nonmoraic preconsonantal consonants onto zero: /paTka/ Æ paTka versus /patka/ Æ pa.ka. This might offer a mora-based approach to certain kinds of ghost-segment behavior (cf. Clements and Keyser 1983, Zoll 1993). 33. I am greatly indebted to Elliott Moreton for discussion of this material.

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Merchant, Jason. (1997). Sympathetic devoicing and continuancy in Catalan. Phonology at Santa Cruz 5: 57–62. Mitchell, T. F. (1960). Prominence and syllabication in Arabic. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 23: 369–389. [Reprinted in T. F. Mitchell, Principles of Firthian Linguistics. London: Longmans, 1975. Also reprinted in Salman Al-Ani, Readings in Arabic Linguistics. Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club, 1978.] Mohanan, K. P. (1985). Syllable structure and lexical strata in English. Phonology 2: 139–155. Moravcsik, Edith. (1978). Reduplicative constructions. In Universals of Human Language, ed. Joseph Greenberg, 297–334. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. Moreton, Elliott. (1996/1999). Non-computable functions in Optimality Theory. Ms., University of Massachusetts, Amherst. [Revised and available (1999) on Rutgers Optimality Archive, http://ruccs.rutgers.edu/roa.html. Originally circulated in 1996.] Myers, Scott. (1987). Vowel shortening in English. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 5: 485–518. Ní Chiosáin, Máire, and Jaye Padgett. (1997). Markedness, segment realization, and locality in spreading. Ms., University of California, Santa Cruz. [Available on Rutgers Optimality Archive, http://ruccs.rutgers.edu/roa.html.] Noyer, Rolf. (1997). Attic Greek accentuation and intermediate derivational representations. In Constraints and Derivations in Phonology, ed. Iggy Roca, 501–528. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Paradis, Carole. (1997). Non-transparent constraint effects in Gere: From cycles to derivations. In Constraints and Derivations in Phonology, ed. Iggy Roca, 529–550. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pater, Joe. (1995). On the nonuniformity of weight-to-stress and stress preservation effects in English. Ms., McGill University, Montreal. [Available on Rutgers Optimality Archive, http://ruccs.rutgers.edu/roa.html.] Pater, Joe. (1999). Austronesian nasal substitution and other NC effects. In The ProsodyMorphology Interface, ed. René Kager et al., 310–343. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Piggott, G. L. (1995). Epenthesis and syllable weight. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 13: 283–326. Potter, Brian. (1994). Serial optimality in Mohawk prosody. In Proceedings of the Thirtieth Annual Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society, ed. Katharine Beals et al., 347–361. Chicago: Chicago Linguistics Society. Prince, Alan. (1975). The phonology and morphology of Tiberian Hebrew. Doctoral dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, Mass. Prince, Alan. (1990). Quantitative consequences of rhythmic organization. In Parasession on the Syllable in Phonetics and Phonology, ed. M. Ziolkowski et al., 355–398. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. Prince, Alan. (1996). A letter from Alan Prince. Glot International 6 (no. 2). Prince, Alan. (1997). Elsewhere and otherwise, Ms., Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J. [Available on Rutgers Optimality Archive, http://ruccs.rutgers.edu/roa.html.] Prince, Alan, and Paul Smolensky. (1993). Optimality Theory: Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar. Report RUCCS TR-2. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University. Prochazka, Theodore. (1998). Saudi Arabian Dialects. London: Kegan Paul International.

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Pulleyblank, Douglas. (1996). Neutral vowels in Optimality Theory: A comparison of Yoruba and Wolof. Canadian Journal of Linguistics 41: 295–347. Pullum, Geoffrey. (1976). The Duke of York gambit. Journal of Linguistics 12: 83–102. Roca, Iggy. (1997). Derivations or constraints, or derivations and constraints? In Constraints and Derivations in Phonology, ed. Iggy Roca, 3–42. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rosenthall, Samuel. (1994). Vowel/glide alternation in a theory of constraint interaction. Doctoral dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Rubach, Jerzy. (1984). Cyclic and Lexical Phonology: The Structure of Polish. Dordrecht: Foris. Rubach, Jerzy. (1993). The Lexical Phonology of Slovak. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rubach, Jerzy. (1997). Extrasyllabic consonants in Polish: Derivational Optimality Theory. In Constraints and Derivations in Phonology, ed. Iggy Roca, 551–582. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rubach, Jerzy. (2000). Glide and glottal stop insertion in Slavic languages: A DOT analysis. Linguistic Inquiry 31: 271–317. Samek-Lodovici, Vieri. (1992). Universal constraints and morphological gemination: A crosslinguistic study. Ms., Brandeis University, Waltham, Mass. Samek-Lodovici, Vieri, and Alan Prince. (1999). Optima. Ms., University of London and Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J. [Available on Rutgers Optimality Archive, http://ruccs.rutgers.edu/roa.html.] Sanders. Gerald. (1974). Precedence relations in language. Foundations of Language 11: 361–400. Sapir, Edward, and Morris Swadesh. (1978). Nootka Texts: Tales and Ethnological Narratives, with Grammatical Notes and Lexical Material. New York: AMS Press. Scobbie, James. (1993). Constraint violation and conflict from the perspective of Declarative Phonology. Canadian Journal of Linguistcs 38: 155–167. Selkirk, Elisabeth O. (1981). Epenthesis and degenerate syllables in Cairene Arabic. In Theoretical Issues in the Grammar of the Semitic Languages, ed. Hagit Borer and Joseph Aoun, 111–140. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Sherer, Tim. (1994). Prosodic phonotactics. Doctoral dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Smolensky, Paul. (1995). On the internal structure of the constraint component Con of UG. Handout of talk given at University of Arizona, 1995. Walker, Rachel. (1998). Nasalization, neutral segments, and opacity effects. Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Santa Cruz. Wilson, Colin. (1999). Consonant cluster neutralization and targeted constraints. Ms., Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md. Wiltshire, Caroline. (1992). Syllabification and rule application in harmonic phonology. Doctoral dissertation, University of Chicago. Zec, Draga. (1995). Sonority constraints on syllable structure. Phonology 12: 85–129. Zoll, Cheryl. (1993). Ghost segments and optimality. In Proceedings of WCCFL 12, ed. Erin Duncan et al., 183–199. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Linguistics Association. Zwicky, Arnold M. (1974). Taking a false step. Language 50: 215–224.

3 The Controversy over Geminates and Syllable Weight Stuart Davis

3.1. Introduction One of the major areas of research in syllable phonology is syllable weight; specifically, what types of syllables can function as heavy and how weight is represented. The moraic view of the syllable is a widely accepted approach for encoding syllable weight. Within this approach, it is generally agreed that a short vowel constitutes a single mora while a long vowel is bimoraic. With respect to consonants, however, there is a controversy over whether the difference between a single consonant and a geminate (long) consonant is one of inherent weight or of featural or other type of representation. On the one hand, Hayes (1989) posits the moraic theory of geminates whereby a geminate consonant is underlyingly moraic but a single consonant is not. On the other hand, Selkirk (1990) posits the two-root node theory of geminates whereby a geminate consonant is represented underlyingly as a consonant linked to two root nodes while a single consonant is linked to only one root node. In an earlier view of geminates, developed in Clements and Keyser (1983) and Hayes (1986), a geminate is represented as a consonant linked to two skeletal slots, but a nongeminate is represented as a consonant linked to a single skeletal slot. These three views are illustrated in (1)–(3), respectively. (The following abbreviations are used: UR = underlying representation, m = mora, c = consonant, RN = root node, X = skeletal slot.) I would like to thank Karen Baertsch, Daniel Dinnsen, Yongsung Lee, Jen Muller, Jaye Padgett, John Paolillo, Alan Prince, and the participants of the Tübingen workshop on the syllable for discussion or comments on aspects of this chapter. I would also like to thank the editors and the referees for their input. All errors are my own responsibility.

77

78 (1)

Stuart Davis Moraic theory of geminates (Hayes 1989) a. Geminate in UR m c (geminate) b. Single consonant in UR c (singleton)

(2)

Two-root node theory of geminates (Selkirk 1990) a. RN RN c (geminate) b. RN c (singleton)

(3)

Two-skeletal position theory of geminates (Clements and Keyser 1983, Hayes 1986) a. X X c (geminate) b. X c (singleton)

Within Optimality Theory (OT), the theoretical framework assumed in this chapter, the controversy over geminates continues. Baker (1997), adopting the two-root node theory in (2), argues for the nonmoraicity of geminates based on the stress pattern of the Australian language Ngalakan. Hume et al. (1997), adopting the theory in (3), argue against the moraicity of geminates based on the patterning of initial geminates of the Austronesian language Leti. In this chapter I focus my attention on the patterning of geminates in Sinhala, an Indic language of Sri Lanka. I argue that an optimality-theoretic analysis of Sinhala strongly supports the view of geminates as being underlyingly moraic. The analysis of Sinhala that I will present in section 3.2 not only argues for the moraic nature of gemi-

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nates but also helps to solve an interesting controversy in the Sinhala phonological literature regarding whether the singular of the Sinhala inanimate noun is derived from the plural (e.g., Feinstein 1979, Rosenthall 1988, Steriade 1993) or the plural derived from the singular (e.g., Pyatt 1993). The optimality-theoretic analysis shows that the plural does not involve an affix or a process; rather the difference between the singular and the plural is determined strictly by the phonology (i.e., the constraint ranking). In section 3.3 I consider the evidence put forth by researchers like Baker (1997), Hume et al. (1997), and others who argue against the moraic view of geminates. I contend that the specific evidence cited either does not argue against geminates being underlyingly moraic in an optimality-theoretic grammar, or, in the case of Leti, points to the extraprosodicity of an edge element. Section 3.4 concludes the chapter.

3.2. Sinhala In this section I present an optimality-theoretic analysis of the Sinhala inanimate plural that provides strong evidence for the underlying moraic nature of geminate consonants. In section 3.2.1 I present and discuss the relevant data. In 3.2.2 I detail the optimality-theoretic analysis that crucially assumes the moraic character of geminates. Here I point out that the analysis offers a solution to the controversy regarding whether the singular is derived from the plural (e.g., Feinstein 1979, Rosenthall 1988, Steriade 1993) or whether the plural is derived from the singular (e.g., Pyatt 1993, Davis 1999a). In section 3.2.3 I provide additional evidence for the underlying nature of Sinhala geminates based on the pattern of genitive allomorphy. I then show that the analysis of the Sinhala genitive is problematic given either the tworoot node theory of geminates in (2) or the skeletal theory of geminates in (3).

3.2.1 Data A common pattern of inanimate plurals found in Sinhala is shown by the data in (4) and (5). The singular noun must always occur with some suffix (e.g., definite suffix, genitive suffix, etc.), whereas plurals can occur without such suffixes. (The sources for the Sinhala data include Feinstein 1977, 1979, Reynolds 1980, Pyatt 1993, Steriade 1993, Letterman 1994).

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(4)

Singular noun (def.) a. mal-ə b. mænik-ə c. pot-ə d. dawas-ə e. rææ f. olu-(w)ə g. kaasi-(y)ə h. toppi-(y)ə i. ispaasu-(w)ə j. igænniim-ə k. bim-ə l. amb-ə [a.mbə] m. kand-ə [ka.ndə]

(5)

Singular noun a. mull-ə b. pætt-ə c. awurudd-ə d. baDəginn-ə e. watt-ə f. kææll-ə g. wæss-ə h. ginn-ə i. redd-ə j. pott-ə k. bell-ə l. and-ə [an.də] m. kand-ə [kan.də]

Plural mal mænik pot dawas rææ olu kaasi toppi ispaasu igænniiŋ biŋ aŋ kaŋ Plural mulu pæti awurudu baDəgini watu kææli wæsi gini redi potu beli a.ndu ka.ndu

Gloss ‘flower’ ‘gem’ ‘book’ ‘day’ ‘dark, night’ ‘head’ ‘coin’ ‘hat’ ‘peace, rest’ ‘teaching’ ‘ground’ ‘mango’ ‘trunk’ Gloss ‘corner’ ‘area’ ‘year’ ‘hunger’ ‘estate’ ‘piece’ ‘rain’ ‘fire’ ‘cloth’ ‘core’ ‘neck’ ‘fence’ ‘hill’

In the data in (4) the inanimate plural can be seen as consisting of just the bare noun root, as evidenced by (4a)–(4i); the glide shown in parentheses in (4f)–(4i) predictably occurs in hiatus. In (4j)–(4m) the word-final nasal is realized as [ŋ], reflecting a general condition on word-final nasals in the language; that is, any final nasal must be velar (Reynolds 1980: 4). The nasals in (4l)–(4m) are traditionally viewed as being single prenasalized segments that could be transcribed as /mb/ and /nd/, respectively. As seen in the data, they too are realized as the velar nasal in the plural. Thus, the plural in (4) is the bare noun root; any word-final nasal is realized as velar in conformity with the phonotactics of the language. In (5) it does not appear that the plural consists of the bare noun root. In (5a)–(5k) the noun roots all end in a geminate consonant, as evidenced

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by the singular forms. The plurals of these end in a high vowel with the root-final consonant degeminated. The apparent difference in the plural formation from (4) can be viewed as reflecting an undominated constraint in Sinhala against the surface appearance of word-final geminates. Consequently, the plural form cannot surface as the bare noun root as in (4). What occurs in (5), then, is degemination plus epenthesis. If we view a geminate as being underlyingly moraic, the occurrence of epenthesis in (5) can simply be viewed as an effect of moraic faithfulness. For example, the noun root /mull/ in (5a) would have two moras, one contributed by the vowel and one by the geminate. Its plural form, [mulu], likewise has two moras. The evidence for epenthesis in (5), as opposed to saying that the final vowel reflects a plural affix, is that the quality of the word-final high vowel is completely predictable. If the preceding vowel is back, the high vowel is [u]. If the preceding vowel is front, then it is [i]. This, plus the fact that the forms in (4) do not have an additional final high vowel in the plural, argues for the epenthetic nature of the final vowel in (5). Thus, in (5) the input to the plural is the bare noun root. Degemination and epenthesis are phonological effects. The data in (5l)–(5m) look different from the other data in (5) but can be viewed the same way. The prenasal consonant in (5l)–(5m) can be considered as underlyingly moraic. In the plural the prenasal demoraifies, and epenthesis occurs just as in the other data in (5). The evidence that the prenasal of the root is moraic in (5l)–(5m) comes from the syllabification shown for the singular, especially in comparison with (4l)–(4m); the nasals in (5l)–(5m) stand in coda position. Moreover, Steriade (1993) specifically proposes that Sinhala data like those in (5l)–(5m) have a nasal closure that is moraic, while those in (4l)–(4m) are nonmoraic. Her evidence comes from the spectrographic work on Sinhala by Ladefoged and Maddieson (1996), which examined examples similar to (4) and (5). Ladefoged and Maddieson show that nasal closures on singular words like those in (5l)–(5m) are at least twice as long as the nasal closures in (4l)–(4m). Given this difference, the data in the former are indeed exactly like the rest of the data in (5). The final consonant in the plural degeminates (or, rather, demoraifies), but its mora is preserved through epenthesis. Since the final prenasal is not moraic in (4l)–(4m), the final consonant becomes a velar nasal in the plural, exactly as in (4j)–(4k). Given this discussion, we can conclude that there is no affix marking the Sinhala inanimate plural. The precise surface form of the plural in (4) and (5) is determined by the phonology. The input to the plural would just be the noun root. I show the specific input forms in (6) for the first and last examples in (4) and (5).

82 (6)

Stuart Davis Input structure m a. mal mm

(4a)

b. mul m

(5a)

c. kand (4m) mm d. kand (5m)

Having established the nature of the input structures for the plural, we can now consider an optimality-theoretic analysis.

3.2.2 Optimality-Theoretic Analysis In this section I present the relevant constraints that are needed for the optimality-theoretic analysis of the Sinhala inanimate plural and consider the tableaux of the forms reflected by the input structure in (6). I show that the analysis is unproblematic given the view that geminate consonants are underlyingly moraic. In analyzing the Sinhala plural data in (4) and (5), I need to make reference to the constraints shown in (7). (7)

Constraints a. *Gem# – Geminates are disallowed in word-final position. b. Faith-m – Moras in the input and output correspond (i.e., no mora deletion or insertion). c. *V: – Long vowels are prohibited. d. Dep[Root Node] – A root node in the output must have a correspondent in the input (i.e., no epenthesis). e. Dep[±back] – The feature [±back] in the output must have a correspondent in the input.

The constraint in (7a) disallows word-final geminates and is inviolable in Sinhala. It is very common for languages that have geminates to prohibit them in word-final position. Such languages include Biblical Hebrew, Japanese, Italian, and Trukese. The constraint in (7b) is a constraint on moraic faithfulness requiring input and output moras to correspond. This militates against the insertion or deletion of moras. Faithfulness constraints of this type are posited by McCarthy and Prince (1995) and Rosenthall (1997). (7b) is a

geminates and syllable weight

83

high-ranking constraint in this analysis and seems reflective of the phonology as a whole since phenomena like vowel deletion that eliminate a mora or insertion processes that add moras appear to be quite rare in Sinhala phonology. Moreover, as seen by the data item in (5f), long vowels do not shorten in closed syllables in Sinhala, thus suggesting that moraic faithfulness is indeed high ranking. The constraint in (7c) is not inviolable in Sinhala as seen by data with long vowels, such as in (4e), (4g), and (5f). However, it plays an important role in our analysis of the plural in (5) so as to rule out candidates with long vowels, such as the hypothetical [muul] for the plural of (5a). The constraint in (7d) is a low-ranking constraint that militates against the occurrence of epenthesis. The constraint in (7e), which does not seem to be crucially ranked, prohibits the insertion of a [±back] feature. Its effect can be seen in (5) where the inserted vowel takes on the backness value of the preceding vowel. (That is, the epenthetic vowel in (5) shares the [back] feature with the preceding vowel.) In (8), I show the tableau for the plural form of (4a) where the input form of the plural is the noun root. I discuss the arguments for the constraint ranking as they arise after each tableau. m (8)

m

/mal/ – [mal] m

‘flowers’ (4a) Faith-m

*Gem#

*V:

Dep[Root Dep[±back] Node]

/mal/ m ☞ a. mal m m

*!

*

b. ma lu

The actual output in (8a) is faithful to the input. It does not violate any relevant constraint. Any other candidate, such as that in (8b), would incur a violation of some faithfulness constraint. A tableau like that in (8) accounts for most of the plural forms for data like those in (4). The tableau in (8) does not provide evidence for the specific ranking of the constraints since the winning candidate does not violate any of the relevant constraints. In (9), we show the tableau for the plural form of (5a). As in (8), the input form consists of the noun root; the final geminate is viewed as being under-

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lyingly moraic. (In the moraic representation of the input and the various candidates in the tableaux I include a subscript for each mora so as to make clear whether moraic faithfulness is being respected.) mi mj (9)

mimj

/mu l/ – [mulu] mi mj

‘corner’ (4a) Faith-m

*Gem#

*V:

Dep[Root Dep[±back] Node]

/mu l/ a.

mi mj

*!

mu l [mull] b.

mi

*!

mul c.

mimj

*!

m u l [muul] d. mi mj mk

*!

*

mu l u [mullu] ☞ e.

mi mj | | mu l u

*

f.

mi mj | | mul i

*

*!

The tableau in (9) is quite revealing of how the phonology alone determines the nature of the plural form. The input in (9) is like that shown in (8). It is just the noun root. However, in (9) the root ends in a moraic (geminate) consonant. Hence, the faithful candidate in (9a) cannot surface since it has a fatal violation of *Gem#. One possibility is simply to degeminate the final consonant, as reflected by the candidate in (9b). Such a candidate is phonotactically good, as can be seen by its resemblance to (8a). However, the candidate fatally violates the moraic faithfulness constraint and so fails

geminates and syllable weight

85

to surface. Thus the constraints *Gem# and Faith-m must each outrank Dep[Root Node] (i.e., avoid epenthesis), which is the constraint violated by the winning candidate in (9e). Candidate (9c) is a realistic possibility because it avoids violating moraic faithfulness by preserving the mora as part of a long vowel. Moreover, a candidate like (9c) is phonotactically possible in Sinhala given that the language has long vowels in closed syllables (as in (5f) and words like [haal] ‘uncooked rice’). That candidate (9c) fails to surface as the plural constitutes a ranking argument for the constraint *V: being higher ranked than Dep[Root Node]. Candidate (9d) is also phonotactically permissible, but it is ruled out because it has one more mora than the input form and thus fatally violates the moraic faithfulness constraint. The choice then is between candidates (9e) and (9f). Both respect moraic faithfulness in that they do not add or subtract moras from the input. They both violate lowranking Dep[Root Node] in that they have an inserted vowel. However, candidate (9f) is eliminated because of its violation of Dep[±back] in that the feature [-back] is added. Candidate (9e) does not violate this constraint since it acquires its backness feature from the preceding vowel. Thus we see from the tableau in (9) how the phonology alone determines the form of the plural, given the noun root as the input. The constraint rankings that emerge from tableau in (9) are given in (10). (10) a. *Gem# >> Dep[Root Node] (Evidence: comparison of (9a) with (9e)) b. Faith-m >> Dep[Root Node] (Evidence: comparison of (9b) with (9e)) c. *V: >> Dep[Root Node] (Evidence: comparison of (9c) with (9e))

While a specific argument regarding the relative ranking of Faith-m and *V: does not emerge from the tableau in (9), the fact that long vowels do not shorten even when in closed syllables (as in (5f)) provides evidence for the ranking of Faith-m over *V:. I am unaware of any evidence that indicates the relative ranking of Faith-m and *Gem#. Based on (9) and (10), both are high ranking. Finally, as mentioned previously, the constraint Dep[±back] is not critically ranked with respect to the other constraints. I place it with Dep[Root Node] in the tableaux for clarity. In dealing with data containing word-final nasal consonants ((4j)–(4m)), we need to make reference to two other constraints: (11) a. Final-ŋ – Word-final nasals must be velar. b. Ident-Place – Place features in the input and output are identical.

The constraint in (11a) requiring word-final nasals to be velar is high ranking in Sinhala since all word final nasals are velar. Trigo (1988) notes that the

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phenomena of word-final nasals being velar is not uncommon crosslinguistically and may be reflective of the glidelike character of a coda nasal that is not followed by a homorganic consonant. The constraint in (11b) is lower ranked than (11a) and would be violated any time a word-final nasal changes its place of articulation to become a velar, as in the plural forms of (4j)–(4m). The tableau for the data item in (4m), where the input has a final nasal, is shown in (12). m

m

(12) /kand/ – [kaŋ] ‘trunks’ (4m) m

Final-ŋ Faith-m *Gem#

*V:

IdentPlace

/kand/ m

Dep [Root Node]

Dep [±back]

*

☞ a. kaŋ m

m

*!

*

b. ka.ndu m

*!

c. kand

The plural for the form in (4m) is accounted for unproblematically. The faithful candidate in (12c) would violate the undominated constraint, requiring final nasals to be velar. (Recall from the discussion in the previous section that all nasal-plus-stop sequences in Sinhala are viewed as prenasalized stops.) The candidate in (12b) violates moraic faithfulness. Thus (12a), with a final velar nasal, surfaces as the actual plural even though it violates IdentPlace. (The exact ranking of Ident-Place is not crucial other than that it must be ranked lower than Final-ŋ.) In (13) is the tableau for the data item in (5m) where the input has a final prenasal that is moraic.

geminates and syllable weight mi mj

mi

87

mj

(13) /ka nd/ – [ka.ndu] ‘hills’ (5m) mi mj

Final-ŋ Faith-m *Gem#

*V:

IdentPlace

/ka nd/ a. mi mj

*!

Dep [Root Node]

Dep [±back]

*

ka nd [ka nd] b.

mi

*!

*

ka ŋ c.

mimj

*!

*

ka ŋ [kaaŋ] d. mi mj mk

*!

*

ka n.du [kan.du] ☞ e. mi mj | | ka.ndu

*

f. mi mj | | ka.nd i

*

*!

The evaluation of the candidates for the plural form of (5m) is quite revealing. The faithful candidate in (13a) is ruled out because it would violate both the constraint against word-final geminates and the constraint requiring final nasals to be velar. The candidate in (13b) is ruled out because of its violation of moraic faithfulness. The candidate in (13c) fatally violates the constraint against long vowels. The candidate in (13d) violates the constraint on moraic faithfulness by adding an extra mora. The choice, then, is between candidates (13e) and (13f), both of which violate low-ranking Dep[Root Node] because of the final epenthetic vowel. However, since (13f) incurs an additional violation of Dep[±back], (13e) surfaces as the winner. Again, we see that the plural output is determined strictly by the phonology, given that the input is just the noun root. Crucial for the analysis is that the Sinhala geminate

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consonants are underlyingly moraic. On this analysis, the only difference between the underlying prenasal consonant in (4m) and (5m) is that the one in (5m) is moraic whereas the one in (4m) is not. That is, they are exactly like the rest of the data in (4) and (5), where the roots in (5) end in moraic consonants while those in (4) do not. As for the singular forms, their input would consist of the noun root plus a suffix, such as the definite suffix, the genitive suffix, and so on. The constraint ranking that we have established results in the correct singular output. The tableaux in (14) and (15) show the singular forms of (4a) and (5a), respectively. m

m

m m

(14) /mal + ə/ – [malə] ‘the flower’ (4a) m

m

Faith-m

*Gem#

*V:

Dep[Root Dep[±back] Node]

*V:

Dep[Root Dep[±back] Node]

/mal + ə/ m m ☞ a. malə mmm

*!

b. mall ə

mm m

mmm

(15) /mul + ə/ – [mullə] ‘the corner’ (5a) mm

m

Faith-m

*Gem#

/mul + ə/ mmm ☞ a. mull ə m m

*!

b. mul ə

The optimality-theoretic analysis presented in this section helps to solve a controversy regarding the proper analysis of the inanimate plural. As I point out in section 3.2, in the optimality-theoretic analysis of the Sinhala inanimate plural there is no affixation or plural process. The precise shape of the plural is determined by the phonology, that is, the constraint ranking with the

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input consisting of just the noun root. However, this has not been the view of previous research on the Sinhala inanimate plural, none of which is done in OT. On the one hand, researchers like Pyatt (1993) and Davis (1999a), following the description of Fairbanks et al. (1968), have analyzed the plural as being based on the singular. On the other hand, Feinstein (1977, 1979) has maintained that the singular form is actually derived from the plural. Feinstein’s analysis has been adopted in more recent discussion on Sinhala by such researchers as Rosenthall (1988), Steriade (1993), and Letterman (1994). Rosenthall (1988: 280) in particular refers to the definite morpheme as the singular morpheme. The optimality-theoretic analysis argues against both of these positions. In previous research, Pyatt (1993) and Davis (1999a) posit similar analyses of the Sinhala inanimate plural whereby the plural is formed from the singular by a delinking process in which the root-final consonant degeminates (or demoraifies), with a final vowel being subsequently inserted whose backness value agrees with that of the last root vowel. On this view, the inanimate plural has an input requirement that the final consonant be geminate. But the optimality-theoretic analysis that I have offered in this section shows that the degemination is not part of a special plural process but rather is just a consequence of the normal phonology (i.e., the constraint ranking). In the analysis of Feinstein (1977, 1979), which is adopted by Rosenthall (1988), it is proposed that the singular form is actually derived from the plural. Feinstein posits that all the nominal roots in (5) end in a glide, /w/ or /y/. The underlying representation for [mullə] and [mulu] in (5a) and for [bellə] and [beli] in (5k) are shown in (16a) and (16b), respectively. (The suffix is argued to be /a/ underlyingly by Feinstein though it surfaces as [ə] as seen from the data in (4) and (5).) (16) Singular noun a. /mulw-a/ b. /bely-a/

Plural /mulw/ /bely/

Gloss ‘corner’ ‘neck’

The suffix that appears in (16) is referred to by Rosenthall (1988) as a singular suffix, though traditionally it is considered to be a definite marker (and it cannot co-occur with plurals). The suffix is viewed in (16) as being attached to a noun root to make it singular. Feinstein posits rules of glide assimilation and vocalization to account for the surface forms of the singular and plural, respectively. Davis (1999a) has offered a number of criticisms of this type of analysis where the singular is derived based on the plural. Two of them center on the positing of a root-final glide. First, the glide actually never surfaces in any of the allomorphs. Thus, the underlying forms in (16) are quite abstract. Second, and probably a more significant criticism is that the nature of the

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root-final glide posited in the underlying form, as exemplified in (16a) and (16b), is completely predictable. It is /w/ if the preceding vowel is back, and it is /y/ if the preceding vowel is front. That the nature of the underlying glide as a /w/ or /y/ is completely predictable in Feinstein’s research seriously calls into question the validity of his analysis, given that one would not expect redundant information of this type to be part of the underlying representation. Consequently, I maintain that the optimality-theoretic analysis offers a new insight into the problem of the Sinhala inanimate plural by showing that there is no special process or morphology associated with the inanimate singular-plural pairs in (4) and (5). The output forms are just determined by the phonology (i.e., the constraint ranking) given the noun root as the input.

3.2.3 Genitive Allomorphy and the Nonmoraic View of Geminates In this section I provide additional evidence for the underlying moraic nature of Sinhala geminates based on the pattern of genitive allomorphy. I then show that the analysis of the Sinhala genitive is problematic given either the tworoot node theory of geminates in (2) or the skeletal theory of geminates in (3). In Sinhala, the genitive suffix has two allomorphs, [-e] and [-ee]. In (17), we see examples of words that take the allomorph [-e], and in (18) are examples with the allomorph [-ee]. (17) Sinhala genitive allomorph [-e] Noun roots Genitive Gloss a. mudalmudəl-e ‘the fund’s’ b. paarpaar-e ‘the street’s’ c. pawlpawl-e ‘the family’s’ d. pættpætt-e ‘the side’s’ e. pottpott-e ‘the core’s’ f. andand-e ‘the fence’s’ g. kandkand-e ‘the hill’s’

Syllabification mu.də.le paa.re paw.le pæt.te pot.te an.de kan.de

(18) Sinhala genitive allomorph [-ee] Noun roots Genitive Gloss a. malmal-ee ‘the flower’s’ b. potpot-ee ‘the book’s’ c. ambamb-ee ‘the mango’s’ d. kandkand-ee ‘the trunk’s’

Syllabification ma.lee po.tee a.mbee ka.ndee

The generalization regarding the allomorphy pattern shown in (17) and (18) is relatively straightforward. If the noun root contains more than a single mora, as in (17), the allomorph is [-e]; if it contains just a single mora, then it is [-ee]. First consider (17). The item in (17a) is representative of nominal roots that are two syllables or longer. With such nouns the genitive is always

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[-e]. The roots in (17b)–(17e) are all monosyllabic, but they are bimoraic, because they either contain a long vowel, a diphthong, or a geminate. Each of the roots would be underlyingly bimoraic given Hayes’s (1989) moraic algorithm. In particular the roots with geminates in (17d)–(17e) would be bimoraic since the vowel of the root constitutes a mora and the geminate constitutes a mora. The roots in (17f)–(17g) are also bimoraic since in these roots the prenasal is underlyingly moraic. This can be demonstrated for these forms since we noted their plural forms in (5l)–(5m). In contrast, the roots in (18) are lexically monomoraic. Only the single vowel in these roots contributes a mora. The roots are monosyllabic and do not contain long vowels, diphthongs, or geminates. The prenasals in (18c) and (18d) are not moraic. This can be clearly observed in the plural forms in (4l–m). Thus, we see that the genitive is realized as [-ee] if the nominal root is monomoraic; otherwise, the genitive surfaces as [-e]. The generalization regarding the genitive allomorphy is relevant because the generalization is difficult and awkward to express given a nonmoraic view of geminates, such as the skeletal view in (3) or the two-root node theory in (2). For example, if one sees a geminate as consisting of a consonant linked to two skeletal slots, as in (3), then one might posit that the genitive is [-e] for forms in which one root node branches to two skeletal slots; however, that would handle neither bisyllabic roots like (17a) nor roots with diphthongs like (17c). Moreover, an analysis based on (18) suggesting that noun roots with three or fewer skeletal slots take [-ee] as genitive would make a wrong prediction regarding (17f). Similar problems would arise if one tried to state the generalization under the two-root node theory of geminates given in (2). What seems to be happening with the Sinhala genitive is that there is a weight requirement demanding nouns in the genitive to surface with at least three moras. The three-mora requirement is specific to the genitive and not to nouns in general. The genitive suffix is underlyingly /-e/. When it suffixes onto a monomorphemic root like in (18), it undergoes lengthening so that the genitive noun actually surfaces with three moras. Consequently, the genitive provides an ideal test to see which roots are treated as monomoraic and which are not. Thus, the grouping together in (17) of monosyllabic nominal roots containing geminates, diphthongs, and long vowels with roots containing more than a single syllable reflects not the number of skeletal slots or root nodes but the fact that such nominal roots contain more than one mora. This grouping provides strong evidence for the underlying moraic nature of geminate consonants.

3.3. The Nonmoraic View of Geminates within Optimality Theory So far in this chapter I have argued, based on an analysis of geminaterelated phenomena in Sinhala, for the underlying moraic nature of

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geminate consonants within OT. In this section I want to consider a couple of cases in the optimality-theoretic literature that have been used to argue against the underlying moraic analysis of geminates. I discuss the case of the initial geminates of the Austronesian language Leti, which Hume et al. (1997) argue to be nonmoraic, and then I discuss work on stress like that of Baker (1997) where geminates do not behave as moraic. In the case of Leti, I argue that the nonmoraic behavior of initial geminates documented in Hume et al. can be understood as a case of word-initial extraprosodicity. I maintain that stress systems in which geminates pattern as nonmoraic do not provide evidence against the underlying moraic nature of geminates but rather result from the role of certain high-ranked constraints.

3.3.1 Evidence from Leti against the Moraic Representation of Geminates Hume et al. (1997), working in an optimality-theoretic framework, provide evidence against the moraic representation of initial geminates in Leti. Their main argument centers on Leti having a minimal word condition that requires lexical words to be minimally bimoraic. Leti also permits geminate consonants in word-initial position. Hume et al. argue that if initial geminates were moraic then one would expect to find words like [ppe], which consist of an initial geminate followed by a short vowel. Such words would be bimoraic if geminates contribute a mora. However, Leti has no such words. Consequently, Hume et al. claim that Leti initial geminates are not moraic and that such evidence argues generally against the moraic view of geminates as in (1). I want to show in this section that Leti initial geminates are more properly analyzed as being extraprosodic. This becomes clear if we compare Leti with another Austronesian language, Trukese, which also has initial geminates and a minimal word constraint. Consider the data in (19) and (20) from Trukese. (The data are based on the Central Lagoon dialects and come from Goodenough and Sugita 1980 and Dyen 1949, 1965. The discussion here owes much to the insights of Churchyard 1991 and Hart 1991, both working in nonlinear derivational phonology. See Davis and Torretta 1998 for a detailed optimality-theoretic analysis of Trukese.) (19)

Underlying representation a. /maa/ b. /tee/ c. /oo/

Output form [maa] [tee] [oo]

Gloss ‘behavior’ ‘islet’ ‘omen’

Wrong output *ma *te *o

geminates and syllable weight (20)

Underlying representation a. /ttoo/ b. /c˘c˘aa/ c. /ssɔɔ/

Output form [tto] [c˘c˘a] [ssɔ]

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Gloss ‘clam (sp.)’ ‘blood’ ‘thwart of a canoe’

Suffixed form -n = relational [ttoo-n] [c˘c˘aa-n] [ssɔɔ-n]

Trukese has a general process whereby a word-final long vowel shortens, as seen in (20). However, as (19) shows, shortening does not apply if the result would be monomoraic, because Trukese has a minimal word constraint that requires nouns to be bimoraic. That the word-final vowel does shorten in (20) strongly suggests that the initial geminate is moraic. That is, an output like [tto] in (20a) is bimoraic, with a mora being contributed by both the vowel and the geminate. Moreover, it would be difficult to account for the difference between (19) and (20) with either the two-root node theory of geminates in (2) or the two-skeletal position theory of geminates in (3). It might be suggested that the minimal word constraint could be one on the number of root nodes or X-slots with the requirement that words must have at least three. This works for the data in (20); the forms underlying have four root nodes (or four X-slots), so vowel shortening is allowed. However, a problem for this view is the form in (19c) (/oo/ – [oo] ‘omen’). This word only has two root nodes, not three. Clearly, the comparison between (19) and (20) shows that the geminate is adding weight to the forms in (20). This is best captured by the moraic theory of geminates shown in (1). Now let us consider Leti, which has initial geminates but lacks words consisting of an initial geminate followed by a short vowel, such as [ppe]. Hume et al. (1997) maintain that the lack of such words argues against the moraicity of geminates. Here, following Davis (1999b), I maintain that Leti is different from Trukese in that the initial geminates of Leti (but not Trukese) are extraprosodic and that this is supported by the phonotactics of Leti. To see this, we can compare Leti geminates and word-initial clusters with those in Trukese. In Leti, underlying geminates only occur in word-initial position (Jen Muller, personal communication). In Trukese, they occur in both word-initial and word-internal positions. Moreover, in Trukese, word-initial clusters other than geminates do not occur (with the exception of a few loanwords). Wordinitial clusters are pervasive in Leti, allowing for almost any possible sequence of two consonants at the beginning of the lexical word. There are no sonority restrictions on what these two consonants can be. The two consonants in a word-initial sequence can be an obstruent + sonorant ([pn, pl, pr, tm, tl, tr, vn, vl, vr]), a sonorant + obstruent ([mb, ms, mv, ns, rs, rv]), a sonorant + sonorant ([mr, nr, rm, rn, rl]), and two obstruents ([pt, tp, pk, kp, tk, kt]). Furthermore, as Hume et al. show, in phrase-internal position the initial consonant of the cluster syllabifies with the preceding word. Given this patterning, one

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could realistically analyze the first consonant of a word-initial cluster in Leti as being extraprosodic. The initial consonant of such a cluster is unrestricted and can be identical to the following consonant. This means that the wordinitial geminate of Leti consists of a sequence of identical consonants; the first consonant of the sequence would be extraprosodic just like the first consonant of any other word-initial cluster. Such an analysis would explain the absence of Leti words like [ppe] or any other word of the shape CCV. With initial extraprosodicity these forms would not comply with the bimoraic minimum. Given that underlying geminates only occur word-initially in Leti and given the general phonotactics of word-initial clusters in Leti discussed, I conclude that Leti presents a different type of situation from Trukese and Sinhala. Consequently, we can maintain that geminates are normally underlyingly moraic; however, there may be cases, such as Leti, where the language has extraprosodic consonants with geminates patterning with such consonants.

3.3.2 Stress Evidence Against the Moraic Representation of Geminates One argument against the moraic representation of geminates in the preoptimality-theoretic literature comes from stress. As independently noted by Selkirk (1990) and Tranel (1991), if geminates are underlyingly moraic we would expect languages with stress systems whereby syllables with long vowels and syllables closed by geminates would pattern together as heavy. This would be expected in a language where stress is sensitive to syllable weight, but where coda consonants do not generally acquire a mora. However, according to Selkirk (1990) and Tranel (1991), such languages do not seem to occur. While Davis (1994) has shown that there are languages whereby only syllables with long vowels and those closed by geminates pattern as heavy with respect to stress, there are nonetheless quantitysensitive languages that systematically ignore syllables closed by geminates. Consider the data from Selkup in (21). (21) Selkup (Halle and Clements 1983) a. qumó:qi ‘two human beings’ b. ú:c qo ‘to work’ c. u:cɔ´:m t ‘we work’ d. qúm n k ‘human being (dat.)’ e. ám rna ‘eats’ f. ú:c kkak ‘I am working’

In Selkup, primary stress falls on the rightmost heavy syllable. A CVC syllable does not count as heavy for stress, even if it is closed by a geminate,

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as seen in (21f). As noted by Tranel (1991), if stress is targeting bimoraic syllables and geminates are underlyingly moraic, then the second syllable in (21f) would be the rightmost bimoraic syllable. Both the vowel and the geminate would contribute a mora to the second syllable. That (21f) does not receive stress seems to provide evidence against the moraic theory of geminates. However, in an optimality-theoretic framework the inertness of syllables closed by a geminate for stress does not really argue against the moraic theory of geminates; rather it would just be a consequence of certain high-ranking constraints that have the effect of ignoring the bimoraicity of any CVC syllable. As Steriade (1990: 275) suggests, some languages may restrict the set of stress-bearing segments so that such segments also must be tone-bearing, “for reasons that are clearly related to the fact that pitch is one of the main realizations of metrical prominence.” Thus, Steriade concludes that in a language like Mongolian a CVC syllable is bimoraic, but for it to attract stress it must contain two tone-bearing elements (i.e., vowels and perhaps other sonorant segments, as discussed in Zec 1995). Steriade’s suggestion can be incorporated into an optimality-theoretic approach in which there is a constraint that restricts pitch realization to vocalic elements. Such a constraint would choose to place stress on any CVV syllable over any syllable closed by an obstruent, even if that obstruent were part of a geminate. Thus, the lack of second-syllable stress in (21f) of the Selkup data does not reflect on the underlying moraicity of geminate consonants. More recently, Baker (1997), working within OT, argues against the moraic representation of geminates based on the stress pattern of the Australian language Ngalakan. Consider the data in (22). (22) Ngalakan (capitalized consonants are postalveolar) a. cíwi ‘liver’ m. kaNTálppuru b. céraTa ‘women’s ceremony’ c. páRamùnu ‘sand goanna’ n. cákanta d. cálapir ‘red ant (species)’ e. kúpuy ‘sweat (n.)’ o. ŋúruNTuc f. purúTci ‘water python’ p. ŋóloŋko? g. miRárppu? ‘crab’ q. ŋámuccùlo h. puTólko? ‘brolga (bird)’ r. cápatta i. kipíTkuluc ‘frogmouth (bird) s. móLoppoL j. màcapúrka ‘plant (sp.)’ t. ŋáNa?pay k. LáRkurca ‘vine (sp.)’ u. kiNálk l. cálpurkic ‘fish (sp.)’ v. kappúRk

‘female plains kangaroo’ ‘female plains kangaroo’ ‘emu’ ‘eucalyptus’ ‘subsection term’ ‘tortoise (sp.)’ ‘catfish (sp.)’ ‘and moreover’ ‘white ibis’ ‘dry’

The data in (22a)–(22l) show that primary stress in Ngalakan falls on the leftmost (nonfinal) heavy syllable; otherwise, it falls on the initial syllable. The

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data in (22m)–(22v) are quite interesting. The data in (22m)–(22p) show that a syllable closed by a nasal homorganic to the following consonant (i.e., a partial geminate) does not count as heavy. The data in (22q)–(22s) show that a syllable closed by a geminate also does not count as heavy. (22t) shows that a syllable closed by a glottal does not count as heavy, and (22u)–(22v) show that a final syllable can count as heavy if it ends in two consonants. The Ngalakan data are unusual because closed syllables are treated as heavy unless they are closed by a geminate or partial geminate. That is, the only closed syllables that are picked out for primary stress are ones where the coda consonant is heterorganic to the following consonant. Thus, it would seem that geminates do not contribute a mora at all, while coda consonants in general do. Such data appear to provide evidence against the moraic representation of geminates. Baker (1997), in his analysis of the Ngalakan stress pattern in (22), refers to a high-ranking constraint, CrispEdge-m. This constraint requires moraic segments to have a crisp edge (i.e., it must be affiliated to a segment that is not place linked). Given that the only codas that would respect CrispEdge-m are ones that are heterorganic to the following consonant, the constraint will not pick out any coda that shares place features with the following onset. While this pattern of stress is of some interest (especially since it is not observed in Hayes 1995), it is actually not incompatible with the view that geminates are underlyingly moraic. It is just that in Ngalakan they may not surface as moraic so as to respect CrispEdge-m. Alternatively, one could analyze the Ngalakan stress pattern as making reference not to mora structure but directly to consonantal place. This is supported by the observation that syllables closed by glottals do not attract stress, as in (20t). Thus, for a closed syllable to attract stress the coda must have its own place features. Syllables closed by geminates, partial geminates, and glottals would not have codas with their own place features. Again, such an analysis does not necessarily argue for the nonmoraicity of underlying geminates. Consequently, while the Ngalakan stress pattern ignores geminates it does not constitute evidence against the underlying moraic nature of geminate consonants.

3.4. Conclusion The issue of the representation of geminate consonants has been controversial within OT. Baker (1997) and Hume et al. (1997) specifically argue against the moraic representation of geminate consonants. In this chapter I argued for the position that geminate consonants are underlyingly moraic within an optimality-theoretic grammar. In support of this I offered detailed optimalitytheoretic analyses of geminate behavior in Sinhala, where I specifically

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argued for the underlying moraicity of the geminate consonants. I also showed that an alternative view of geminates, such as the two-root node theory or the skeletal slot theory, is highly problematic in accounting for the geminate behavior. Finally, I considered the evidence against the moraic view of geminates put forth by Baker (1997) and Hume et al. (1997). I demonstrated that in the case of Ngalakan the stress evidence does not argue against geminates being underlyingly moraic in an optimality-theoretic grammar, and in the case of Leti the evidence points to the extraprosodicity of an edge element. With the possible caveat regarding the extraprosodicity of an edge element, as in Leti, the arguments and analyses presented in this chapter provide strong evidence for the view that geminates are always underlyingly moraic.

references Baker, Brett. (1997). Edge crispness: Segment to mora isomorphism. WCCFL 16: 33–47. Churchyard, Henry. (1991). Compensatory lengthening and ‘gemination throwback’ in Trukese and Puluwat as evidence for Rime and Onset in moraic phonology. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Chicago, January 1991. Clements, George N., and Samuel J. Keyser. (1983). CV Phonology. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Davis, Stuart. (1994). Geminate consonants in moraic phonology. WCCFL 13: 32–45. Davis, Stuart. (1999a). On the moraic representation of underlying geminates: Evidence from prosodic morphology. In The Prosody-Morphology Interface, ed. Harry Van der Hulst et al., 39–61. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Davis, Stuart. (1999b). On the representation of initial geminates. Phonology 16: 93–104. Davis, Stuart, and Gina Torretta. (1998). An optimality-theoretic account of compensatory lengthening and geminate throwback in Trukese. NELS 28: 111–125. Dyen, Isadore. (1949). On the history of the Trukese vowels. Language 25: 420–436. Dyen, Isadore. (1965). A Sketch of Trukese Grammar. New Haven, Conn.: American Oriental Society. Fairbanks, Gordon, James Gair, and M. W. S. De Silva. (1968). Colloquial Sinhalese. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. Feinstein, Mark. (1977). The linguistic nature of prenasalization. Doctoral dissertation, City University of New York, New York. Feinstein, Mark. (1979). Pre-nasalization and syllable structure. Linguistic Inquiry 10: 245–278. Goodenough, Ward, and Hiroshi Sugita. (1980). Trukese-English Dictionary. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society. Halle, Morris, and G. N. Clements. (1983). Problem Book in Phonology. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Hart, Michele. (1991). The moraic status of initial geminates in Trukese. BLS 17: 107–120. Hayes, Bruce. (1986). Inalterability in CV phonology. Language 62: 321–351. Hayes, Bruce. (1989). Compensatory lengthening in moraic phonology. Linguistic Inquiry 20: 253–306.

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Hayes, Bruce. (1995). Metrical Stress Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hume, Elizabeth, Jennifer Muller, and Aone van Engelenhoven. (1997). Nonmoraic geminates in Leti. Phonology 14: 371–402. Ladefoged, Peter, and Ian Maddieson. (1996). The Sounds of the World’s Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. Letterman, Rebecca. (1994). Nominal gemination in Sinhala and its implications for the status of prenasalized stops. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Lingusitic Society of America, Boston, January 1994. McCarthy, John, and Alan Prince. (1995). Faithfulness and reduplicative identity. UMOP 18: 249–384. Pyatt, Elizabeth. (1993). Gemination and the Sinhala prenasalized stop. Harvard Working Papers in Linguistics 2: 173–190. Reynolds, Christopher. (1980). Sinhalese: An Introductory Course. London: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Rosenthall, Sam. (1988). The representation of prenasalized consonants. WCCFL 7: 277–291. Rosenthall, Sam. (1997). The distribution of prevocalic vowels. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 15: 139–180. Selkirk, Elisabeth. (1990). A two root theory of length. UMOP 14: 123–171. Steriade, Donca. (1990). Moras and other slots. Formal Linguistic Society of Midamerica 1: 254–280. Steriade, Donca. (1993). Closure, release, and nasal contours. Phonetics and Phonology 5: 401–470. Tranel, Bernard. (1991). CVC light syllables, geminates and moraic theory. Phonology 8: 291–302. Trigo, Lauren. (1988). On the phonological behavior and derivation of nasal glides. Doctoral dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, Mass. Zec, Draga. (1995). Sonority constraints on syllable structure. Phonology 12: 85–129.

4 The Syllable as a Unit of Prosodic Organization in Japanese Haruo Kubozono

4.1. Introduction The traditional typology proposed by Trubetzkoy (1969) classifies Tokyo Japanese as a typical “mora language” as opposed to a “syllable language.” The conception of the mora as an indispensable unit in Japanese can be supported by a wide range of linguistic evidence (see Kubozono 1999 for a summary). In comparison, it is not very clear yet what role the syllable plays in the same prosodic system, particularly in the nonderivational framework of Optimality Theory (OT – Prince and Smolensky 1993). The goal of this chapter is twofold. First, I will show that several independent phenomena in Japanese exhibit the dominance of heavy-light over light-heavy structures. These phenomena include motherese (mother–baby language), emphatic mimetics, and sporadic lengthenings and shortenings, which all have drawn little or no attention in the literature, as well as the now well-known phenomena of loanword truncation and zuzya-go (jazz musicians’ language). Moreover, it is argued that similar asymmetries occur in longer words involving three or more feet, such as compound nouns and the chanting phrases used in baseball cheering. By demonstrating the magnitude with which such a prosodic asymmetry occurs, I will argue for a syllable-based Earlier versions of this chapter were presented at the Conference on Syllable Typology and Theory (Tübingen, June 1998), the regular meeting of PAIK (Phonological Association in Kansai, October 1999), and linguistic colloquia held at various places during 1998–1999 (University of California, Santa Cruz, Nagoya University, Kyushu University, and Tohoku University). I am indebted to the audience of these meetings, particularly to Junko Ito, Armin Mester, and Akio Nasu, for their valuable comments. I would like to thank the editors of this volume and the two anonymous reviewers for a number of useful comments and suggestions for the improvement of this chapter. I am also grateful to Frank Owens for comments on the style. All the remaining errors are my own. This chapter is based in part upon work supported by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Science and Culture under Grant Nos. 09610480, 10044010, and 11111102.

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generalization of Japanese and, hence, for the universality of the syllable as an organizing element of phonological structure. Second, I will present an optimality-theoretic analysis of the phenomena exhibiting the asymmetries in syllabic organization. Building on previously proposed nonderivational analyses, I demonstrate how OT provides a unified and principled account for each of these seemingly complicated phenomena as well as the essential properties that they share.

4.2. Asymmetries in Syllabic Organization 4.2.1 Lengthening and Shortening Patterns The phenomena we will examine in this chapter exhibit the types of syllable shortening and lengthening shown in (1) and (2). Of these, (1b) is an optional process affecting only those words that end in a long vowel. A light syllable (L) is a monomoraic syllable that, by definition, ends in a short vowel, whereas a heavy syllable (H) is a bimoraic syllable that contains either a long vowel (or diphthong) or a short vowel followed by a coda consonant, namely, CVV or CVC. (1)

(2)

Shortenings a. LH Æ LL b. HH Æ HL Lengthenings a. LL Æ HL b. c. d. e. f.

LH Æ HH L Æ HL H Æ HL H Æ HH LH Æ HL

loanword truncation (section 4.2.2), zuzya-go (section 4.2.3), sporadic shortening (section 4.2.5)

zuzya-go, motherese (section 4.2.4), sporadic lengthening (section 4.2.5), emphatic mimetics (section 4.2.6) sporadic lengthening zuzya-go, motherese zuzya-go motherese zuzya-go, motherese

These shortenings and lengthenings are crucially different from “iambic lengthening” (LL Æ LH) and “trochaic shortening” (HL Æ LL), the syllable phenomena said to be widely observed in iambic and trochaic systems, respectively (Prince 1990, Hayes 1995). In fact, (1a) and (2a) exert entirely opposite effects from these two general processes. The lengthening pattern in (2a) would look particularly mysterious given the general idea that Japanese has a quantity-sensitive trochaic system (Poser 1990, Ito and Mester 1992, 1995a). Under bimoraic trochaic footing, which is generally assumed for Japanese (Ito and Mester 1992), the shortening and lengthening processes in (1) and

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(2) are suggestive of the asymmetries in the syllabic organization of Japanese words shown in (3) (( ) denotes foot boundaries and A > B means that A represents a better form than B). (3)

#(H)L# > #(H)(H)# > #(LL)# > #L(H)#, #(H)#

In the following subsections, we will see several independent processes showing these prosodic asymmetries. I will demonstrate that a minimal reranking of the prosodic constraints covers a wide range of phenomena.

4.2.2 Loanword Truncation To begin with, let us consider the process of loanword truncation, which has been extensively studied by Ito and Mester (Ito 1990, Ito and Mester 1992, 1995a). This word formation process is subject to three prosodic constraints, whose effects are illustrated in (4) (· Ò indicates the truncated portion, and periods /./ denote syllable boundaries). (4)

a. su.to.·rai.kiÒ, *su.·to.rai.kiÒ ‘strike’ tyo.ko.·ree.toÒ, tyo.·ko.ree.toÒ ‘chocolate’ b. roo.te·e.syonÒ, *roo.·tee.syonÒ ‘rotation’ dai.ya.·mon.doÒ, *dai.·ya.mon.doÒ ‘diamond’ pan.hu.·ret.toÒ, *pan.·hu.ret.toÒ ‘pamphlet’ c. baa.ten.·daaÒ, *baa.·ten.daaÒ ‘bartender’ d. ro.ke·e.syonÒ, *ro.kee.·syonÒ ‘location’ de.mo·n.su.to.ree.syonÒ, *de.mon.·su.to.ree.syonÒ ‘demonstration’

First, monomoraic outputs are prohibited, as illustrated in (4a). This is due to a common minimality constraint on the size of content words (Hayes 1995), which can be expressed by the constraint known as FOOT BINARITY in an optimality-theoretic analysis (Prince and Smolensky 1993, Kager 1999). (5)

Foot Binarity (FtBin): Feet are binary under moraic or syllabic analysis.

A second prosodic constraint prohibits monosyllabic outputs. Thus, a #HL# or #HH# output is produced, as illustrated in (4b)–(4c), from a source word that begins with a heavy syllable. Finally, #LH# outputs are also disfavored. If the source word begins with a LH sequence as in (4d), its second syllable omits its second mora to yield #LL# outputs. The ill-formedness of #LH# as well as #H# can be properly accounted for by Nonfinality (head syllable), which is defined independently of Nonfinality (head foot) (Ito and Mester 1995a, Kubozono et al. 1997). These two constraints are formulated in (6).1 (6)

Nonfinality (s¢): No head syllable is final in PrWd. Nonfinality (Ft¢): No head foot is final in PrWd.

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The notion of the “syllabic head” or “head syllable” of a word, denoted by s¢, is defined as the initial syllable within the head foot of the prosodic word (PrWd). This is based in part on the observation that bimoraic, bisyllabic words usually attract a default accent on their initial syllable in Japanese: for example, /NE.ko/ ‘cat’, /BA.su/ ‘bus’. Theoretically, this observation can be expressed by the idea that Japanese has a trochaic prosodic system (Poser 1990, Ito and Mester 1995a) or, in OT terms, by positing the constraint in (7) as an undominated constraint in Japanese (Kager 1999). (7)

Rhythm Type = T: Feet have initial prominence.

The notion of “head foot,” denoted by Ft¢, is defined as the head foot within a word. It can be defined easily for three- and four-mora words. Trimoraic words can contain only one foot, for example, #(H)L#, and this foot is inevitably the head of the word. In words composed of two feet, for example, #(H)(H)#, the initial foot is considered the head, as this foot is most likely to attract a word accent in Japanese. The same assumption is held for longer words, such as #(H)(H)L# and #(H)(H)(H)#. Under bimoraic trochaic footing, the bisyllabic structure of #LH# is analyzed as having a head foot word-finally, that is, #L(H)#, which violates both Nonfin (s¢) and Nonfin (Ft¢). Words consisting of a single heavy syllable, that is, #(H)#, also violate these two constraints. In contrast, #(LL)# violates Nonfin (Ft¢), but not Nonfin (s¢). While Nonfin (s¢) is instrumental in banning #LH# and #H# outputs, this constraint alone cannot explain the whole range of phonological structures exhibited by truncated loanwords: (i) bimoraic, bisyllabic forms like /su.to/ and /ro.ke/ in (4a) and (4d); (ii) trimoraic forms like /te.re.bi.·zyonÒ/ ‘television’ and the HL forms in (4b); and (iii) four-mora forms like /i.ra.su.to.·ree.syonÒ/ ‘illustration’ and /baa.ten.·daaÒ/ ‘bartender’ in (4c). This wide range of possibilities in syllable/mora structure is indeed a characteristic of loanword truncation that is not shared by other phenomena to be discussed in this chapter. To account for this high degree of variability (or unpredictability), Ito and Mester (1995a) propose the notion “free ranking,” or the idea that two or more constraints are not rigidly ranked with each other and, moreover, that different groups of loanwords are subject to different subsets of an otherwise invariant ranking. Specifically, they propose the ranking in (8), where Nonfin (Ft¢), Align-L and Parse-s are above Max-seg but below Nonfin (s¢). The three new constraints are defined in (9). Note that Align-L as well as Parses is heavily dependent on the notion of syllable, as the violation of this constraint is defined by the number of syllables between a foot and the specified edge of the word (Kager 1999). (8)

Nonfin (s¢) >> {Nonfin (Ft¢), Align-L, Parse-s} >> Max-seg

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103

a. Align-L (Ft, PrWd): The left edge of every foot of a PrWd is aligned with the left edge of the PrWd. b. Parse-s: Every syllable is parsed into feet. c. Max-seg: Every segment in the input has a correspondent in the output.

Under this analysis, loanwords are specifically subject to the rankings in (10), (11), and (12), resulting in truncated forms of two, three, and four moras, respectively. These three subrankings actually imply the subsets described in (a) and (b) in each case. (10) Nonfin (s¢) >> {Align-L, Parse-s} >> Nonfin (Ft¢) >> Max-seg a. Nonfin (s¢) >> Align-L >> Parse-s >> Nonfin (Ft¢) >> Max-seg b. Nonfin (s¢) >> Parse-s >> Align-L >> Nonfin (Ft¢) >> Max-seg (11) Nonfin (s¢) >> {Nonfin (Ft¢), Align-L} >> Parse-s >> Max-seg a. Nonfin (s¢) >> Nonfin (Ft¢) >> Align-L >> Parse-s >> Max-seg b. Nonfin (s¢) >> Align-L >> Nonfin (Ft¢) >> Parse-s >> Max-seg (12) Nonfin (s¢) >> {Nonfin (Ft¢), Parse-s} >> Align-L} >> Max-seg a. Nonfin (s¢) >> Nonfin (Ft¢) >> Parse-s >> Align-L >> Max-seg b. Nonfin (s¢) >> Parse-s >> Nonfin (Ft¢) >> Align-L >> Max-seg

The three subrankings in (10)–(12) successfully account for the asymmetry between #HL# and #LH#. Thus the #HL# output for /roo.tee.syon/ in (4b) results from the ranking in (11), whereas the ranking in (10) yields a #LL# output rather than #LH# for words beginning with a LH sequence; for example, /ro.ke(e.syon)Ò/ in (4d). Four-mora outputs like /baa.ten.·daaÒ/ in (4c) follow from the ranking in (12). These are illustrated in the tableaux in (13)–(15), respectively. (13) Optimality of #HL# (F + s) output: subranking in (11) /roo.tee.syon/ (4b) Nonfin (s¢) Nonfin (Ft¢) Align-L Parse-s Max-seg a. (roo)

*!

*

tee.syon

☞ b. (roo)te

*

c. (roo)(tee)

*!

syon syon

(14) Optimality of #LL# (F) output for #LH . . . # input: subranking in (10) /ro.kee.syon/ (4d) a. (ro)

Nonfin (s¢)

Align-L

Parse-s

*!

☞ b. (ro.ke) c. ro(kee) d. (ro.ke)(syon)

*!

* **!

*

Nonfin (Ft¢)

Max-seg

*

tee.syon

*

syon

*

syon

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(15) Optimality of F+F output: subranking in (12) /baa.ten.daa/ (4c)

Nonfin (s¢) Nonfin (Ft¢) Parse-s Align-L Max-seg

a. (baa)

*!

*

b. (baa)te ☞ c. (baa)(ten)

ten.daa *!

n.daa *

daa

As we will see in sections 4.2.3–4.2.6, the ranking in (8) represents a basic ranking in Japanese. Specifically, the subsystems in (11a) and (12a) account for all of the other independent phenomena to be discussed in this chapter.

4.2.3 Zuzya-go Formation The dominance of #HL# over #LH# is also observed in zuzya-go (ZG), the secret language of jazz musicians that has been analyzed quite extensively by Tateishi (1989), Poser (1990), and more recently by Ito et al. (1996) in OT. This word formation process involves a sort of metathesis whereby two moras from the end of the source word are combined with two moras taken from its initial part. The unmarked output is a four-mora templatic form as exemplified in (16). (16) a. ma.nee.zyaa ‘manager’ Æ zyaa.ma.ne b. ta.ku.sii ‘taxi’ Æ sii.ta.ku c. i.ke.ba.na ‘flower arrangement’ Æ ba.na.i.ke

Unlike loanword truncation discussed in section 4.2.2, this morphological process only produces three- and four-mora outputs. Four-mora outputs, on the one hand, can be of any form except #LHL#: that is, #HH#, #HLL#, #LLH#, and #LLLL#. Three-mora outputs, on the other hand, may be #HL# or #LLL#, and not #LH#. The asymmetry between #HL# and #LH# in the output reflects what happens to monosyllabic and bisyllabic inputs. As the examples in (17) show, monosyllabic and bisyllabic inputs alike yield #HL# bisyllables in the output, with the only exception being the #HH# input from which #HH# is derived (see Ito et al. 1996 for the ZG forms for longer inputs). (17) a. b. c. d. e. f.

L Æ HL hi ‘fire, cigarette light’ Æ ii.hi, me ‘eye’ Æ ee.me H Æ HL kii ‘key’ Æ ii.ki, ai ‘love’ Æ ii.a, paN ‘bread’ Æ N:.pa LL Æ HL zya.zu ‘jazz’ Æ zuu.zya, me.si ‘rice’ Æ sii.me HL Æ HL dan.su ‘dance’ Æ sun.da, doi.tu ‘Germany’ Æ tui.do LH Æ HL hu.men ‘score’ Æ men.hu, ta.buu ‘taboo’ Æ buu.ta HH Æ HH koo.hii ‘coffee’ Æ hii.koo, ron.don ‘London’ Æ don.ron

What is of interest here is the fate of the #HL# input. This particular input form does not generally undergo metathesis in an exhaustive way but rather

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switches the first and last moras leaving the second mora intact.2 This nonexhaustive reversal helps to reinforce #HL# outputs rather than to produce #LH# outputs. The occurrence of #HL# forms in this and other cases and the contrasting lack of #LH# forms together produce an asymmetry in the output inventory, which is exactly the same asymmetry that we have observed in loanword truncation. The asymmetry in question is further reinforced when a word-final long vowel is optionally shortened in the output, a fact that did not attract serious attention in Ito and Mester (1995a,1996).This optional shortening occurs when the source word is a four-mora word that begins with a heavy syllable containing a long vowel. (18) exhibits a case where the input is a #HH# bisyllable. (18) koo.hii ‘coffee’ Æ (a) hii.koo, (b) hii.ko kaa.tyan ‘mommy’ Æ (a) tyan.kaa, (b) tyan.ka

There are two facts to note here. First, the shortening in (18) represents a case of word-final vowel shortening and not of word-final syllable shortening or segment deletion. Initial H syllables in the input are invariably retained in the output unless they involve a long vowel. Thus /ron.don/ ‘London’ (#HH#) turns into /don.ron/ (#HH#) and not /don.ro/ (#HL#). A similar type of wordfinal vowel shortening is observed in some bisyllabic Sino-Japanese compounds, as we will see in section 4.2.5. Second, #HH# forms are not permitted for the #LL# input in (17c). Namely, #LL# inputs are (after being reversed) lengthened to #HL# and never to #HH#. In contrast, #HH# inputs involving a long vowel in the first syllable may retain this vowel when metathesis occurs. This difference in ZG forms reflects nothing but a difference in the input structure. This subtle difference as well as the basic HL-LH asymmetry can be accounted for in a reasonable way by an optimality-theoretic analysis. Expanding on Ito and Mester’s (1995a) analysis, I propose that these follow from the ranking in (19), where Align-L and Parse-s are not in a dominance relationship. This ranking implies the subrankings in (19a) and (19b), which are basically identical to the rankings in (11a) and (12a). These subrankings contain an additional constraint called Dep-m, which prohibits the addition of a mora not present in the input. This constraint was not involved in the process of loanword truncation discussed in section 4.2.2, where it was conceivably ranked as low as Max-seg. (19) Nonfin (s¢), Nonfin (Ft¢) >> Align-L, Parse-s >> Dep-m, Max-seg a. Nonfin (s¢), Nonfin (Ft¢) >> Align-L >> Parse-s >> Dep-m, Max-seg b. Nonfin (s¢), Nonfin (Ft¢) >> Parse-s >> Align-L >> Dep-m, Max-seg

The main effects of the ranking in (19) are illustrated in the tableaux in (20)–(22). As shown in (20), default four-mora structures follow from the

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subranking in (19b). The subranking in (19a) results in trimoraic outputs, as illustrated in (21). (20) Optimality of #HH# output: Parse-s >> Align-L /ron.don/ (17f) a. (do.ro)

Nonfin

b. (don)ro c. do(ron)

Parse-s

Align-L

Dep-m

(Ft¢)*!

n,n *!

(s¢)(Ft¢)*!

Max-seg

n

*

*

☞ d. (don)(ron)

n

*

(21) Optimality of #HL# output: Align-L >> Parse-s /zya.zu/ (17c) a. (zu.zya)

Nonfin

Align-L Parse-s Dep-m Max-seg

(Ft¢)*!

☞ b. (zuu)zya c. zu(zyaa)

(s¢)(Ft¢)*!

*

d. (zuu)(zyaa)

*

*

*

*

*!

**

(22) Optionality between #HH# and #HL# (with/without a final long vowel) a. /koo.hii/ (18a) Nonfin i.

(hi.ko)

*! (s¢)(Ft¢)*!

*

☞ iv. (hii)(koo) (hi.ko)

Align-L Parse-s Dep-m Max-seg

(Ft¢)*!

☞ ii. (hii)ko iii. hi(koo) iv. (hii)(koo)

* *

b. /koo.hii/ (18b) Nonfin i.

Align-L Dep-m Max-seg

(Ft¢)*!

ii. (hii)ko iii. hi(koo)

Parse-s

* (s¢)(Ft¢)*!

*

*

*!

Finally, (22) exhibits an interesting case where the free ranking between Align-L and Parse-s in (19) accounts for the optionality of the final vowel length in HH outputs.3 Here the subranking in (19b) predicts the #HH# form as an optimal output, as shown in (22a), whereas that of (19a) selects the #HL# form where the word-final long vowel has been shortened, as shown in (22b).

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107

4.2.4 Mother–Baby Language A third piece of evidence for the dominance of #HL# over #LH# comes from a phonological analysis of Japanese motherese. This is a variety of spoken language used by Japanese-speaking mothers when talking to their babies (but almost never to adults) and, consequently, used by babies in their early stage of linguistic development. Words used in this particular type of language are typically bisyllabic and exhibit a highly restricted set of syllable structures.4 The most common word types are #HL# and #HH#, illustrated in (23a) and (23b), respectively. Most of the #HH# forms are formed via reduplication from a #H# base. In addition to these, there are some trimoraic words, such as those in (23c), which consist only of light syllables, that is, #LLL#.5 These are mostly reduplicated forms of a monomoraic base, with an honorific marker /o/ attached at the beginning. Interestingly, there is no attested case of a #LH# form although it is a mirror image of the #HL# form. (23) a. HL forms mam.ma ‘food, to eat’ (< ma.ma ‘food’ (colloquial)), dak.ko ‘holdingup’ (< da.ku ‘to hold in one’s arms’), sik.ko ‘peepee’, an.yo ‘legs, to walk’, nen.ne ‘to sleep’ (< ne.ne < ne ‘to sleep’), un.ti ‘poopoo’, om.mo ‘garden’, pap.pa ‘leaf’ (< ha ‘leaf’), om.bu ‘a piggyback ride’ (< o.buu ‘to carry a person on one’s back’) b. HH forms pon.pon ‘belly’, hai.hai ‘crawling’ (< hau ‘to crawl’), kon.kon ‘a fox, cough’, op.pai ‘breast milk’ c. LLL forms o.te.te ‘hand’ (< te ‘hand’), o.me.me ‘eye’ (< me ‘eye’)

These baby words fall into two groups in relation to adult language. Some words, such as /mam.ma/, /dak.ko/, and /hai.hai/, have a corresponding word in adult language, while other words, such as /un.ti/ and /pon.pon/, do not seem to have such a direct correlate. The syllable structure of the first type is summarized in (24) in comparison with that of the corresponding adult forms (cf. Tomosada 1997). The lengthening patterns in (24a), (24d), and (24e) are strikingly similar or practically identical to the ZG patterns we saw in (17a), (17c), and (17e), respectively.6 (24) Adult form a. L b. L c. H d. LL e. LH

Baby form HL LLL HH HL HL

Examples ha Æ pap.pa te Æ o.te.te, me Æ o.me.me hau Æ hai.hai ma.ma Æ mam.ma, da.ku Æ dak.ko, ne.ne Æ nen.ne o.buu Æ om.bu

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Haruo Kubozono

Needless to say, adult Japanese does not impose any constraint on the syllabic organization of underived words, allowing monosyllabic words like /te/ ‘hand’ and /men/ ‘mask’ as well as bisyllabic words of the form #LH# like /ka.ree/ ‘curry’ and /ta.roo/ ‘Taro (boy’s name)’. This contrasts very sharply with the asymmetry observed in the baby language shown in (23) and (24). If we focus on the forms that do not involve the additional process of reduplication, we can account for the baby forms with the ZG contraint ranking given in (19). This is illustrated in the tableaux in (25) and (26), where reference to Max-seg is omitted for the sake of simplicity.7 (25) Optimality of HL output for LL input Input = LL a. (LL)

Nonfin

Align-L

☞ b. (H)L c. L(H)

Parse-s

Dep-m

(Ft¢)*! (s¢)(Ft¢)*!

*

d. (H)(H)

*

*

*

*

*

**!

(26) Optimality of HL output for LH input Input = LH a. (LL)

Nonfin

Align-L

☞ b. (H)L c. L(H) d. (H)(H)

Parse-s

Dep-m

(Ft¢)*! * (s¢)(Ft¢)*!

* *

* *!

Interestingly enough, the HL-LH asymmetry has been further borne out in the speech perception of Japanese-speaking babies. Hayashi and Mazuka (Hayashi et al. 1998, Mazuka and Hayashi 1998) recently carried out a series of so-called head-turn experiments with 20 to 30 Japanese-speaking babies under 12 months in each experiment. Using three types of trimoraic nonsense words as auditory stimuli – HL, LH, and LLL – they found out that eight- to ten-month-old babies display a preference for #HL# sequences, that is, they listen to #HL# forms substantially longer than the other two forms, although four- to six-month-olds do not show any preference for any one type.8 These results are interesting in and of themselves, but they are even more interesting when compared with the results reported by Jusczyk and his colleagues (Jusczyk et al. 1993). They conducted similar head-turn experiments with English-learning infants in the United States and found that Englishlearning nine-month-olds showed sensitivity to the predominant stress pattern of English, that is, strong-weak (S-W) over weak-strong (W-S), while six-

the syllable as a unit of prosodic organization

109

month-olds showed no such difference. They interpreted this as suggesting that infants begin to display sensitivity to native language sound patterns at some point during the latter half of their first year. The two sources of experimental data, those from Japanese-speaking and English-speaking babies, exhibit a crucial similarity. The two groups of infants both display sensitivity to a certain prosodic pattern – the #HL# bisyllabic pattern and the S-W stress pattern, respectively – in the second half of their first year. What was unclear, then, is whether the #HL# form favored by Japanese babies represents a predominant prosodic pattern in adult language too, just as the S-W pattern is dominant for English-speaking adults and babies alike. The truncation and ZG data presented in sections 4.2.2–4.2.3 as well as the new data to be discussed in section 4.2.5 reveal that this is indeed the case.

4.2.5 Sporadic Lengthenings and Shortenings Our discussion so far has centered on the HL-LH asymmetry that occurs in more or less productive word formation processes in modern Japanese. Interestingly enough, the same asymmetry is observed in historical changes and some ongoing phonetic changes typically involving Sino-Japanese (SJ) compounds. These changes fall into the following three types: LH Æ HH, LL Æ HL, and HH Æ HL. Let us first consider the lengthening of #LH# to #HH#, a phenomenon that I am tempted to call trochaic lengthening. In (27a), the SJ morpheme /zyo/, meaning ‘woman’ or ‘daughter’, tends to undergo phonetic lengthening in the SJ compound /zyo.oo/ ‘woman king, queen’ but not in /oo.zyo/ ‘king’s daughter, princess’. Similarly, in (27b), the underlying monomoraic SJ morpheme /nyo/ ‘woman’ is pronounced with a long vowel in the compound /nyoo.boo/ ‘wife’ but not in /nan.nyo/ ‘man and woman’. This lengthening has established itself so firmly in modern Japanese that the original LH form is no longer cited in Japanese dictionaries. (27) LH Æ HH a. zyo.oo Æ zyoo.oo ‘woman king, or queen’ cf. oo.zyo Æ *oo.zyoo ‘king’s daughter, or princess’ b. nyo.boo Æ nyoo.boo ‘wife (woman + chamber)’ cf. nan.nyo Æ *nan.nyoo ‘man and woman’

These seemingly peculiar occurrences of vowel lengthening can be properly accounted for if interpreted in terms of syllable weight: vowels may lengthen in the first syllable of #LH# but not in the second syllable of #HL#. This gives rise to the asymmetry between #HL# and #LH# that we have repeatedly argued for. Note that the LH-to-HH lengthening in (27) is similar

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to trochaic shortening (LH Æ LL) (Prince 1990, Hayes 1995). These two phenomena occur for one and the same reason: to avoid #LH# structure. Whereas Japanese lengthens the initial syllable, other languages shorten the second syllable. The instances in (28) further reinforce the argument for the dominance of #HL# bisyllables.9 (28) LL Æ HL a. si.ka Æ sii.ka ‘poem’, hu.hu Æ huu.hu ‘a married couple’ hu.ki Æ huu.ki ‘riches and honors’ b. mi.tu Æ mit.tu ‘three’, mu.tu Æ mut.tu ‘six’ sa.ki Æ sak.ki ‘a little while ago’, ta.da Æ tat.ta ‘only’

These represent a historical change whereby #LL# bisyllables have been turned into #HL# by lengthening the vowel of the initial light syllable, as in (28a), or by geminating the onset obstruent of the second light syllable, as exemplified in (28b). Vowel lengthening in (28a) seems to be characteristic of SJ compounds, whereas the consonant gemination in (28b) seems to occur typically in native Japanese bisyllables. These lengthening phenomena, too, represent the same syllable lengthenings that we saw in the discussions of ZG and motherese and that we will see in emphatic mimetics in section 4.2.6. A careful analysis of ongoing phonetic changes in Japanese reveals another interesting tendency toward HL bisyllables – this time involving the shortening of a word-final long vowel in HH bisyllables. This vowel shortening is an optional synchronic process affecting only word-final long vowels.10 (29) HH Æ HL a. tyoo.tyoo Æ tyoo.tyo ‘butterfly’, nyoo.boo Æ nyoo.bo ‘wife (colloquial)’ (= (27b)) b. hon.too Æ hon.to ‘true’, sen.see Æ sen.se ‘teacher’ c. gak.koo Æ gak.ko ‘school’, kak.koo Æ kak.ko ‘appearance’

The phonetic vowel shortening in (29) is identical in effect to the optional shortening of HH to HL in the ZG data described in (18); that is, they are both optional and only occur in the second syllable of HH bisyllables. In relation to this, Sukegawa et al. (1999) report some interesting results of a perceptual experiment in which they examined how native speakers of Japanese tolerate phonetic shortening of long vowels. Using synthesized auditory stimuli based on the SJ compound, /koo.koo/ ‘high school’, they found their subjects to be much more sensitive to the phonetic distortion of the word-medial long vowel than to that of the word-final long vowel. This accords well with the production data described in (29) in that vowel length tends to be neutralized word-finally in HH bisyllables and not in word-medial positions.

the syllable as a unit of prosodic organization

111

As already mentioned, #LH# and #LL# bisyllables as well as #HL# and #HH# are perfectly well formed in Japanese: for example, /ta.rai/ ‘tub’, /ka.ree/ ‘curry’, /sa.gyoo/ ‘work’; /a.si/ ‘leg’, /ni.ku/ ‘meat’, /ba.su/ ‘bus’. Accordingly, the two types of syllable lengthening in (27) and (28) as well as the optional vowel shortening in (29) are not part of any productive word formation process; rather, they represent either a historical change or a synchronic phonetic change that has affected only a limited number of words. Yet, it is nonetheless worth emphasizing that these phenomena exhibit the same tendency – that is, the tendency to avoid #LH# and #LL# in favor of #HH# and #HL# – as seen in the productive word formation processes described in the preceding subsections. Interestingly enough, our preliminary analysis shows no case of syllable lengthening converting #HL# into #HH# or #LL# into #LH#, although the latter case is reported to occur in many languages under the name of iambic lengthening (Prince 1990, Hayes 1995).11 Likewise, we find no case of vowel shortening turning #HH# into #LH#. The vowel lengthenings and shortenings illustrated in (27)–(29) can be accounted for by the constraint ranking in (19), which is responsible for the complicated but highly predictable patterns of ZG formation and mother– baby language. To be specific, the subranking in (19b) accounts for the lengthening described in (27), whereas the subranking in (19a) accounts for the lengthening patterns in (28). These two cases are illustrated in the tableaux in (30) and (31). Moreover, the optional vowel shortening in (29) can be expressed by the free ranking illustrated in (32), where Parse-s >> Align-L yields #HH# forms, whereas the reverse ranking results in #HL# forms.12 (30) Lengthening of #LH# to #HH#: Parse-s >> Align-L /zyo.oo/ ‘queen’ (27a)

Nonfin

a. (zyo.o)

(Ft¢)*!

b. zyo(oo)

(s¢)(Ft¢)*!

Parse-s

Align-L

*

*

☞ c. (zyoo)(oo) d. (zyoo)o

Dep-m

*

*

Parse-s

Dep-m

*

*

*

*

*!

(31) Lengthening of #LL# to #HL#: Align-L >> Parse-s /si.ka/ ‘poem’ (28a) a. (si.ka)

Nonfin

Align-L

(Ft¢)*!

☞ b. (sii)ka c. si(kaa) d. (sii)(kaa)

(s¢)(Ft¢)*!

* *!

**

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Haruo Kubozono

(32) Optionality between #HH# and #HL# (with/without a final long vowel) /nyoo.boo/ ‘wife’ (29a)

Nonfin

a. i. (nyo.bo)

(Ft¢)*!

Align-L

☞ ii. (nyoo)bo iii. nyo(boo)

(s¢)(Ft¢)*!

*

*

*! Nonfin

Parse-s

Align-L

Dep-m

(Ft¢)*!

ii. (nyoo)bo iii. nyo(boo)

Dep-m

*

iv. (nyoo)(boo) b. i. (nyo.bo)

Parse-s

*! (s¢)(Ft¢)*!

☞ iv. (nyoo)(boo)

*

* *

As shown in the tableaux in (30)–(32), the asymmetry between #HL# and #LH# again follows primarily from the high ranking of Nonfin (s¢). (31) further confirms that avoidance of #LL# in favor of #HL# results primarily from the ranking of Nonfinality (Ft¢) over Parse-s. This is exactly the same situation that we saw in loanword truncation, ZG formation, and motherese.

4.2.6 Emphatic Mimetics Our final evidence for the HL-LH asymmetry comes from an analysis of the emphatic forms of reduplicative mimetic expressions. As we will see, formation of emphatic mimetics is different in several crucial respects from the four types of phenomena we have discussed so far, but it nonetheless yields an asymmetry between HL and LH. A typical mimetic form in Japanese involves reduplication of a bimoraic mimetic base. This is exemplified in (33) (Mester and Ito 1989, Nasu 1995, 1999a). (33) a. pi.ka Æ pi.ka.pi.ka ‘shiny’ ba.sa Æ ba.sa.ba.sa ‘loose’ b. su.be Æ su.be.su.be ‘smooth, slippery’ ke.ba Æ ke.ba.ke.ba ‘showy’

Note that the bimoraic bases cannot be used in isolation; rather, they are used either in the four-mora reduplicative form as shown or in a four-mora form with a mimetic ending /-ri/ plus a monomoraic particle /-to/ (e.g., /pi.ka.ri.to/, /zu.ba.ri.to/).13 That bisyllabic, bimoraic forms are illicit suggests

the syllable as a unit of prosodic organization

113

that mimetic formation is subject to the same constraints that govern ZG formation, notably Nonfin (s¢) and Nonfin (Ft¢). An interesting case arises when these reduplicative mimetics are converted into emphatic forms. Emphatic forms of mimetic expressions are typically produced by geminating one of the onset consonants in the reduplicative form. They thus consist of more than two feet, that is, they involve longer material than any other word type discussed so far in this chapter. Despite this difference, emphatic mimetic forms are like all the other phenomena in that they exhibit an asymmetry between HL and LH. According to the statistical study by Nasu (1999a), reduplicative mimetics fall into two groups, depending on which onset consonant is geminated. Namely, the consonant of the second syllable is geminated if this consonant is voiceless, as in (33a), whereas the onset of the third syllable is geminated if the first syllable but not the second involves a voiceless consonant, as in (33b). These two types of emphatic forms are illustrated in (34). (34) a. pi.ka.pi.ka Æ pik.ka.pi.ka ba.sa.ba.sa Æ bas.sa.ba.sa b. su.be.su.be Æ su.bes.su.be ke.ba.ke.ba Æ ke.bak.ke.ba

To make matters more complicated, the first gemination pattern also arises when both the first and second syllables in the input involve a voiced consonant. (35) zu.ba Æ zu.ba.zu.ba Æ zub.ba.zu.ba ‘(speak) frankly’ da.bu Æ da.bu.da.bu Æ dab.bu.da.bu ‘loose’

In terms of syllable structure, the emphatic forms in (34a) and (35) contain a heavy syllable in word-initial position, resulting in the four-syllable form #HL = LL#. Namely, this particular process of emphatic mimetic formation involves creating a HL sequence from a LL sequence. This is exactly the same pattern that is observed in ZG formation, motherese, and sporadic syllable lengthening discussed in the previous subsections. In contrast, the emphatic forms in (34b) contain a heavy syllable word-medially, that is, #LH = LL#. This involves creating a LH sequence from a LL sequence, which is a pattern not shared by any other process. The seemingly complicated gemination patterns in (34) and (35) can be attributed to two factors. A first factor militates against the gemination of a voiced consonant. A second factor dictates that gemination take place at a place as close to the beginning of the word as possible, a feature that is also shared by the feature [voice] in Japanese mimetics.14 Since the wordinitial consonant cannot be geminated, a default pattern would involve

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geminating the onset consonant of the second syllable. This is actually the pattern that emerges in the case of a tie, namely, when the onset consonants are all voiceless, as in /pik.ka.pi.ka/ in (34a) or when they are all voiced, as in (35). In an optimality-theoretic framework, the seemingly complicated patterns of gemination described in (34)–(35) can be accounted for by the constraint ranking in (36), which is essentially identical to the ZG ranking in (19).15 (36) Ranking for emphatic mimetics Realize Morpheme, NoVoiGem >> Align-L, Parse-s >> Dep-m

This ranking involves two additional constraints, defined in (37), that are ranked above Align-L and Parse-s. (37) a. No Voiced Geminate (NoVoiGem): Geminate consonants must be voiceless. b. Realize Morpheme (RM): Every morpheme in the input must receive a phonological realization.

NoVoiGem is a constraint that governs the distribution of the feature [voice] in Japanese in general (Ito and Mester 1995b), whereas RM is known to play a pivotal role in morphophonological phenomena in many languages (SamekLodovici 1993, Gnanadesikan 1997, Kurisu 1999). In the case under consideration, the latter constraint requires that the emphatic morpheme be realized as an additional mora in phonological manifestation. Note that the rankings in (19) and (36) can be easily collapsed into one basic hierarchy, as shown in (38). This overall ranking is a subset of the ranking in (8), which is responsible for the truncation phenomena. (38) Nonfin (s¢, Ft¢), RM, NoVoiGem >> Align-L, Parse-s >> Dep-m, Max-seg

Constraint interaction according to the ranking in (36) is illustrated in the tableaux in (39)–(41). (39) Emphatic mimetics with a HL pattern /pi.ka.pi.ka/ + m ‘shiny emph.’ (34a)

Parse-s

Dep-m

*

*

*

c. pi(kap)(pi.ka)

*,**!

*

*

d. (pi.ka)(pik)ka

**!

*

*

e. (pik)ka(pik)ka

**!

**

**

a. (pi.ka)(pi.ka) ☞ b. (pik)(ka.pi)ka

RM *!

NoVoi Gem

AlignL **

the syllable as a unit of prosodic organization

115

(40) Emphatic mimetics with a HL pattern /zu.ba.zu.ba/ + m ‘frankly emph.’ (35) a. (zu.ba)(zu.ba)

RM

NoVoi Gem

*!

AlignL

Parse-s

Dep-m

**

☞ b. (zub)(ba.zu)ba

*

*

*

*

c. zu(baz)(zu.ba)

*

*,**!

*

*

d. (zu.ba)(zub)ba

*

**!

*

*

e. (zub)ba(zub)ba

*

**!

**

**

Parse-s

Dep-m

(41) Emphatic mimetics with a LH pattern /su.be.su.be/ + m ‘smooth emph.’ (34b) a. (su.be)(su.be) b. (sub)(be.su)be

RM

NoVoi Gem

*!

** *!

☞ c. su(bes)(su.be) d. (su.be)(sub)be

AlignL

*!

*

*

*

*,**

*

*

**

*

*

It must be emphasized here that the #LHLL# output in (41) emerges only in the context where the #HLLL# output is made illicit by NoVoiGem, a constraint that does not directly concern the other processes discussed in this chapter. Note also that avoidance of #LHLL# outputs in general contexts is attributed to the effect of Align-L. This is the point where the formation of emphatic mimetics is crucially different from all the cases we have considered, where #LH# forms are banned by Nonfinality (s¢). This difference of course arises from the fact, noted earlier, that emphatic mimetics consist of five moras, whereas outputs of ZG and other processes may contain up to four moras. Despite this difference, the fact remains that LH forms are disfavored in emphatic mimetic formation, just as they are in the other processes. Not surprisingly, nonemphatic forms of reduplicative mimetics, or the inputs of the emphatic forms described in (39)–(41), can also be accounted for by the ranking in (36). This is shown in the tableau in (42). In fact, the only difference between the tableaux in (39)–(41) and that in (42) is that the input structure in the latter contains no emphatic morpheme and, therefore, that RM is not violated by any of the output candidates.

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(42) Nonemphatic forms /pi.ka.pi.ka/ ‘shiny’ ☞ a. (pi.ka)(pi.ka)

RM

NoVoi Gem

AlignL

Parse-s

Dep-m

**

b. (pik)(ka.pi)ka

*

*

*!

c. pi(kap)(pi.ka)

*,**!

*

*

d. (pi.ka)(pik)ka

**

*!

*

e. (pik)ka(pik)ka

**

**!

**

4.3. Related Asymmetries Before concluding our discussion of prosodic asymmetries in Japanese, it is worth pointing out briefly that Japanese words consisting of three or more feet exhibit an asymmetry similar to the HL-LH asymmetry we have considered so far. Here I will discuss two phenomena, the morphological and prosodic structures of compound nouns and the prosodic structure of the chanting phrases used in baseball games.

4.3.1 Compound Formation Compound nouns in Japanese exhibit two types of asymmetries, one being morphological and the other prosodic. The morphological asymmetry concerns the dominance of left-branching compounds over their right-branching counterparts. According to my own statistical analysis (Kubozono 1988), the left-branching structure accounts for about 70% of all the three-member compound nouns in Japanese. Namely, the left-hand component tends to be heavier than the right-hand component in Japanese compound nouns, as schematically shown in (43). (43) [[AB][C]] > [[A][BC]]

This morphological asymmetry is reflected in the prosodic asymmetry that compound nouns exhibit. Namely, the right-branching structure is generally realized in two prosodic words with the first member constituting an accentual unit independent of the remaining part; that is, it takes a phrasal accentual pattern. Other conditions being equal, this kind of accentual division does not occur in left-branching compound nouns, which form a single prosodic unit with only one accent realized in the whole domain. These two types of prosodic structures are exemplified in (44), where { } denotes the domain of a prosodic word.16

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(44) a. [[AB][C]] Æ {ABC} [[[do’itu][bu’ngaku]][kyookai]] Æ {doitu-bungaku-kyo’okai} ‘Germany-literature-association’ ‘Association of German literature’ b. [[A][BC]] Æ {A} {BC} [[do’itu][[bu’ngaku][kyookai]]] Æ {do’itu}{bungaku-kyo’okai} ‘Germany-literature-association’ ‘German Association of literature’

In sum, the heavy-light structure is predominant in Japanese compound nouns in morphological terms, and the morphologically marked light-heavy structure exhibits a marked prosodic structure, too.

4.3.2 Baseball Chanting A similar tendency toward the heavy-light structure is observed in the phrases chanted by baseball fans when cheering for their favorite team or player. According to Tanaka’s (1999) preliminary analysis, the basic form of these chanting phrases is to put the player’s (most frequently, the batter’s) name in the three X-slots of (45) to form a three-foot template (or a four-foot template if the phrase-final pause is taken into account): /kat.to.ba.see XXX/ ‘Hit a homerun, XXX (= player’ name)’. (45) 4/4

ka t.to.ba.see X X X ‘Hit a homerun, XXX.’
  .-  
   


A default output form surfaces if the player’s name is trimoraic and trisyllabic, as illustrated in (46). (46) ka.ke.hu Æ (kaa)(kee)(huu) ‘Mr. Kakahu’ su.mi.su Æ (suu)(mii)(suu) ‘Mr. Smith’

What is of direct relevance to our discussion is the chanting forms of the following three input structures: #H#, #LL#, and #HH#. All of these input structures are prosodically well balanced, showing neither heavy-light nor light-heavy asymmetry. However, the output structures they yield do exhibit a systematic prosodic asymmetry whereby the material in the first half of the input structure occupies the first two feet (i.e., two-thirds) of the output structure. Consequently, a heavy-light structure rather than a light-heavy structure results from the balanced input structure. This is exemplified in (47). (47) a. sai Æ (saa)(aa)(ii) ‘Mr. Sai’ b. no.mo Æ (noo)(oo)(moo) ‘Mr. Nomo’ c. tai.son Æ (taa)(ii)(son) ‘Mr. Tyson’

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4.4. Concluding Remarks In this chapter, I have described some interesting asymmetries in the syllabic organization of Japanese words and discussed how these asymmetries can be accounted for in OT. In generally, HL and HH structures are preferred, whereas the LH structure is disfavored in at least five independent phenomena in Japanese. These phenomena are summarized in (48) with respect to the specific syllable changes they involve. (48) Motherese: LL Æ HL, L Æ HL, LH Æ HL, H Æ HH Loanword truncation: LH Æ LL ZG formation: HH Æ HL, LL Æ HL, L Æ HL, H Æ HL, LH Æ HL Sporadic lengthenings/shortenings: HH Æ HL, LL Æ HL, LH Æ HH Emphatic mimetics: LL Æ HL

The phenomena in (48) are basically independent of one another, with each phenomenon having its own characteristics: loanword truncation is a subtractive morphological process turning long words into shorter forms; ZG is a musician’s secret language involving reversal; emphatic mimetic formation is triggered by a morphosemantic requirement and involves adding a mora to a four-mora base, and so on. Despite all these differences, the five independent phenomena all exhibit one and the same structure – the remarkable tendency toward HL and away from LH. Moreover, this asymmetry in the prosodic organization of words does not represent an isolated tendency in Japanese phonology. As shown in section 4.3, other word formation processes prefer heavy-light structures to light-heavy structures at the level where three or more feet are organized to form a prosodic word. In descriptive terms, the HL-LH and other syllabic asymmetries cannot be captured without reference to the syllable structure of words, especially to the distinction between heavy and light syllables. This reinforces the recent argument that the syllable is no less indispensable than the mora is in Japanese, the most famous and classic example of a mora-based language (Kubozono 1999). This, in turn, is suggestive of the universality of the syllable as an organizing element of phonological structure. The same argument also calls for the separation of the foot and the syllable into two independent descriptive units above the level of the mora. In this chapter I have also proposed a nonderivational analysis of the various phenomena exhibiting the syllabic asymmetries in question. I have shown that an optimality-theoretic analysis provides a simple and principled account of both the optimality and optionality observed in these phenomena. Moreover, the same analysis accounts for the essential similarity behind all of these independent phenomena, which can be analyzed as involving a certain basic constraint hierarchy.

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Finally, it is worth emphasizing that the constraints proposed for this analysis are heavily dependent on the two notions of mora and syllable. The mora is indispensable for Dep-m and the foot-related constraints like FootBin, Nonfinality (Ft¢), and Align-L (Ft, Wd), whereas the syllable plays a pivotal role in Nonfinality(s¢) and Parse-s. In fact, the lack of #LH# forms can generally be attributed to the high ranking of Nonfinality(s¢), a constraint that militates against any word structure involving a word-final syllabic head. This constraint must be strictly distinguished from Nonfinality (Ft¢), which bans any word form consisting solely of one foot, that is, #H# and #LL#, as well as #LH# bisyllables. The syllable is indispensable for the definition of Align-L (Ft, Wd), too, in that its violation is actually defined by the number of syllables to the left of any foot within a prosodic word. As discussed in section 4.2.6, this constraint is indeed responsible for the general preference for #HL = LL# output forms over #LH = LL# forms in the formation of emphatic reduplicative mimetics.

notes 1. See Kubozono 1995b, 1997 for independent arguments for the separation of these two types of Nonfinality constraints. 2. The HL input may result in a HH output via exhaustive reversal: e.g., /koo.ra/ Æ /raa.koo/ ‘Coca-Cola’ (Ito and Mester 1995a). 3. The free ranking between these two constraints may also be responsible for the optional shortening of word-final long vowels attested in many Japanese words, e.g., /(dee)(taa)/-/(dee)ta/ ‘data’, /(kon)(pyuu)(taa)/-/(kon)(pyuu)ta/ ‘computer’, as well as the phenomenon of poetic license characteristically found at the end of senryu poems (Tanaka 1999). 4. Motherese exhibits another asymmetry by which heavy syllables dominate over light syllables, which contrasts sharply with the reverse tendency in adult speech (Kubozono 1995a). Interestingly, Allen and Hawkins (1978) note a similar tendency in English-speaking children, who tend to lengthen light syllables into heavy syllables. 5. There are some bisyllabic words consisting of two light syllables, i.e., #LL#, most of which are loanwords: e.g., /ma.ma/ ‘mommy’, /pa.pa/ ‘daddy’. 6. The example in (24c) involves a segmental change from /au/ to /ai/. This may be attributed to the marked status of the diphthong /au/ in Japanese (cf. Katayama 1998). 7. In (25)–(26), #(H)L# will be more optimal than #(LL)L# because the latter, but not the former, violates a low-ranking constraint, Dep-s, which prohibits the addition of a syllable not present in the input. 8. This asymmetry between HL and LH in babies’ perception can also be accounted for by the ranking in (19). 9. The devoicing of [d] in /ta.da/ (28b) is due to the effect of NoVoiGem to be discussed in section 4.2.6. 10. Alfonso (1980) notes that this optional vowel shortening occurs only when the initial syllable ends in a moraic consonant, that is, a moraic nasal or the first part of a

120

11.

12.

13.

14. 15.

16.

Haruo Kubozono geminate consonant. This generalization must be extended to cover HH words whose first syllable contains a long vowel. In fact, the HL form of /tyoo.tyo/ in (29a), originally a reduplicated form of the monosyllabic word /tyoo/ ‘butterfly’, has now been established in modern Japanese and contrasts with the longer compound noun, /tyoo.tyoo.hu.zin/ ‘butterfly, wife; Madam Butterfly’, where vowel shortening is blocked in a word-medial position. Potential exceptions to this are such vulgar forms as /zi.zii/ ‘old man’, /ba.baa/ ‘old woman’, and /ka.kaa/ ‘wife, mom’. It is possible that these vulgar forms have been derived from #LL# forms, i.e., /zi.zi/, /ba.ba/, and /ka.ka/. Note that the constraint interaction described in (30)–(32) is not claimed to apply to every lexical item in the language. For most lexical items (or underived forms, to be more exact), output structures are identical to their input structures, suggesting that they maximally obey the faithfulness constraints Max and Dep. Many of the trimoraic forms with a mimetic ending /-ri/ alternate in modern Japanese with trimoraic LH forms ending in a moraic nasal or obstruent: e.g., /ba.ta.ri/-/ba.tan/, /pi.ka.ri/-/pi.kat/. These LH forms, too, may not be used in isolation but always appear in speech with a particle /-to/: e.g., /ba.tan.to/, /pi.kat.to/ (Nasu 1995). For example, /ga.sa.ga.sa/ is favored over /ka.za.ka.za/ as a voiced counterpart of /ka.sa.ka.sa/ (Mester and Ito 1989, Nasu 1999b). Nasu (1999a) proposes an optimality-theoretic analysis entirely different from the one proposed here, using different constraints and a different constraint ranking. One of the most crucial differences between these two analyses lies in that the fivemora emphatic forms as well as the four-mora base forms are analyzed as constituting two prosodic words in Nasu’s analysis, whereas they are assumed to form one prosodic word in the analysis proposed here. Word accents are marked by an apostrophe (¢) placed immediately after the accented mora. Words without this mark are so-called unaccented words, or words that do not involve an abrupt pitch fall at the phonetic output. See Kubozono 1988, 1995a for the details of the prosody of Japanese compounds.

references Alfonso, A. (1980). Japanese Language Patterns. Vol. 2. Tokyo: Sophia University. Allen, G., and S. Hawkins. (1978). The development of phonological rhythm. In Syllables and Segments, ed. A. Bell and J. B. Hooper, 173–185. Amsterdam: North-Holland. Gnanadesikan, A. (1997). Phonology with ternary scales. Doctoral dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Hayashi, A., Yoshioka, K., and R. Mazuka. (1998). Baby-word rhythm preferences of Japanese infants. Paper presented at the ASA meeting, Seattle, June 1998. Hayes, B. (1995). Metrical Stress Theory: Principles and Case Studies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ito, J. (1990). Prosodic minimality in Japanese. In CLS 26-II: Papers from the Parasession on the Syllable in Phonetics and Phonology, ed. K. Deaton et al., 213–239. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. Ito, J., and A. Mester. (1992). Weak layering and word binarity. LRC Working Paper, University of California, Santa Cruz.

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Ito, J., and A. Mester. (1995a). Binarity. Paper presented at the GLOW phonology workshop, Tromso, Norway, June 1995. Ito, J., and A. Mester. (1995b). Japanese phonology. In The Handbook of Phonological Theory, ed. J. Goldsmith, 817–838. Oxford: Blackwell. Ito, J., Y. Kitagawa, and A. Mester. (1996). Prosodic faithfulness and correspondence: Evidence from a Japanese argot. Journal of East Asian Linguistics 5: 217–294. Jusczyk, P. W., A. Cutler, and N. Redanz. (1993). Preference for the predominant stress pattern of English words. Child Development 64: 675–687. Kager, R. (1999). Optimality Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Katayama, M. (1998). Optimality Theory and Japanese loanword phonology. Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Santa Cruz. Kubozono, H. (1988). The organization of Japanese prosody. Doctoral dissertation, Edinburgh University. [Published by Kurosio Publishers, Tokyo, 1993.] Kubozono, H. (1995a). Gokeisei to Onin Koozoo (Word Formation and Phonological Structure). Tokyo: Kurosio Publishers. Kubozono, H. (1995b). Constraint interaction in Japanese phonology: Evidence from compound accent. Phonology at Santa Cruz 4: 21–38. Kubozono, H. (1997). Lexical markedness and variation: A nonderivational account of Japanese compound accent. WCCFL 15: 273–287. Kubozono, H. (1999). Mora and syllable. In The Handbook of Japanese Linguistics, ed. N. Tsujimura, 31–61. Oxford: Blackwell. Kubozono, H., J. Ito, and A. Mester. (1997). Nonfinality in Japanese phonology. Paper presented at the 16th International Congress of Linguists (ICL), Paris, August 1997. Kurisu, K. (1999). Morpheme realizations and phonological exponence. Talk presented at the second meeting of GLOW in Asia, Nanzan University, Japan, September 1999. Mazuka, R., and A. Hayashi. (1998). Learning to speak with morae: Development of mora-based rhythm in Japanese. Paper presented at From Speech Perception to Word Learning: A Workshop, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, June 1998. Mester, A., and J. Ito. (1989). Feature predictability and underspecification: Palatal prosody in Japanese mimetics. Language 65: 258–293. Nasu, A. (1995). Prosodic restrictions on Japanese onomatopoeia. (In Japanese). The Bulletin (The Phonetic Society of Japan) 209: 9–20. Nasu, A. (1999a). Tyoohukukei onomatope no kyootyookei to sokuon no iti (Emphatic forms of reduplicative mimetics and the location of consonant geminates). In Proceedings of the 19th Meeting of the Kansai Linguistic Society, 308. Kansai. Nasu, A. (1999b). Voicing in onomatopoeia and the markedness of /p/. (In Japanese). Journal of the Phonetic Society of Japan 3(3): 52–66. Poser, W. (1990). Evidence for foot structure in Japanese. Language 66: 78–105. Prince, A. (1990). Quantitative consequences of rhythmic organization. In CLS 26–II: Papers from the Parasession on the Syllable in Phonetics and Phonology, ed. K. Deaton et al., 355–398. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. Prince, A., and P. Smolensky. (1993). Optimality Theory: Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar. Technical Report #2. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science, Rutgers University. [To appear, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.] Samek-Lodovici, V. (1993). Morphological gemination. Paper presented at Rutgers Optimality Workshop, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J., October 1993.

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Sukegawa, Y., K. Maekawa, and S. Uehara. (1999). An experimental phonetic study of Japanese vowel shortening and its implications to pronunciation training. (In Japanese). In Linguistics and Japanese Language Education, ed. Y. Sasaki-Alam, 81–94. Tokyo: Kurosio Publishers. Tanaka, S. (1999). Syllable and four-mora template in Japanese: Analyses of modern senryu poems and baseball chanting. In Speech and Grammar 2, ed. Spoken Language Working Group, 261–290. Tokyo: Kurosio Publishers. Tateishi, K. (1989). Theoretical implications of the Japanese musicians’ language. WCCFL 8: 384–398. Tomosada, K. (1997). Zenkoku Yoozigo Ziten (A Dictionary of Baby Words in Japan). Tokyo: Tokyodo. Trubetzkoy, N. S. (1969). Principles of Phonology. Trans. C. A. M. Baltaxe. Los Angeles: University of California Press. [Original work published 1958.]

5 Prosodic Weight Draga Zec

5.1. Introduction Syllable weight has been standardly characterized in terms of subsyllabic constituency and computed by making reference to mora count, as argued in Hyman (1984), McCarthy and Prince (1986), and Hayes (1989), among others.1 Certain recent proposals, however, posit additional syllable weight distinctions, based on the sonority of the nucleus (e.g., Hayes 1995, Gordon 1999). While continuing to maintain that syllable weight in terms of mora count is the sole weight mechanism associated with the syllable as a prosodic constituent, I will argue that cases of weight distinctions based on the sonority of the nucleus fall under an entirely different rubric. My central claim is that such cases crucially reflect how the syllable relates to the other members of the prosodic hierarchy, notably the foot, bringing into relief the role of sonority in characterizing this relation. I will begin with the relevant properties of the prosodic hierarchy, given in (1) (see McCarthy and Prince 1986, Nespor and Vogel 1986, among others). (1)

Prosodic word Foot Syllable Mora

w f s m

Each constituent within the hierarchy establishes a direct relation with the level of segments by imposing a minimal sonority threshold. It has been demonstrated (in Zec 1988, 1995) that the constituents at the lower end of the hierarchy, the mora and the syllable, restrict the minimal sonority thresholds of segments they dominate.2 In English, for example, the syllable imposes

I am grateful for invaluable comments and suggestions to Wayles Browne, Abby Cohn, Paul Kiparsky, and Jaye Padgett, as well as to two anonymous referees.

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Draga Zec

a minimal sonority threshold on segment s2 in (2), admitting only vowels and sonorant consonants in its nuclear position, while the threshold imposed by the mora is unrestricted, permitting any segment in position s3, under the second mora of a heavy syllable. s

(2)

s1

m

m

s2

s3

I will argue here that the higher levels of the prosodic hierarchy, the foot and the prosodic word, also impose their own minimal sonority thresholds. Crucially, weight distinctions based on the sonority of the nucleus are governed by the foot or the prosodic word and thus associated with the extrasyllabic portion of the prosodic constituency. With this essential background, I now turn to the implementation of this proposal. Taking Optimality Theory (OT) as a frame of reference (cf. McCarthy and Prince 1993a, 1993b, 1995, Prince and Smolensky 1993), I posit the Son(ority) family of constraints, which governs the sonority relations within the prosodic hierarchy, as shown in (3). (3)

a. f

Son-f Son-s

sh

s

Son-m

mh

mh

s1

s2

s3

b. Son-f

f

Son-s

sh

Son-m s5

mh

m

s6

s7

s4

Assuming that each prosodic constituent possesses a head, corresponding to one constituent at the next lower level (marked by the h subscript), the Son constraint at each prosodic level imposes a sonority threshold on the

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125

segment at the bottom of its head path, as in (3). Back to the case at issue, the relevant constraint for cases of weight distinctions based on the sonority of the nucleus is Son-f. This constraint is responsible for the minimal sonority threshold imposed by the foot and belongs to the family of constraints responsible for minimal sonority thresholds imposed by the other constituents in the prosodic hierarchy: Son-s for the syllable and Son-m for the mora. In (3), segment s7 is under the jurisdiction of Son-m, s4 is under the jurisdiction of both Son-m and Son-s, while s2 and s6 are under the jurisdiction of all three Son constraints. I will show that only those syllables that act as foot nuclei are subject to weight evaluation based on the sonority of the nucleus; therefore, in (3), only segments s2 and s6, but not s4, could constitute insufficiently sonorous syllable nuclei.3 In sum, the prosodic constituency is viewed here as a hierarchy of sonority peaks. It is regulated by several principles that, if viewed as constraints, will have to be undominated constraints. One is the principle of Strict Layering (Selkirk 1984a, 1995), which excludes any dominance relations other than those in (1) and, additionally, calls for the postulate stated in (4), whereby each prosodic constituent possesses one subconstituent marked as the head, that is, as its most perspicuous element (Zec 1988, Ito and Mester 1993, Selkirk 1995). (4)

Headedness: A prosodic constituent must contain a head, i.e., constituent n must immediately dominate exactly one constituent n - 1 designated as its most prominent element, and marked by the h subscript. (“No skipping of prosodic levels.”)

The headedness relation, captured in (4), has already been invoked in (3), where it plays a crucial role in characterizing the hierarchy of prosodic constituents as a prominence hierarchy. Another important principle, the Prosodic Peak Transparency, stated informally in (5), ensures that prosodic constituents higher in the hierarchy impose more restrictive sonority thresholds than those subordinated to them.4 (5)

Prosodic Peak Transparency: The sonority threshold associated with prosodic constituent n may not be less restrictive than the sonority threshold associated with its head.

In other words, Son-s is “visible” only if it is more restrictive than Son-m, and Son-f is visible only if more restrictive than both Son-s and Son-m. I now turn to the case studies that provide evidence for positing a sonority threshold constraint external to the syllable. The cases arguing for a sonority constraint imposed by the foot are those of English, Mordwin, and Old Church Slavonic. By positing a Son-f constraint for each of these languages, I account for the occurrence of light and heavy syllable nuclei in English, for

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preferred and dispreferred loci of stress in Mordwin, and for the absence of a class of vowels from so-called strong positions in Old Church Slavonic. The case of Asheninca, in contrast, argues for a sonority constraint imposed by the prosodic word, with syllable nuclei classified into light and heavy for the purposes of primary, but not secondary, stress. In the concluding section I address the issue of the overall organization of prominence within the prosodic hierarchy.

5.2. English: Light and Heavy Syllable Nuclei English possesses two classes of syllable nuclei: while any [+sonorant] segment in English may act as a syllable nucleus (e.g., vowels and liquids, as in butter, murky, bottle, cuddle, apple, and nasals, as in sudden, button, sedentary), not all syllable nuclei are on an equal footing. We can clearly distinguish a difference in the distribution of those syllables whose nuclei correspond to l or a nasal, and those whose nuclei are either a vowel or r. The former class of syllables, those with light nuclei, have a severely restricted distribution, as stated in (6). (6)

Distribution of syllables with l or a nasal in the nucleus (L = l or nasal) a. CL and CLC syllables are never stressed. b. There are no monosyllabic CLC words or disyllabic CLCL words. c. CLC syllables are restricted to positions within the word inflicted by “extraprosodicity” (student, prudent).

The restricted distribution in (6) is explained by positing minimal sonority thresholds both at the level of the syllable and at the level of the foot. Crucially, while all [+sonorant] segments are possible syllable nuclei, only vowels and r are sufficiently sonorous to satisfy the sonority threshold imposed by the foot, thus excluding l and nasals from this position. To be more specific, vowels and r, but not l and nasals, may occupy segmental positions s2 and s6 in (3). The collocations listed in (6), from which syllables with light nuclei are excluded, are precisely those in which they would also act as foot nuclei. First, because stressed syllables have to be foot heads, a CL(C) syllable may not bear stress, as stated in (6a). Next, a prosodic word must, minimally, contain a foot, yet a syllable with a light nucleus is incapable of sustaining a foot, which accounts for the absence of CLC monosyllables or CLCL disyllables, as stated in (6b). Finally, CLC syllables, which like other heavy syllables should correspond to feet, as in (3b), occur in only those positions in which they cannot be granted the foot status, that is, in positions inflicted by extraprosodicity, as stated in (6c) (see Hayes 1982).

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127

No such restrictions are associated with syllables headed by a vowel or r, as described in (7), since both these segments meet the sonority threshold imposed by the foot. (7)

Distribution of syllables with r in the nucleus (CR(C)), which is identical with the distribution of CV(C) syllables a. CR(C) syllables may be stressed, as in murky, covert, furnace. b. CR and CRC may occur in monosyllables: fur, turf, curl, terse. c. Disyllables of the CRCL shape are possible, as in curtain, curdle.

In other words, the Son-f constraint for English imposes a cutoff point for foot sonority between r and l. But, do r and vowels, the only foot-bearing syllable nuclei, form a natural class? Kahn (1978) shows that r and l pattern differently with respect to flapping and release, the former patterning with glides and the latter with obstruents.5 Therefore, in the spirit of Kahn’s (1978) proposal, I assume that r is a [-consonantal] segment and that it exhibits both glide-like and vowel-like behavior. The constraint in (8a) demarcates the class of foot-bearing segments in English, which correspond to the [-consonantal] set, and is more restrictive than (8b), which captures the class of English syllable nuclei. (8)

English: a. Minimal sonority threshold imposed by the foot Son-f [-consonantal] b. Minimal sonority threshold imposed by the syllable Son-s [+sonorant]

To conclude, English CL(C) syllables are lighter than other syllables in the language. I have argued against positing a hybrid weight hierarchy, along the lines proposed by Hayes (1995) and Gordon (1999), as in (9), with CL and CLC syllables figuring as lightest. (9)

CVC, CVV, CRC >> CV, CR >> CL, CLC

Instead, I invoke an additional sonority threshold, that imposed by the foot, and rely on the constraint Son-f [-consonantal] to account for the distinction between light and heavy nuclei. In English, the Son-f [-consonantal] constraint is surface true and as such appears to be undominated, since no segments other than the [-consonantal] ones serve as foot nuclei. Since this constraint does not seem to interact with any relevant constraints from the faithfulness family, we assume that these constraints are also undominated. What we encounter, as a result, is a fixed distribution of syllables with light and heavy nuclei, as stated in (8) and (9).

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5.3. Mordwin: Preferred and Dispreferred Loci of Stress Of particular interest are those cases that provide evidence for interactions among Son-f and the faithfulness constraints (henceforth Faith). One such case will be illustrated by Mordwin, whose stress-related alternations call for the ranking with Faith dominating Son-f. The Mokshan dialect of Mordwin (Tsygankin and Debaev 1975, Kenstowicz 1996) possesses two types of syllables, which differ in their readiness to bear stress. For this purpose, Mordwin vowels are divided into two classes, broad (e, o, ä, a) and narrow (i, u, ə). Only syllables headed by the former class receive stress under all circumstances, while those headed by the latter class are stressable under restricted conditions. In words that contain only broad vowels, as well as those that contain only narrow vowels, stress falls on the leftmost syllable, as in (10a) and (10b), respectively. But in words with both broad and narrow vowels, as in (10c), stress falls on the leftmost broad vowel. (The stressed vowel is underlined.) (10) Distribution of stress a. In words containing only broad vowels: s’är’äd’an ‘you arrive’, rämasak ‘you buy it’, kel’askä ‘fox’, noldasak ‘you release it’ b. In words containing only narrow vowels: puvəndəms ‘to press’, kiz’əfn’əms ‘to ask’, pəs’t’ərdəms ‘to roll with the feet’, kulit’i ‘in that ash’ c. In words containing both broad and narrow vowels: sasəndat ‘you arrive’, tərgadat ‘you fight’, tusˇəndat ‘you go away’, tuc’än’ä ‘cloud’, k’el’əpt’əms ‘to widen’

These facts strongly suggest that, in the very least, broad vowels are the preferred foot nuclei. This is clearly shown by the forms in (10c). These forms justify positing a Son-f constraint, which captures the minimal threshold for foot sonority in Mordwin. As stated in (11), the syllable and the foot are associated with different sonority thresholds: the threshold imposed by the foot, in (11a), is more restrictive than the threshold imposed by the syllable, in (11b). (11) Mordwin a. Minimal sonority threshold imposed by the foot Son-f [-consonantal, -high] b. Minimal sonority threshold imposed by the syllable Son-s [-consonantal]

prosodic weight

129

While all syllable nuclei in Mordwin satisfy (11a), only those that contain broad vowels satisfy, also, (11b). Note that Mordwin calls for fine-graining the sonority scale in the realm of vowels, with high vowels treated as less sonorous than the nonhigh class. The locus of stress is regulated by the alignment constraint in (12), which requires that the stress-bearing foot be aligned with the left edge of the prosodic word (McCarthy and Prince 1993b). This specific foot is referred to here as the head of the prosodic word, in accordance with the Headedness requirement in (4).6 (12) Align-L: Align the head of prosodic word with the left edge of prosodic word.

The interactions between the Son-f [-consonantal, -high] constraint in (11a) and Align-L in (12) are given in the tableau in (13), which clearly shows that the former dominates the latter. In the optimal candidate, stress falls on the rightmost syllable, which satisfies Son-f [-consonantal, -high] and thus leads to the violation of Align-L. (13) Form with broad and narrow vowels: Son-f >> Align-L tusˇəndat

Son-f

☞ tusˇəndát túsˇəndat

Align-L **

*!

I turn now to forms in (10b), those with only narrow vowels. Even though these forms do not contain any syllable that satisfies Son-f, they are stressed, with stress falling on a narrow vowel, in violation of Son-f [-consonantal, -high]. This establishes the ranking of Son-f [-consonantal, -high] with respect to two other relevant constraints. One hypothetical option would be to leave a form with only narrow vowels unstressed, thus vacuously satisfying Son-f. This, however, would lead to a fatal violation of the constraint in (14), which requires that each prosodic word possess a head, that is, dominate at least one foot (cf. the principle of Headedness in (4)). (14) Head-w: A prosodic word must have a head.

The tableau in (15) establishes that Head-w ranks higher than Son-f: the winning candidate receives stress, in violation of Son-f, to satisfy Head-w, while the suboptimal one, which has no stressed syllable, fatally violates the latter constraint.

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(15) Form with narrow vowels: Head-w >> Son-f kulit’i ☞ kúlit’i

Head-w

kulit’i

*!

Son-f *

Next, we can establish that Son-f [-consonantal, -high] ranks lower than any Faith constraint: a narrow vowel remains faithful to its input counterpart at the cost of violating Son-f, which results in a lowered sonority threshold on feet. The relevant interactions are shown in the tableau in (16), where stress falls on the leftmost syllable in both candidate forms, in full compliance with Align-L. The losing candidate, which satisfies Son-f due to a conversion of u to o, concomitantly commits a violation of Faith. (16) Form with narrow vowels: Faith >> Son-f kulit’i

Faith

☞ kúlit’i kólit’i

Son-f *

*!

In sum, there is no need to posit two classes of syllable nuclei for Mordwin or establish an additional syllable weight metric based on the sonority of the nucleus. Under the analysis proposed here, the distribution of stress in Mordwin results, first, from different sonority thresholds imposed by the syllable and the foot and, second, from the mutual ranking of Son-f and Faith. Because the latter constraint outranks the former, narrow vowels are dispreferred loci of stress, although they may be stressed if no broad vowel is available.

5.4. Old Church Slavonic: Lowering of Jer Vowels in Strong Positions Old Church Slavonic (henceforth OCS), the language preserved in the earliest Slavic written documents,7 illustrates the reversed ranking of Son-f and Faith from that found in Mordwin. OCS restricts the set of syllabic segments to vowels, the relevant constraint being Son-s [-consonantal]. But as in English and Mordwin, syllable nuclei fall into two classes: those that can and those that cannot sustain a foot. This is demonstrated by the behavior of the so-called jer vowels, which belong to the latter class and participate in a specific set of phonological alternations. Before turning to these alternations, we will first look into the vocalic system of OCS and the place of jer vowels in this system.

prosodic weight

131

Listed in (17) and (18) are the vocalic segments of OCS. The jer vowels are the high lax vowels I and U in (17). Following Lightner (1972), I distinguish them from the other OCS vowels by designating them as [-tense] segments, the other vowels in the language being [+tense]. (17) Historically short vowels I U high jers: [-tense] e o nonhigh

The vowels in (17) correspond to short vowels in Common Slavic, while those in (18) correspond to what clearly used to be long vowels. It is not obvious, however, that vocalic length was phonologically relevant in the OCS dialect described here. For reasons of accuracy, I state that the vowels in (17) historically correspond to short, and those in (18), to long Common Slavic vowels. But since we have no clear evidence regarding the status of vocalic length at the stage we focus on, the analysis is free of any assumptions in this regard.8 (18) Historically long vowels i y u high e o nonhigh e˘ a

The jer vowels exhibited a characteristic pattern of lowering in certain collocations, a phenomenon known as Havlík’s Law (based on Isacˇenko 1970). (19) Havlík’s Law a. Word-final jers and jers in syllables followed by vowels other than jers become weak (weak jers are subsequently dropped). b. Jers in syllables followed by a weak jer become strong. c. Strong jers I and U merge with e and o respectively (in OCS and Old East Slavic, as represented in Zogr and Ostr [see note 7].

To paraphrase, jers in so-called strong positions lower to the corresponding nonhigh vowels, while those in weak positions remain unaltered.9 Crucial for my argument is the fact that jers in “strong” positions are immediately followed by another jer, which strongly suggests that this phenomenon is related to foot structure. The examples in (20)–(22) illustrate the alternations described in Havlík’s Law.10 I first focus on the behavior of jers in disyllabic forms, given in (20), which demonstrate that the jer vowels are subject to lowering only when the underlying form contains consecutive jers, as in (20c). In the other cases, namely (20a–b), in which the jer is either followed or preceded by a regular vowel, jer lowering does not take effect.

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(20) Forms with two syllables Underlying Surface a. cvcU stolU stolU ‘throne’ (nom.) b. cUcv sUnu sUnu ‘dream’ (dat.) dIne dIne ‘day’ (gen. Sg.) zUla zUla ‘evil’ (adj. nom. sg. f.) c. cUcU sUnU sonU ‘dream’ (nom.) dInI denI ‘day’ (nom. Sg.) zUlU zolU ‘evil’ (adj. nom. sg. m.)

This strongly suggests that a cUcU sequence is footed as (cUcU). Because it is the leftmost jer that lowers, yielding (cvcU), we can conclude that the foot system is trochaic and that the leftmost syllable within the foot is subject to Son-f, whose effect is manifested as jer lowering. The trisyllabic forms in (21) further corroborate what we observe in (20). Forms that contain only one jer vowel, as in (21a–c), or those that contain jers interspersed with non-jer vowels, as in (21d), do not exhibit any alternations. Alternations are found in only those forms that underlyingly contain consecutive jers. Those in (21e) and (21f), each containing two consecutive jers, are footed as cv(cUcU) and (cUcU)cv, respectively, with the leftmost jer lowering. The crucial case is (21g), with three consecutive jer vowels, which clearly shows that footing is binary and that the directionality of footing is right to left: a cUcUcU form is footed as cU(cUcU), yielding cU(cvcU), rather than *(cUcU)cU, yielding *(cvcU)cU. In each case, the resulting feet are disyllabic (and of course bimoraic) trochees. (21) Forms with three syllables Underlying Surface a. cUcvcv vUzglasi vUzglasi ‘announce’ b. cvcUcv tetUka tetUka ‘aunt’ (nom. sg) otIca otIca ‘father’ (gen. sg) c. cvcvcU bolitU bolitU ‘ache’ (3 sg. present) d. cUcvcU mUnogU mUnogU ‘many’ e. cvcUcU otIcI otecI ‘father’ (nom. sg) rabU tU rabo tU ‘this slave’

prosodic weight f. cUcUcv cˇItIca sUnIna tImIna sUnIma vU tIme˘ g. cUcUcU cˇItIcI sUnInU tImInU sUnImU

133

cˇetIca sonIna temIna sonIma vo tIme˘

‘reader (gen.)’ ‘of sleep’ (adj. nom. sg. f.) ‘dark’ (nom. sg. f.) ‘gathering’ (gen. sg.) ‘in the darkness’

cˇItecI sUnenU tImenU sUnemU

‘reader (nom.)’ ‘of sleep’ (adj. nom. sg. m.) ‘dark’ (nom. sg. m.) ‘gathering’ (nom. sg.)

In (22) are listed forms containing four syllables and with at least two consecutive jer vowels in the underlying form. All cases of jer lowering in (22) are accounted for under the assumption that binary footing proceeds from right to left. (22) Forms with four syllables Underlying Surface a. cUcUcvcU vUskrIsnetU voskrIsnetU b. cUcUcvcv sU mUnojo so mUnojo c. cUcUcUcv pIpIrIca pIperIca vU sUnIme˘ vU sonIme˘ d. cUcUcUcU pIpIrIcI pepIrecI vU sUnImU vo sUnemU

‘resurrect’

(3 sg. present)

‘with me’ ‘pepper’ (gen. sg) [constructed] ‘in (the) gathering’ (loc.) ‘pepper’ (nom. Sg) ‘to (the) gathering’ (acc.)

To conclude, the distribution of strong and weak jers results from binary footing, assuming the system of moraic trochees. This is captured by the following foot-related OT constraints (following Prince 1990, McCarthy and Prince 1993a, 1995, Prince and Smolensky 1993): (23) FtBin: Feet are binary. (24) Align-R: Align every foot with the right edge of the prosodic word.

While FtBin requires that feet are maximally, and minimally, bimoraic, the alignment constraint in (24) mimics the effect of right-to-left footing, guaranteeing that a cUcUcU sequence becomes cU(cvcU) rather than *(cvcU)cU. Jer lowering is explained as a sonority threshold restriction on feet in OCS: the vowel heading the foot may not be a jer; that is, it has to belong to the class of [-consonantal, +tense] segments. Jers are thus sufficiently sonorous

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to be syllabic but are insufficiently sonorous to be foot bearing, as captured by the constraints in (25). (25) OCS a. Minimal sonority threshold imposed by the foot Son-f [-consonantal, +tense] b. Minimal sonority threshold imposed by the syllable Son-s [-consonantal]

We now turn to the complexities of OCS foot structure, which is characterized by opaque constraint interactions. Son-f plays a central role in evaluating optimal foot structure but for this purpose is, crucially, dominated by Faith. The evaluation of optimal foot nuclei, however, calls for the reversed ranking, with Son-f dominating Faith (to allow for jer lowering). Opaque constraint interactions in OCS will be resolved by positing two phonological levels: Level 1, at which Faith dominates Son-f, as in Mordwin, and Level 2, at which this dominance relation is reversed.11 This move is necessary because concomitant jer lowering and footing would lead to undesirable results (see note 12). At Level 1, at which all footing takes place, no jers are lowered due to the ranking Faith >> Son-f. The tableau in (26) shows that selecting a foot nucleus that meets the Son-f requirement is more important than satisfying Align-R. (26) Level 1: Align-R >> Son-f cvcUcU

Align-R

☞ cv(cUcU) (cvcU)cU

Son-f *

*!

At this point I introduce an additional foot-related constraint, FtForm, in (27), which ensures that trochaic feet containing a jer and a non-jer vowel are not headed by the jer. As a result, cUcUcv is footed as (cUcU)cv rather than *cU(cUcv). (27) FtForm: Feet of the (cUcv) shape are prohibited.

The tableau in (28) provides evidence that FtForm dominates Align-R, and the tableau in (29) shows that this constraint also dominates FtBin.12 (28) Level 1: FtForm >> Align-R cvcUcv

FtForm

☞ (cvcU)cv cv(cUcv)

Align-R *

*!

prosodic weight

135

(29) Level 1: FtForm >> FtBin cUcv

FtForm

☞ cU(cv)

FtBin *

(cUcv)

*!

The optimal candidate in (29) contains a monomoraic foot, in violation of FtBin. This analysis, which admits monomoraic feet in OCS, is supported by the forms in (30): a jer found in monosyllabic, and monomoraic, forms is subject to lowering and thus constitutes a foot head. (30) Monosyllables a. cv to to ‘that’ b. cU nU no ‘but’

In (30b), FtBin is violated under the pressure of the constraint in (31), which ensures that each prosodic word possesses a foot; the effect of this constraint has already been evidenced in Mordwin. (31) Head-w: A prosodic word must have a head.

Because a prosodic word must contain a foot, the footing of a monomoraic form proceeds in violation of FtBin, as shown in (32). (32) Level 1: Head-w >> FtBin cU

Head-w

☞ (cU) cU

FtBin *

*!

We now turn to the interactions at Level 2 and the Son-f >> Faith ranking that OCS provides evidence for. Once all footing is in place, the jer vowels that occupy the positions of foot nuclei are converted to the corresponding non-jer vowels, in order to meet the requirements of Son-f. In other words, the pattern of jer lowering in strong positions calls for Son-f >> Faith. The tableau in (33) presents a Level 2 interaction, its input form being the output from Level 1.

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(33) Level 2: Son-f >> Faith cv(cUcU)

Son-f

☞ cv(cocU)

Faith *

cv(cUcU)

*!

Thus far, I have only documented disyllabic feet, those in (3a), and this is precisely what Havlík’s Law focuses on, if interpreted in terms of foot structure. An obvious further line of investigation is to look for monosyllabic feet, those in (3b), that correspond to a single heavy syllable. This brings us to the so-called exceptions to Havlík’s Law: in Ostromirovo Evangelie (see note 7), jers in syllables closed with liquids do not follow the strong/weak pattern predicted by Havlík’s Law. According to V. Kiparsky (1979: 100), “U and I in the groups tUrt, tIrt, tUlt were always treated as if ‘strong’.” Late Common Slavic is characterized by a strong tendency toward open syllables (Bethin 1998 and references therein). By the time of the earliest written records, most closed syllables had been eliminated from the language. The phenomenon known as pleophony is part of the general open syllable strategy in Late Common Slavic and is characteristic of East Slavic (cf. Bethin 1998). As shown in (34), all syllables closed with liquids other than those with a jer nucleus were eliminated by copying the nuclear vowel. (34) but

oLC eLC ULC

Æ Æ Æ

oLoC eLeC ULC (with ULUC in certain dialects)

As a result, CUL is the only closed syllable in the East Slavic dialect of OCS and the only heavy syllable headed by jer. This closed syllable, being bimoraic, forms a trochaic foot.13 And indeed, in later East Slavic manuscripts, jers in syllables closed with liquids are lowered (Borkovskij and Kuznecov 1965, Shevelov 1965, V. Kiparsky 1979, Bethin 1998). In (35)–(37) I compare the forms found in Ostromirovo Evangelie, from the eleventh century, and their correspondents in thirteenth-century manuscripts Eleventh century (Ostr) (35) a. tUrgU b. sUmIrtI c. mUlnIji

Thirteenth century torgU smertI molnIja

‘square’ ‘death’ ‘lightening’

prosodic weight (36) a. b. c. d. e.

tUrgovati vIrba pIrvyi gUrlo vUlna

(37) gUrnIcI

137 torgovati verba pervyi gorlo volna

‘trade’ ‘willow’ ‘first’ ‘throat’ ‘wave’

gornecI

‘jar’

All the forms in the left-hand column contain syllables closed with a liquid whose nucleus is a jer vowel. Note that, in the thirteenth-century forms, the jer lowers in (35), where there is a weak jer in the immediately following syllable; in (36), where the lowered jer is the sole jer in the word; and in (37), where there is a strong jer in the following syllable. Thus, jer lowering in closed syllables does not fall under Havlík’s Law, which is why this case had been treated as an exception. But under the account of jer lowering proposed here, we can explain why a jer in a CUL syllable behaves like a strong jer: it occupies the head position within a foot. We also explain why the jer in a CUL syllable does not adhere to Havlík’s Law: this law refers only to jers in monomoraic syllables but not to those in bimoraic syllables, that is, to disyllabic but not to monosyllabic feet. The proposed analysis thus provides a unified account, covering both the cases that fall under Havlík’s Law and those that are seen as its exceptions: we expect jer lowering in all types of trochaic feet, both monosyllabic and disyllabic.

5.5. Asheninca: The Impact of the Prosodic Word In the three cases analyzed thus far, the prosodic constituent responsible for the distinction between light and heavy syllable nuclei is the foot, or rather, the minimal sonority threshold that it imposes. But if the prominence structure of the entire prosodic hierarchy is governed by sonority, and if a minimal sonority threshold is imposed by each prosodic constituent, the obvious question to ask is whether the prosodic word also participates in prosodic prominence. This prosodic constituent crucially differs from the foot, the syllable, and the mora in having a dual identity, both prosodic and morphosyntactic, which would allow for the possibility that the prosodic word does not contribute to the Son family of constraints. But if it did, we would have a fourth Son constraint, Son-w, which would impose its own sonority threshold. With both Son-w and Son-f as active constraints, and the former more restrictive than the latter, segments s2 and s6 in (38) would fall under the jurisdiction of Son-f, and segment s6 would be additionally evaluated by Son-w.

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(38) w

Son-w f

Son-f

fh

Son-s

sh

s

Son-m

mh

mh

s1

s2

s3

s4

sh

s5

mh

m

s6

s7

A case that would constitute supporting evidence for this is one in which primary stress would be associated with a higher sonority threshold than the secondary stress. This is precisely what we find in Asheninca, as described in Payne (1990). The distribution of stresses in Asheninca follows an iambic footing pattern, with feet corresponding to (LL), (LH), and (H), as shown in (39) and (40). In addition, a final syllable may not be footed, which leaves at least one syllable and in some cases as many as two syllables in word-final position unfooted. Since a final syllable may not be footed, a disyllabic form, as in (39h), contains only a single monomoraic foot. (39) Forms with monomoraic syllables a. pa.mé.na.kó.weN.tá.ke.ro ‘take care of her’ b. ha.má.naN.tá.ke.né.ro ‘he bought it for her’ c. no.kó.wa.wé.ta.ka ‘I wanted (it) in vain’ d. no.tóN.ka.méN.to ‘my gun’ e. ka.máN.ta.ke ‘he/she said’ f. no.pí.to ‘my canoe’ g. syoN.kí.ri ‘type of partridge’ h. há.ka ‘here’ (40) Forms with monomoraic and bimoraic syllables a. no.má.ko.ryáa.wái.ta.páa.ke ‘I rested a while’ b. pi.ñáa.páa.ke ‘you saw on arrival’ c. i.kyáa.píiN.ti ‘he always enters’ d. póo.ka.ná.ke.ro ‘you threw it out’ e. páa.ti.ká.ke.ri ‘you stepped on him’

The stresses in (39) and (40) are all equal in status. Moreover, any vowel in the Asheninca inventory – i, e, a, and o – may serve as the foot nucleus in (39) and (40). But once the distinction between the primary and the secondary stress is taken into account, we note that one of the vowels in the inventory,

prosodic weight

139

the high vowel i, may not serve as the primary stress nucleus, although it is a possible secondary stress nucleus.14 According to Payne (1990), primary stress falls within the four-syllable window at the word’s right edge.15 In the terms here, stress falls on one of the final two feet in a word: either the foot not headed by i or the rightmost one.16 In (41a–d), the rightmost foot is headed by a vowel other than i and can thus serve as the bearer of primary stress. However if, as in (41e–g), the final foot has i as its nucleus and the one immediately preceding has any vowel other than i, then the penultimate foot is the bearer of primary stress. Finally, in (41h), we see that a syllable with an i nucleus is selected for primary stress if neither foot is headed by a vowel other than i. (41) Primary and secondary stress a. ((sàa).(sáa)).ti b. ((no.tòN).(ka.méN)).to c. iN.kìN.ki.syi.re.tà.((ko.tà).(wa.ké)).ri d. e. f. g. h.

na.wì.((sa.wè).(ta.ná)).ka ((máa).(ki.ri)).ti ñàa.wyàa.((ta.wá).(ka.ri)).ri nò.syi.ya.pì.ca.tàN.((ta.ná).(ka.ri)).ri i.kàN.((ta.syi).(ta.rí)).ra

‘type of partridge’ ‘my gun’ ‘he thought about it for a while’ ‘I went in vain’ ‘type of bee’ ‘what he saw in a vision’ ‘I escaped from him’ ‘he said it without thinking’

These facts strongly suggest that the Son constraints in (42) are active in Asheninca. (42) Asheninca a. Minimal sonority threshold imposed by the prosodic word Son-w [-consonantal, -high] b. Minimal sonority threshold imposed by the foot Son-f [-consonantal] c. Minimal sonority threshold imposed by the syllable Son-s [-consonantal]

It is by virtue of the Son-w constraint that Asheninca distinguishes between the segmental positions s2 and s6 in (38): the latter, but not the former may not be occupied by i, whose sonority is sufficient to meet constraint (42b) (and incidentally, also (42c)) but not (42a), which imposes a more restrictive sonority threshold on those feet that serve as heads of the prosodic word. Thus, Asheninca provides evidence that the prosodic word imposes its own sonority threshold, which further suggests that every constituent in the prosodic hierarchy in (1), and in (38), participates in a prominence structure governed by sonority.

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5.6. Concluding Remarks I have proposed an account of light and heavy syllable nuclei without resorting to a hybrid weight hierarchy in which syllable weight would be computed on the basis of both mora count and the sonority of the nucleus. By positing the Son family of constraints, I have in effect factored out subparts of what may appear to be a hybrid weight system. In the first three cases analyzed here, English, Mordwin, and OCS, the relevant segmental positions are s2 and s6 in (38). In these positions, English prohibits syllabic liquids and nasals, OCS induces jer lowering, and Mordwin allows high vowels only under duress. This is because segments s2 and s6 in (38) are under the jurisdiction of Son-f, which overrides the effect of Son-s and Son-m. The s4 position is free for syllabic liquids and nasals in English or for jers in OCS, being under the jurisdiction of Son-s (and Son-m) but not Son-f. In Asheninca, however, in which the distinction between light and heavy syllable nuclei is relevant for determining the minimal sonority of syllables associated with primary stress but not of those associated with secondary stress, the sonority constraint at work is Sonw. This constraint crucially distinguishes between segments s2 and s6 in (38), imposing an additional sonority requirement on the latter but not on the former. This is because segment s6, but not s2, is under the jurisdiction of Sonw, which singles out only those feet that act as heads of the prosodic word. Cases of light and heavy syllable nuclei are thus a direct result of sonority constraints imposed by the prosodic constituents that belong to the extrasyllabic portion of the prosodic hierarchy. This is due to the role of sonority in the overall prominence structure of the prosodic constituency, with constituents at each prosodic level governing the sonority of segments that occupy relevant prosodic positions.

notes 1. Or in terms of branchingness of the rhyme, as, for example, in P. Kiparsky (1981), Steriade (1982), Levin (1987). 2. I am assuming the following sonority scale: obstruents, nasals, liquids, vowels. This scale will be fine-grained when the cases discussed here call for it. On the significance of sonority in characterizing syllable structure, see Hooper (1976), P. Kiparsky (1979, 1981), Steriade (1982), Selkirk (1984b), Zec (1988, 1995) and the references therein, Clements (1990). 3. Prince and Smolensky’s (1993) proposal can be interpreted as recognizing two peaks within the syllable that are constrained in terms of minimal sonority, the nucleus and the rhyme. While on p. 115 they propose a mechanism whereby only the syllable nucleus is constrained in terms of sonority, on p. 163, they allow for “a somewhat more complex approach [which] introduces a separate Rime Hierarchy of constraints. . . .” However, they do not envision any sonority thresholds associated with the prosodic constituents other than the syllable.

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141

4. The effect of Prosodic Peak Transparency can be achieved, formally, in terms of constraint conjunction, as elaborated in Zec (2000). 5. According to Kahn (1978), flapping occurs after vowels, glides, and r, as in potting; loiter and shouting; forty and parting. Flapping does not occur after l: *malted, *shelter. (In flapped forms like winter the nasal is elided.) Also, voiceless stops in pre-pausal position are unreleased after vowels and glides (sit, height), and after r (heart), but they are released after obstruents and l (apt, list, belt). 6. I follow Kenstowicz (1996) in assuming that Mordwin possesses unbounded leftheaded feet. 7. OCS is the language of the earliest Slavic documents translated by Cyril and Methodius, and their disciples, between the ninth and eleventh centuries, most likely spoken in the region of Thessaloniki (Lunt 1959 and references therein). The documents that this analysis is based on are Codex Zographensis (hereafter Zogr), a twelfth-century copy of an early manuscript, which according to Lunt (1959: 6) is “phonetically . . . nearest to the language of Cyril and Methodius,” and Ostromirovo Evangelie (hereafter Ostr), which dates from 1056 and possesses certain East Slavic traits. 8. Vocalic length is entirely absent from the modern counterparts of the dialects that serve as the basis of our analysis – Russian and Macedonian/Bulgarian. Among the historically long vowels in (18), e and o were nasalized vowels, and e˘ was an open mid vowel that may have been a diphthong in some dialects. 9. This is the case at the historical stage I am capturing here. At a later time, jers in weak positions were lost, but this aspect of Havlík’s Law is outside the scope of this paper (cf. (19a)). 10. In the schematized representations of OCS examples, I use the following abbreviations: c = any consonant, v = any non-jer vowel, U = jer vowel. 11. We would avoid introducing multiple levels by invoking a sympathy-based evaluation in addition to input-output evaluation, following McCarthy’s (2000) proposal. I opt for a level-based analysis to keep the focus on the central concern of this study; the question of the status of levels in phonology is outside its scope. 12. Crucially, FtForm takes effect only if Faith >> Son-f [-consonantal, +tense], thus preventing jer lowering. Under the reversed ranking, Son-f >> Faith, the input cv(cUcv) in (28) would yield *cv(cvcv) as the optimal ouput; and the input cUcv in (29) would yield *(cvcv) as optimal. This provides pivotal evidence that the evaluation of OCS forms needs to proceed in two steps. 13. By Late Common Slavic, bimoraic syllables ending in a liquid were transformed in several ways as part of the general open syllable strategy. While in Old East Slavic, they were transformed through pleophony, presented in (34), in Old South Slavic, such syllables were transformed by virtue of liquid metathesis, with VLC yielding LV:C, accompanied by the lengthening of the nuclear vowel. Since this is an obvious case of compensatory lengthening, it crucially argues for the moraic status of liquids in Late Common Slavic. The set of moraic segments in Late Common Slavic, and most likely also in OCS, was the [+sonorant, -nasal] class. For details, see Bethin 1998 and references therein. 14. Syllables with i in the nucleus, and either ¢ or sy in the onset, are according to Payne (1990) extralight and, as such, repel stress. One possible reason for this could be that vowels in such syllables are devoiced, judging by the conditions on vowel devoicing in Japanese (Tsuchida 1997 and references therein); if so, the

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properties of extralight syllables, most likely, are not strictly part of the weight system. 15. I follow Payne’s (1990) interpretation of the distribution of primary stress. Hayes (1995) presents a somewhat different picture of primary stress assignment in Asheninca, subsuming under this phenomenon the facts of clash resolution. I assume, together with Payne, that clash resolution is a phenomenon orthogonal to primary stress assignment. 16. A mechanism is needed to ensure that no feet other than the final two are considered for primary stress assignment. The one proposed by Hayes (1995) is to add the level of the colon to the prosodic hierarchy and then to assign primary stress within the rightmost colon.

references Bethin, C. Y. (1998). Slavic Prosody: Language Change and Phonological Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Borkovskij, V. I., and P. S. Kuznecov. (1965). Istoricˇeskaja grammatika russkogo jazyka. Moskva: Nauka. Clements, G. N. (1990). The role of the sonority cycle in core syllabification. In Papers in Laboratory Phonology 1: Between the Grammar and Physics of Speech, ed. J. Kingston and M. Beckman, 283–333. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gordon, M. K. (1999). Syllable weight: Phonetics, phonology, and typology. Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles. Hayes, B. (1982). Extrametricality and English stress. Linguistic Inquiry 13: 227–276. Hayes, B. (1989). Compensatory lengthening in moraic phonology. Linguistic Inquiry 20: 253–306. Hayes, B. (1995). Metrical Stress Theory: Principles and Case Studies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hooper, J. B. (1976). An Introduction to Natural Generative Phonology. New York: Academic Press. Hyman, L. (1984). A Theory of Phonological Weight. Dordrecht: Foris. Isacˇenko, A. V. (1970). East Slavic morphophonemics and the treatment of the jers in Russian: A revision of Havlík’s Law. International Journal of Slavic Linguistics and Poetics 13: 73–124. Ito, J., and A. Mester. (1993). Licensed segments and safe paths. In Constraint-Based Theories in Multilinear Phonology, ed. C. Paradis and D. LaCharite. Special issue, Canadian Journal of Linguistics 38: 197–213. Kahn, D. (1978). Syllable-based generalization in English phonology. Doctoral dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, Mass. Kenstowicz, M. (1996). Quantity sensitive stress. Rivista di Linguistica 9: 157–187. Kiparsky, P. (1979). Metrical structure assignment is cyclic. Linguistic Inquiry 10: 421–441. Kiparsky, P. (1981). Remarks on the metrical structure of the syllable. In Phonologica 1980, ed. W. Dressler et al., 245–256. Innsbruck: Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft. Kiparsky, V. (1979). Russian Historical Grammar. Vol. 1: The Development of the Sound System. (Translated from the German by J. I. Press.). Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis.

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Levin, J. (1987). A metrical theory of syllabicity. Doctoral dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, Mass. Lightner, T. M. (1972). Russian Phonology and Turkish Phonology: Problems in the Theory of Phonology. Edmonton, Alb.: Linguistic Research, Inc. Lunt, H. (1959). Old Church Slavonic Grammar. The Hague: Mouton. McCarthy, J. J. (2000). Sympathy and phonological opacity. Phonology 16: 331–399. McCarthy, J., and A. Prince. (1986). Prosodic phonology. Ms., University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Brandeis University, Waltham, Mass. McCarthy, J., and A. Prince. (1993a). Prosodic morphology 1: Constraint interaction and satisfaction. Ms., University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J. McCarthy, J., and A. Prince. (1993b). Generalized alignment. In Yearbook of Morphology 1993, ed. G. Booij, and J. van Marle, 79–153. Dordrecht: Kluwer. McCarthy, J., and A. Prince. (1995). Faithfulness and reduplicative identity. In UMOP 18, ed. Jill Beckman et al., 249–384. Amherst: GLSA, University of Massachusetts. Nespor, M., and I. Vogel. (1986). Prosodic Phonology. Dordrecht: Foris. Payne, J. (1990). Asheninca stress patterns. In Amazonian Linguistics, ed. D. L. Payne, 185–212. Austin: University of Texas Press. Prince, A. S. (1990). Quantitative consequences of rhythmic organization. In Papers from the 26th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society. Vol. 2: The Parasession on the Syllable in Phonetics and Phonology, ed. M. Ziolkowski et al., 355–398. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. Prince, A., and P. Smolensky. (1993). Optimality theory: Constraint interaction in generative grammar. Ms., Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J., and University of Colorado, Boulder. Selkirk, E. O. (1984a). Phonology and Syntax. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Selkirk, E. O. (1984b). On the major class features and syllable theory. In Language Sound Structure, ed. M. Aronoff and R. Oehrle, 107–136. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Selkirk, E. O. (1995). Prosodic structure of function words. In UMOP 18, ed. J. Beckman et al., 439–469. Amherst: GLSA, University of Massachusetts. Shevelov, J. (1965). A Prehistory of Slavic. The Hague: Mouton. Steriade, D. (1982). Greek prosodies and the nature of syllabification. Doctoral Dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, Mass. Tsuchida, A. (1997). Phonetics and phonology of Japanese vowel devoicing. Doctoral dissertation. Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. Tsygankin, P. J., and C. Z. Debaev. (1975). Ocˇerk sravnitel’noj grammatiki mordovskix (moksˇanskogo i erz’anskogo) literaturnix jazykov. Saransk: Mordovskij gosudarstvennyj universitet imeni N.P. Ogareva. Zec, D. (1988). Sonority constraints on prosodic structure. Doctoral dissertation, Stanford University, Stanford, Calif. Zec, D. (1995). Sonority constraints on syllable structure. Phonology 12: 85–129. Zec, D. (2000). Multiple Sonority Thresholds. In Annual Workshop on Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics, ed. T. H. King and I. A. Sekerina, 382–413. Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications.

part three NONMORAIC SYLLABLES AND SYLLABLE EDGES

6 Syllables and Moras in Arabic Paul Kiparsky

6.1. CV-, VC-, and C-dialects Some of the most salient differences among Arabic vernaculars have to do with syllable structure. This study focuses on the syllabification patterns of three dialect groups, (1) VC-dialects, (2) C-dialects, and (3) CV-dialects,1 and argues that they differ in the licensing of semisyllables, moras unaffiliated with syllables and adjoined to higher prosodic constituents. The analysis provides some evidence for a constraint-based version of Lexical Phonology, which treats word phonology and sentence phonology as distinct constraint systems that interact in serial fashion. VC-dialects include the dialects of Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, and Turkey (Blanc 1953, Erwin 1963, Cowell 1964, Grotzfeld 1965, Palva 1966, Jastrow 1978, Behnstedt 1994), Bedouin and Bedouin-type dialects, such as Bani-Hassan of Jordan (Irshied and Kenstowicz 1984), the Hijazi dialects of Central Arabia (Jastrow 1980a), and the dialects of eastern Libya (Owens 1984: 12ff., Mitchell 1993: 85, 88), and two groups of Egyptian dialects, spoken in the easternmost part of the Delta and in Upper Egypt approximately to Asyut. (Woidich 1980: 207, Behnstedt and Woidich 1985). C-dialects are spoken over a large area in North Africa, including Morocco (Harrell 1962a, 1962b, 1965), Tunis (Marçais 1977: 28, Singer 1980), and Mauretania (Cohen 1963). Like the coterritorial Berber (Dell and Elmedlaoui 1985, 1988, 1996a, 1996b, 1997, Dell and Tangi 1992, 1993, Prince and Smolensky 1993, Clements 1997), they have long consonant sequences, I would like to thank Andrew Garrett, Larry Hyman, John McCarthy, and Michael Redford for comments and discussion, and Albert Borg and Manwel Mifsud for their expert counsel on Maltese. The final version has benefited from the comments of two readers. After this chapter was written, I became aware that Hagstrom (1997) (who in turn refers to Potter 1994) had proposed more or less the same idea of unsyllabified moras for Mohawk and Passamaquoddy.

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which have been analyzed both as complex clusters and as sequences of syllables with consonantal nuclei. Certain Bedouin-type dialects also seem to belong in this group, as does the Maltese language. CV-dialects constitute a distinctive group, comprising the majority of the dialects of Egypt, including Cairo, most of the Delta, the oases of the Libyan desert, and Middle Egypt (Woidich 1980, Behnstedt and Woidich 1985). They correspond to Broselow’s (1992) onset dialects.2 VC- and C-dialects often coexist as distinct speech registers or sociolects within a basic regional dialect. I will argue that they have the same lexical syllabification and differ mainly in their postlexical phonology. The CVdialects, with a distinct lexical syllabification, differ more fundamentally from both. The table in (1) illustrates the distribution of diagnostic properties for 15 Arabic dialects and for the Maltese language. Column G is included to show that the syllabification isoglosses do not bundle with the major word stress isogloss. The Egyptian data are from Behnstedt and Woidich (1985), and those from other dialects are from Fischer and Jastrow (1980), Mitchell (1993), and the additional sources indicated in (2).3

(1)

a. i.

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

‘dog’

‘I wrote’

‘book’

‘they write’

‘they talk to’

‘her door’ ‘library’

kalib

katábit

(ʔi)ktáab yíkitbu

ikálmu

báabha

ii.

kalb

katábit

ktáab

ikállmu

báabha

máktaba

iii.

kal(i)b

kitábit

(ʔi)ktáab yikitbúun

ykalmúun

báabha

máktaba

iv.

caləb ˇ

catábət ˇ

ktáab

yiˇcətbúun

yˇcal(l)múun

v.

kal(ə)b katábət

ktáab

yə´k(ə)tbu

vi.

kalib

kitábit

ʔiktáab

yə´k(ə)tbu

kəlb

ktəbt

ktaab

yəktbu

kalb

kitábt

b. i. ii. iii.

c. i.

yíkitbu

ikállmu

maktába

báabha

máktabi

báabha

máktaba

báabha

máktiba

baabha

məktaba

yuktbúun

ykállmih

baabha

ktibt

ktieb

jiktbu

jitkellmu

biebha

[ktipt]

[kti:p]

[jígdbu]

[jitkélmu]

[bí:ba]

kalb

katábt

kitáab

yiktíbu

yikallímu

bábha

maktába

ii.

kalb

katábt

kitáab

yiktíbu

yikillímu

bábha

maktába

iii.

kalb

katábt

kitáab

yíkt(i)bu

y(i)káll(i)mu bábha

máktaba

iv.

kalb

katábt

kitáab

yíktibu

yikíllimu

báabha

máktaba

v.

kalb

katábt

kitáab

yiktsibúu

yikillimúu

bàabiháa

maktsába

vi.

kalb

katábt

kitáab

yiktsibóo

yikillimóo

bàabiháa

miktáaba

vii. kalb

katábt

kitáab

yíktibu

yikállimu

báabha

máktaba

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149

Key to the dialects shown in (1) a. VC-dialects i. Sˇarqiyya dialects (easternmost part of Delta) ii. Upper Egypt south of Asyut. iii. Iraq (Baghdad; Erwin 1963) iv. Syria (Soukhne; Behnstedt 1994) v. Syria (Damascus; Cowell 1964, Grotzfeld 1965) vi. Eastern Libya (Owens 1984) b. C-dialects i. Tunisia (Marçais 1977, Singer 1980) ii. Rufaidah, southern Hijaz (Prochazka 1988: 32, 153, 163, 179, 185, 198, 200) iii. Maltese (Aquilina 1959) c. CV-dialects i. Cairo ii. Rosetta iii. Damietta (Dumya¯t.) iv. ilBah.ariyya oasis v. alFara¯fira oasis vi. adDa¯xila oasis vii. Middle Egypt, Upper Egypt to Asyut.

A summary of the cross-dialectal generalizations follows. Phrase-final -CC clusters occur unrestrictedly only in CV- and C-dialects (columns A–B). They can be broken up by an epenthetic vowel, under conditions that vary according to style and dialect; for example, /katab-t/ katabit, katabt (CV-dialects), ktə bt (C-dialects) ‘I wrote’, /ʔakl/ ʔ akl, ʔ akil ‘food’, /ʔism/ ʔ ism, ʔ isim ‘name’. The VC-dialects either permit no -CC clusters (kalib, katabit) or permit them only with falling sonority (kalb, katabit). Phrase-initial onset CC- clusters are allowed in VC- and C-dialects, which accordingly allow the pan-Arabic process that deletes high vowels in open syllables to reduce even initial CiC- to CC- (column C). The resulting clusters are often broken up by a prothetic vowel (which in turn is phonetically preceded by a glottal stop, in satisfaction of Arabic’s undominated ranking of Onset); for example, (ʔ i)slaah., ‘plowshare’, (ʔ i)klaab, (ʔ i)claab ‘dogs’, (ʔ i)h.maar ‘donkey’ (silaah., kilaab, h.imaar in CV-dialects). Geminates are included in the class of permissible initial CC- clusters, a fact that will be of special significance in my analysis. Most often arising from assimilation, initial geminates occur only in VC- and C-dialects. They can be resolved by epenthesis in the same way as other onset clusters; for example, /l-landan/ llandan, ʔ illandan ‘to London’, /l-cˇaay/ cˇ-cˇaay ‘the tea’.

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Medial -CCC- clusters are broken up as -CiCC- in VC-dialects and as -CCiC- in CV-dialects; for example, Iraqi gílitla, Cairene ʔ ultílu(h), Moroccan qə ltlu ‘I/you (m.) said to him’. “Metathesis” of medial -CCiC- to -CiCC- occurs only in VC-dialects (column D); for example, /yi-ktib-u/ yikitbu ‘they write’. CV-dialects always retain -CCiC- (yiktibu), and C-dialects simply drop the vowel in the corresponding cases (yiktbu). Woidich (1980: 212) and independently Broselow (1992: 35) noticed that dialects have metathesis only if they have epenthesis of the -CCC- Æ -CiCC- type, and the correlation with the other VC-dialects traits can be seen for Egyptian in Behnstedt and Woidich 1985: maps 59, 66, 67. As Woidich and Broselow point out, this is evidence for interpreting metathesis as a composite process consisting of medial syncope followed by insertion of an epenthetic vowel into the resulting -CCC- cluster (-CCiC- Æ -CCC- Æ -CiCC-). Desonorization of word-final -VCR, -VVR occurs only in CV-dialects. For example, in North Yemen the CV-/VC- isogloss coincides with the incidence  , -V ´ ʔR  ) (Behnstedt 1985: 14, 48, 58). In of glottalization and devoicing (-VCR ʔl, Egypt, final glottalization occurs in a subset of CV-dialects; for example, [ka mo:ʔs] (Behnstedt and Woidich 1985, maps 41–43). High vowel deletion occurs after geminates only in the VC- and C-dialects (column E); for example, /y-kallim-u/ (y)ikal(l)mu ‘they talk to someone’, /y-sakkir-u/ (y)isak(k)ru, ‘they shut’, /y-ʕ allim-u/ (y)iʕ al(l)mu ‘they teach’. All CV-dialects retain the vowel (yikallimu, yiʕ allimu, yisakkiru (or yikillimu etc.)). In most dialects, the geminate is then shortened, but retention of a quantitative distinction between -VCC.C- and -VC.C- is attested, for example, in Qift. (Upper Egypt; Nishio 1994: 41). For Egyptian dialects, that the incidence of i-deletion after medial geminates correlates with the possibility of initial clusters and with epenthesis of the -CCC- Æ -CiCC- type was noted by Behnstedt and Woidich (1985: 74). Shortening of nonfinal CVVC- before word-level endings, and in the output of word-level syncope, occurs only in CV-dialects: /baab-ha/ babha ‘her door’, /saah.ib-i/ sah.b-i ‘my friend’, /saah.ib-a/ sah.b-a ‘girlfriend’ (column F). “Cyclic” effects, such as the contrast between fhímna ‘we understood’ and fihímna ‘he understood us’ (Brame 1974, Kenstowicz 1981, 1996), are attested only in VC-dialects. Opaque epenthesis/stress interactions (such as the antepenultimate stress of /fihm-na/ fíhimna ‘our understanding’) are attested only in VC-dialects. Only here is the epenthetic vowel invisible to lexical processes like stress and vowel shortening. In CV-dialects, epenthetic vowels are always visible to lexical processes and get stressed under the same conditions as regular vowels; for example, Cairene /bint-na/ bintína ‘our daughter’, like maktába.

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Previous theoretical literature on these phenomena has concentrated primarily on two sets of issues: the divergent ways of resolving consonant clusters by epenthesis and the problems of cyclicity and opacity raised by the Levantine dialects. Discussion of the first question was launched by Selkirk (1981) in the context of syllable theory with a proposal that stray consonants are assigned to onsets in CV-dialects and to rhymes in VC-dialects. In a variation on this approach, Broselow (1992) argued that stray consonants are linked to syllable nodes directly in CV-dialects and via moras in VC-dialects. A rather different approach was initiated by Ito (1986, 1989) and further developed by Farwaneh (1995). They suggested that CV-dialects syllabify left to right and that VC-dialects syllabify right to left. Mester and Padgett (1994) noted that this processual formulation can be translated into constraint-based terms by means of alignment constraints. Research on the second complex of issues began with Brame (1974), who noted that in Levantine dialects the blocking of syncope is systematically predictable and proposed a cyclic analysis to explain it. It was continued by Kenstowicz (1981, 1983, 1986) and others and recently by Kager (1999), who worked out an Optimality Theory (OT) renalysis using O/O constraints and also proposed a transderivational analysis for the problem of opaque stress. In the analysis to be developed in this chapter I claim that the dialects differ in whether they license unsyllabifiable consonants by moras adjoined to the prosodic word.4 I will refer to consonants so licensed as semisyllables. Formally, semisyllables arise where a constraint License-m, which requires all moras to be licensed by syllables, is outranked by markedness constraints on the form of syllables and feet. The syllabic typology introduced earlier in this section can be reconstructed in terms of the level at which semisyllables are licensed: (1) C-dialects allow semisyllables both at the word level and postlexically, (2) VC-dialects allow semisyllables only at the word level (License-m is undominated postlexically), and (3) CV-dialects allow no semisyllables at any level (License-m is undominated everywhere). I show that this analysis is superior to the directionality/alignment approach to Arabic syllabification and eliminates the O/O constraints that have been proposed for the cyclicity and opacity phenomena. Such theoretical interest as the analysis developed here lies primarily in two aspects. First, it provides evidence for the violable character of Strict Layering and, in particular, for moras that are unaffiliated with syllables. Second, it is incompatible with fully parallel OT, because it crucially requires distinct constraint systems for word phonology and sentence phonology, which moreover must interact in serial fashion. Thus, if the analysis is correct, it constitutes support for a constraint-based version of Lexical Phonology and Morphology (LPM).

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The main features of the specific model of constraint-based LPM that I will assume are the following: • Stems, words, and sentences are characterized by distinct constraint systems. • These constraint systems are serially related. • Morphology and phonology are cyclically interleaved in each domain. • I/O constraints are the only type of correspondence constraint.

I refer to this model as stratal OT. In Kiparsky (to appear) I argue that stratal OT does a better job of explaining morphology/phonology interactions, and opaque constraint interactions, than parallel OT with an enriched correspondence theory. Trading in sympathy constraints, O/O constraints, and Paradigm Uniformity constraints for the intrinsic seriality of domains improves descriptive adequacy and lead to gains in learnability, naturalness, and typological restrictiveness. Just as LPM solves OT’s problems with synchronic analogy and opaque constraint interactions, so OT helps LPM complete its synchronic program of modeling the lexicon and the morphology/phonology interface and its diachronic program of providing the basis for a theory of analogical change. In the cited work I support these claims with analyses of the principal benchmark phonological systems of the recent theoretical literature, as well as several that are new to it. An important strand of evidence for stratal OT is that it helps realize the typological goals of OT phonology. Crucially, an important site of crosslinguistic and dialectal variation is whether a markedness constraint is active in stems, in words, or postlexically, which determines its domain and interaction with other constraints. It is sometimes claimed that parallel OT is more restrictive than serial models. That is true only if correspondence theory is restricted to I/O constraints. When augmented with sympathy constraints, O/O constraints, and/or with Paradigm Uniformity constraints, parallel OT is not more restrictive than stratal OT. It is just different, and the differences are uniformly to its disadvantage. While this chapter assumes stratal OT, and its results add a measure of support to that framework, its main purpose is not to compare it with parallel OT or with rule-based serial theories. It is primarily about syllable theory and the syllable structure of Arabic vernaculars.

6.2. Semisyllables Generalizing the Exhaustive Syllabification principle of Selkirk 1981, the Prosodic Licensing principle formulated in Ito 1986, 1989 requires that every

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segment be assigned to a higher-level prosodic constituent. A stronger licensing requirement, Strict Layering, requires that every nonhighest prosodic or metrical element be in its entirety a constituent of an element belonging to the next higher category on the prosodic hierarchy (Nespor and Vogel 1986: 7): (3)

a. A given nonterminal unit of the prosodic hierarchy, Xp, is composed of one or more units of the immediately lower category, Xp-1. b. A unit of a given level of the hierarchy is exhaustively contained in the superordinate unit of which it is a part.

In the OT perspective, higher-ranked constraints could force violations of Prosodic Licensing and Strict Layering. “Floating” elements are presumably violations of Prosodic Licensing, occurring when it is dominated both by markedness constraints (syllable structure, etc.) and by faithfulness constraints. Such violations of Prosodic Licensing do not occur in Arabic, as far as I can tell. But Strict Layering is, under certain conditions, violable in Arabic. I assume the proposal of Selkirk (1995) that Strict Layering corresponds to a class of subconstraints that regulate the affiliation of elements in the prosodic hierarchy and that are dominated but nonetheless visible in Arabic. Of particular interest here will be the two constraints License-m and License-Segment, which respectively require that a mora be affiliated with a syllable and that a segment be affiliated with a syllable. These are the constraints whose ranking determines the syllabic typology of Arabic vernaculars. The claim that Strict Layering constraints are violable has respectable roots even in pre-OT work. Aside from extrametrical and floating elements, which violate Prosodic Licensing and a fortiori Strict Layering, several other types of prosodic representations that violate the latter constraint have been motivated by Ito and Mester (1992) under the heading of weak layering. For metrical constituency, Ito and Mester propose structures of the form in (4). w

(4)

f s m

s m

m

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Structures of the form in (5), required for cliticization and compounding, respectively, also violate Strict Layering.5 (5)

w

a. w X

clitic w

b. w

w

X

Y

Ito and Mester claim that Strict Layering does hold between moras and syllables, and formulate a principle (“Mora Confinement”) that states that m can only be licensed by s. This would be an unexpected restriction on their otherwise general hypothesis. I shall argue that the Weak Layering hypothesis holds in complete generality. Violations of Weak Layering for moras require no novel constraints. The possibility is already inherent in the uncontroversial constraints of standard syllable theory. Suppose that Foot-Binarity, License-Seg (which requires that a segment be licensed by a syllable or mora), and the relevant Max and Dep constraints all dominate the requirement that a mora be affiliated with a syllable (License-m). OT principles require, other things being equal, the representation that constitutes the minimal violation of the constraints. To avoid gratuitously violating Prosodic Licensing, a mora that cannot be affiliated with a syllable should be affiliated with the lowest possible superordinate prosodic category. In Arabic, affiliation of an unsyllabified mora with the next higher category foot would violate the otherwise undominated constraints on foot size. I will therefore assume that it is affiliated with the prosodic word, which is not subject to any size constraints (or at least not to any size constraints that would bar this affiliation). Previous evidence for moraic licensing includes Hyman (1985) for Gokana, Zec (1988) for Bulgarian, and Buckley (1994), 6.4 for Kashaya. Moras that are prosodically licensed by adjunction to a superordinate prosodic category offer a way to accommodate what an older phonetic tradition originating with Sievers (1901) has called “semisyllables,” or “minor syllables” (Sievers’s “Nebensilben”). I shall adopt the term semisyllable here to denote such an unsyllabified mora, without meaning to imply that all the things that have been called semisyllables are necessarily to be analyzed that way. Semisyllables offer what is arguably the right representation for trimoraic trochees, including superheavy syllables and resolved trochees. Bye (1997)

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argues that Estonian and Saami superheavy (overlong, Q3) syllables have a third unsyllabified mora after the bimoraic core. He actually suggests that the unsyllabified mora in such sesquisyllabic structures is freestanding, but that does not seem to be an essential feature of his analysis. In a number of Slavic languages, nonsyllabic sonorants occur at word edges in positions where they violate the sonority sequencing constraint. For example, Russian words like in (6a) are monosyllabic (as evidence from stress, versification, etc. shows). In Czech, word-initial liquids are nonsyllabic, while consonant + liquid sequences are syllabic, as in (6b) (Rubach and Booij 1990). (6)

a. Russian: mglá ‘mist’, rtá ‘mouth’ (gen.) (one syllable) b. Czech: rty ‘lips’, rvát ‘pull’ (one syllable), srdce ‘heart’, zrno ‘corn’, vlna ‘wool’, vichr ‘wind’, bobr ‘beaver’, bratr ‘brother’ (two syllables)

In some Mon-Khmer languages, the canonical word structure is a sesquisyllable (a “1–12 -syllable”), carefully documented for Kammu by Svantesson (1983), who proposes that sesquisyllables are regular syllables with a prepended headless syllable (syllable with an empty nucleus, a “minor syllable,” in his terminology).6 A degenerate syllable treatment has been worked out by Shaw (1993) for Bella Coola semisyllables; Cho and King (this volume) also argue that some semisyllables are nonmoraic syllables. A more minimalist view of semisyllables, in line with the proposal of this chapter, is that they are unsyllabified moras. Sesquisyllabic structures, then, would be regular syllables with a prepended mora. Bagemihl (1991) suggests this analysis for Bella Coola, where semisyllables are not constrained by position or sonority. I do not wish to claim that headless syllables are ruled out in principle; in fact, it is possible that they occur, in addition to unsyllabified moras, in Kammu. Svantesson (1983) distinguishes between nontonal and tonal semisyllables. Nontonal minor syllables contain just a single consonant, with the possibility of an added schwa in careful speech; for example, c.mɔ ɔ l ‘to sow’. Tonal minor syllables are of the form CC-, where the second consonant is either a sonorant (e.g., hr.maal ‘soul’) or a reduplicated copy of the stem-final segment, which may be an obstruent (e.g., rt.yuut ‘bellows’). The former would be a semisyllable in my terms, the latter a degenerate (headless) full syllable. One virtue of the interpretation of semisyllables as unsyllabified moras offered here is that it implies that they are not necessarily restricted to consonants. If Onset is also added to the set of constraints that dominate License-m, then onsetless syllables will be avoided by treating onsetless vowels as semisyllables. Several researchers have indeed noticed that onsetless initial vowels tend to have a special prosodically defective status in various languages, of a kind that suggests that they are not syllables in their

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own right at least at some level of representation. Mutaka and Hyman (1990), in their study of Kinande reduplication, argue that there are only CVsyllables at the stem level and that unsyllabified moras join syllables at a later stratum (or postlexically). Downing (1998) pursues this analysis and relates it to the Onset constraint of Prince and Smolensky (1993). Further evidence for the degenerate status of onsetless syllables has been presented by McCarthy and Prince (1993) and Odden (1995). In terms of the constraints assumed here, a parse as unsyllabified moras follows straightforwardly from the constraint ranking in which Onset, Max, and Dep dominate License-m. The basic argument for treating semisyllables as unsyllabified moras is that it immediately explains their characteristic cross-linguistic properties: (7)

a. b. c. d. e. f. g.

Unstressed, toneless, or reduced tonal contrasts Restricted segmental inventory Can be less sonorous than syllable nuclei Restricted shape (e.g., no onset, or no branching onset, no coda) Sometimes restricted to peripheral position (typically word edges) Prosodically invisible Can be subject to minimum sonority requirement

Precisely these properties hold for the second (nonhead) mora of syllabic nuclei. On the assumption that they are properties of nonhead moras, the present proposal predicts them for semisyllables as well. In the C- and VC-dialects, License-m is ranked below the constraints that impose syllable and foot well-formedness, and below Reduce (Kirchner 1996, McCarthy 1999), which requires minimizing the duration of light syllables on the scale a > i,u > 0/ (in practice, in nonfinal position, because a dominant alignment constraint preserves vowels at the right edge). This ranking will result in certain sesquisyllabic structures. For example, on /baab-ha/, /yi-ktib-u/, /ʔakl/, and /silaah./, it imposes the syllabification shown in (8) in the C-dialects, and, at the word level, in the VC-dialects as well.7 (8)

Semisyllables in VC- and C-dialects w w

w

w

f

f

s

s

s

m m m

f

f s

s

s

m m m

m

m

m

m

m

b h a

y i

k

t

b u

b a

ʔ a k

l

m s

m m m l

a

h.

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157

Postlexically, VC-dialects epenthesize a vowel before moraic consonants under certain (partly variable) conditions, for example, (yík)tm.bu Æ (yi.ki)tm.bu, (ʔ ak)lm Æ (ʔ a.ki)lm, and, optionally, in initial clusters that result from deletion, for example, sm.(laa)h.m Æ (ʔ is).(laa)h.m. The CV-dialects, where avoidance of semisyllables is a high-priority constraint, the syllabification in (9) results instead and is retained in the postlexical phonology. (9)

In CV-dialects, moras must be affiliated with syllables. w w w f

f

f

w

f

f

s

s

s

s

s

s

s

s

m m

m

m m

m

m

m m

m

m m

b a b

h a

u

ʔ a k l

y i

k

t

i

b

s i

l

a

h.

Crucially, moras that are not affiliated with syllables or feet do not count toward syllable weight or foot size. Therefore, all dialects that allow semisyllables permit what look like superheavy syllables, that is, on our analysis regular syllables with an adjoined semisyllable. Additional evidence that unsyllabified and unfooted moras do not count for prosodic minimality is furnished by the relationship of epenthesis and lengthening in the dialect of De¯r izZo¯r spoken in Syria (Jastrow 1978: 79–80, 87).8 Like most dialects of Arabic, De¯r izZo¯r categorically prohibits monoˇ C. Such words would have only a syllabic lexical words of the form (C)CV single mora because the undominated constraint Final-C forces final consonants to be weightless. When the morphology forms such words, they are accommodated to the minimum word requirement in one of two ways. Either the root vowel is lengthened (see (10a)), or alternatively, a prothetic stressed i (or u, in back contexts) may be added, in which case the root vowel remains short (see (10b)). As in other dialects of this type, all initial clusters may optionally get a prothetic vowel. Because epenthesis is postlexical, the prothetic vowel is unstressable and does not count toward satisfaction of the word minimum. Therefore, lengthening takes place regardless of prothesis (see (10c)). (10) a. /kal/ ko¯l ‘eat’, /ktib/ kte¯b ‘write’, /rkab/ rka¯b ‘climb’, ra¯b ‘hit’ (2 sg. m. imperatives) b. íktib ‘write’, írkab ‘climb’, ú rub ‘hit’ ´ (*isˇkún) “what” c. sˇku¯n ~ isˇku¯n

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Thus, on the one hand, /ktib/ ‘write!’ has three possible pronunciations in the De¯r izZo¯r dialect: kte¯b, ikte¯´ b (lexical lengthening with optional postlexical epenthesis), and íktib (lexical epenthesis). Impossible, on the other hand, are the following pronunciations: *ktib (too short), *iktíb (with postlexical epenthesis the word still does not satisfy the lexical word minimum; with lexical epenthesis the stress is misplaced), *íkte¯b (if postlexical epenthesis, it has the wrong stress; if lexical epenthesis, the vowel lengthening is unnecessary, constituting a gratuitous Dep violation). Jastrow (1978) insightfully explains these and other data on the basis of a distinction between phonemic and phonetic epenthesis, which in this case is for practical purposes equivalent to our distinction between lexical and postlexical epenthesis. A similar idea figures in other traditional and structural grammars of Arabic as well.

6.3. Overview of the Analysis The syllable structure of the dialects differs in the ranking of License-m in the word-level phonology. In the VC- and C-dialects, it is outranked by a number of faithfulness constraints (of both the Max and Dep type), by the markedness constraints Ft-Bin, License-C, and by Reduce (which minimizes the number of light syllables, specifically, because of dominating Align and Max constraints, of nonfinal light syllables with high vowels); in CV-dialexts, it dominates them. The tableaux in (11) and (12) show the basic idea in schematic form.

(11) VC-dialects: Word level

Reduce

Max-m

License-m

a. Input: [(baa)b]-ha i.

☞ (báa)bm.ha

**

ii.

(bab).ha

**

iii.

(báa).(bi.ha)

***

* *

b. Input: [ki.(táa)b] i.

☞ km(táa)b

ii.

ki(táa)b

* *

c. Input: [(yík).(ti.bu)] i. ii.

☞ (yík).tm.bu (yík).(ti.bu)

* **

*

...

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(12) CV-dialects: Word level

License-m

Reduce

*

**

Max-m

...

a. Input: [(baa)b]-ha i.

(báa)bm.ha

ii. ☞ (bab).ha

**

iii.

***

(báa).(bi.ha)

*

b. Input: [ki.(táa)b] i.

km(táa)b

*

ii. ☞ ki(táa)b

*

c. Input: [(yík).tib]u i.

(yík).tm.bu

ii. ☞ (yík).(ti.bu)

*

* **

Because of the low ranking of License-m in VC- and C-dialects, they preserve the long vowel in /baabha/ and delete the syllable final -i- in /fihimna/ and /yiktibu/, in each case forming an unsyllabified moraic consonant. In the VCdialects, however, License-m is promoted in the postlexical phonology, causing epenthesis of an unmarked vowel (i, or ə , in those dialects that have it) before semisyllables.9 In the VC-dialects, the vowel is epenthesized before rather than after the semisyllable because of prosodic faithfulness: it is the minimal modification that brings the word-level moraic (semisyllabic) parse into line with the language’s surface syllable canon. Thus, (yík).tm.bu Æ (yí.ki)tm.bu, not (*yík).(ti.bu). Nonfinal CVVC syllables that arise in the word-level phonology surface in all VC- and C-dialects, because these dialects license the third mora -C as a semisyllable ((báa).bm.ha ‘her door’). In the CV-dialects, License-m ranks high at the word level, forcing violations of faithfulness constraints and phonological constraints, depending on their ranking. Most CV-dialects eliminate CVVC syllables by shortening the vowel, for example, /baab-ha/ Æ bábha. Some do it by epenthesis (baabiha), and some Middle Egyptian dialects accommodate superheavy syllables unchanged (baabha). These three subtypes of CV-dialects arise by variation in ranking between the constraints Dep-m, Ft-Bin, and Max-m. Phrase-initial onset CC- clusters are allowed only in VC- and C-dialects, for example, sm(laa)h.m ~ (ʔ is).(laa)h.m, ‘plowshare, weapon’, versus si.(laa)h.m in CV-dialects. Syncope is allowed to create initial clusters only where their first consonant can be licensed as a semisyllable. The distribution of initial geminates is similar: Syrian (Mitchell 1993: 92ff.) /n-midd/ mmidd ‘we extend’,

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/w-t-afaʕ/ ttáfaʕ ‘he agreed’ (infixed /t/), Moroccan /ttə-ktəb/ ttəktəb ‘it was written’. The semisyllabic analysis of initial geminates is shown in (13). w

(13)

f s m

m

t

a

s

f

m

m

a

ʕ

In addition to the dialectal distribution of geminates, this representation accounts for their phonological properties. They are bimoraic, hence true geminates, as shown by the fact that they commonly arise by assimilation. While the first member is moraic, it is nonsyllabic, hence invisible to stress, and does not satisfy word minimality constraints. Because final consonants and the initial consonant of a geminate are both semisyllables, a hypothetical *mmut would have a monomoraic foot; therefore, it is not a possible word. Medial -CCC- clusters can be parsed in VC- and C-dialects by making the middle consonant a semisyllable; for example, /gil-t-la/ Æ (word level) (gil).tm.la Æ (postlexical) (gi.li)tm.la in VC-dialects, but /ʔul-t-lu/ Æ (ʔ ul)(ti.lu) in CV-dialects. Metathesis is restricted to VC-dialects. I follow a long tradition of Arabic phonology in treating “metathesis” as syncope followed by epenthesis (Mitchell 1960, Woidich 1974, 1980: 211, Kenstowicz and Abdul-Karim 1980, Kenstowicz 1986, Broselow 1992). Syncope is driven by Reduce at the word level (/yiktibu/ Æ (yik)tm.bu) and epenthesis is postlexical as before ((yik)tm.bu Æ (yi.ki)tm.bu).10 In CV-dialects, word-level syncope is blocked after clusters, because they do not allow the semisyllable needed to parse its output in conformity with Ft-Bin, hence /yi-ktib-u/ Æ (yik).(ti.bu). C-dialects simply have deletion without postlexical epenthesis. My analysis requires, and is in a sense a consequence of, the intrinsic serialism of levels in LPM. Any evidence for it will thus further support serial OT over parallel OT. The analysis of metathesis crucially depends on the serial relation between the word-level and postlexical phonology. The two constraint systems induce an intrinsic ordering /yiktibu/ Æ yík.tm.bu Æ (yí.ki)tm.bu. This is also the key to our solution to the opacity and cyclicity problems. High vowels delete after geminate consonants only in VC- and C-dialects: /y-kallim-u/ y(i)kal(l)mu ‘they talk to someone’ versus yikallimu in CVdialects. Only in the former can the resulting superheavy syllable be prosodically licensed.11 The correlation of medial syncope, “metathesis,” and retention of super-

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161

heavy syllables follows because deletion of light vowels and retention of superheavy syllables are prosodically licensed the same way; in VC-dialects they can apply more widely because semisyllables are allowed. Several intermediate forms of VC- and CV-dialects are also attested, corresponding to the possibility of ranking License-m at several points among the other constraints. Phrase-final -CC clusters that violate sonority sequencing occur only in CV- and C- dialects, but their status is quite different in the two types. In VCand C-dialects, the second C is licensed as a semisyllable at the word level, and in VC-dialects an epenthetic vowel is inserted before it, at least if the cluster violates sonority sequencing. For example, the lexical representation of /akl/ is ʔ ak.lm in VC-dialects and in C-dialects; the semisyllable is broken up by postlexical epenthesis in VC-dialects (ʔ akil). In CV-dialects, in contrast, the second consonant is parsed in the word phonology as a nonmoraic stray consonant (an “extrametrical” consonant adjoined to the prosodic word), namely ʔ akl; therefore, epenthesis is inapplicable. Desonorization of word-final consonants seems to be a trait of CV-dialects. It characteristically involves devoicing and glottalization, sometimes neardeletion. In northern Yemen, the Western dialects break up final -CC clusters of rising sonority with an epenthetic vowel, a VC-dialect trait (e.g., /ʔism/ Æ (ʔ i)sim ‘name’, /ʔibn/ Æ (ʔ i)bin ‘son’). Those of the eastern part seem to be of the CV-type, and lack epenthesis in -CC clusters. In these dialects, final consonants, including sonorants, are glottalized after a long vowel and ¯ ʔC , -VCC . Jastrow (1980a: 110) reports similar dedevoiced in clusters: V sonorization phenomena for southern Yemen, which also retain -CC. Epenthesis and desonorization thus seem to be in complementary distribution (Behnstedt 1985: 14, 48, 58). In some Egyptian dialects, again of the CV-type, word-final consonants are devoiced and an intrusive glottal is heard; for ʔl], /-ooz/ Æ [o¯ʔs] (Behnstedt and Woidich 1985, maps example, /-al/ Æ [a 41–43).12 This distribution can be understood if we take desonorization to be a process that applies to nonmoraic consonants, in terms of the syllable structure of VC- and CV-dialects proposed in (8) and (9). Thus, the boxed consonant in (14b) undergoes desonorization. (14) a. VC-dialects w f s

ʔ

m

m

m

a

k

l

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Paul Kiparsky b. CV-dialects w f s

ʔ

m

m

a

k

l

That moraic consonants should tend to remain more sonorous than nonmoraic consonants makes good phonological sense, since moraic elements are known to be subject to sonority restrictions (Zec 1988). Cyclic blocking of syncope, typified by the fihímna: fhímna contrast, is restricted to a group of VC-dialects. All Levantine dialects are said to have it (Mitchell 1993: 156). To my knowledge it has not been reported for any CVdialect, and this is predicted, for in CV-dialects, deletion cannot give rise to forms like fhím-na ‘we understood’ in the first place, so the question of blocking that deletion by lexically assigned stress does not arise. In C-dialects, Reduce outranks Max-V´, so that stem-level stresses do not protect vowels from deleting at the word level; thus, these cyclic effects cannot surface. The tableau in (15) shows the word-level (w.l.) phonology of VC-dialects; the corresponding tableau in (16) is for CV-dialects.

(15) VC-dialects

. . . *Complex Max-[V´] Reduce License-m . . .

a. Input: [(fí.hi)mm] ‘he understood’ (unsuffixed): no change b. Input: [fi.(hímm)na] ‘we understood’ (stem-level suffix) i.

fi.(hím).na

***

ii. ☞ fm(hím).na iii.

(fhím).na

** *

*

**

c. Input: [(fí.hi)m]-na ‘he understood us’ (w.l. suffix) i.

☞ fi.(hím).na

ii.

fm(hím).na

iii.

(fhím).na

*** *

*

**

*

**

*

syllables and moras in arabic

163

(16) CV-dialects

. . . *Complex Max-[V´] License-m Reduce . . .

a. Input: [(fí.hi)m] ‘he understood’ (unsuffixed): no change b. Input: [fi.(hím)na] ‘we understood’ (stem-level suffix) i.

☞ fi.(hím).na

ii.

fm(hím).na

iii.

(fhím).na

*** * *

** **

c. Input: [(fí.hi)m]-na ‘he understood us’ (w.l. suffix) i.

☞ fi.(hím).na

ii.

fm(hím).na

iii.

(fhím).na

*** * *

*

*

** **

Invisibility of epenthetic vowels to lexical constraints (such as stress and shortening) is restricted to VC- and C-dialects, because in these dialects stray consonants are licensed as semisyllables, so epenthetic vowels are not present at the word level.13 This results in surface violations of the otherwise inviolable requirement that the last nonfinal foot is stressed; for example, /fihm-na/ Æ (w.l.) (fíh)mm.na Æ (postlex.) fíhim-na ‘our understanding’. Stray consonants cannot be licensed in CV-dialects (except word-finally), so they must receive an epenthetic vowel in the lexical phonology, which is necessarily visible to stress like any other lexical vowel. For example, Cairene (ʔul)(tí.lu) ‘I/you (m. sg.) said to him’ is stressed like (mak)(tába). In sum, apparent surface exceptions to stress arise when the conditions for lexical stress assignment are masked by postlexical epenthesis. A word like fíhim-na is disyllabic for purposes of the word phonology, including stress. The assumption that unsyllabifiable consonants are semisyllables in the lexical phonology of VC-dialects explains the opaque constraint interaction of stress and epenthesis. The licensing of semisyllables in VC-dialects is subject to certain constraints. To derive ka(táb)tm rather than *(káta)bmtm and to exclude hypothetical forms with complex consonant clusters, we must assume that some constraint prohibits two adjacent semisyllables.14 This has a further consequence: the two middle consonants of a medial four-consonant cluster cannot be licensed as consecutive semisyllables. Epenthesis is then lexical, making the closed syllable visible to stress. In an input like /kitab-t-l-ha/, -tl- cannot be parsed as two semisyllables, nor (since semisyllables are onsetless) as one. The cluster must therefore get a full syllable for all its consonants to be parsed. A full syllable requires a vocalic nucleus and

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therefore gets an epenthetic vowel, forming a closed syllable at the word level. Contrast: (17) a. /kitab-l-ha/ Æ (w.l.) ki.táb.lm.ha Æ (postlex.) kitábilha ‘he wrote to her’ b. /kitab-t-l-ha/ Æ (w.l.) kitabtílha ‘I wrote to her’

In the following sections I motivate in more detail some aspects of the analysis just sketched out.

6.4. Initial Geminates Mitchell’s (1993) phonetic description of initial geminates in Arabic states clearly that they share with medial geminates the phonetic characteristics of length and tenseness: “All types of gemination reveal not only an increase of duration over non-gemination but also greater muscular tension and pulmonary pressure, a more extensive spread of tongue-palate contact, increased loudness of adjoining vowels and ‘incisiveness’ of on- and off-glides (especially in the case of plosive consonants), as relevant phonetic characteristics. . . . An epenthetic vowel may be heard initially in most cases of initial gemination but it is never essential and is better omitted in the [Moroccan, Iraqi, and Levantine] vernaculars. . . .” (Mitchell 1993: 92). Owens (1984: 26) similarly states that gemination in eastern Libyan “may have a realization as glottalization or an increased length on an initial consonant, the latter realization common before voiceless consonants and nasals.” Initial geminates constitute fairly direct evidence for unsyllabified moras. Given that assimilation is the spread of a melody over timing slots or syllabic positions, an assimilated geminate must be affiliated with two such positions. In a medial geminate, these positions are the coda of one syllable and the onset of the next, or, in the most popular version of the moraic theory, the second mora of one syllable and the syllable node of the next. Onset geminates must have some extra syllabic position, and under standard assumptions, this can only be a mora. (It cannot constitute a syllable of its own, since the geminate consonant does not function as a syllable peak.) This mora must be affiliated with the foot or the word, presumably depending on whether it adds weight. Thus, moraic theory requires representations like (18a) for medial geminates, as in a hypothetical word atto, and (18b) or (18c) for initial geminates, as in tto. (18) a. s m m a

s m t o

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f

b.

s m

m t

o w

c.

f s m

m t

o

If we adopt this representation of initial geminates for Arabic, we can immediately explain why their distribution correlates with the distribution of initial clusters. In Arabic, initial geminates are restricted to C-dialects and to those VC-dialects that allow initial clusters. In CV-dialects, initial clusters are categorically excluded. (19) a. CV-dialects: Egyptian kitaab ‘book’ (*ktaab), siláah. ‘plowshare’, katábt ‘I wrote’, fihímt ‘I understood’ b. VC-dialects: Levantine ktaab ~ ʔ iktaab ‘book’, sláah. ~ ʔ isláah. ‘plowshare’, claab ~ ʔ iclaab ‘dogs’ (Iraqi; Erwin 1963), ktə bt ‘I wrote’ (Syrian; Grotzfeld 1980: 177), fhím(i)t ‘I understood’. c. C-dialects: ktəbt ‘I wrote’, fzˇə mb t.t.reeq ‘at the side of the road’, lh.ə m zˇzˇmə l ‘camel meat’, flʕ sˇiya ‘in the evening’ (Moroccan; Mitchell 1993: 62–65), ktibt ‘I wrote’, kla¯b ‘dogs’ (Tunis), nh.rag ‘he was burned’ (Mza¯b), ktabt ‘I wrote’ (Benghazi) (Singer 1980: 255, 257, 260).

Many initial geminates arise by assimilation of consonantal prefixes or infixes to stem-initial consonants ((20a–g)). In Maghrebi dialects, initial [tt-] seems to mark passive verbs ((20h–i)) and stative verbs ((20j)).

166 (20) a. b. c. d. e. f. g. h. i. j.

Paul Kiparsky /b-baal-a/ /l-landan/ /w-walad-ha/ /b-fuut/ /l-rjaal/ /l-sˇriik/ /w-t-afaq/ /ttə-d.r.əb/ /tt-s.ab/ /t-t.eelləb/

bbáala llandan wwaládha ffuut rrjaal sˇsˇriik ttáfaq ttəd..rə b tts.ab t.t.eellə b

‘in his mind’ (Iraqi) ‘to London’ (Iraqi) ‘and her son’ (Iraqi) ‘I go in’ (Syrian) ‘the men’ (Syrian) ‘the partner’ (Syrian) ‘he agreed’ (infixed /t/) (Syrian) ‘it was beaten’ (Moroccan) ‘it was found’ (Moroccan) ‘to be a mediocre student’ (Algerian; Singer 1980: 264–265)

CV-dialects admit no initial consonant clusters, hence in particular no initial geminates, so prothetic [ʔi-] is obligatory in cases comparable to (20). Similarly, those VC-dialects that avoid word-initial clusters tend to have obligatory prothesis before initial geminates, such as Cyrenaican Bedouin. Therefore, I take the parallelism between initial geminates and consonant clusters as support for the semisyllable analysis. Could the parallelism be accounted for without invoking mora theory? Owens’s (1980) structural analysis of eastern Libyan is one analysis that attempts to do that. He takes the first member of an initial geminate as the realization of a vowel “v”, which is the epenthetic vowel here written i. (21a) is his representation of an initial geminate, and (21b) shows a variant articulation where the first member is replaced by a glottal. (21) a. j j lu:d ‘skins’ ||| vCC b. ʔ t tikállam ‘you m. speak’ | | | vCC

To update something like Owens’s analysis, we would have to reintroduce CV slots or X-slots into phonological representations (Clements and Keyser 1983, Levin 1985), and that is just what Hume et al. (1997) advocate. With one crucial exception, their data on Leti gemination is very similar to the Arabic data discussed here, but they arrive at a different conclusion. In both languages, geminates pattern distributionally with consonant clusters (in Leti, geminates and clusters occur underlyingly only in word-initial position). They arise in medial as well as in initial position by assimilation of adjacent consonants and, unlike other two-consonant sequences, may not be broken up by epenthesis (for Arabic, see Abu-Salim 1980) – evidence that they have a

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single root node. And in both languages, initial geminates do not count toward the weight of the syllable that follows. Hume et al. nonetheless reject representations like (18b–c). The reason has to do with an optional postlexical process that “downgrades” the prosodic prominence of the first of two syntactically related words, with certain concomitant vowel reduction processes. Words with long vowels and words with geminates, including inital geminates, cannot undergo this downgrading process. Hume et al. capture this restriction with a Length-toProminence constraint, which requires a long segment to be in a prominent domain, and plausibly suggest that its functional motivation is to prevent the merger of durational contrasts. They then state that this constraint is inconsistent with the moraic (semisyllabic) representation of geminates: “Since a mora unattached to a syllable node would not contribute to syllable weight, a geminate-initial syllable would again not be predicted to pattern with long vowels in terms of weight. Note that this same problem would arise if the extrasyllabic mora were linked to a node higher than the syllable, e.g. foot, phonological phrase” (Hume et al. 1997: 393). Actually, there is no difficulty with the moraic representation if we distinguish carefully between segment length and syllable weight. Let us say that a segment is long if it is affiliated with more than one timing slot (mora or syllable). And let us say that a syllable is heavy if it has more than one mora (and, of course, superheavy if it has more than two moras). Then the initial consonant in (18b), is long (bimoraic), but the first mora that it is affiliated with does not contribute to syllable weight, because it is not part of the syllable. The Length-to-Prominence constraint can then be stated in terms of segment length, exactly as Hume et al. have it, and it will correctly refer to long vowels and geminates, including initial geminates. A second objection that Hume et al. raise to the moraic representation, as in (18b), is that it violates Prosodic Licensing. But this is the case only if the unsyllabified mora is stray. Since the unsyllabified mora can be affiliated with a higher prosodic category, as they recognize in the passage quoted, this objection does not seem valid either. My proposal immediately entails that there could exist languages in which initial geminates are not only long but weight bearing as well. These would be languages in which a stray mora is associated at the syllable level or perhaps at the foot level. Hart (1991) shows that Trukese is a case of just this type (see also Davis 1999). Like Arabic, Trukese has a bimoraic word minimum and an undominated constraint that requires final consonants to be weightless. Because final consonants do not contribute to syllable weight, words like maa ‘behavior’ and tiip ‘emotions’ are possible, whereas words like *ba and *ban do not occur. Yet words with initial geminates allow both of these otherwise forbidden rhyme types; for example, tto ‘clam sp.’, ffen

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‘advice’. The conclusion is that in Trukese initial geminates contribute to prosodic weight and that the weight-bearing mora must be contained within the prosodic category in terms of which the minimality constraint is stated. Supposing this to be the foot, the structure of tto in Trukese would be as shown in (18b). A second, similar case would be Piro (Lin 1997). Lin works out a moraic licensing analysis of stray consonants, including initial geminates. Since Piro has compensatory lengthening effects, the semisyllables would have to be associated at the foot level. This appears to be compatible with Lin’s analysis, though Lin opts for the alternative affiliation at the prosodic word level.15

6.5. Sonority, Syllabicity, and Epenthesis Nearly all CV- and C-dialects allow phrase-final -CC clusters.16 (22) a. CV-dialects: katábt ‘I wrote’, ʔ akl ‘food’, gabr ‘algebra’ (phrase-finally), but ʔ akli mas.ri ‘Egyptian food’ b. C-dialects: ktə bt ‘I wrote’, Moroccan s.t.h.a˘qt ‘I needed’, rə bh. ‘winning’, zˇə ˇsm ‘body’ (Mitchell 1993: 70ff., Cohen 1975: 74ff.)

With regard to their treatment of phrase-final -CC clusters, VC-dialects fall into two areally discontinuous groups. The first group of dialects permits phrase-final -CC clusters only if they satisfy the Sonority Sequencing Principle. Most Levantine dialects are of this type. The typical VC-dialect pattern is illustrated by the examples in (23) from Tripoli (Kenstowicz and AbdulKarim 1980). (23) a. /h.ilm/ b. /h.iml/

h.ilm h.ímil

‘dream’ ‘load’

h.ílim-na h.ímil-na

3.Pl.Poss.

h.ílm-ak h.íml-ak

2.P.Poss.

A second group of VC-dialects permits no phrase-final -CC clusters at all. For example, on the one hand Baghdad Christian Arabic (Abu-Haidar 1991) epenthesizes ə into a final cluster irrespective of sonority, and there seems to be no evidence of an underlying contrast between /CVCəC/ and /CVCC/:17 (24) a. kálə b ‘dog’, bənət ‘girl’, sˇə´ g ə b ‘drink’ b. ə´ sə m ‘name’, más.ə g ‘Egypt’, qámə l ‘lice’

In Baghdad Jewish Arabic, on the other hand, epenthesis is sensitive to the sonority profile of the final cluster, and /CVCəC/ contrasts lexically with /CVCC/ (Mansour 1991: 101ff.):18 (25) a. /bənt/ bə nə t ‘daughter’, /bənt-a/ bə´ nta ‘her daughter’ b. /ban-ət/ banə t ‘she built’, /banət-a/ bnə´ ta ‘she built it (f.)’

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A number of writers report stylistic and sociolectal variation as to epenthesis in -RC clusters of falling sonority (Palva 1966: 35, passim, Mitchell 1993: 86f., Haddad 1984):19 (26) a. /bint/ bint ~ binit ‘daughter’, /fhim-t/ fhimt ~ fhimit ‘did you understand?’, /dars/ dars ~ daris ‘lesson’ b. /h.ilm/ h.ílim ‘dream’, /jibn/ jíbin ‘cheese’

A second point of variation is whether the inserted vowel counts for stress. In all CV-dialects, epenthetic vowels behave with respect to stress like ordinary vowels. In the majority of VC-dialects, epenthetic vowels are invisible to stress, both in that they do not get stressed themselves and in that the syllable they head is “skipped” in the calculation of stress. This is the case, for example, in Baghdad Jewish and Christian Arabic ((27a); Abu-Haidar 1991: 34), and in the Anatolian dialect of Mardin ((27b); Jastrow 1980b: 144). (27) a. kálə b-ki ‘your dog’, bə´ nə t-kə m ‘your daughter’, ə´ sə m-na ‘our name’ b. ákə l-na ‘our food’, ə´ bə n-ki ‘your (f.) son’

But there are dialects in which the epenthetic vowel obligatorily counts for stress: (28) akə´ l-na ‘our food’, əbə´ n-ki ‘your (f.) son’ (Qartmı¯n, Jastrow 1980b)

In Baghdad Moslem Arabic, as well as in some Palestinian dialects, there is variation with respect to this point, with penult stress an option; for example, /gil-t-la/ gílitla ~ gilítla ‘I said to him’, ákə lna ‘our food’ ~ akə´ lna, yúd.urbu ‘he hits him’ ~ yud.úrbu (Blanc 1953: 28–29, Palva 1966: 53, Erwin 1963, Mitchell 1993: 82, 194). An epenthetic vowel that is stressable must be inserted lexically, either at the stem level or at the word level. We will assume the latter, though reanalysis of stem-level (underlying) representations should be kept in mind as a possibility (as suggested by Hamid [1984] for Sudanese nominal stems). In either case, we predict that such dialects will show no postlexical distinction between /CVCəC/ (or /CVCiC/) and /CVCC/. This prediction seems to be true in general.20 An interesting test case appears in the Palestinian dialect of the speaker studied by Johnson (1979). Here epenthesis shows special behavior in two specific classes of words. The larger consists of some morphologically defined types of nouns in -CC that undergo regular epenthesis even when the cluster is not of rising sonority. For stress and postlexical phonology, the vowel nonetheless counts as epenthetic. These include infinitives and active participles, such as dáres ‘studying’, versus the phonologically expected dárs ‘lesson’, and plurals of adjectives of color and defect, such as zorʕ ‘blue’ (pl.). For this speaker, then, the moraic parsing of the final consonant in these specific

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classes of words is fixed lexically, perhaps in observance of some templatic constraint; adjectives of color and defect notoriously show a rigid template and special morphophonological behavior in Arabic.21 The second set is very small and contains obligatorily just the word kotob ‘book’ (and optionally also málek ‘king’). Here the vowel of the second syllable is invisible for purposes of word stress, like a normal epenthetic vowel (kótobna ‘our book’, like fóronna ‘our oven’), but it functions like an underlying vowel in the phrasal phonology (kótob el wálad ‘the boy’s book’ versus fórn el wálad). From the present point of view, this exceptional word must involve a lexical alternation between a bound allomorph /kotb/ in kótobna and a free allomorph /kotob/ in kótob el wálad. The North African C-dialects would require special study, but a few inconclusive remarks may not be out of place here. According to phonetic descriptions, medial three-consonant clusters are either retained without epenthesis (yilbsu, yiktbu) or get a furtive phonetic transitional vowel on one or the other side of the middle consonant yík ə tbu, yíkt ə bu (Fischer and Jastrow 1980: 65, Singer 1980: 255). The latter happens typically when the cluster contains a sonorant or guttural; for example, (Mauretanian) yəz ə rgu ‘they (will) ask’, yəd ə h.lu ‘they (will) enter’, yər ə dfu (Cohen 1963: 90).22 When no epenthesis takes place, what is the syllable structure? One possibility is that consonants can be syllable peaks, at least on the phonetic level. Alternatively, the long consonant sequences of these dialects could be considered clusters rather than syllables (Mitchell 1993: 72). The representation suggested here raises a third possibility: that they are composed of moraic but unsyllabified consonants, that is, semisyllables. Auditorily, these dialects certainly have vowelless peaks. See Harrell 1962b, where various analyses including voiceless schwa and empty nuclei are considered. In songs,23 consonants (at least sonorants and voiceless fricatives) readily occupy beats. This could point to syllabic status, but a semisyllabic analysis cannot be excluded a priori. My methodological starting point is that phonological rather than phonetic evidence is the key to the answer. Syllable structure, like stress, is a matter of prosodic organization and is not necessarily manifested directly in any single phonetic dimension. From comparative Slavic phonology (Liewehr 1967) it is clear that the difference between, say, a semisyllabic r and a syllabic r is not reliably identifiable from the phonetic record alone. The decisive considerations are whether it can or cannot be stressed, whether it can have an onset, whether it contributes to syllable and foot weight, and so on. Moreover, a segment can be nonsyllabic in the lexical phonology and syllabic in the postlexical phonology, as the m of English rhythm. Phonological evidence of this kind is not easy to come by. However, there are indications that sonorants can be syllable nuclei in Maghrebi Arabic, at

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least on some level. First, they can constitute the most sonorous segment of a word, as in Moroccan /dərb/ [dr b] ‘cul-de-sac’ (Mitchell 1993: 63). If the r in this word were not syllabic, then the word would have no syllable or an empty nucleus, both problematic options. Second, sonorants are stressable, such as Marrakshi msˇr´btha (Mitchell 1993: 201). Conversely, it seems that no word can consist entirely of obstruents and that obstruents apparently cannot be stressed, so we might conclude that obstruents cannot form syllable peaks in Maghrebi, at least at the phonetic level. If obstruents could be syllabic, they should be capable of having onsets, and given these dialects’ preference for closed syllables, they should have codas as well, predicting the possibility of words like *ktb, which do not seem to occur. Cohen (1963: 128) describes the variation pattern in (29) for phrase-initial sonorants in Mauretanian Arabic. (29) a. ə nzˇr.ah.t *nzˇr.ah.t ‘I have been injured’ b. ə nzˇar.ə h.ə t nzˇar.ə h.ə t ‘she has been injured’

On the assumptions that Cohen’s transcription ə n represents syllabic [n] as described by Mitchell (1993) and others, and that n in a sonority peak position is a semisyllable, the distribution in (29) could be understood in the following way. Syllabification is obligatory before -CCV, because the nasal must be a syllable nucleus if it has to support a coda consonant, namely, n zˇ.r.ə h.ə t. Otherwise it is optionally syllabified or remains a semisyllable (n .zˇar.ə h.ə t ~ nm.zˇar.əh.ə t). Under the assumptions stated, this would indicate variation between syllabic and semisyllabic parsing of sonorants in sonority peak position, except when other constraints on syllable structure make the syllabic parsing obligatory. Cohen also cites the following remarkable data for Mauretanian, virtually a reversal between underlying and output forms. In the 3 sg. m. perfect, the citation form is monosyllabic (ktə b ‘he wrote’), but in context a prothetic ə is usually inserted, unless the preceding word begins with a vowel, namely ə ktə b. In the imperative, the citation form is, on the contrary, disyllabic (ə ktə b ‘write!’), but the most frequent pronunciation in running speech, in all contexts, is monosyllabic ktə b. If the citation form is taken as the underlying form, we are in trouble, for how can we have /ktəb/ Æ ə ktə b and at the same time /əktəb/ Æ ktə b? We can make some sense of this by positing the respective underlying forms /kətəb/ ‘he wrote’ and /ktəb/ ‘write!’ with lexical epenthesis to ə ktə b. The citation form can be identified with the output of the word-level phonology, derived by imposing on the underlying form the previously discussed constraint Reduce, which bars light syllables. In the phrasal context, the perfect’s initial C is joined into a syllable with a preceding vowel. The imper-

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ative is not subject to phrasal resyllabification, presumably because it initiates its own intonational group (as in English and in most languages) and only undergoes optional reduction to a monosyllable: (30)

Underlying W.l., citation C____ V____ Cə k.tə b Vk.tə b ‘he wrote’ Perfect /kətəb/ km.tə b ə ktə b ə ktə b ~ km.tə b ‘write! (m. sg.)’ Imperative /ktəb/

I tentatively conclude that sonorants in Maghrebi dialects may be syllabic if they are sonority peaks and that they are otherwise at least optionally retained as semisyllables.

6.6. Opaque Shortening of Medial CVVC The subject agreement endings in Arabic are introduced at the stem level of the lexical phonology, while object endings are word level. Before consonantinitial subject endings, the long vowel of CVVC- syllables is obligatorily shortened in all Arabic dialects, regardless of whether the final cluster is subject to epenthesis; for example, Iraqi /gaal-t/ gilit, Egyptian /qaal-tu/ qultu ‘I said’.24 So *CVVC syllables are categorically prohibited everywhere in the stemlevel phonology. More generally, the Ft-Bin constraint that prohibits feet exceeding the two-mora limit is undominated at the stem level. The relationship between shortening before subject endings and epenthesis is opaque in all dialects (counterbleeding). For example, the 1 sg. form corresponding to sˇaaf ‘he saw’, sˇif-na ‘we saw’ is sˇift or sˇuft; there are no dialects with forms like *sˇaaf-it ‘I saw’. This follows from the consonantal underlying form of the ending /-t/, if subject endings are assigned at the stem level in all dialects (as other facts of the phonology and morphology independently show). Epenthesis, in contrast, is active only in the postlexical constraint system or, in some dialects, at the word level, and therefore in either case intrinsically follows shortening. With regard to the treatment of CVVC- syllables before object clitics and other word-level endings, dialects differ. VC- and C-dialects always retain the long vowel, or shorten it variably at the postlexical level,25 and CV-dialects show three different treatments: shortening, epenthesis, and retention of the long vowel: (31) /báab-ha/ ‘her door’ a. VC- and C-dialects: báabha b. CV-dialects 1. Shortening: bábha (Cairo, Delta) 2. Epenthesis: bàabiháa (alFara¯fira, adDa¯xila), báabaha (Mecca) 3. Retention of CVVC-: báabha (middle and northern Upper Egypt, ilBah.ariyya)

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In addition to object endings and possessive endings, a second class of word-level closed syllable shortening environments arises when medial syncope before vocalic word-level suffixes creates closed syllables, which are then shortened if long in the CV-dialects (Woidich 1980: 213, Abu-Mansour 1991): (32) a. CV-dialects: /kaatib-a/ Æ katba ‘having written’ (f.), /s.aah.ib-a/ Æ s.ah.ba ‘female friend’ b. VC-dialects: /kaatib-a/ Æ kaatba, /s.aah.ib-a/ Æ s.aah.ba

The dialectal distribution of this second type of shortening tallies very closely with that of the first, as we would expect. Next consider dialects where superheavy syllables arising by morphological combination are eliminated by epenthesis, with preservation of the long vowel. They include two oasis dialects in Egypt (dialects (c-v) and (c-vii) in (1)), and Makkan, where the epenthetic vowel is a: /ʕumr-ha/ Æ ʕ umraha, /sˇuf-t-ni/ Æ sˇuftani (Abu-Mansour 1991: 141). The third solution is found in Middle Egyptian CV-dialects. In these dialects, superheavy syllables occur, but the restrictions on consonant clusters are the same as in other dialects (baabha but yiktibu). A similar system is found in Makkan (Abu-Mansour 1991).26 Typically, CVCC and CVVC syllables have a parallel status, and syllabification works to avoid both. Yet CVCC and CVVC do not behave in exactly the same way in all dialects; the former are more restricted. Also, syncope is allowed more readily after geminates than after other CC clusters, for shortening of long vowels and of geminates is a way of accommodating to the syllable structure without incurring a melodic Max-violation. This is an instance of a “lookahead” effect of the sort that OT makes sense of. The interplay of epenthesis and shortening in the resolution of overlength gives a measure of support for the LPM-OT approach to constraint interaction. Farwaneh (1995: 152) notes that monomorphemic -CV endings, bimorphemic -C-V endings, and bimorphemic -C-CV endings all behave differently. In the Levantine dialects described by Abu-Salim (1980) and Haddad (1984), only monomorphemic -CV suffixes like those in (33b) allow the length of the preceding stem to surface.27 (33) a. Shortening before stem-level consonantal endings i. /sˇaaf/ sˇaaf ‘he saw’ ii. /sˇaaf-t/ sˇífit ‘I saw’ iii. /sˇaaf-na/ sˇífna ‘we saw’ b. No shortening before word-level -CV endings i. /beet-na/ béetna ‘our house’ ii. /nnoʕ-ha/ nóoʕ ha ‘its (f.) type’ iii. /ʔih.taaj-ha/ ʔ ih.táajha ‘he needed it (f.)’ iv. /jaab-ha/ jáabha ‘he brought her’

174

Paul Kiparsky c. Shortening before word-level -C-V endings i. /jaab-l-i/ jábli ‘he brought for me’ ii. /jaab-l-u/ jáblu ‘he brought for him’ d. Shortening before word-level -C-CV endings (with epenthesis) i. /jaab-l-ha/ jábilha ‘he brought for her’ ii. /sˇaaf-l-ha/ sˇáfilha ‘he saw for her’ iii. /raah-l-ha/ ráhilha ‘he went to her’

These data indicate that suffixation with -l triggers cyclic shortening of the resulting hyperlong (four-mora) syllable. This confirms that the word level can be cyclic and that bound bases can constitute domains of constraint evaluation. Farwaneh’s South Palestinian dialect differs in having no shortening in the (33c) cases, such as jaablu (1995: 162). A third group of dialects keeps the vowel long before all word-level endings, including cases like (33c) and (33d); for example, Northern Iraqi Jewish Arabic baaʕ -l-ú-me ‘he sold them to him’, jáab-ə l-kə m ‘he brought you (pl.)’ (Jastrow 1990: 59, 325).28 A prediction of my analysis is that there should be no word-level closed syllable shortening before stressable epenthetic vowels. Because closed syllable shortening is lexical, it must be bled by lexical epenthesis, and it cannot be bled by postlexical epenthesis. The status of epenthesis as lexical or postlexical is independently determined by its interaction with word stress. Since stress is lexical, an epenthetic vowel that is stressable must be lexically inserted, and an epenthetic vowel that is unstressable must be postlexically inserted. So, closed syllable shortening should be bled by the insertion of stressable epenthetic vowels. This is confirmed by Soukhne Syrian kaalílha ‘he said to her’ (Behnstedt 1994: 107) and by Iraqi jaabílha (alternating with jáabilha) ‘he brought to her’ (Erwin 1963: 143, 41), with transparent constraint interaction (not *jabílha). Conversely, since unstressable (postlexically inserted) epenthetic vowels are invisible at the word level, they should not block lexical closed-syllable shortening. And this is what we find, for example, in Levantine jaab-l-ha Æ (word level) jáblmha Æ (postlexical) jábilha. Thus the intrinsic serial relation of the levels enforces opaque (counterbleeding) constraint interaction. In dialects with general pre-stress shortening, the root vowel is of course short even before a stressable epenthetic vowel. For example, all Egyptian dialects have pre-stress shortening (Fischer and Jastrow 1980: 213), evidently at the word level. Hence, Egyptian dialects that stress epenthetic vowels do shorten before those vowels, such as il-Bi‘raat jabílhum (Woidich 1973–1974: 365). Blanc (1953: 44, 75) explicitly gives this analysis for North Palestinian examples like / h.maar-t-ku/ h.marítku ‘your female donkey’. Similarly, the Benghazi Libyan jabílha (Farwaneh 1995: 141) may really be jaabílha with

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the variable phonetic shortening of unstressed vowels described by Owens (1984: 30) for a closely related Libyan dialect.29 The prediction is that dialects retain length before unstressable epenthetic vowels only if they tolerate hyperlong syllables. This is confirmed by data from eastern Libyan (Owens 1984), which admits final hyperlong syllables in the output and apparently also retains medial hyperlong configuration -CVVC-C- in cases like (33) in spite of postlexical epenthesis: (34) ma sˇif-na¯-k-sˇ ‘we didn’t see you’ (Owens 1984: 158) ma inʕ a¯´m-sˇ ‘not swimmable’ (124) da¯ff ‘has pushed’ (24) g l-il-ha, from /gall-l-ha/ ‘he said to her’ (inferred from 33, 105, 113)

Perhaps structures like (34) are prosodically accommodated by licensing two semisyllables in a row at the word level.30 The dialect data are very complex, but they seem compatible with the prediction that closed-syllable shortening is bled by lexical epenthesis. Apparent cases of counterbleeding are attributable to independently motivated wordlevel or postlexical processes that shorten unstressed syllables. This would tend to further support the claim that interaction of phonological processes is transparent within a level and that opacity effects arise from interlevel serialism.

6.7. Summary I have argued that certain Arabic dialects permit consonants to form unsyllabified moras (onsetless semisyllables) in the word-level phonology. These moras are licensed by adjunction to the prosodic word. Semisyllables persist into the output in certain contexts in C-dialects, in part accounting for the Berber-type syllable structure of these dialects. In VC-dialects an epenthetic vowel is inserted before them as a nucleus postlexically, rendering lexical processes like stress and shortening opaque. Faithfulness requires that the epenthetic vowel be placed before the consonant, so as to maintain its moraic character and to minimize changes in the foot structure of the word. In CV-dialects, a licensing constraint requiring moras to be affiliated with syllables ranks higher, ruling out semisyllables in general. Unsyllabifiable consonants never become moraic but get an epenthetic vowel after them (its place again dictated by prosodic faithfulness). The characteristic syllabic differences between the dialects can largely be explained from these assumptions.

notes 1. I present a more extensive treatment of this material in my forthcoming Paradigm Effects and Opacity.

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2. But this classification does not coincide with the division between gilit and qə ltu dialects (Jastrow 1978). 3. The words in this table are meant to represent phonological types. Most cited forms are taken directly from the sources cited, but in the Egyptian data I have replaced, with fingers crossed, Behnstedt and Woidich’s type word siláah. ‘plowshare’ with the corresponding forms of kitáab ‘book’, which are better attested in the other sources. 4. This is a preliminary hypothesis made for the sake of concreteness. The question of where unsyllabifiable moras are adjoined requires more study. On general grounds one would expect them to be adjoined as low as constraints on the form of prosodic constituents allow, since that minimizes violations of Strict Layering. Adjunction to the prosodic word would be motivated by a constraint against the resolution of moraic trochees. A reviewer pointed out that adjunction to a foot entails that unsyllabified moras could never occur between two syllables that form a foot (provided adjunction is allowed only to the edges of constituents). I believe this is true for Arabic; in Mohawk and Passamaquoddy, where Hagstrom (1997) argues for adjunction to feet, precisely that structure is motivated. For more on the locus of adjunction see section 6.2. 5. See Han 1994 for compelling arguments that these are in fact the correct representations and for additional evidence in favor of the Ito-Mester theory of weak layering. 6. Taking a maximalist position, van der Hulst and Ritter 1998 argue that sesquisyllables consist of two feet, each containing two degenerate syllables. 7. For the moment, let us assume that the foot structure of all dialects of Arabic is organized into moraic trochees. 8. See Behnstedt 1994: 64 for traces of a similar system in the Syrian dialect of Soukhne. 9. The quality of the epenthetic vowel varies but generally in a uniform way for medial, initial, and final syllables in a given dialect. The vowel is most often i (in Syrian ə, sometimes -i or e), and under dialectally varying conditions it is liable to be assimilated to a back vowel in the preceding syllable, e.g., mnúqutlu ‘we’ll kill him’, rukub ‘riding’, sˇahar ‘month’ (Palestinian; Palva 1966: 30, 53). Epenthetic vowels are “often pronounced as full vowels and as such are phonetically comparable with phonemic vowels occurring in the same positions” (Palva 1966: 42). 10. Not all VC-dialects undergo “metathesis.” Dialects that otherwise have VCphonology but retain the medial -CV- in cases like yiktibu are found in Mesopotamia and Anatolia, e.g., Mardin yəktəbu¯n ‘they write’ (Jastrow 1978: 204), and the Gulf, e.g., Makkan yiktub, tiktubu (Jastrow 1980a). 11. The geminate is postlexically shortened in many, perhaps the majority, of dialects, often optionally (Mitchell 1993: 95–96); for some reason no CV-dialect has lexical degemination, which would allow deletion after geminates. 12. Turkish-style final devoicing, without glottalization, is naturally widespread in Anatolian and other Northern dialects of Arabic, including those of the CV-type (Jastrow 1978). Nigerian Arabic glottalizes all pre-pausal segments including vowels (Owens 1993: 21–22). Sudanese Arabic also has final glottalization, perhaps a substrate effect (Redford, 1996 et voce). 13. Nevertheless, there are some VC-dialects in which epenthesis is lexical under some conditions, particularly in the case of clusters that violate sonority sequencing. In

syllables and moras in arabic

14.

15.

16. 17. 18. 19.

20. 21. 22.

23. 24.

25. 26.

27. 28.

29.

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these dialects, a constraint requiring sonority peaks to be syllable heads has been promoted in the lexical phonology. A reviewer suggests that a parallel to this constraint can be found at the level of syllables. There are languages that permit single unfooted syllables but force two adjacent unfooted syllables to form a foot. Similarly, in Arabic, two adjacent unsyllabified moras must form a syllable, forcing epenthesis of a nucleus. Interestingly, Lin’s (1997) analysis depends on cyclic constraint evaluation. However, Lin assumes that all segments are redundantly moraic in underlying representations, which seems incompatible with Richness of the Base. Final -CR clusters of rising sonority are avoided under some conditions, even if they are not categorically excluded (Cohen 1975: 80). Similarly the Egyptian dialects of the eastern Delta region (Behnstedt and Woidich 1985, map 51). It appears that there is no covert contrast in those contexts in which epenthesis is obligatory, i.e., basically in clusters of rising sonority. According to Palva (1966: 36), “the pronunciation of a consonant as syllabic [moraic, in my terms – P. K.] is often heard in [Lower Galilean Palestinian] in elevated style and in learned borrowings. In colloquial, however, an epenthetic vowel is pronounced before a syllabic consonant.” Epenthetic vowels count for stress in Soukhne Syrian (Behnstedt 1994) and in some parts of Upper Egypt (Behnstedt and Woidich 1985, map 3). For example, in eastern Libyan they are systematically stressed on the initial syllable, unlike other words: hábal ‘foolish’ but kitáb ‘he wrote’. Cohen (1963) considers the transitional vowels to be phenomena of phonetic implementation, endorsing Cantineau’s statement that “phonologiquement, elles n’ont aucune existence réelle et sont tenues pour zéro par les sujets parlants qui souvent n’ont pas conscience de les prononcer” (Cantineau 1946: 179). Nevertheless, Cohen notes that the transitional vowel can be phonetically identical to phonemic ə , though it never gets stressed in environments where a regular vowel would be stressed. For example, in recordings by the Algerian singer Dahmane el Harrachi. Long -aa- is shortened to i or u, or, in dialects that neutralize high vowels, to ə . Historically, these long vowels are derived from -VCV- roots by loss of a medial glide or laryngeal, whose color originally determined the quality of the shortened root vowel. In the Mesopotamian qə ltu-dialects it is an optional allophonic process, according to Jastrow (1978: 212–213). Interestingly, this class of Egyptian CV-dialects (Behnstedt and Woidich 1985, map 74) includes all those dialects that lengthen all vowels under stress, apparently nonphonemically (Behnstedt and Woidich 1985, map 5): /bagar.a/ bá:gar.a ‘cow’, gu:t.t.a ‘cat’. All these endings trigger shortening in all CV-dialects, of course; e.g., Egyptian /raah.l-ha/ rah.laha ‘he went to her’. Farwaneh (1995) accounts for the data in (33) by supposing that monoconsonantal suffixes like -l are underlyingly moraic, an ad hoc solution that in any case does not extend to the other variations on the shortening theme. Allophonic and/or variable shortening of unstressed vowels is attested for other dialects; see, e.g., Fleisch 1947–1948: 60 on Zah.le (Lebanon), Johnson (1979) on

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Palestinian, and Cohen (1975: 55) on “half-long” vowels in Moroccan Jewish Arabic. 30. Syrian shows variation: /zˇaab-l-na/ zˇáabə lna ‘he brought to us’ (Cowell 1964: 481), /ma-ktuub-l-ak/ maktə blak ‘written to you (m.)’ (Grotzfeld 1965: 42); cf. /ma kaan-sˇ/ makansˇ (Grotzfeld 1980: 178), Soukhne Syrian maa bi-sˇuuf-sˇ ‘he doesn’t see anything’ (Behnstedt 1994: 162). Iraqi shows stress variation in case of epenthesis, e.g., ʔ íbin-ha ~ ʔ ibín-ha ‘her son’ (Erwin 1963: 41); no shortening is reported for forms like jáabla, jáabilha ~ jaabílha (Erwin 1963: 143). I was unable to find consonantal word-level suffixes like -sˇ in Iraqi to test the prediction.

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Kirchner, R. (1996). Synchronic chain shifts in Optimality Theory. Linguistic Inquiry 27: 341–350. Levin, Juliette. (1985). A metrical theory of syllabicity. Doctoral dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, Mass. Liewehr, F. (1967). Zur Entstehung und Behandlung der Nebensilbigkeit im Slavischen. Zeitschrift für Slawistik 12: 708–726. Lin, Yen-Hwei. (1997). Syllabic and moraic structures in Piro. Phonology 14: 404–436. Mansour, Jacob. (1991). The Jewish Baghdadi Dialect. Or-Yehuda: Babylonian Jewry Heritage Center. Marçais, Philippe. (1977). Esquisse grammaticale de l’arabe maghrébin. Paris: Librairie d’Amérique et d’Orient. McCarthy, John. (1999). Serialism, OT, and the Duke-of-York Gambit. Ms., Rutgers Optimality Archive. McCarthy, J., and A. Prince. (1993). Prosodic morphology I: Constraint interaction and satisfaction. Ms., University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J. [To appear, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.] Mester, Armin, and Jaye Padgett. (1994). Directionality in generalized alignment. Phonology at Santa Cruz 3: 79–85. Mitchell, T. F. (1960). Prominence and syllabification in Arabic. BSOAS 23: 369–389. Mitchell, T. F. (1993). Pronouncing Arabic. Vol. 2. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Mutaka, Ngessimo, and Larry Hyman. (1990). Syllable and morpheme integrity in Kinande reduplication. Phonology 7: 73–120. Nespor, Marina, and Irene Vogel. (1986). Prosodic Phonology. Dordrecht: Foris. Nishio, Tetsuo. (1994). The Arabic Dialect of Qif t. (Upper Egypt): Grammar and Classified Vocabulary. Tokyo: Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa. Odden, David. (1995). Onsetless syllables in Kikerewe. OSU Working Papers in Linguistics 41: 46–84. Owens, Jonathan. (1980). The syllable as prosody: A reanalysis of syllabification in Eastern Libyan Arabic. BSOAS 43: 277–287. Owens, Jonathan. (1984). A Short Reference Grammar of Eastern Libyan Arabic. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Owens, Jonathan. (1993). A Grammar of Nigerian Arabic. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Palva, Heikki. (1966). Lower Galilean Arabic: An Analysis of Its Anaptyctic and Prothetic Vowels with Sample Texts. Helsinki. Studia Orientalia 32. Potter, Brian. (1994). Serial optimality in Mohawk prosody. CLS 30. Prince, Alan, and Paul Smolensky. (1993). Optimality Theory: Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar. Report RUCCS TR-2. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University. Prochazka, Theodore. (1988). Saudi Arabian Dialects. London: Kegan Paul International. Redford, Michael. (1996). Some aspects of Sudanese colloquial Arabic phonology. Master’s thesis, Universität Konstanz. Rubach, Jerzy, and Geert Booij. (1990). Syllable structure assignment in Polish. Phonology 7: 121–158. Selkirk, Elizabeth. (1981). Epenthesis and degenerate syllables in Cairene Arabic. In Theoretical Issues in the Grammar of Semitic Languages, ed. Hagit Borer and Youssef Aoun, 111–140. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 3. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Selkirk, Elizabeth. (1995). The prosodic structure of function words. In Papers in Opti-

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7 Semisyllables and Universal Syllabification Young-mee Yu Cho and Tracy Holloway King

7.1. Introduction Syllables have played a key role in generative phonology except for the brief period following the SPE (Sound Pattern of English). The importance of syllables has increased with the developments of nonlinear phonology, prosodic phonology, and, more recently, Optimality Theory (OT – Prince and Smolensky 1993, McCarthy and Prince 1993). As pointed out by Hyman (1990), there can be two independent hypotheses about syllables. One is Universality, which requires all languages to have syllables, and the other is Exhaustivity, which requires all segments to belong to a syllable. The more or less received view that syllables are universal and that syllabification is exhaustive is sometimes questioned by researchers working on languages with extreme collocation of consonants or vowels. Bagemihl (1991), for instance, analyzes Bella Coola words with no vowels or sonorants, as in (1), as not licensed by syllables. (1)

Apparent violation of nonexhaustivity: Bella Coola (Bagemihl 1991) c¢ktskwc¢ ‘he arrived’ q¢pssttc ‘taste it’

On the other extreme, there is Gokana, which has long stretches of vowels, as shown in (2). Hyman’s (1990) analysis relies on the redundancy argument that the properties of syllabicity can be better captured by constituents other than the syllable, such as the mora and the foot, and that syllabification need not be exhaustive, even if there is a syllable in the language. Earlier versions of this chapter were presented at the Tenth Biennial Non-Slavic Languages Conference at the University of Chicago in May 1997, at the Prosodic Phonology Conference during the LSA Summer Institute at Cornell University in July 1997, and at the National Science Foundation Workshop on Syllable Structure and Gesture Timing in September 1998 at the Ohio State University. We thank the participants for their many helpful comments. We are particularly indebted to Paul Kiparsky, Sharon Inkelas, and Alan Prince. We thank Adam Przepiórkowski, Marzena Rochón, and Anna ´Lubowicz for help with Polish.

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184 (2)

Young-mee Yu Cho and Tracy Holloway King Apparent violation of nonuniversality: Gokana (Hyman 1990) me´e´ e´ kɔm `m ` ke˜ e˜ e˜` e˜` e˜` e˜´ ‘Who said I woke him up?’

In the context of the universality/exhaustivity debate, particularly problematic are languages that exhibit remarkable consonant clusters. These clusters often seem to violate the Sonority Sequencing Principle (SSP), which regulates the sonority relation between any member of the syllable and the syllable peak (Selkirk 1984, Clements 1990), as articulated in (3). (For an implementation of SSP in OT, see section 7.3.4.) (3)

Sonority Sequencing Principle (SSP) Between any member of the syllable and the syllable peak, a sonority rise must occur.

The sonority hierarchy in (4), where stops are least sonorous and low vowels are most sonorous, is acknowledged by many as universal at least in unmarked cases, and we will rely on this hierarchy in this chapter. (4)

Sonority Hierarchy Obstruents (Stops < Fricatives)

< Nasals < Liquids < Glides < Vowels (l < r) (highV < lowV)

A final principle that is important for the well-formedness of syllables is Exhaustive Syllabification, which requires that all segments be part of a syllable. That is, no segments can be part of a well-formed prosodic word if they are not also part of a syllable. This is shown schematically in (5). (5)

Exhaustive Syllabification (ES) s / | \ ...X XX ...

The combination of the SSP in (3) and the Sonority Hierarchy in (4) predicts, for example, that syllables of the type obstruent-liquid-vowel-glide-nasal should be possible, while those of the type nasal-obstruent-vowel-nasal-glide should not be (in each case, the vowel is assumed to be the syllable peak). To defend the universality of the SSP and of ES,1 a systematic account has to be given for surface violations of the SSP, which are abundant across languages. On the one hand, there are clusters that show sonority plateaus (e.g., English: apt, sphere, Russian: mnu ‘I crumble’, kto ‘who’, Marshallese: qqin ‘to be extinguished’, lliw ‘angry’). On the other hand, there are clusters that manifest sonority reversals (e.g., English: strange, axe, apse, adze, Russian: rta ‘mouth’, mgla ‘mist’, French: table ‘table’, autre ‘other’, Klamath: ltewa ‘eats tules’, toq¢lGa ‘stops’). (These data are from Clements 1990.) Before we review past proposals dealing with sonority violations, let us briefly examine some evidence for extra- (or hetero)syllabicity of certain consonants, as summarized in (6).

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Evidence for extra- (hetero)syllabicity a. Phonotactics: strike (*ftr, *tsl), slay (*dl, *pw), smile (*tm, *pn) b. Invisibility to reduplication: stan-tan ‘thunder’ vs. si-smai-a ‘smile’ (Sanskrit) c. Morphology: il sale, il braccio vs. lo spirito, l¢osso, lo psicologo (Italian) d. Phrasal phonology: Italian Raddoppiamento Sintattico (palto pulito Æ palto ppulito, avra tro Æ avra ttro, gia stanco Æ *gias stanco)

Consider phonotatics (Selkirk 1984, Harris 1994). In English ((6a)), for example, /s+stop/ clusters are unique in many ways. First, these are the only clusters where the second consonant may be an obstruent. Second, these are the only cases of onsets with three members (str vs. *ftr). Third, they are immune to the restrictions on homorganicity between the members of the onset consonants (sl, sn vs. *dl, *pw). Finally /s/ is the only obstruent that can be combined with a nasal (sm vs. *tm, *fn). This idiosyncratic behavior is not limited to English. In Sanskrit reduplication ((6b)), /s+stop/ clusters behave differently from other clusters in that /s/ is not reduplicated in /s/+stop but in well-formed onsets (e.g., /sm/), /s/ surfaces in the reduplicant.2 There is also evidence from morphology, as in (6c). In Italian, according to Davis (1990), the masculine definite article has two forms: /il/ before a single consonant or well-formed clusters (/br/, /pl/) but /lo/ before a vowel and extrasyllabic clusters (/sp/, /ps/). Finally, Syntactic Doubling, in Italian known as Raddoppiamento Sintattico ((6d)) (Chierchia 1986, Nespor and Vogel 1986, Cho 1998a), treats sonority reversals differently from well-behaved clusters. Whereas a single onset or onset cluster geminates (if preceded by a word ending in an open stressed syllable), the extra syllabic consonant does not geminate. Instead, this extrasyllabic consonant closes the preceding syllable. There have been a number of proposals for dealing with SSP violations, as listed in (7). (7)

Explaining surface exceptions to the SSP a. The core vs. affix (Fujimura and Lovins 1978, Clements 1990) b. Syllable appendix (Halle and Vergnaud 1980, Steriade 1982) c. Language-particular stipulations (Steriade 1982, Levin 1985, Rubach and Booij 1990) d. Clusters as single complex segments (Selkirk 1982); Gothic: gai-grot ‘weep’ vs. stai-stald ‘possesses’ e. Some consonants remain unsyllabified (Bagemihl 1991)

First, the distinction between the syllable core and affix was made to argue that the SSP holds only in core syllabification ((7a)). If all apparent violations of the SSP occur in the syllable affix and not the core, then the SSP still holds. Second, the notion of syllable appendix was introduced to incorporate extrasyllabic segments ((7b)). This proposal is similar to that of

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the core/affix distinction because it avoids SSP violations by positing a syllable domain in which the SSP does not hold. Third, language-particular stipulations were made ((7c)): that is, several language-specific versions of the SSP were proposed. For instance, some languages are argued to employ place features in addition to sonority features, and the notion of sonority distance was manipulated (Steriade 1982, Levin 1985). This idea includes Rubach and Booij’s (1990) analysis of Polish syllabification. They explain long stretches of obstruents by stipulating the Obstruent Sequencing Principle whereby there can be any number of obstruents in onsets and codas. In other cases, clusters are analyzed as single complex segments ((7d)). If such clusters comprise a single segment, then there is no SSP violation because such violations are only possible across a sequence of segments. In section 7.3, we argue that this approach is necessary, but not sufficient, for the analysis of certain Georgian clusters. Finally, there have been proposals of adjunction of segments directly to a constituent (either higher or lower than the syllable) in defiance of ES (Bagemihl 1991) ((7e)). As observed by Broselow (1995: 203), “allowing some segments to be licensed by moras rather than syllables increases the power of a grammar, since it permits virtually any sequence of segments to be a possible word.” As such, our aim is to find an analysis that can maintain both the SSP and the ES, while accounting for a wide range of apparent SSP violations in such languages as Georgian, Bella Coola, and Polish. Before we move on to our own proposal, we would like to point out a problem with certain surface generalizations regarding obstruent clusters. We believe that generalizations on surface clusters (especially initial clusters) may be misleading when they do not account for the legitimate evidence for extrasyllabicity discussed in (6) and rely strictly on surface distribution. They may not necessarily capture syllabification that holds generally throughout a given language. Furthermore, little attention has been paid to link medial syllabification and coda syllabification with initial clusters. For instance, Morelli (this volume) argues, based on the so-called markedness observation on initial clusters, that Fricative + Stop is least marked and that the presence of other types of combinations (Stop + Stop, Fricative + Fricative) implies the presence of Fricative + Stop despite the sonority reversal. She proposes a markedness relationship according to which the /st/ onset is the least marked and the /tt/ onset is the most marked. Such a generalization relies solely on surface distribution (possibly attributable to historical accidents or arbitrary syllable assignments, especially in Salish languages), rather than phonological alternations based on syllabification. In this chapter, we propose another way to explain surface violations of the SSP, which we hope to rise above some inherent inadequacies

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of past accounts listed in (7). We cover representative cases from the regions often identified as the sources of unwieldy consonant clusters: Georgian from the Caucasian languages, Polish from Slavic languages and Bella Coola of the Northwest Pacific Coast are the focus of our investigation.

7.2. Semisyllables The present proposal relies on the notion of semisyllables; we will demonstrate that complex segments in several notorious languages obey both the SSP and ES once the notion of semisyllables are incorporated and proper morpheme analyses are given. We define semisyllables as syllables that contain no mora. This definition has several fortuitous consequences for the general observations made about their behavior, shown in (8). Since they have no mora, semisyllables are prosodically invisible and do not contribute to foot formation or stress assignment. In addition, there can be no heavy semisyllables, no codalike segments in semisyllables, and no tone or accent. (8)

Properties of semisyllables a. No nucleus b. No codas c. No stress/accent/tone d. Prosodically invisible e. Well-formed onset clusters (observing SSP) f. Restricted to morpheme peripheral positions

Semisyllables have been proposed in a number of guises; for example, minor syllables, Siever’s (1881) Nebensilbe, the first third of sesquisyllables (of the Mon-Khmer languages), consonantal syllables, headless syllables (Nepveu 1994), and degenerate syllables. Such syllables have no codas, do not bear stress or accent, are invisible to prosodic processes, are subject to a minimum sonority requirement, and are restricted to morpheme peripheral positions. Our proposal differs from those of earlier analyses in that we define semisyllables as syllables that contain no mora. The SSP applies to the consonant clusters comprising semisyllables because they form a syllable, resulting in the onsetlike behavior; since there is no syllabic peak, there is only rising sonority in semisyllables, and they are invisible to many prosodic processes sensitive to moras.3 Adopting semisyllables as a legitimate entity in phonology has another implication for the theory of phonology. Semisyllables allow for a universal prosodic structure, shown in (9), in which all segments belong to a syllable and a prosodic word (PrWd), but not necessarily to a mora or a foot, welcome

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consequences for prosodic phonology, given the literature on moraic and metrical phonology. (9)

Prosodic hierarchy PrWd (j) s (m) X

Our proposal, then, depends on the three universal principles: the SSP ((3)), ES ((5)), and the prosodic hierarchy ((9)), which all play a role in our analysis of complex consonant clusters.

7.3. Georgian Consonant Clusters One of the best-known languages with surface consonant clusters in violation of the SSP is Georgian. Georgian has the consonant inventory in (10), in addition to five vowels. Note the three-way distinction among stops and afficates: glottalized, aspirated, and voiced. The dorsal fricatives /c, g/ pattern like the missing aspirated and voiced uvular stops; the remaining fricatives show no (10) Consonant inventory (Vogt 1988, Nepveu 1994, Hewitt 1995) labial

apicoalveolar

laminopalatal

dorsovelar

dorsouvular q¢

Glottalized

p¢

t¢

c¢

cˇ¢

k¢

Aspirated

p

t

c

cˇ

k

Voiced

b

d

j

ˆ

g

s

sˇ

c

z

zˇ

g

m

n †

(v) †

apicodental

r, l

The status of /v/ is discussed in section 7.3.2, where it is argued to be an off-glide in Georgian [Nepveu 1994].

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special behavior as far as the three-way distinction among stops is concerned (see section 7.3.1 on harmonic clusters). Typical surface violations of the SSP are shown in (11). (11a) shows violations in initial position, (11b) in medial position, and (11c) in final position. The clusters in (11d) are the largest found in the language. (11) Surface violations of the SSP a. zrdiloba ‘manners’, mk¢rtali ‘pale’, trmeva ‘deprivation’ b. sibrjne ‘wisdom’, sˇekmna ‘creation’, grdemlma ‘anvil-erg.’ c. c¢igns ‘book-dat.’, sacls ‘house-dat.’, calcs ‘people-dat.’ d. gvprckvnis ‘he is peeling us’, mscverp¢ls ‘victim-dat.’, mcvrtneli ‘trainer’

There are two morpheme-based generalizations about consonant clusters in Georgian. First, it is possible to state canonical onset and coda templates for roots (Vogt 1988). Second, unwieldy clusters occur only at the morpheme edge (Nepveu 1994). These generalizations will prove important in the semisyllable analysis since the distribution of semisyllables is dictated by the morphology. To illustrate this point, the morpheme boundaries for the words in (11) are provided in (12). (12) Morpheme boundaries for (11) a. zrdil+ob+a ‘manners’, mk¢rt+al+i ‘pale’, trm+ev+a ‘deprivation’ b. si+brjn+e ‘wisdom’, sˇe+kmn+a ‘creation’, grdeml+ma ‘anvil-erg.’ c. c¢ign+s ‘book-dat.’, sacl+s ‘house-dat.’, calc+s ‘people-dat.’ d. gv+prckvn+i+s ‘he is peeling us’, m+scverp¢l+s ‘victim-dat.’, m+c¢vrtn+el+i ‘trainer’

Before discussing the details of our analysis, we discuss two ways in which Georgian clusters are not as complicated as they first seem. One set of simplifications comes from so-called harmonic clusters, which can be analyzed in phonology as complex segments of two stops or of an affricate and a stop. The second simplification comes from the fact that [v] is an off-glide in Georgian.

7.3.1 Harmonic Clusters Harmonic clusters are formed by a sequence of a [-dorsal][+dorsal] stop or affricate (and of certain fricative + fricative combinations) that agrees in laryngeal features. This sequence forms a complex segment and hence patterns as if it were a single obstruent. The harmonic clusters found in Georgian are listed in (13).

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(13) Harmonic clusters in Georgian: a sequence of [-dorsal][+dorsal] Glottalized Aspirated Voiced

p¢k¢

t¢k¢

c¢k¢

cˇ¢k¢

p¢q¢

t¢q¢

c¢q¢

cˇ¢q¢

pk

tk

ck

cˇk

px

tx

cx

cˇc

bg

dg

jg

ˆg

bg

dg

jg

ˆg

Fricatives

sk/zg

sˇc/zˇg

zg

That harmonic clusters form a complex segment for the purposes of the phonology has been discussed in detail (Vogt 1971, Deprez 1987, Nepveu 1994). The evidence for their being complex segments is briefly outlined in this section. First, harmonic clusters involve homogeneity of laryngeal features; nonhomogeneous clusters of [-dorsal][+dorsal] are not found, as in (14). (14) Harmonic clusters: homogeneity of laryngeal features *dk¢ *dq *tk¢ *tg *p¢k *p¢g

Second, there is a morphologically conditioned phenomenon in Georgian referred to as fleeting ‘r’. In certain words, /r/ can appear optionally, as in prta/pta in (15). However, this /r/ never appears in a harmonic cluster, as evidenced in the absence of forms such as pka and dge. (15) Fleeting ‘r’ prta/pta grdemli/ gdemli

‘wing’ ‘anvil’

*prka/pka *drge/dge

Third, medial harmonic clusters are syllabified as onsets, as in (16a), while medial nonharmonic clusters are syllabified across the syllable boundary, as in (16b), based on native speaker intuitions.4 (16) Syllabification a. si.t¢q¢va ‘word’ ‘fire’ ce.ccli b. ag.dia ‘to lie’

Fourth, in onsets and codas the harmonic clusters pattern phonotactically as if they were a single stop. So, in root-final position, there is maximally either one obstruent or a harmonic cluster, as in (17).

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(17) Phonotactic patterns a. bert¢q¢ ‘to dust’ vic¢q¢ ‘to forget’ apk- ‘membrane’ b. *berq¢t¢ *akp- *akt-

In addition, onsets in roots contain maximally two stops or one stop plus a harmonic cluster, as outlined in (18). (18) Maximal onsets Stop [coronal dorsal] [coronal dorsal] Stop Stop Stop

Finally, facts on language change ((19a)) and reduplication ((19b)) also support harmonic clusters as a single segment. (19) Language change and reduplication (Butskhrikidze 1998) a. dg Æ tk, *tg, *dk b. cˇkar-cˇkara ‘quickly’

There are occasional changes involving laryngeal features; in all cases harmonic clusters pattern as a unit; devoicing affects the whole cluster, unlike cases of nonharmonic clusters, in which only one member devoices. Similarly, harmonic clusters reduplicate as a unit, while in other nonharmonic clusters only the first member reduplicates. Thus, based on this evidence, we treat harmonic clusters as a single complex segment for purposes of the SSP.

7.3.2 The Status of [v] Nepveu (1994) argues that [v] is a labial off-glide; that is, it is not a separate segment in Georgian, and hence it is invisible for purposes of the SSP. We follow his proposal and briefly present his arguments. First, [v] shows great phonetic variability and can be realized as {v, f, b, f, w}, depending on the surrounding segments (Robins and Waterson 1952). This widespread variation in pronunciation contrasts with other phonemes in Georgian that show remarkably little variability; for example, there are relatively few assimilation processes. Second, /v/ deletes in the environment of labials, where it would be redundant if it were an off-glide. For example, in many environments [v] is lost before labial consonants and vowels, as in (20), in which the [v] in the suffix -ev- is lost when the participial suffix -ul- is added.

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(20) da+ngr+ev+ul+i Æ dangreuli ‘destroyed’

Third, the sequence /v/+obstruent is found only at morpheme boundaries, where the loss of /v/ would result in a loss of meaning. This is seen in (21), where loss of the /v/ in the first person plural marker gv- would result in confusion with the second person marker g-. (21) gv+prckvn+i+s Æ gvprckvnis ‘he is peeling us’

Fourth, and finally, there is a metathesis process affecting [v], which is shown in (22). If [v] were a full segment, this process would make its sonority unclear because the process appears to take a well-formed sequence and turn it into one with an SSP violation. (22) Metathesis: stop + nas/liquid + v Æ stop + v + nas/liquid k¢l + v + a Æ k¢vla ‘to kill’

Although the exact mechanism and proper analysis of [v] is unclear (see Nepveu 1994 for more discussion), for our purposes, there is ample evidence that it is not an independent segment.

7.3.3 Headless Syllables: Nepveu 1994 In this section we discuss Nepveu’s (1994) analysis of Georgian consonant clusters, many features of which we adapt or expand upon for our own analysis. Nepveu provides an analysis of these clusters utilizing “headless” syllables, as in (23) where T represents any obstruent and R any resonant. (23)

s / | \ T R Ø

These syllables have an onset and a null nucleus but no coda. Nepveu restricts the appearance of headless syllables to one per morpheme edge, a restriction that we adopt and, he equates this restriction to one headless syllable per prosodic word. His analysis of msxverp¢ls [victim-dat.] is shown in (24). The root /sxverp¢l/ contains a full syllable and a headless syllable. Each of the affixes /m-/ and /-s/ forms a headless syllable.

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(24) m + scverp¢l +s n. ag. victim dat. PrWd PrWd PrWd j s

s

s

s

m m ø + sc v e r p¢ l ø + s ø

Although we follow many of Nepveu’s insights, there are some technical problems with his analysis that we wish to avoid. First, there is recursion of the prosodic word, as illustrated in (24), so that there is only one headless syllable per prosodic word; however, there is no motivation for this recursion. Second, it is unclear how to foot roots with no vowels, which are common in Georgian. Consider, for example, (25), which contains a root, c¢vrtn, which would have to contain two headless syllables. (25) m + c¢vrtn + N.Ag. train

el SF (stem formant)

+i nom.

‘trainer’

This is a relatively minor point because all words in Georgian surface with a vowel: vowelless roots always combine with at least one prefixal or suffixal morpheme containing a vowel (el and i in (25)). However, given the reliance on underlying morpheme structure and the prevalence of vowelless roots, it is necessary to extend Nepveu’s analysis to cover these forms. Finally, it is unclear how to treat medial clusters, as in sxver.p¢l versus sxverp¢.l. Should maximal onsets be formed to favor .p¢l. over .l.? Or should there be maximum syllabification of morphemes to favor sxverp¢.l?

7.3.4 Analysis We propose that semisyllables are syllables without a mora. For expository purposes, we represent semisyllables with a final-position sigma and moraic full syllables with a regular sigma as represented in (26); however, it should be borne in mind that both are syllables and that the difference lies in the presence or absence of a mora.

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(26) Semisyllable: V

Full syllable: s m

C C C...

C

C...X...C

C

We then posit a peripherality condition based on the investigation of 200 roots and an extensive list of affixes and clitics. As shown in (27), verbal and nominal roots contain a maximum of two semisyllables and affixes contain one. (27) Morphological distribution of semisyllables a. Roots: -scdoma- ‘session’ -targm- ‘translate’ -grdeml- ‘anvil’ b. Affixes, clitics: -dnen ‘conditional, 3, pl.’ -mdis ‘up to’ -urt ‘together’

We derive these generalizations from the peripherality condition (28), which allows only one semisyllable per morpheme edge. Since the peripherality condition makes reference to morpheme edges, the morphological structure of words will have a major role to play in the analysis of the complex clusters that appear to violate the SSP. (28) Peripherality Condition: there is at most one semisyllable per morpheme edge.

Technically, the generalization in (28) is captured by an alignment constraint stating that semisyllables are aligned with morpheme edges. This is shown in (29). (29) Align-edge-V: Align semisyllable to morpheme edge.

Next consider another observation about Georgian word and syllable structure: a prosodic word contains at least one mora (= vowel) (e.g., k¢i ‘but’, bu ‘owl’, ce ‘tree’). In other words, there is no bimoraic constraint. There are no words without at least one vowel (i.e., consonants are not moraic). This is captured by the constraints in (30) and (31).5 (30) Word-Minimality (W-min) A prosodic word in Georgian contains at least one mora. PrWd m (31) Georgian Moraicity Constraint (Mora) All and only vowels in Georgian are moraic. m V

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In Georgian, the extensive concatenation of morphemes, in conjunction with the existence of harmonic clusters (section 7.3.1) and the off-glide [v] (section 7.3.2), results in the appearance of surface clusters (comprising as many as eight surface consonants) that violate the SSP. V

(32) a.

s

V

V

m +

m + scv e r p¢ l N.Ag. victim b. PrWd

s dat.

j V

s

V

V

m m sxv e r p¢ l c. V V V

s s

V

m gv + p r ckv n+ i + s us peel SF he d. PrWd j V

V

s m

gv

p r ckv n i s

(32a) shows the underlying syllabification of the word m+scverp¢l+s with three semisyllables all occurring at the morpheme edge.6 (32b) illustrates the surface syllabification, which is not too different from (32a), other than the organization into the prosodic hierarchy. In contrast, (32c) is a case of a vowelless root. The root prckvn ‘peel’ consists of two semisyllables, and it syllabifies with the following vowel to form a full syllable, thus satisfying the word minimality.

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We propose an optimality account for Georgian syllabification, employing the constraints in (33). We submit that the SSP and ES are universal, thus undominated by other constraints. Exhaustive syllabification is enforced by a constraint that requires all segments to belong to a syllable. (33) Constraints: Sonority Sequencing Principle (SSP) Exhaustive Syllabification (ES) Moraicity (Mora) Word minimality (W-min) Align-edge-V Syllable Mora (Syl-m) No epenthesis (DEP-IO) No deletion (Max-IO)

Examples: (3) (5) (31) (30) (29) (37) (38) (39)

The first constraint is the SSP, and there are various ways to implement it in the grammar. For instance, Prince and Smolensky (1993) propose a complex of binary constraints governing the affinity of segments to particular syllable positions according to their sonority rank. There is a set of constraints governing peak position as well as margin. We use the name SSP as a shorthand for the entire family of peak and margin hierarchies in (34), calling for subdivisions within the hierarchies only when needed. (34) Prince and Smolensky (1993, chap. 8)7 a. Peak Hierarchy: *P/t >> . . . >> *P/i >> *P/a b. Margin Hierarchy: *M/a >> *M/i >> . . . >> *M/t

Following Zec (1995, this volume), we subscribe to the importance of intrinsic sonority in assigning moraicity. (35) Minimum sonority constraints on nuclei and moras are statable in terms of cutoff points on the sonority hierarchy (Zec 1995). a. A syllabic nucleus must contain minimally a segment that is i. vowels (Finnish, Lithuanian) ii. vowels, liquids (Slovak) iii. vowels, liquids, nasals (English; postlexical) iv. vowels, liquids, nasals, fricatives (Yavapai) v. no restrictions (IT Berber) b. A mora must contain minimally a segment that is i. vowels/glides (Mongolian, Yidih, Lardil) ii. vowels/glides, liquids (Kwakwala) iii. vowels/glides, liquids, nasals (Lithuanian, Tiv) iv. no restrictions (English, Finnish)

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The cross-linguistic generalizations in (35) can be decomposed into a set of constraints in a parallel fashion to the peak and margin hierarchies. However, for ease of explication, we will use a cover term, such as “Georgian Moraicity,” rather than fully incorporating the Mora-Hierarchy in (36) in the tableaux. (36) Mora-Hierarchy: *m/t >> *m/s >> *m/n >> *m/l >> *m/v

Simply put, consonants that may bear a mora are more sonorous than those that cannot, and the set of syllabic consonants (i.e., the nucleus of a syllable) is a subset of the moraic set. The set of segments that may constitute the head of a foot, in turn, is a subset of the set of syllabic consonants.8 In Georgian, as in Khalkha Mongolian, Yidih and Lardil, only vowels are moraic, thus excluding syllables headed by a sonorous consonant, in contrast to such languages as Lithuanian, Kwakwala, and Tiv, where not only vowels but nasals and liquids can be moraic. Hence, the Georgian moraicity requirement is as in (31). The next consideration concerns the word minimality requirement. Languages seem to differ in their requirement of word minimality. English words consist of a bimoraic foot (a long vowel or a short vowel and consonant is a minimum). As was seen before, the requirement on Georgian words is less strict in that monomoraic words are attested.9 The Word-Minimality constraint of (30) requires a prosodic word to contain at least a mora. The constraint Syl-m (37) plays an important role in the surface realization of underlying consonant clusters and in particular in the existence of semisyllables. (37) Syllable Mora (Syl-m): All syllables should contain a mora: s m

Finally, we need the usual apparatus of faithfulness constraints developed in correspondence theory to control epenthesis (38) and deletion (39) of segments (McCarthy and Prince 1995a). (38) DEP-IO: Every segment of the output has a counterpart in the input (no epenthesis). (39) Max-IO: Every segment of the input has a counterpart in the output (no deletion).

Having introduced the constraints used in our analysis, we now turn to the analysis of Georgian consonant clusters. In the tableau in (40), SSP and ES are undominated, excluding the first two candidates; the first is excluded because the consonant clusters are incorporated into a syllable without regard to the sonority consideration, whereas the second is out of contention because the peripheral segments are not syllabified but directly attached to the higher node. The third candidate violates the Georgian moraicity constraint since it

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allows nonvocalic moras. The fourth one is a hypothetical case where there is no vowel in the word. In addition to its being unfaithful to the underlying representation, it violates the word-minimality condition according to which a well-formed word should be at least one mora long in Georgian. The winning candidate is the last one; though it violates the Syl-m constraint (thus allowing three syllables that do not contain a mora), it violates none of the four higher-ranked constraints. (40) Georgian syllabification SSP *!

s

ES

Mora

W-min

Syl-m

*!

*****

m m scv er

p¢ls

PrWd

*!

s m m scv er

p¢ls

s

s

s

m

m

m

m scv er

*!

p¢ls PrWd

V

V

V

V

V

m

scv

r

p¢l

s

==> PrWd

***

j s V

m

m scver

V

V

p¢l

s

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To recapitulate some of the most salient points of Georgian syllabification, we have argued that the extensive concatenation of morphemes, in conjunction with the existence of harmonic clusters, results in the appearance of surface clusters that violate the SSP.

7.4. Polish Clusters Like Georgian, Polish has surface clusters that defy the SSP. We will argue that the analysis we propose for Georgian can be directly extended to Polish without the overgeneration of Rubach and Booij’s (1990) account. In addition, our account provides the motivation behind the two-onset template of Gussmann (1992), deriving it from independently needed constraints.

7.4.1 Data and Previous Analyses Sample intial, medial, and final Polish clusters defying the SSP are shown in (41). The corresponding morphological structures are shown in (42). As was the case with Georgian, morpheme boundaries play a crucial role in the distribution of semisyllables, and hence consonant clusters, in Polish. (41) a. ptak ‘bird’, bdzura ‘nonsense’, fstre t ‘repulsion’, mdl´ y ‘tasteless’ b. piosnka ‘song’, karmnik ‘feeder’ c. przestempstf ‘crime-gen.’, astm+y ‘asthma-gen.’ (42) a. ptak ‘bird’, bzdura ‘nonsense’, fstre t ‘repulsion’, mdl´ y ‘tasteless’ b. piosn+ka ‘song’, karm+nik ‘feeder’ c. prze+stemp+stf ‘crime-gen.’, astm+y ‘asthma-gen.’

The problems posed by these clusters have long been noted for Polish. Gussmann (1992), on the one hand, made the telling generalization that the maximum onset in Polish comprises two well-formed onsets, as exemplified in (43). (43) Gussmann’s (1992) Generalization (two onset template) [dr-gn]ac ‘shudder’ [f-str]e t ‘repulsion’ [m-gw]a ‘mist’ pio[sn-k]a ‘song’

Rubach and Booij (1990), on the other hand, propose that there is a Polishspecific obstruent sequencing principle: that is, with obstruents there is no requirement for sonority distance. As such, an unlimited number of obstruents can occur, in any order, in onset and coda position. Their structure for fstre t ‘repulsion’ is shown in (44).

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(44) Obstruent sequencing principle (Rubach and Booij 1990): With obstruents there is no requirement for sonority distance. s m f s t r e t

More problematic for Rubach and Booij’s analysis are the cases where certain clusters violate even this Polish-specific version of the SSP. To account for these cases, they propose that there are processes of initial and medial stray adjunction of segments to a “mot,” as shown in (45). These segments then violate ES. (45) a. m(ot) s

b.

m d ´l y m s pios n

s ka

There is a serious empirical problem in this analysis: Rubach and Booij incorrectly predict more types of clusters than actually occur; for example, unlimited obstruents or multiple obstruents with stray adjoined segments, such as initial mpt, kpt, medial kmnpt, kmsnpt, and so on.

7.4.2 Semisyllable Analysis The onsetlike form of semisyllables accounts for Gussmann’s (1992) generalization without having to stipulate a Polish-specific double onset. That Polish is restricted to two well-formed onsets derives from Align-Edge-V, which captures the peripherality condition of one semisyllable per morpheme edge. As such, a word can seemingly begin with two onsets: a semisyllable at the root edge and then the onset of a full syllable. The restriction of maximally one semisyllable per morpheme edge also avoids the overgeneration predicted by the Polish-specific SSP of Rubach and Booij, as well as the necessity for positing stray adjunction that occurs at morpheme edges where the semisyllables are located. Consider the syllabification of piosnka ‘song’ in (46). The root piosn has a full syllable (pio) at its left edge and a semisyllable (sn) at its right edge. The

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201

affix comprises a full syllable (ka). Note that this is an example of a semisyllable occurring on the surface in medial position, even though it is at a morpheme edge.10 (46) Semisyllable analysis PrWd s

V

s

m

m

pio

sn +ka

Polish semisyllables are exactly like those found in Georgian: that is, they comprise well-formed “onsets” obeying the SSP and ES. Surface differences between the clusters found in Georgian and those found in Polish are due to the shape of affixes, the consonantal inventory of the two languages, and the fact that Polish does not have harmonic clusters.11

7.5. Bella Coola 7.5.1 Basic Data Another language that we examine is Bella Coola, which has more startling consonant clusters than Georgian. Bagemihl (1991) states that the canonical syllable structure is obstruent-sonorant-vowel-consonant. However, in addition to the large clusters like those in (47), it has a number of vowelless words, as in (48). (Data are from Bagemihl 1991.) (47) Typical clusters nuyaml´ +l´ +l´ +l´ ‘we used to sing’ (to-sing+past+past+1pl) q¢psta ‘to taste’ st¢qwlus ‘black bear snare’ (48) Vowelless words q¢pst+tc ‘taste it’ (to-taste+PM [person marker]-you-it) w w ´l c t+l´ +cc ‘you spat on me’ (to-spit+past+PM-you-it) k¢x+l´ +l´ +ccw+s+l´ cwt+l´ +l´ +c ‘you had seen that I had gone through the passage’ (to-see+past+past+PM-you-me+nom.+to-go-through+past +past+I)

The chart in (49) summarizes some of the past analyses of the vowelless word /c¢ktskwc¢/, which are striking in their lack of consensus.

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(49) c¢ktskwc¢ ‘he arrived’ Syllabification Newman 1947

w

c¢ktsk c¢

Number of s 0

w

Hockett 1955

c¢.k.t.s.k ·c¢

6

Greenberg 1962

c¢kt.skwc¢

2? w

3

Hoard 1978

c¢.k.ts.k .c¢

5

Bagemihl 1991

mmmmmm

0

Fudge 1976

c¢*.k*t.sk *c¢ w

c¢k t s kwc¢ Semisyllable

V V s

V

4 (1 s & 3 V)

c¢ k t s kw c¢

7.5.2 Unsyllabified Segments: Bagemihl 1991 Bagemihl (1991) proposes that in Bella Coola segments are unsyllabified if they do not fit into the canonical syllable type (obstruent-sonorant-vowelconsonant). Under his account, vowels and sonorants are syllabic, and those obstruents that are not incorporated into the syllable are saved by moraic licensing, as in (50). A sample analysis from Bagemihl of the vowelless forms q¢psttc and tqnk ‘be under’ are shown in (51). (50) a. Canonical syllable shape: Obs-Son-Vowel-C b. Moraic licensing c. Vowels and sonorants are syllabic. (51) a. q¢psttc PrWd m m mmmm q¢ p s t t c b. tqnk PrWd s m t

m q

n

k

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203

In (51a), there are no vowels or sonorants. As such each segment (obstruents and fricatives) is saved by moraic licensing; that is, each is assigned a mora and then directly adjoined to a PrWd. In (51b), there is a sonorant n, which is syllabic and hence dominated by a syllable as well as by a mora. We point out several problems that counter the predictions made by Bagemihl’s proposal. First, there is a limitation on the size of obstruent clusters: obstruent-only affixes and roots never contain more than two stops at an edge, while fricatives are abundant (Nepveu 1994). Second, fricatives behave as if they were the syllabic peak: there is a disproportionate number of fricatives in vowelless words. Relatedly, affixes often have fricatives in nuclear positions (e.g., pst). For example, aspiration of stops occurs everyh where except before fricatives, sonorants, and vowels (e.g., pl ´t ‘thick’ [p´l t ], h p´l tk [p´l t k], txnxni [txnxni]). That is, these three form a natural class if all are considered to be moraic and hence constituting syllable peaks. In addition, there is a preference for fricatives to be syllabified in codas and stops in onsets, as evidenced by alternation among dorsal obstruents. So, in this respect as well, fricatives behave like the syllable peak. Next consider the reduplication facts of (52) and (53), which constitute primary support for the moraic licensing account. We argue that these cannot be used as evidence for unsyllabified segments. (52) Reduplication milixw Æ milmilixw´l p sma Æ smsma (53) st¢qwlus qpsta ¸ pl´ tkn stan p¢l´ a

Æ Æ Æ Æ Æ

t¢qwlqwlus-i qpstata pl´ tknknl´ p stantanmts p¢l´al´a

‘bear-berry’ ‘story’ ‘black bear snare’ ‘to taste’ ‘bark of bitter cherry tree’ ‘mother’ ‘wink’

According to Bagemihl, reduplication prefixes a syllable template to the first foot of the root. Reduplication is prefixal in (52) while it becomes an infix in (53). The generalization is that in (53) the first sonorant segment is found inside the word with unsyllabified segments to its left. In qpsta, for instance, the first three segments are not part of the syllable and the first syllable is ta, which reduplicates. Bagemihl’s assumptions about the syllabicity of vowels and sonorant consonants come solely from reduplication. Reduplication skips over nonsonorant consonants, and there is no reduplication in obstruent-only words. These facts illuminate what types of syllable structure are allowed in the reduplicant, but one cannot make the argument that the only possible syllable structure of Bella Coola is that which is found in redu-

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plication. Recent optimality studies of partial reduplication in a number of languages demonstrate that reduplication often exhibits the effect of the emergence of the unmarked (TETU), the name given to the striking tendency of reduplicants to be less marked in some dimensions than generally in the language (McCarthy and Prince 1995a, Carlson 1997, Alderete and Beckman 1999). Within the basic model of reduplicative Identity (McCarthy and Prince 1995), correspondence holds not only between the input and the output forms of words (IO Faith) but also between the base and the reduplicant. This distinction has a liberating effect on the analysis of Bella Coola. Phonological generalizations that hold only for reduplicants can be expressed as markedness constraints that are sandwiched between IO-Faith and BR-Faith (see (54)). According to this TETU ranking, the reduplicant’s inventory is more restricted than the inventory of the whole language. (54) TETU in Reduplication (McCarthy and Prince 1995a, Alderete et al. 1999) IO-Faith >> M >> BR-Faith

In particular, Carlson (1997) proposes such an account for Bella Coola in (55), according to which Bella Coola would prefer to mis-Align the reduplicant to avoid having an obstruent nucleus in the reduplicant due to *P/obstr dominating the alignment. (55) Bella Coola ranking (Carlson 1997) L-Anch >> *P/obst >> Al-Prefix >> *P/son >> *P/vowel

However, (55) says nothing about syllabification in the language in general. This account is compatible with Bagemihl’s (1991) simple syllables or the exhaustive syllabification of the present account. The syllable structure that holds only for reduplication tells us relatively little about the syllable structure of Bella Coola in general and cannot be used to motivate the moraic licensing analysis. Given the distribution of segments in morphemes and the segmental alternations, we can conclude that all obstruents are not equally moraic. In particular, vowels, sonorants, and fricatives are moraic in Bella Coola; that is, syllables containing a vowel, sonorant, or fricative will form a full syllable, as in Yavapai.

7.5.3 Semisyllable Analysis As discussed, we propose that fricatives in Bella Coola are moraic, as in (56). The semisyllable analysis proposed for Georgian and Polish extends directly

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205

to Bella Coola. As such, it can form a prosodic word by satisfying the wordminimality and moraicity constraints. (56) Moraicity (Mora): A mora must be licensed by a segment at least as sonorous as fricatives.

In a vowelless word like q¢pst+tc ‘taste it’ in (57), the root comprises a semisyllable [q¢] and a full syllable with a moraic fricative [pst]. The affix [tc] contains a moraic fricative and hence forms a full syllable. The end result is a form with two full syllables and a single semisyllable. (57)

PrWd V

s

s

m

m

q¢ p s t + t c

A form involving reduplication is shown in (58), where the reduplicated syllable has a [+sonorant] element and hence a mora and a full syllable. (58)

PrWd V

s

s

s

m

m

m[+son]

t a t RED

a

q p s

(59) Constraint ranking in Bella Coola SSP, ES, Mora, W-min >> Dep-IO, Max-IO >> Syl-m

Thus, the distribution of consonant clusters in Bella Coola falls out naturally from the facts of fricative moraicity and the restriction of one semisyllable per morpheme edge, thereby allowing it to be analyzed exactly as Georgian and Polish were.

7.6. Conclusion The semisyllable analysis provides a principled account of Georgian, Polish, and Bella Coola clusters once the complex morpheme structure of each language is considered. Semisyllables are shown to be an integral part of

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universal syllable typology (Cho 1998b).12 The constraint ranking for these three languages is essentially the same: (60) SSP, ES, Mora, W-min >> Dep-IO, Max-IO >> Syl-m

The only difference is that whereas Georgian and Polish allow only a vowel, the most sonorant segment, to head a mora and a syllable, Bella Coola has a lower cutoff point for segment moraicity in that it permits any segment equal to or higher than a fricative in sonority to head a mora. Therefore, two different mora constraints must be invoked for Georgian and Polish on one hand and for Bella Coola on the other.

7.6.1 Stress and Semisyllables In none of the languages we have discussed does stress interact with semisyllables in any interesting way to provide empirical evidence for semisyllables and for foot typology with regard to semisyllables. Georgian stress, for instance, is notoriously unclear so that a number of conflicting proposals are available, ranging from assuming a total lack of stress to positing stress assignment in any syllable within a word (Robins and Waterson 1952, Aronson 1990, McCoy 1995). What is clear in all of these proposals is that Georgian consonants, including sonorants, are weightless. In Polish, main stress is penultimate except in some words with antepenultimate stress. Again, only vowels are moraic and participate in stress assignment.13 The only evidence we have for interactions between semisyllables and stress comes from Czech. The moraicity of liquids depends on the environments in which they occur. As illustrated by the data in (61), liquids are moraic “only when they occur after a consonant and are not followed by a vowel” (Trubetzkoy 1939: 172). Czech, as a syllabic trochee system, assigns stress in the initial syllable. (61) a. Two syllables and initial stress on the liquid sr´.dce ‘heart’ zr´.no ‘corn’ vl´.na ‘wool’ b. Two syllables and initial stress on the vowel ví.tr ‘wind’ bó.br ‘beaver’ brá.tr ‘brother’ c. One syllable and stress on the vowel rty´ ‘lips’ rvát ‘pull’ rtút ‘mercury’

A straightforward explanation arises from our semisyllable analysis. Liquids are moraic and can head a stress foot in Czech. The Onset constraint requires a syllable to have an onset and is higher ranked than Syl-m, which licenses moraless syllables. This results in not assigning a mora to a liquid when there is no onset. The initial liquids in (61c) cannot be parsed to form a stress foot to satisfy the onset requirement. They form semisyllables and are directly linked to the prosodic word node, bypassing the stress foot and, ultimately, a

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stress assignment. The contrast between a moraful syllable and a moraless syllable (semisyllable) is illustrated by (62). (62) a.

PrWd f / s

\ s

m

m

z r b.

V

no PrWd \ f s m

r

v a t

Thus, the semisyllable analysis can provide a simple account for the interaction of stress and the moraicity of liquids in vowelless syllables in Czech.

7.6.2 Cross-Linguistic Variation Within the optimality-theoretic framework, cross-linguistic variation is obtained through constraint reranking. Thus, the question of why some languages allow semisyllables while others do not can be answered straightforwardly. The constraint that ensures all syllables to contain a mora, Syl-m, interacts with the faithfulness constraints (Dep, Max). When Syl-m dominates Dep, or Max, epenthesis or deletion of segments occurs to accommodate unsyllabifiable clusters. However, when Faithfulness dominates Syl-m, semisyllables surface, as in the three languages we have investigated. In addition, the present analysis allows the SSP and ES to be universal and permits a universal prosodic structure in which all segments belong to a syllable and a prosodic word, but not necessarily to a mora or a foot, welcome consequences for prosodic phonology. Not all languages allow semisyllables, and the interaction between Syl-m and the faithfulness constraints is responsible for the typology of syllable types. In languages where underlying clusters surface intact, the faithfulness constraints are higher ranked than Syl-m, thus allowing syllables with no

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mora, as in Georgian. That is, these languages have semisyllables. In contrast, there are languages whose underlying clusters are not faithfully parsed on the surface. Clusters in Japanese and Korean, for instance, are accommodated by vowel epenthesis,14 whereas Diola Fogny and Lardil delete unsyllabified segments. There are two examples from Korean and Diola Fogny in the tableau in (63), both of which do not allow semisyllables (Syl-m >> Faith). In loan phonology, Korean creates five syllables out of the monosyllabic English word Sprite since Korean syllables allow only one consonant in the onset position. Given the ranking in (63), the second candidate is preferred where Syl-m is ranked higher than DEP-IO, resulting in vowel epenthesis. In Diola Fogny, however, the lower-ranked Max-IO constraint ensures that stray consonants delete. (63) Korean: ‘Sprite’ Æ [si-. ph-i . ra. i. th-i ] Diola Fogny: /let-ku-jaw/ Æ[lekujaw] ‘they won’t go’ Korean V V

Syl-m

s

s

Max-IO

Dep-IO

**!

s ph r a i th Æ s s s s s-i. ph-i. ra. i. th-i

s

Diola Fogny

Syl-m

s V

*!

s s

*** Dep-IO

Max-IO

letkujaw Æ V

V V

*

lekujaw

In conclusion, the semisyllable analysis demonstrates that not only can one maintain the universality of the SSP, but the ranking between Faith and Syl-m accounts for the existence or nonexistence of semisyllables in a given language. Note the summary in (64) of the relevant ranking for the languages examined here. (64) Georgian, Polish: SSP, ES, Mora-V >> Dep-IO, Max-IO >> Syl-m Bella Coola: SSP, ES, Mora-f >> Dep-IO, Max-IO >> Syl-m Japanese, Korean: SSP, ES, Mora >> Syl-m >> Max-IO >> Dep-IO Diola Fogny: SSP, ES, Mora >> Syl-m >> Dep-IO >> Max-IO

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notes

1. We will assume universality as a moot point since, unlike the exhaustivity argument, arguments for the absence of the syllable in any language have never been developed in any detail. Even Hyman’s (1990) analysis of Gokana points out the redundant nature of the syllable rather than the nonexistence of the syllable. 2. The disappearance of /s/ in the reduplicant can be treated as a case of the emergence of the unmarked (TETU) on the assumption that /t/ is less marked than /s/ as an onset. However, it still remains a problem why /st/ sometimes acts as a unit (e.g., Germanic versification, Gothic reduplication), while only /t/ surfaces in other languages. Moreover, it is quite mysterious why /s/ never surfaces alone, possibly except for one form in Avestan (/sˇtat/ ‘he stands’ vs. Sanskrit [tistati]) (Brett Kessler, personal communication). 3. Incidentally, we came across what are called “moraless vowels” in Chuvash and other languages (Hayes 1995). These vowels may constitute a syllable without an intervening mora and hence are a type of semisyllable under our definition. We do not examine these further here. 4. Unfortunately, we know of no processes in Georgian that determine syllable boundaries. As such, the only indication of medial syllabification is native speaker intuition. 5. Unlike in Bella Coola (section 7.5), fricatives in Georgian are not moraic, as reflected in the word minimality and moraicity requirements. As such, none of the arguments presented in support of the moraic status of fricatives in Bella Coola apply to Georgian. 6. According to the Richness of the Base Hypothesis in OT, the set of all inputs is available to every grammar. The underlying syllabification particular to Georgian should not be available in the input. For strict adherents of Richness of the Base, the underlying syllabification shown in (32) can be reanalyzed as showing the effect of the Peripherality condition, implemented by the alignment constraint that does its work. That is, semisyllables occur in root-edge position. As such, even without underlying syllabification, the alignment constraint permits maximally one semisyllable for each morpheme edge. 7. An extreme case of the SSP manifestation is found in Berber, where every segment wants to be a syllabic peak. We can assume that in this language all margin constraints dominate all peak constraints (Faithful, Onset >> Margin-H >> Peak-H), resulting in the situation where any segment can be a syllable peak. 8. The idea that the sonority requirements for each node in the prosodic hierarchy are not uniform is explored by Zec (this volume). For instance, in English all consonants are moraic, while only vowels and sonorant consonants are syllabic (e.g., bottom). Only vowels however, are allowed as head of a foot; all stressed syllables are headed by a vowel but never by a sonorant consonant. 9. McCarthy and Prince 1995b: 322 derive minimality by stating that word-minimality restrictions in many languages are “the result of the combination of two requirements, the prosodic hierarchy and foot binarity.” In Georgian, however, it is not apparent how one can derive the minimality effect from foot binarity since a single mora (i.e., a single vowel) is sufficient to constitute well-formed words. 10. Native speaker intuitions do not appear to be very reliable when it comes to medial clusters. There is variation both across speakers and within an individual. Gussmann (1992) syllabifies piosnka as [pio.snka] because he allows only sonorant codas, while

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Young-mee Yu Cho and Tracy Holloway King allowing two onset templates (sn and k). Rubach and Booij (1990), in contrast, assume the s to be the coda of the first syllable, the n to be an unsyllabified segment directly linked to the prosodic word, and k to be the onset of the second syllable. They also report varying syllabifications of words containing medial clusters. Similarly in Georgian, native intuitions were used to argue for syllabification in earlier studies (Bush 1996). Such forms as Georgian (i) do not necessarily constitute an argument for or against the present semisyllable analysis, in that the variation shows the optional adjunction of semisyllables either to the preceding full syllable or to the following one. (The semisyllables are underlined and shown as part of the full syllable to which they adjoin.) (i) tvit+m+prin+av+i [tvit.m.prin.av.i] Æ tvit.mpri.na.vi. tvitm.pri.na.vi targm+na [tar.gm.na] Æ tar.gmna, targm.na,*targ.mna

11. There is a puzzling behavior of sonorants in voice assimilation in Polish. Initial unsyllabifiable sonorants block voicing assimilation; medial and final unsyllabifiable sonorants are transparent to assimilation, as in (i). (i) a. teatr wojenny Æ [-dr v-] ‘war theater’ b. brak rdzy Æ [-k r dz-] ‘lack of rust’

We believe this asymmetry can be accounted for by our semisyllable analysis in that voicing assimilation occurs only in strict syllabic locality. In ‘te.a.tr#vo’ the trigger (v) and the target (t) are syllabically adjacent while in ‘brak.#r.dzy’ the trigger (dz) and the target (k) are separated by the intervening semisyllable /r/. A detailed analysis is underway. 12. Insofar as we can determine, our semisyllable analysis can be extended to other languages, including English. Sonority plateaus and reversals are found in complex onset and coda clusters in English in such examples as strike, sphere, apt, axe, adze, fifth, cats, and lapsed. All of these words can be analyzed as having a semisyllable at the morpheme-edge position. The only potential problem is midst. If we consider the word to be tautomorphemic, the s in the dst cluster should not be found cluster medially; if we assume the word to consist of two morphemes (/mid/ + /st/) a semisyllable is found on the left edge of the second morpheme. 13. We are not aware of any study on Bella Coola stress. The only evidence proposed for Bella Coola moraicity/syllabicity is based on reduplication patterns, syllabicity alternations, allophonic variations, and the behavior of glottal stop. 14. Syllabification of certain morphological combinations in Japanese and Korean, which we do not discuss here, results in deletion rather than epenthesis.

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study from Modern Georgian. Talk presented at a phonology workshop, Stanford University, Stanford, Calif., February 1988. Carlson, Katy. (1997). Sonority and Reduplication in Nakanai and Nuxalk (Bella Coola). Ms, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Chierchia, Gennaro. (1986). Length, syllabification and the phonological cycle in Italian. Journal of Italian Linguistics 8: 5–34. Cho, Young-mee Y. (1998a). Raddoppiamento Sintattico as an epiphenomenon. Paper presented at the 8th Colloquium on Generative Grammar, Palmela, Portugal, April 1998. Cho, Young-mee Y. (1998b). Syllable typology and acquisition of clusters. Paper presented at the Third Utrecht Biannual Phonology Workshop, Utrecht, The Netherlands, June 1998. Clements, G. N. (1990). The role of the sonority cycle in core syllabification. In Papers in Laboratory Phonology 1, ed. J. Kingston and M. Beckman, 283–333. Cambridge: Cambridge University. Davis. S. (1990). The onset as a constituent of the syllable: Evidence from Italian. CLS 26 (2): 71–79. Deprez, Viviane. (1987). Georgian complex segments. NELS 18: 109–123. Fudge, E. (1976). Phonotactics and the syllable. In Linguistics Studies Offered to Joseph Greenberg, ed. A. Juilland. Saratoga, Calif.: Anma Libri. Fujimura, Osamu, and J. Lovins. (1978). Syllables as concatenative phonetic rules. In Syllable and Segments, ed. A. Bell and J. B. Hooper, 107–120. Amsterdam: NorthHolland. Greenberg, Joseph. (1962). Is the vowel-consonantal dichotomy universal? Word 18: 73–81. Gussmann, Edmond. (1992). Resyllabification and delinking: The case of Polish voicing. Linguistic Inquiry 23 (1): 29–56. Halle, Morris, and J.-R. Vergnaud. (1980). Three-dimensional phonology. JLR 1: 83–105. Harris, John. (1994). English Sound Structure. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Hayes, Bruce. (1995). Metrical Stress Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hewitt, B. G. (1995). Georgian: A Structural Reference Grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Hoard, J. E. (1978). Syllabification in Northwest Indian languages. In Syllables and Segments, ed. A. Bell and J. Hooper, 59–72. Amsterdam: North-Holland. Hockett, C. F. (1955). A Manual of Phonology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Hyman, L. (1990). Non-exhaustive syllabification: Evidence from Nigeria and Cameroon. CLS 26: 175–195. Levin, Juliette. (1985). A metrical theory of syllabicity. Doctoral dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, Mass. McCarthy, John, and Alan Prince. (1993). Prosodic Morphology: Constraint Interaction and Satisfaction. Report RUCCS TR-3. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University. McCarthy, John, and Alan Prince. (1995a). Faithfulness and reduplicative identity. UMOP 18: 249–384. McCarthy, John, and Alan Prince. (1995b). Prosodic morphology. In The Handbook of Phonological Theory, ed. John Goldsmith, 318–366. Cambridge: Blackwell. McCoy, Patricia. (1995). Word stress in Georgian. Presented at the annual meeting of AATSEEL, Chicago, December 1995.

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Nepveu, D. (1994). Georgian and Bella Coola: Headless syllables and syllabic obstruents. Master’s thesis, University of California, Santa Cruz. Nespor, Marina, and Irene Vogel. (1986). Prosodic Phonology. Dordrecht: Foris. Newman, S. (1947). Bella Coola 1: Phonology. IJAL 13: 129–134. Prince, Alan, and Paul Smolensky. (1993). Optimality Theory: Constraint interaction in generative grammar. Report RUCCS TR-2. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University. [To appear, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.] Robins, R. H., and N. Waterson. (1952). Notes on the phonetics of the Georgian word. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London) 14 (part 1): 52–72. Rubach, Jerzy, and G. Booij. (1990). Syllabic structure assignment in Polish. Phonology 7: 121–158. Selkirk, E. (1982). The syllable. In The Structure of Phonological Representations, ed. H. van der Hulst and N. Smith, Part 2: 337–383. Dordrecht: Foris. Selkirk, E. (1984). On the major class features and syllable theory. In Language Sound Structure, ed. M. Aronoff and R. Oehrle, 107–136. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Sievers, E. (1881). Grundzüge Phonetik. Leipzig: Bretkopf und Hartel. Steriade, Donca. (1982). Greek prosodies and the nature of syllabification. Doctoral dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, Mass. Trubetzkoy, N. (1939). Principles of Phonology. Trans. C. A. M. Baltaxe. Berkeley: University of California Press. Vogt, Hans. (1971). Grammaire de la langue georgienne. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Vogt, Hans. (1988). Structure phonemique du georgien: Etude sur le classement des phonemes et des groupes des phonemes. [1958.] In Linguistique caucasienne et armenienne, ed. H. Vogt (1988). Oslo: Norwegian University Press. Zec, Draga. (1995). Sonority constraints on syllable structure. Phonology 12: 85–129.

8 Onsets and Nonmoraic Syllables in German Caroline Féry

This chapter considers the status of nonappendical word-final consonants and proposes an analysis in which they project a nonmoraic semisyllable (see Cho and King, this volume, for a similar proposal for Georgian, Polish, and Bella Coola and Féry, to appear, for French). More specifically, such consonants are onsets of syllables with no nuclei. This analysis improves on alternative proposals on several grounds. First, syllables are maximally bimoraic, which renders the assumption that German has trimoraic syllables unnecessary. German behaves in this respect like most other languages in obeying a bimoraic maximum for syllables. Second, puzzling properties of laryngeals and of [g] after a dorsal nasal are accounted for. In a nutshell, the laryngeals, [h] and [ʔ], as well as [g] after a dorsal nasal are only realized when they are the onsets of higher prosodic constituents, like prosodic word, foot, and moraic syllables, but not as onsets of nonmoraic syllables, like schwa syllables and semisyllables. Finally, that some final consonants contribute weight can be accounted for. The semisyllable they project is the weak member of a final syllabic trochee. This has the advantage of rendering feet consisting of superheavy syllables superfluous. In the first section of this chapter, some basic facts about the syllable structure of German are presented. In section 8.2, the role of the prosodic hierarchy in determining the presence of an onset is given an optimality-theoretic analysis. The analysis relies on the assumption that the prosodic constituents form a natural markedness hierarchy. The three next sections (8.3–8.5) subsequently examine the behavior of [g] after [ŋ], [h], and the glottal stop in greater detail, and the claim is made that these consonants are always onsets of some syllable. Section 8.6 concludes. I would like to thank Birgit Alber, Gisbert Fanselow, Peter Gebert, Tonio Green, René Kager, Ruben van de Vijver, two anonymous reviewers, and the audience of the Workshop on Conflicting Rules in Potsdam in December 1999 for helpful comments, support, and suggestions.

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8.1. Syllable Structure Syllables are traditionally organized into onsets, nuclei, and codas. In moraic theory, nuclei – and in some languages also codas – are moraic and thus contribute weight to the syllables they are part of, whereas onsets are nonmoraic and weightless. German syllables are maximally bimoraic, which implies that the moraic part of the syllable maximally consists of a bimoraic tense vowel or, alternatively, of a monomoraic lax vowel followed by a single moraic consonant. This is shown in (1). Stressed tense vowels are bimoraic and stand mainly in open syllables ((1a)), whereas lax vowels are monomoraic and obligatorily closed by a consonant ((1b–c)). There are no lax vowels in unambiguously open syllables, such as final ones ([áu.to] but *[au.tɔ]), or in a hiatus position ([mu.zé:.υm] but *[mu.ze.υm]) (Moulton 1962). This speaks for a bimoraic minimality of the syllables, at least in those with full vowels. Word-internally, syllables are not only minimally but also maximally bimoraic.1

(1)

a. Word-medial tense vowels s s

m

m

m

i:

t

ə (Miete ‘rent’)

b. Word-medial lax vowels s s

m

m

m

I

t

ə (Mitte ‘middle’)

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c. Lax vowels in final syllables s m m

m 

l

(M u¨ ll ‘garbage’)

There is a clear relationship between the vowel quality and quantity on the one hand, and the status of the following consonant on the other. If the vowel is tense, the following consonant is just the onset of the following syllable, but if the vowel is lax and followed by a single consonant and a vowel, then the consonant can be analyzed as ambisyllabic: it is both the coda of the preceding syllable and the onset of the next (see van Oostendorp, this volume, for the same observation in other Germanic languages). The difference is reflected in the orthography. In many cases, a plain onset is written with a single grapheme (as in Miete [mi:tə] ‘rent’ or Robe [ʁo:bə] ‘robe’) and an ambisyllabic consonant with a double one (as in Mitte [mtə] ‘middle’ or Robbe [ʁɔbə] ‘seal’). Reversely, one can say that a single intervocalic consonant grapheme signalizes a preceding tense vowel, whereas a doubly written consonant signalizes a lax vowel (see Ramers 1999 for exceptions as well as an overview of the relevant literature). Ambisyllabic segments like [t] in Mitte in (1b) and plain onsets differ in a number of respects. It has been observed by some authors (Selkirk 1984a, Ramers 1992, Wiese 1996, among others) that ambisyllabic segments display some properties of onsets and some of codas, but not all: they are not aspirated, and they are not finally devoiced. This means that they are neither plain onsets nor plain codas, but just foot-internal syllable boundaries. They only appear between a stressed and an unstressed syllable. In Ito and Mester’s (1994) terms, they have blurred edges, as opposed to crisp edges of syllables, in which case a syllable has its own onset or coda. This chapter focuses on onsets of crisp syllables. Ambisyllabic segments are not considered. German, as well as Dutch, English, French, and many other languages, has also nonmoraic syllables: schwa syllables ((2a)) and semisyllables ((2b)). A distinction must thus be made between nonmoraic syllables with a nucleus (schwa or syllabic sonorant) and those without a nucleus (semisyllables).2 (2)

Examples of nonmoraic syllables a. Schwa syllables (with nucleus): Lampe [lam.pə] ‘lamp’, Ehe [e:.ə] ‘marriage’, Himmel [hml] ‘sky’, loben [lo:.bn] ‘to praise’, Eber [e:.bɐ] ‘boar’, Geschrei [gə.ʃrai] ‘shouting’ ˆ

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Caroline Féry b. Semisyllables (without nucleus): Lob [lo:.p] ‘praise’, Katafalk [ka.ta.fal.k] ‘catafalque’, fünf [fn.f] ‘five’, Helm [hel.m] ‘helmet’

In word-final syllables, additional consonants are not unusual. In this position, tense vowels can apparently be closed by one, lax vowels by two consonants.3 These “superheavy” syllables have the property of attracting stress – at least in the majority of the cases – which shows that the additional consonant plays a role in the computation of weight. To account for this fact, at least two analyses are possible.4 In one analysis, the additional consonant is moraic and part of the final syllable. The syllable is trimoraic and as such attracts stress. This solution, shown in (3a) was adopted in Féry 1997 but is rejected in this chapter. The other solution, adopted here, is to let the additional consonant project a semisyllable, as in (3b), consisting of just an onset. Syllables are then maximally bimoraic without exception.5 (3)

a. Moraicity of the final consonant s

m m m

Kata f

a l k

f

u¨ n f

L

o

b

b. Syllabicity of the final consonant s s

m m

Kata f

a

l

k

f

u¨ n

f

L

o

b

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In projecting a syllable, as in (3b), the final consonants allow the words in which they appear to have the unmarked syllable trochee pattern of the language. (Lexical stress will not be examined here, but see Féry 1998 for a detailed optimality-theoretic account.) (4)

F s´

F s

m m (Kata) f a l k

s´

s

m m (Sol) d a

t

8.2. Onsets 8.2.1 Data German syllables can have a simple onset ((5a)), a complex one ((5b)), or no onset at all ((5c)). Word-initial syllables can have a so-called prefix (or appendix), which is always a coronal fricative, [ʃ] or [s], as in (5d). Syllable prefixes are not discussed in this chapter. (5)

Onsets a. Simple onsets: Tisch [tʃ] ‘table’, Idee [ʔi.dé:] ‘idea’, chaotisch [ka.ʔó:.tʃ] ‘chaotic’, alkoholisch [ʔal.ko.hó:.lʃ] ‘alcoholic’ b. Complex onsets: Tritt [t t] ‘kick’, Gnade [gná:.də] ‘mercy’, blau [blau] ˆ ‘blue’ c. No onsets: Museum [mu.zé:.υm], Korea [ko.ʁé:.a], Ehe [ʔé:.ə] ‘marriage’ d. Prefixes: starr [ʃtaɐ] ‘unflexible’, Skript [skrpt] ‘script’ ˆ

Only noninitial unstressed syllables can be onsetless, as shown by the words in (5c). All other syllables have an onset. Moraic syllables generally require an onset. However, and this is crucial for the analysis proposed here, not only syllables require onsets but also higher prosodic constituents, like feet and prosodic words.6 When the left edge of a syllable coincides with the left edge of a foot or prosodic word, an onset is required by the higher constituent rather than by the syllable. If no underlying consonant is present that could serve as an onset, a glottal stop is inserted. This is shown by the words Idee, chaotisch, and alkoholisch in (5a), as well as by Ehe in (5c).

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The prosodic hierarchy assumed here is adapted from the conventional one in (6), from Selkirk 1984b, McCarthy and Prince 1986, 1990, Nespor and Vogel 1986, and others. The syllable constituent is split into two different ones, the moraic syllable and the nonmoraic syllable. All syllables with a full vowel are moraic except for some suffixes like -ung, -lich, -ig, and the like that have a high vowel before a back consonant, a position in which schwa is not allowed (Wurzel 1970). I analyze these suffixes as nonmoraic and their vowel as standing for a vowel which should be schwa, but must have another quality. (6)

Prosodic hierarchy PrWd (Prosodic Word) F

(Foot)

sm

(Moraic Syllable)

s non-m (Nonmoraic Syllable)

Syllables falling together with the left edge of a foot require an onset, as shown in (7a). All higher constituents, like the prosodic word (and the phonological phrase) also require an onset, though this requirement may already be met at the level of the foot, as in the words in (7b). But in a disyllabic word with a noninitial stress, the first syllable is not footed (see Féry 1998). The presence of a glottal stop is required at the level of the prosodic word, which is shown in (7c), using the word Idee. The association lines with an arrow are meant to emphasize that onsets are associated not only to the syllable they belong to but also to higher prosodic constituents. (7)

Onset required by feet and prosodic words a. PrWd Ft s

s s

[k a (ʔ o: t I chaotisch

Ú)F]PrWd

onsets and nonmoraic syllables in german b.

219

PrWd

Ft s s mm [(ʔ e: ə)F]PrWd Ehe c.

PrWd Ft s m

[ʔ i (d

s m m

e:)F]PrWd

Idee

Up to now, only syllables requiring an onset have been considered. In some instances, however, syllables are onsetless. Besides syllables like in (5c), schwa syllables with an orthographic ·hÒ in their onset as in (8a) as well as those with ·gÒ after a dorsal nasal (orthographic ·nÒ) as in (8b) are also phonetically onsetless.7 (8)

Nonmoraic syllables without (their own) onsets a. [h] is unpronounced: Ehe [ʔé:.ə] ‘marriage’, Ziehung [tsí:.υŋ] ‘draw’ (vs. Alkohol [ʔál.ko.ho:.l] ‘alcohol’, Ruin [ʁu.ʔí:.n] ‘ruin’) b. [g] is unpronounced: Zunge [tsυ´ŋə] ‘tongue’, junge [jυ´ŋə] ‘young’ (vs. Tango [táŋ.go])

Summing up what has been said, some syllables require onsets while others avoid them. A detailed overview of the onset realization is given in Table 1. First, an orally articulated consonant present in the input is always realized. Second, [g] after [ŋ] appears as the onset of a noninitial moraic

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Table 1: Onset Realizations

Oral consonant

[g] after [ŋ]

[h]

Glottal top

Prosodic word

Foot

Moraic syllable

Nonmoraic syllable

Tisch ‘table’ Sénse ‘scythe’ Gémüse ‘vegetable’ not a possible context

Gémüse ‘vegetable’ Aréna ‘arena’ Lèopárd ‘leopard’ Linguíst ‘linguist’ dìphtongíeren ‘to diphthongize’ ahói ‘ahoy!’ behárren ‘to insist’ Gehéul ‘howling’

Áuto ‘car’ Télefon ‘telephone’

Ámeise ‘ant’ Betéiligung ‘participation’ no

Horizónt ‘horizon’ hállo ‘hallo’ háuen ‘to beat’ Hèrmelín ‘ermine’ Idée [ʔi.de:] ‘idea’ [ʔ]Eréignis ‘event’ [ʔ]Ámeise ‘ant’

Chaot ‘chaotic person’ [ka.ʔo:t]/[ka.o:t] Beámte ‘civil servant’ [bə.ʔam.tə]/[bə.am.tə]

Tángo ‘tango’ Úngarn ‘Hungary’ Ánglo ‘Anglican’ Úhu ‘owl’ Màhagóni ‘mahogany’ Álkohol ‘alcohol’ no

no

no

syllable, but neither word-initially (because it is not licit in this position; see next section) nor as the onset of a nonmoraic syllable. Third, an unstressed syllable with a full vowel retains all input consonants except for the one with the lowest sonority, which is [h], the only phonemic laryngeal in German: [h] is not phonetically realized at the left edge of an unstressed syllable. And fourth, the other laryngeal, the nonphonemic glottal stop, is also lowest in the sonority hierarchy. Its contexts of realization are even more limited than those of [h]. It is only realized in case a foot or a prosodic word would otherwise be onsetless. Moreover, foot-initial [ʔ] is optional, as shown in the last row of Table 1.

8.2.2 An OT Analysis In the remainder of this section, an optimality-theoretic analysis of onset preservation, deletion, and insertion is sketched, the details of which are developed in the remainder of the chapter. The facts to be accounted for are that plain oral consonants are just faithful to their inputs, whereas the presence of laryngeal consonants and of [g] in the context of a dorsal nasal depends to a large extent on markedness effects. Optimality Theory (OT) is thus the ideal framework to account for this. A list of the markedness constraints used in the analysis appears in (9).8 (9)

Markedness constraints a. OnsetPrWd (prosodic words begin with onsets) >> OnsetFoot (feet begin with onsets) >> Onsets(m) (moraic syllables begin with onsets) >> Onsets(non-m) (nonmoraic syllables begin with onsets)

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b. *[h]: No [h]. c. *[ŋg]: No [g] after a dorsal nasal.

The markedness hierarchy in (9a) expresses the fact that the higher the prosodic constituent, the more likely it is to have an onset. In other words, it is more important for a prosodic word to begin with a consonant than it is for a foot, and so on.9 (9b–c) are just ordinary markedness constraints militating against marked segments or segment sequences. The faithfulness constraints listed in (10) come in different forms, but the intention is always the same: the output resembles the input. Max(C) and Dep(C) posit that a nonlaryngeal oral consonant in the input has a correspondent in the output and reversely. Max(Nasal) says that the feature [nasal] in the input is also present in the output. Max(Dorsal) requires the same for the feature [dorsal]. These constraints will be motivated in the next section. Finally, Dep(ʔ) militates against epenthesis of glottal stops.10 (10) Faithfulness constraints a. Max(C): No deletion of an oral (nonlaryngeal) consonant. b. Dep(C): No epenthesis of an oral (nonlaryngeal) consonant. c. Dep(h), Max(Nasal), Max(Dorsal), Dep(ʔ)

The ranking of the markedness and faithfulness constraints is shown in (11). (11) Ranking of the constraints Max(C), Dep(C), Dep(h), Max(Nasal), Max(Dorsal), OnsetPrWd >> OnsetFoot >> Dep(ʔ) >> Onsets(m) >> *[h], *[ŋg] >> Onsets(non-m)

It is shown in Tableau 1 in (12) that Max(C) and Dep(C) are undominated, using the word Tisch ‘table’. Parentheses stand for feet. The prosodic words always correspond to the grammatical words in the examples given. Candidate (12a) in Tableau 1 wins because it has a faithful onset consonant. The other candidates fail on Max(C) and/or Dep(C) and are eliminated. An oral consonant in the onset is always realized in German and does not change its quality. (12) Tableau 1: Tisch ‘table’ /tʃ/

Max(C)

Dep(C)

OnsetPrWd

Dep(ʔ) Onsets(m) *[ŋg] *[h]

☞ a. (Tisch) b. (Isch)

*!

c. ([ʔ]isch)

*!

* *!

* *

Onsets(non-m)

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It will be shown in the next sections how the OT analysis developed here accounts for the presence or absence of [g] after a dorsal nasal and of the laryngeals. All of them are unrealized when they would appear in the onset of a nonmoraic syllable, and this property distinguishes them from oral consonants. However, they require different analyses, since [h] is just an ordinary phonemic segment, [ʔ] is epenthetic, and [ŋg] is in allophonic variation with [ŋ]. Both [g] and the laryngeals are realized in an onset if they begin at least a nonmoraic syllable. Prosodic words and feet always require onsets, even at the cost of epenthesis. Moraic syllables always realize an input consonant, even weak [h], but do not epenthesize a glottal stop, and nonmoraic syllables prefer to be onsetless, which means that they do not realize [h] and [g] after [ŋ]. These facts can be accounted for with the help of a few natural constraints, taking advantage of the prosodic hierarchy.

8.3. [g] after the Dorsal Nasal 8.3.1 Data It is generally assumed in the literature on the subject that the alternation between [ŋ] and [ŋg] is best explained if [g] is deleted in the coda position (Wurzel 1980, Giegerich 1985, Hall 1992, Wiese 1996, Ito and Mester, this volume, among others). I propose a different analysis: [g] is pronounced only if it is in the onset of a higher prosodic constituent but not if it would be the onset of a nonmoraic syllable. To motivate this proposal, the allophonic nature of [ŋ] must be made explicit. It will first be shown that some occurrences of the dorsal nasal emerge as the result of an assimilation of a tautomorphemic coronal nasal to a following dorsal stop: Bank [baŋk], Ankara [aŋkaʁa], and the like are well formed, but other sequences like *[ŋp], *[ŋt], *[ŋç], etc. are not.11 After that, it will be shown that the remaining occurrences of [ŋ] stand in an allophonic relation to [ŋg]. The first point, the allophony with the coronal nasal, is orthogonal to the main interest of this chapter, but still necessary, because it illustrates that the dorsal nasal is always nonphonemic. In German monomorphemes, the only consonants before which the dorsal nasal stands are the dorsal stops. This restricted distribution is explained if the dorsal nasal is the product of regressive assimilation. This does not hold for the other nasals. Though the consonant following [m] in a sequence [m] + stop is usually labial, as in Bombe ‘bomb’, Imperfekt, and imperial, it may also appear before a coronal or dorsal stop, as in Hemd ‘shirt’, Zimt ‘cinnamon’, and Imker ‘beekeeper’, or before a coronal fricative, as in Amsel ‘blackbird’. [n] also appears before noncoronals but only before fricatives, like labial [f] (as in fünf ‘five’ or Senf ‘mustard’) and dorsal [ç] (as in Mönch ‘monk’). In short, nasals do not assimilate to a following fricative,12 but sequences of coronal and dorsal nasals plus stops are homorganic, as the

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result of assimilation (except for the coronal appendix segments t and s, which realize inflection morphemes and are extrasyllabic). This distribution has been accounted for by an analysis in which [m] and [n] are segments by their own rights, but [ŋ] is not (see, e.g., Wurzel 1980, Kloeke 1982, Ramers and Vater 1992, and Hall 1992). No detailed OT account of the assimilation is offered here. The facts are accounted for by a ranking like the one shown in (13). (13) Ident(labial)nasal, Ident(Place)stop >> Agree(Place)nasal+stop >> *Dorsal >> Ident (Place)nasal

This ranking delivers the pattern just described: a coronal nasal assimilates to a following stop (before stops, labial, coronal, and dorsal are found). A nasal does not assimilate to a following fricative (before fricatives, only labial and coronal nasals are found). Consider next the allophonic relationship [ŋ] ~ [ŋg]. A comparison of the distribution of [ŋ] with the other nasals is revealing: (14) Distribution of [ŋ] a. Word-medially: kommen ‘to come’, rennen ‘to run’, langen ‘long, infl.’ b. Word-finally: Lamm ‘lamb’, rann ‘ran, sg.’, lang ‘long’ c. Not word-initially: Mama, Nase ‘nose’, Ø (*ŋa) d. Not after ʃ: Schnabel ‘beak’, schmal ‘narrow’, Ø (*ʃŋa) e. Not after liquid: Farn ‘fern’, Köln, Helm ‘helmet’, arm ‘poor’, but *Farŋ f. Only after short lax vowels: lang ‘long’, sing ‘sing’, but *bauŋ , *ri:ŋ g. Only before unstressed vowels, often schwa, but not only: Inge ‘a name’, Verengung ‘narrowing’ vs. Tango, laryngal ‘laryngeal’ [ŋg]

The distributional restrictions affecting the dorsal nasal find a natural explanation if [ŋ] and [ŋg] are in an allophonic relation. [ŋ] is always a coda (this must be posited; see (18a)), and [g] after [ŋ] is always an onset: [ŋ] is found in those cases in which just a coda is needed and [ŋg] when both a coda and an onset are required. Neither [ŋ] nor [ŋg] are possible word-initially or after [ʃ]: [ŋ] is not possible because it must be a coda, and [ŋg] would additionally violate the Sonority Hierarchy Sequencing. Similarly, [ŋ] is not possible after tense vowels, diphthongs, and liquids. Since a syllable is maximally bimoraic, in all these cases, [ŋ] or [ŋg] would be the onset of a syllable, degenerate or not, and this disagrees with the phonotactics of German. However, as shown in (14), both [ŋ] and [ŋg] are allowed intervocalically. Further properties of this segment that also speak in favor of an allophonic variation are the following: • In some morphemes, [ŋ] alternates with [ŋg], as in Englisch [ŋ] – Anglo [ŋg], Diphthong [ŋ] – diphthongieren ‘diphthongize’ [ŋg], Triangel [ŋ] ‘triangle’ – triangulär [ŋg] ‘triangular’ (Ramers and Vater 1992, Wiese 1996).

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• Verbs with a medial [ŋ] behave like verbs with a nasal plus stop sequence, as, for instance, [n + d] and [ŋ + k], and not like the verbs with a single medial nasal. The ablaut vowels in (15c) are i-u as in (15a) and not i-o as in (15b). Compare the following paradigms (from Vennemann 1968: 76). (15) a. binden – gebunden ‘to tie-participle’ trinken – getrunken ‘to drink-part.’ b. spinnen – gesponnen ‘to spin-part.’ rinnen – geronnen ‘to run-part.’ c. klingen – geklungen ‘to ring-part.’ ringen – gerungen ‘to wrestle-part.’

stinken – gestunken ‘to stink-part.’ sinken – gesunken ‘to sink-part.’ schwimmen – geschwommen ‘to swim-part.’ schlingen – geschlungen ‘to wind-part.’ singen – gesungen ‘to sing-part.’

Notice that, in this case, [ŋ] alone shares the properties of [ŋg]. • The following nominal and verbal ge-formations also speak in favor of an analysis of [ŋ] as having the same properties as a sequence of a nasal plus an homorganic stop. Vennemann (1968) and Wurzel (1970) observe that the dorsal nasal behaves like a voiced obstruent, since the final schwa in the words of the left column is retained while the words of the middle and right columns have lost their schwa (see also Plank 1986 and Olsen 1991). (16) Gelände ‘ground’ Gebinde ‘arrangement’ Gestänge ‘struts’ Gemenge ‘mixture’ Gebirge ‘mountain range’

Gedärm ‘intestines’ Gebein ‘ossement’ Gespann ‘team’ Gestirn ‘heavenly body’ Gestein ‘rock’

Gebräu ‘brew’ Gefäß ‘vessel’ Getier ‘animals’ Gebell ‘barking’ Gewitter ‘thunderstorm’

• Finally, words like lang ‘long’ or Ding ‘thing’ have a Northern German variant in which [g] is present and subject to final devoicing. These words are then realized as [laŋk] and [diŋk] (see Lass 1984 and Ito and Mester, this volume, for an analysis with local conjunction of OT constraints).

In suffixed words, [g] is sometimes realized and sometimes not. Compare the words in (17a) in which no [g] is realized with the words in (17b) where [g] is pronounced. (17) a. [ŋ] Veréngung ‘narrowing’, Lä´ngung ‘lengthening’, (tief)rángig ‘(low) ranking’, lä´nglich ‘oblong’, Sä´nger ‘singer’, énger ‘narrower’ b. [ŋg] laryngál, diphthongál, diphthongíeren, triangúlär

3. [g] after the dorsal nasal

225

The difference lies in the kind of suffix listed in (17a) and (17b). Suffixes -ung, -ig, -lich, and -er are always unstressed and have no influence whatsoever on the stress pattern of the word they appear in. As already mentioned, they are best analyzed as nonmoraic. Suffixes like -al, -ieren, and the like are moraic, and, as a consequence, they bear the main stress of the words they appear in. The analysis proposed in section 8.3.1, according to which the difference between the realization or nonrealization of [g] lies in the moraicity of the following vowel, is thus fully confirmed. Before we come to the OT analysis, a final point remains to be clarified. In words like Bangladesch and Mangrove, [g] is pronounced, although the syllables in which [g] appears would have an onset anyway, even if [g] would be left unpronounced. In a way, this is what the analysis predicts since [g] is onset to a nonmoraic syllable. In another way, [g] seems superfluous, since the syllable in which it appears has two onset segments. I propose that the reason why [g] is pronounced has to do with the Syllable Contact Law (Vennemann 1986), as formulated in (18e), an additional principle of syllabification positing that a syllable contact is better if the sonority across the syllable boundary decreases. In other words, the onset of a syllable must have a lower sonority than the coda of the preceding syllable. In Bangladesch and Mangrove, the realization of [g] guarantees that the Syllable Contact Law is fulfilled (see Tableau 7 in (24)).

8.3.2 Optimality-Theoretic Analysis An optimality-theoretic analysis of the allophony between [ŋ] and [ŋg] uses the constraints listed in (18). The first one, Onset-Cond, posits that the dorsal nasal is always a coda. Sonority (abbreviated as Son) requires that the syllable margins respect the Sonority Sequencing Principle (Sievers 1901, Selkirk 1984a). BiMor is the constraint limiting the number of moras to two per syllable. Nuc militates against semisyllables in requiring that syllables have nuclei. And finally, SyllableContact (SyllCont) says that sonority should be decreasing across syllable boundaries. (18) Constraints regulating the allophony between [ŋ] and [ŋg] a. Onset-Cond: [ŋ] must not be an onset. b. Son: The sonority of the syllable margins must not increase from the nucleus to the syllable’s periphery. c. BiMor: Syllables are maximally bimoraic. d. Nuc: Syllables have nuclei. e. SyllCont: The sonority of an onset is lower than the sonority of the preceding coda.

First, Tableau 2 in (19) shows the effect of Onset-Cond on a hypothetical input /ŋase/ or /ŋgase/. I propose that both allophones are part of the input

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and that, in general, optimality-theoretic inputs consist of all possible allophones. The constraints on the output select the optimal candidate depending on the context. A segment with no allophone has only one input, and the constraints referring to it require complete faithfulness. If inputs consist of (relevant) allophones, it means that only part of the features realizing the output is unambiguously specified in the input. The remaining features can be changed or added, depending on the constraints on the output. From Tableau 2 in (19) onward, the constraints Max(Nasal) and Max(Dorsal) are fused into one single constraint, abbreviated as Max(N,D). These two constraints are undominated, which means that the features [nasal] and [dorsal] end up in the output whenever they are specified in the input. The dorsal nasal [ŋ] alone contains the relevant features and is thus able by itself to fulfill Max(N,D). Tableau 2 in (19) shows that a dorsal nasal cannot be realized in the onset: both [gazə] and [nazə] are better than [ŋgazə] or [ŋazə]. Onset-Cond is undominated. (19) Tableau 2: Hypothetical candidate ŋ ase or ŋ gase /ŋazə/ or /ŋgazə/

Onset-Cond

☞ a. [n]ase

Max(N,D)

Son

Nuc

*

b. [ŋ]ase

*!

c. [ŋg]ase

*!

☞ d. [g]ase

BiMor

* *

The interesting behavior of [ŋ] as opposed to [ŋg] intervocalically is summed up in the contrast between Tango and Zunge. The stop [g] is only realized when the following syllable requires an onset, like in Tango in Tableau 3 in (20) because [o] is a moraic vowel and as such requires an onset. Remember from section 8.2 that [g] pops up when a higher prosodic constituent requires an onset. In contrast, in Zunge, illustrated in Tableau 4 ((21)), there is no need for [g] since a nonmoraic syllable like the final schwa syllable in this word does not require an onset. Candidate (20b) in Tableau 3 violates Onsets(m) because it has no onset of its own (but just an ambisyllabic one) and is thus eliminated. Candidate (20c) is eliminated because [nasal] is not realized. In Tableau 4, Candidate (21b), with [g], is eliminated because it violates the constraint against [ŋg] and Candidate (21c) is also eliminated, because of Max(Nasal). Candidate (21a) with just [ŋ] is optimal. The presence of [g] in the second syllable of Tango is thus a consequence of the need of a syllable with a full vowel to begin with an onset. It is the

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allophonic variation between [g] and [ŋg] that makes the emergence of [g] possible in such a case. (20) Tableau 3: Tango /taŋo/ or /taŋgo/

Ide nt(C)

Max(N,D)

OnsetPrWd

Onsets(m)

*[ŋg]

☞ a. (Ta[ŋ.g]o)

Onsets(non-m)

*

b. (Ta[ŋ]o)

*!

c. (Ta.go)

*!

In Tableau 4 for Zunge in (21), the constraint against [ŋg] is higher ranked than the constraint requiring an onset to a nonmoraic syllable, as shown. Candidate (21a), without [g], is thus optimal. (21) Tableau 4: Zunge ‘tongue’ /tsυŋə/ or /tsυŋgə/

Ident(C)

Max(N,D)

OnsetPrWd

Onsets(m)

*[ŋg]

☞ a. (Zu[ŋ]e)

Onsets(non-m) *

b. (Zu[ŋ.g]e)

*!

c. (Zu.ge)

*!

Tableau 5 in (22) shows the interaction between the onset constraints and the ones regulating the allophony between [ŋ] and [ŋg]. (22) Tableau 5: All constraints /tsυŋə/ or /tsυŋgə/

OnsetCond

BiMor

Max(N,D)

Son

Onsets(m) *ŋg

Nuc

☞ a. (Zu[ŋ]e)

Onsets(non-m)

*

b. (Zu[ŋ.g]e)

*!

c. (Zu.ge)

*!

Tableau 6 in (23) shows why lang is realized as [laŋ], at least in Standard German. If [g] (or [k] because of final devoicing) was realized, it should project either a third mora, which is excluded by undominated BiMor, or a semisyllable, which is avoided by Nuc. A candidate without [g] is preferable since it fulfills these two constraints as well as both Max(N,D) and *[ŋg]. (23) Tableau 6: lang /laŋ/ or /laŋg/

Onset-Cond BiMor Max(N,D) Son Onsets(m) *[ŋg] Nuc

☞ a. .laŋ. b. .laŋg.

*!

*

c. .laŋ.g. d. .lag.

*! *!

*

Onsets(non-m)

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Caroline Féry

Finally, Tableau 7 in (24) for Mangrove shows the effect of SyllCont. Candidate (24b) violates this constraint since a nasal is less sonorous than a liquid and is thus eliminated. (24) Tableau 7: Mangrove /maŋrovə/ or /maŋgrovə/

Onset-Cond

Son

Max(N,D)

OnsetF

SyllCont

☞ a. .maŋ.gro.ve b. .maŋ.ro.ve

*ŋg *

*!

This section has shown that in some cases [ŋ] and [ŋg] are allophones of each other: [ŋ] is always a coda and [g] always an onset. Furthermore, the segment [g] after [ŋ] is realized just in case the following vowel is moraic.

8.4. [h] 8.4.1 Data This section shows that the phonetic distribution of [h] is similar to the one of [g] after a dorsal nasal: it is pronounced as the onset of a moraic syllable or of a higher constituent but not as the onset of a nonmoraic syllable. Before the optimality-theoretic analysis can be shown, the following question must be answered: how can it be decided whether [h] is present in the input when it is not realized, as in Ehe ‘marriage’, gehe ‘go, 1 sg.’, Ziehung ‘draw’, and the like versus Böe ‘gust of wind’, schneeig ‘snowy’, Museum with no [h]? An obvious answer is that a graphemic ·hÒ corresponds to a phonological [h].13 This is confirmed by the following observation: if an onsetless syllable that is usually unstressed is stressed for the purpose of correction or contrast, glottal stop or [h] is realized in its onset, because the syllable is then foot-initial and needs an onset. The syllables beginning with [h] correspond to the ones with graphemic ·hÒ. Gehe, for instance, is then pronounced [gehe´] or [gehé]. It is generally assumed that the grapheme ·hÒ has two phonological functions: onset and lengthening (Dehnungszeichen); see Ossner 1996, Eisenberg 1998, Primus 1999, Ramers 1999. In its second role, ·hÒ lengthens the preceding vowel. The usual view is that the two functions, which have little in common, must be reconstructed in one way or another: diachronically, phonologically, or graphematically. It is proposed here that the grapheme ·hÒ always functions as a graphematic onset in German and that this function corresponds to its role in phonology. In other words, both graphemic and phonemic h are onsets. The distribution of ·hÒ can only be understood if the syllable structure is taken to be active both in the written system and in the phonological system, as has

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229

been proposed by several phonologists (see, for instance, Ossner 1996, Wiese 1996, Eisenberg 1998, and Ramers 1999). Additional words in which ·hÒ is present are listed in (25) and (26). If ·hÒ appears before a full vowel, it has a phonetic correspondent: see the words in (25). In this case, it is generally the onset of the main stressed vowel. As shown in (25b), it also appears marginally before a secondary stressed vowel. An exhaustive list in (25b) would contain considerably fewer items than an exhaustive one in (25a).14 If ·hÒ appears before a schwa or a consonant or at the end of the word, it is not pronounced. In these cases, illustrated in (26), it is mute. (25) ·hÒ is realized as [h] a. before a vowel with main stress: Hilfe [híl.fə] ‘help’, Hütte [h´tə] ‘hut’, heben [hé:.bn] ‘to lift’, Hölle [hœlə] ´ ‘hell’, haben [há:.bn] ‘to have’, holen [hó:.ln] ‘to fetch’, Hund [hυnt] ‘dog’, Hai [hai ] ‘shark’, Heu [hɔi] ‘hay’, ˆ ˆ hauen [háun] ‘to beat’ ˆ b. before an unstressed or secondarily stressed full vowel: Alkohol [ál.ko.ho:l] ‘alcohol’, Mahagoni [ma.ha.gó:.ni], Uhu [ú:.hu] ‘owl’,Ahorn [á:.hɔʁn] ‘maple’ ˆ (26) ·hÒ is mute a. before a schwa: Kühe [ky:.ə] ‘cows’, gehe [ge:.ə] ‘go, 1 sg.’, mähen [me:.n] ‘to mow’, frohe [fʁo:.ə] ‘happy, infl.’, ziehen [tsi:.n] ‘to draw’, leihen [lai .n] ‘to lend’ ˆ b. before a consonant: lahm [la:.m] ‘lame’, Kohl [ko:.l] ‘cabbage’, Rohr [ʁo:.ʁ] ‘pipe’, ihn [i:.n] ‘him’, Fehde [fe:.də] ‘feud’ ˆ c. word finally: Kuh [ku:] ‘cow’, froh [fʁo:] ‘happy’, nah [na:] ‘near’, rauh [ʁau] ‘rough’, Geweih [gə.vai ] ‘antlers’ ˆ ˆ The representation of the different occurrences of graphemic ·hÒ is given in (27). There is nothing special about (27a). [h] is just an onset, and it is phonologically realized as such. In (27b), it is also an onset, but since the syllable is nonmoraic, it is not realized in the phonology. The graphemic and phonemic representations have thus no phonetic correspondent. In (27c), the controversial cases appear. Those are the cases for which most researchers working on the orthography/phonology correspondence assume a lengthening function for ·hÒ. This analysis is motivated by the fact that all vowels preceding ·hÒ are tense and thus long when stressed. On my account, ·hÒ has no effect on the vowel preceding it. It is not even in the same syllable. The vowel is long by virtue of being in an open syllable. ·hÒ is the onset of a following syllable, which may or may not have a nucleus. If it precedes a moraic nucleus, it is pronounced, otherwise it is not. In this latter case, it is the onset of a semisyllable, but of a special kind, since it has no phonetic representation.

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(27) Syllabic and phonological representation of graphemic ·hÒ a. As the onset of a moraic syllable (corresponding to a pronounced [h]) Graphemic Phonological/Phonetic s s m

m

H e

u

[hɔ] ˆ

h

‘hay’

m

m

ɔ

 ˆ

b. As the onset of a schwa syllable (unpronounced) Graphemic Phonological/Phonetic s s s s m m

K

ü

m m

h

e

[ky:.ə]

‘cows’

y:.

k

c. As the onset of a semisyllable (unpronounced) Graphemic Phonological s

s

s m

m m

l

a

h m

[la:m]

‘lame’

l

ə Phonetic s

s

m m

m

a:

m

l

a:

m

This analysis is in line with the analysis of [g] in [ŋg]. Both consonants are realized only if they are onsets of a moraic syllable. A major difference between the two cases comes from the environment in which these consonants are found. [g] after a nasal always follows a closed syllable and [h] an open one.

8.4.2 OT Analysis Two different aspects of the distribution of [h] must be accounted for by an OT analysis. The first one has to do with the fact that [h], like the glottal stop,

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cannot be in the coda,15 and the second with the fact that [h] is pronounced only if it is at the beginning of a moraic syllable or a higher prosodic constituent. The constraint in (28) blocks the emergence of a laryngeal in the coda. This constraint is undominated and blocks the realization of a coda laryngeal in loanwords, as in Isbollah, Brah.min, Yah.veh, and Fahd (see Davis 1999a for similar examples in English). (28) Coda-Cond: Laryngeals are onsets.

Consider a word like Brahmin in Tableau 8 in (29). The optimal candidate has no [h] in the coda of the first syllable, even if [a] would be short. This is due to the effect of Coda-Cond. (29) Tableau 8: Brahmin /brahmin/ or /bramin/ ·BrahminÒ

Ident(C) Coda- OnsPrWd Dep(ʔ) Onsets(m) *[h] Onsets(non-m) Cond

☞ a. (Bra.min) b. (Brah.min)

*!

*!

Tableaux 9 and 10 in (30)–(31) illustrate the behavior of [h]. Inputs for hallo and Kühe agree with the graphemic representation. [h] is part of the input in both cases. Notice that [h] has no allophone. The only relevant alternation is nonrealization of [h] thus, zero, and this just in case [h] is in the onset of a nonmoraic syllable. In Tableau 9 for hallo, the candidate with [h] is better than the other ones even if it violates *[h]: the other candidates are eliminated by higher-ranking constraints. The ranking of *[h] above Onsets(non-m) but below Onsets(m) guarantees that [h] is realized as the onset of a moraic syllable but not as the onset of a schwa syllable. This explains why Candidate (31a) without [h] in Tableau 10 for Kühe is optimal. The segment h begins a nonmoraic syllable. The allophone /kyhə/ with [h] is motivated by graphemic ·hÒ and by the rare instances of stressed second syllable. (30) Tableau 9: Hallo ‘hello’ /halo/ ·halloÒ

Ident(C)

Dep(h)

OnsetPrWd

Dep(ʔ)

Onsets(m)

☞ a. [h]allo

*

b. allo

*!

c. [ʔ]allo d. [t]allo

*[h] Onsets(non-m)

* *!

*!

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(31) Tableau 10: Kühe ‘cows’ /kyhə/ or /kyə/ ·KüheÒ

Ident(C)

Dep(h)

OnsetPrWd Dep(ʔ) Onsets(m) *[h] Onsets(non-m)

☞ a. (Kü.[ə])

*

b. (Kü.[hə]) c. (Kü.[ʔə])

*! *!

8.5. Glottal Stop Like [h], the glottal stop in German is always an onset. This restriction on the occurrence of the laryngeals has been observed in other languages as well, such as some Semitic languages (see McCarthy 1994 and Hiller 1998 for an overview). Hiller observes that, due to their low sonority and low consonantal strength, laryngeals prefer to be realized as unique segments in the onset or in the coda of syllables. This is always true in German, where the glottal stop is epenthetic, as in other languages like French and Ashininca Campa. Epenthetic status means that it corresponds to no segment in the input, and it is not signalized in the orthography.16 An interesting aspect of the glottal stop in German is its optionality in the foot-initial, word-internal position. Some examples were given in (5a), one of which is repeated in (32) along with others added. The last example, Pinguin, is particularly interesting since the last syllable is not primarily stressed. However, since it is a superheavy one (two syllables in the present account), it receives a certain amount of stress and is thus perceived by some speakers and in some styles as projecting a foot, though not a primarily stressed one. (32) Chaot [ka.ʔó:t]/[ka.ó:t] ‘chaotic person’ Theater [te.ʔá:.tɐ]/[te.á:.tɐ] ‘theater’ Pinguin [píŋgu.ʔì:n]/[píŋgu.ì:n]

Beamte [bə.ʔám.tə]/[bə.ám.tə] ‘civil servant’ Ruin [ʁu.ʔí:n]/[ʁu.í:n] ‘ruin’

Compare also the pairs in (33). The function words in the expressions in the left column are stressed, or at least form their own. In this case, the presence of a glottal stop is mandatory. In the second members, the function word has been cliticized to the preceding host word and is syllabified with it. In this case, there is no glottal stop. (33) habe ich [ha:.bə.ʔiç] hab ich [ha:.biç] ‘I have’ nimm ihn [nm.ʔi:n] nimm ihn [nmi:n] ‘take him’ hilf ihr [hlf.ʔi:ɐ] hilf ihr [hl.fi:ɐ] ‘help her’ ˆ ˆ Moulton (1962) has analyzed the glottal stop in German as a boundary sign between words. In a sense, the findings of this chapter corroborate his analysis. Here too, a glottal stop in the onset of a vowel-initial syllable is

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more probable if the syllable coincides with a higher prosodic constituent boundary. The difference with Moulton’s analysis is that here the glottal stop behaves like other segments in German. It is thus not a boundary signal (like a boundary tone) but just a segment that happens to be realized at some boundaries. Finally, it is shown in Tableaux 11 and 12 in (34)–(35) that Dep(ʔ), the faithfulness constraint against the insertion of a glottal stop, ranks relatively high in the hierarchy, namely between OnsetFoot and Onsets(m). As shown in Tableau 11, this ranking allows a glottal stop to be inserted at the beginning of a prosodic word or a foot but not of a lower constituent (Tableau 12). The high ranking of Dep(ʔ) expresses that it is more costly to insert a consonant than to be faithful to a consonant already present in the input. In some styles, Dep(ʔ) and OnsetF are tied or their ranking is reversed and epenthesis is then blocked. (34) Tableau 11: Idee ‘idea’ /ide/

Ident Dep OnsetPrWd OnsetF Dep Onsets(m) *[ŋg] *[h] (C) (h) (ʔ)

☞ a. [?]i.(dee)

*

b. I.(dee)

*!

c. [h]i.(dee) d. [t]i.(dee)

Onsets(non-m)

*

*! *!

(35) Tableau 12: Museum ‘museum’ /museum/

Ident(C)

Dep(h)

OnsetPrWd

Dep(ʔ)

☞ a. Mu.(se.um)

Onsets(non-m)

*

b. Mu.(se.[?]um) c. Mu.(se.[t]um)

Onsets(m)

*! *!

8.6. Conclusion Two opposite tendencies in the behavior of German onsets have been observed: higher prosodic constituents prefer to begin with an onset, whereas lower prosodic constituents try to get rid of their onsets. A possible explanation for this contradictory tendency is that higher prosodic constituents prefer to be clearly demarcated, and one way to reach this aim is to realize an onset consonant (a crisp syllable in Ito and Mester’s [1994] sense), whereas syllables belonging to the same foot tend to blur together. Ambisyllabicity of medial consonants is the best way of blurring the boundaries between syllables. A detailed metrical theory should probably distinguish between trochaic feet with weak second syllables, namely nonmoraic ones, and feet

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with stronger second syllables, namely moraic syllables, since they behave differently with respect to their onsets.

notes 1. There are exceptions to this generalization, however, though largely restricted to the initial syllable of disyllabic words, as in Müesli, Arktik, Leutnant, and Symptom. The segments [s], [k], and [t] in Müesli, Arktik, and Leutnant can be analyzed as projecting a semisyllable, but [p] in Symptom is different: [p] is partly geminate with the preceding [m] and, together, they share a single mora. 2. See also Kager 1989 for an analysis of schwa syllables as nonmoraic. 3. Syllable appendices ([s], [t], or combinations of these two segments) also appear in word-final position, additionally to semisyllables, as shown in (i). They are best analyzed as adjoined at the level of the prosodic word (PrWd), which accounts for their weightlessness and for the fact that they are mostly inflectional elements and thus suffixes to the word rather than to the syllable or the foot. Appendices are not discussed in this chapter. PrWd | F | s s

(i)

k

4. 5.

6.

7. 8.

m m | | e mp

t (kämpft ‘fight +  infl. suffix’)

Extrametricality is not an option, since these consonants add weight to their syllable. Kiparsky (this volume) analyzes final extrasyllabic consonants in Arabic as moras unaffiliated to syllables. This solution is not available for German, since final consonants are onsets, which means that they are nonmoraic. See also the chapters of Green, Kiparsky, and Wiltshire in this volume for the status of consonants at the edge of prosodic words in different languages. See also Giegerich 1985, Kiparsky 1991, and Kager 1995, among others, for proposals going in the same direction as the proposal made in this chapter, namely, to treat some final consonants as onsets of empty syllables. The dorsal nasal is ambisyllabic but, as mentioned before, ambisyllabic segments are different from onsets (they are foot-medial consonantal joints) and are ignored here. Regarding (9b): the constraints against individual segments are probably best formulated as constraints against features. See Davis 1999 for *[spread glottis] shunning [h] and aspirated stops in English. Though Davis does not use positional faithfulness, his analysis – like mine – can easily be translated into such a model: [spread glottis] is realized only when it falls together with the left edge of a foot (in English) or with the left edge of a moraic syllable (in German). This point is not pursued here. Regarding (9c): the constraint *[ŋg] is phonologically and phonetically well motivated. There is a preference for a velar gesture to be nasal rather than plosive or a sequence of a nasal plus a stop. In German, [g] is avoided in other con-

onsets and nonmoraic syllables in german

9.

10.

11. 12.

13.

14.

15. 16.

235

texts as well (see Ito and Mester, this volume), and it is also avoided in other languages (see Kager 1999). This is compatible with the alignment effect observed in languages like Tashlhiyt Berber (Prince and Smolensky 1993) or Ashininca Campa (McCarthy and Prince 1993), which tolerate onsetless syllables word-initially. In these languages, the relevant alignment constraints are higher ranking than ONSETPrWd. As René Kager (personal communication) observes, this constraint can be understood as an instance of Dep(C) plus constraints identifying [ʔ] as the epenthetic, leastmarked, consonant. Appendical segments must be eliminated from the discussion. Sing-t ‘sing+ sg. infl.’ is realized as [ziŋt]. If Padgett’s (1991) representational model of continuancy – in which the feature [±continuant] is dependent on the place feature – is accepted, this fact comes as a natural conclusion. Fricatives are [+continuant] and nasals are [-continuant]. As a consequence of this contradictory specification, assimilation does not happen. There is a large amount of literature on the interaction between the graphemic representation and the phonology of [h] (see, for instance, Ossner 1996, Eisenberg 1998, and Primus 1999), but nearly nothing in OT though this theory seems best suited for the task (however, see Geilfuß-Wolfgang, to appear and Sternefeld 1999 for proposals in this direction). In Ahorn and Alkohol in (25b), the syllable beginning with [h] can be analyzed as projecting a foot since it ends with a semisyllable, but this is not possible for Mahagoni and Uhu. See Kager and Zonneveld 1986 for a different account of the prohibition of the laryngeals in the coda in Dutch. The grapheme segment correspondence is also especially interesting since, here, a segment is realized that has no graphemic correspondent. This is the opposite case of ·hÒ, which is a grapheme that is sometimes without segmental correspondent.

references Davis, Stuart. (1999). On the distribution of /h/ and aspirated stops in American English. Ms. [To appear in Proceedings of HILP 4, ed. Vincent v. Heuven et al.] Eisenberg, Peter. (1998). Grundriss der deutschen Grammatik. Vol. 1: Das Wort. Stuttgart/Weimar: Verlag J. B. Metzler. Féry, Caroline. (1997). The mora as a measure of weight and a syllabic constituent. In Certanem Phonologicum III: Papers from the Third Cortona Phonology Meeting, ed. P. M. Bertinetto et al., 91–110. Torino: Rosenberg & Sellier. Féry, Caroline. (1998). German word stress in Optimality Theory. Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 2: 101–142. Féry, Caroline. (2001). Markedness, faithfulness, vowel quality and syllable structure in French. ROA-474, Rutgers Optimality Archive, http://roa.rutgers.edu/. Geilfuß-Wolfgang, J. (to appear). Studien Zur Worttrennung inn Deutschen. Leipzig: Habilitationsschrift, Universität Leipzig. Giegerich, H. J. (1985). Metrical Phonology and Phonological Structure: German and English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hall, T. A. (1992). Syllable Structure and Syllable-Related Processes in German. Linguistische Arbeiten 276. Tübingen: Niemeyer.

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Hiller, M. (1998). Pharyngeality, laryngeality and their relationship in phonology. Master’s thesis, University of Tübingen. Ito, J., and A. Mester. (1994). Reflections on CodaCond and Alignment. In Phonology at Santa Cruz 3, ed. J. Merchant et al., 27–46. Santa Cruz: University of California. Kager, René. (1989). A Metrical Theory of Stress and Destressing in English and Dutch. Dordrecht: Foris. Kager, René. (1995). Consequences of catalexis. In Leiden in Last, ed. H. van der Hulst and J. van de Weijer, 269–298. HIL Phonology Papers I. The Hague: Holland Academic Graphics. Kager, René. (1999). Optimality Theory: A Textbook. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kager, René, and W. Zonneveld. (1986). Schwa, syllables, and extrametricality in Dutch. Linguistic Review 5: 197–221. Kiparsky, P. (1991). Catalexis. Ms., Stanford University, Stanford, Calif. Kloeke, W. U. S. van Lessen. (1982). Deutsche Phonologie und Morphologie: Merkmale und Markiertheit. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Lass, R. (1984). Phonology: An Introduction to Basic Concepts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McCarthy, J. (1994). The phonetics and phonology of Semitic pharyngeals. In Papers in Laboratory Phonology, Vol. 3, ed. P. Keating. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McCarthy, J., and A. S. Prince. (1986). Prosodic phonology. Ms., University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Brandeis University, Waltham, Mass. McCarthy, J., and A. S. Prince. (1990). Foot and word in prosodic morphology: The Arabic broken plural. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 8: 209–283. Moulton, W. G. (1962). The Sounds of English and German. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Nespor, M., and I. Vogel. (1986). Prosodic Phonology. Dordrecht: Foris. Olsen, S. (1991). Ge-Präfigierungen im heutigen Deutsch. Beiträge zur Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache 113: 333–366. Ossner, J. (1996). Silbifizierung und Orthographie des Deutschen. Linguistische Berichte 165: 369–400. Padgett, J. (1991). Stricture in feature geometry. Doctoral dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Plank, F. (1986). Das Genus der deutschen Ge-Substantive und Verwandtes. Zeitschrift fuer Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung 39. Beiträge zur Vererbungslehre 1: 44–60. Primus, B. (1999). Suprasegmentale Phonologie und Graphie: Die Geschichte vom stummen ·hÒ. Ms., University of Cologne. Ramers, K. H. (1992). Ambisilbische Konsonanten im Deutschen. In Silbenphonologie des Deutschen, ed. P. Eisenberg et al., 246–283. Tübingen: Narr. Ramers, K. H. (1999). Vokalquantität als orthographisches Problem: Zur Funktion der Doppelkonsonanzschreibung im Deutschen. Linguistische Berichte 177: 52–64. Ramers, K. H., and H. Vater. (1992). Einführung in die Phonologie. Klage 16. Gabel: Köln. Selkirk, E. O. (1984a). The syllable. In The Structure of Phonological Representation, ed. H. van der Hulst and N. Smith, 337–383. Part I. Dordrecht: Foris. Selkirk, E. O. (1984b). Phonology and Syntax: The Relation between Sound and Structure. Cambridge: MIT Press.

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Sievers, E. (1901). Grundzüge der Phonetik zur Einführung in das Studium der Lautlehre der indogermanischen Sprache. 5th ed. (1st ed. 1876). Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel. Sternefeld, W. (1999). Schreibgeminaten im Deutschen: Ein Fall für die Optimalitätstheorie. Linguistische Berichte 181:35–54. Vennemann, T. (1968). German phonology. Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles. Vennemann, T. (1986). Neuere Entwicklungen in der Phonologie. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Wiese, R. (1996). The Phonology of German. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Wurzel, W. U. (1970). Studien zur deutschen Lautstruktur. Studia Grammatica 8. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag. Wurzel, W. U. (1980). Phonologie. In Grundzüge einer deutschen Grammatik, ed. K. E. Heidolph et al., chapter 5. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag.

9 Extrasyllabic Consonants and Onset Well-Formedness Antony Dubach Green

9.1. Introduction In many languages it has been observed that not all consonants are conveniently assigned a position within a syllable; those that fall outside a syllable are called extrasyllabic. A small sample of researchers who have examined the treatment of extrasyllabic consonants includes Steriade (1982), Clements and Keyser (1983), Borowsky (1986), Ito (1986), Rubach and Booij (1990a, 1990b), Lamontagne (1993), Rialland (1994), Sherer (1994), and Rubach (1997); the chapters by Cho and King, Féry, Kiparsky, and Wiltshire in this volume; and of course many others too numerous to mention here. These researchers have argued that when the potential for an extrasyllabic consonant exists, the consonant may become syllabified through vowel epenthesis, or may be deleted through stray erasure, or may be incorporated into higher prosodic structure. Only in the last case are the consonants in question extrasyllabic on the surface. The members of the prosodic hierarchy considered here include, from bottom to top: syllable (s), foot (f ), and prosodic word (henceforth pword, symbolized w). See Selkirk 1980, 1984, 1995, Booij 1983, Inkelas and Zec 1995, and many others for discussion of the roles of these elements in the prosodic hierarchy.

Portions of this paper were presented at the Conference on the Phonological Word in Berlin in October 1997, the Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America in New York in January 1998, the Third Conference on Irish Linguistics in Galway in April 1998, the Sixth Manchester Phonology Meeting in May 1998, and the Conference on Syllable Typology and Theory in Tübingen in July 1998. Many thanks to the participants at those conferences for their helpful comments. Thanks also to Birna Arnbjörnsdóttir, Haraldur BernharQsson, Ian Gallagher, Gearóid Mac Eoin, and Christiane Schaefer for their assistance. In addition, thanks to Abby Cohn, Caroline Féry, Tracy Hall, Máire Ní Chiosáin, Marzena Rocho´n, Kelly Sloan, Ruben van de Vijver, Draga Zec, and two anonymous reviewers for valuable comments and suggestions on this chapter. Any mistakes are my responsibility alone.

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In this chapter I examine the behavior of consonant clusters at the left edges of prosodic categories from the perspective of Optimality Theory (OT – Prince & Smolensky 1993), presenting evidence from Icelandic, Attic Greek, and Munster Irish to show that clusters that are not licit syllable onsets may nonetheless be licit left-edge clusters at higher prosodic levels. In some of these cases, the first consonant in such clusters will surface as extrasyllabic by being attached directly to the foot or pword. Since I follow moraic theory (Hyman 1985 et al.) in assuming that there is no constituent node within the syllable called the onset, my definition of “syllable onset” is the string between s[ and the syllable peak. But in this chapter I will assume that the other levels of the prosodic hierarchy have their own onsets too; thus for any constituent p (varying over syllable, foot, pword, phonological phrase, etc.), the onset of p is the string between p[ and the first syllable peak within p. Clearly this definition presupposes that not all consonants at prosodic left edges are attached to the s node. Further, according to this definition, prosodic edges can occur within the onsets of higher elements (e.g., s[ can occur within the onset of a foot). As we shall see, these assumptions play a crucial role in my analysis. I argue for a universally and intrinsically ranked set of Onset Well-Formedness (OWF) constraints against specific onset clusters, in which constraints against onset clusters with falling sonority (e.g., *s[SonorantŸObstruent [the symbol Ÿ means “immediately followed by”]) are ranked above those against onset clusters with shallow-rising sonority (e.g., *s[StopŸNasal), which in turn are ranked above those against onset clusters with steep-rising sonority (e.g., *s[StopŸLiquid). Furthermore, there are separate OWF constraints for the various prosodic categories, such as *s[StopŸNasal, *f[StopŸNasal, and *w[StopŸNasal. Exactly which onsets a particular language tolerates will be determined by the ranking of the OWF constraints with respect to faithfulness constraints, or to a constraint against syllable codas, or to a constraint against rising sonority across a syllable boundary. The structure of the chapter follows: in section 9.2 I present data from Icelandic showing that shallow-rising consonant clusters that are permitted word initially are syllabified heterosyllabically when word-internal. I argue that this is due to the placement of the constraint NoCoda within the ranking of the OWF constraints. In section 9.3 I extend the analysis to Attic Greek, where there is evidence that the first consonant of word-initial heterosyllabic clusters surfaces as extrasyllabic, and argue that not only NoCoda but also the constraint against consonant extrasyllabicity is ranked below some OWF constraints but above others. In section 9.4 I analyze data from Munster Irish and show that, in this language, the syllable, foot, and pword each permit increasingly marked clusters at their left edges. Illicit clusters are broken up by epenthesis, indicating that the constraint against epenthesis is ranked

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below the OWF constraints against the clusters illicit at any given prosodic level but above the OWF constraints against the licit clusters at that level. Section 9.5 concludes the chapter.

9.2. Sonority Restrictions at Syllable Contact: Icelandic In Icelandic (Kress 1963, 1982,Vennemann 1972, Oresˇnik and Pétursson 1977, Pétursson 1978, Thráinsson 1978, 1994, Kiparsky 1984, Booij 1986, Ito 1986), only steep-rising clusters of s or stop + r or glide are tautosyllabic internally; all others that are permitted initially (e.g., s or stop + l/n; fricative + sonorant; s + stop; nasal or liquid + j) are heterosyllabic internally. The diagnostic for syllabification in Icelandic is this: vowels in initial (stressed) open syllables are lengthened; in closed syllables stressed vowels are not lengthened.1 For example, the tr sequence in sœ .tra ‘to slurp’ is tautosyllabic, while the kn sequence in ek.na ‘to bait’ is heterosyllabic, even though kn is permissible word-initially; compare knaiva ‘to project’. Researchers agree the reason that kn is heterosyllabic word-internally while tr is tautosyllabic is that kn is a shallow sonority rise while tr is a steep rise. I therefore propose a family of constraints against onset clusters, intrinsically ranked according to the degree of sonority rise, thus: *s[SonorantŸObstruent >> . . . >> *s[StopŸNasal >> . . . >> *s[StopŸLiquid. See Smolensky 1995 for a formalized justification of this intrinsic ranking. The set of tautosyllabic clusters in a particular language will be determined by the rank of NoCoda (syllables have no coda: syllables are open) with respect to these OWF constraints. For languages like Icelandic, NoCoda will come in between *s[StopŸNasal and *s[StopŸLiquid, thus compelling the observed syllabifications: (1) /ekna/ .e.kna.

*s[StopŸNas

NoCoda

*s[StopŸLiq

*!

☞ .ek.na.

*

(2) /sœtra/

*s[StopŸNas

NoCoda

☞ .sœ.tra. .sœt.ra.

*s[StopŸLiq *

*!

Assuming that both consonants in word-initial clusters like knaiva ‘to project’ are linked to the first s node (and in the absence of convincing

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evidence of consonant extrasyllabicity this seems a reasonable assumption to make), we need only postulate that the faithfulness constraints Dep-IO against insertion and Max-IO against deletion (McCarthy and Prince 1995) are ranked above *s[StopŸNasal in Icelandic. (See section 9.3 on Attic Greek for constraints against consonant extrasyllabicity, which are presumably also high ranked in Icelandic.) (3) /knaiva/

Dep-IO

Max-IO

☞ .knai.va.

*

.nai.va. .kə.nai.va.

*s[StopŸNas

*! *!

To conclude this section, I would like to show that an alternative analysis that refers only to the sonority of the individual segments, rather than to the degree of sonority climb in the cluster, will not correctly account for the Icelandic data. Ito and Mester (1994) argue that the hypothetical syllabifications a.tri and ar.ti can be derived by ranking the constraint Align-L (T, s) (“obstruents are syllable-initial”) above Align-L (R, s) (resonant consonants are syllable-initial) since in both forms the obstruent t is syllable-initial. Ito and Mester (1994: 33) point out that “the ranking of the various segmentto-syllable alignment constraints with respect to each other is intrinsic and determined by the sonority hierarchy,” a point made also by Smolensky (1995). In other words, the ranking Align-L (T, s) >> Align-L (R, s) is universal and can never be reversed. Some languages prefer the syllabification at.ri to a.tri, however; Ito and Mester argue that in such languages highranking NoComplexOnset prohibits complex onsets, and therefore at.ri is preferred to a.tri. Ito and Mester’s (1994) analysis, however, does not account for languages like Icelandic, in which steep-rising clusters are tautosyllabic while shallowrising clusters are heterosyllabic. The only way to achieve the Icelandic pattern of syllabification using segment-to-syllable alignment constraints would be to break Align-L (R, s) into two separate constraints, Align-L (L, s) (liquids are syllable-initial) and Align-L (N, s) (nasals are syllable-initial), and rank Align-L (N, s) above Align-L (T, s), as shown in (4). (4) a. sœtra

Align-L (N, s)

Align-L (T, s)

☞ .sœ.tra. .sœt.ra.

Align-L (L, s) t

sœ !

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Antony Dubach Green b. /ekna/ .e.kna. ☞ .ek.na.

Align-L (N, s)

Align-L (T, s)

Align-L (L, s)

k! e

The trouble, of course, is that this ranking is unavailable. As Ito and Mester (1994) and Smolensky (1995) point out, the ranking of these constraints is intrinsic and universal: obstruents always make better onsets than nasals do (cf. Vennemann 1988: 20ff., Clements 1990, Prince and Smolensky 1993), and therefore the ranking Align-L (T, s) >> Align-L (N, s) cannot be reversed. Furthermore, the ranking shown in (5) makes the extremely undesirable prediction that an Icelandic word like ent ‘end’ should be syllabified *e .nt rather than en.t in Icelandic, which is patently not the case. An appeal to high-ranking NoCompOns will not help us here: although it would correctly predict en.t , it would also falsely predict *sœt.ra rather than actual sœ .tra. So not only does the ranking Align-L (N, s) >> Align-L (T, s) violate the intrinsic ranking of segment-to-syllable alignment constraints, it does not even correctly predict the pattern of languages like Icelandic with the syllabifications sœ .tra, ek.na, en.t . Thus, languages like Icelandic, where some rising-sonority clusters are heterosyllabic while others are tautosyllabic word-internally, show that reference must be made to the steepness of the sonority climb in a cluster and not merely to the sonority of the individual segments, in contrast to Ito and Mester’s arguments. The Icelandic case is especially interesting since both kinds of clusters are tolerated word-initially, indicating that there is not just a single parameter of onset well-formedness. Rather, the clusters that are permitted to be onsets word-internally are a subset of those permitted word-initially. The ranking of NoCoda with respect to the OWF constraints determines which onsets are heterosyllabic and which are tautosyllabic word-internally. In the next section we see how to account for word-initial consonant extrasyllabicity, using data from Attic Greek.

9.3. Extrasyllabic Consonants in Word-Initial Position: Attic Greek In this section I explore the constraint interaction that permits extrasyllabic consonants in word-initial position in Attic Greek. I show that NoCoda and the Exhaustivity family of constraints are ranked inside the hierarchy of OWF constraints in this language. The Exhaustivity constraints proposed by Selkirk (1995) can be used to capture the generalization that syllabified consonants are preferable to extrasyllabic consonants.

extrasyllabic consonants (5)

243

Exh(austivity) No category immediately dominates a constituent more than one level beneath it.

This is actually not a single constraint but a constraint family. Exh at different levels (e.g., syllable and pword) can be ranked differently. An extrasyllabic consonant (indicated here by boldface) will incur a violation of Exhw if it is linked directly to the pword, for example, in Greek w[g .nɔ´ .me .] ‘judgment’. Under the assumption that onset consonants are linked directly to the s node rather than to the mora, Exhs is violated by the n and the m in w[g .nɔ´ .me .]. There may be a constraint requiring consonant-to-syllable mapping that universally outranks Exhs, but I will not explore this issue further here. We can make the following cross-linguistic generalization about surface extrasyllabic consonants: when they are allowed at all, they are more tolerated at the margins of the prosodic elements to which they are attached (Milliken 1988, Clements 1990, 1997), though if Rubach’s (1997) analysis of Polish w[.ment. r .ka.] ‘crafty person’ (gen.) with an extrasyllabic r is correct, then extrasyllabic consonants can occur word-internally as well.2 Nevertheless, the point is well taken: a structure like w[g .nɔ´ .me .] is typologically more common, and therefore presumably less marked, than one like w[.ment. r .ka.]. I propose the constraint C-at-Margin to capture this observation. (6)

C-at-Margin An extrasyllabic consonant is at the margin of the prosodic category to which it is linked.

The significance of C-at-Margin will become clear in section 9.4, where Munster Irish will be shown to permit extrasyllabic consonants both pwordinitially and foot-initially. Left-edge consonant extrasyllabicity seems to occur in Attic Greek (Steriade 1982), where some permissible word-initial clusters are heterosyllabic internally (e.g., sm, kt, ps, gn, bl, gm), while others are tautosyllabic internally (e.g., kr, khl, pn, br). The tautosyllabic clusters are those with a steep sonority rise, namely voiceless stop + sonorant and voiced stop + r. All other rising-sonority or level-sonority clusters (e.g., fricative + sonorant, stop + obstruent, voiced stop + nasal, voiced stop + l), even though they are permitted as onsets word-initially, are heterosyllabic word-internally. Evidence from the scansion of Greek poetry reveals syllabification, as CVC syllables are heavy while CV syllables are light. When a word-initial cluster is not permitted at the s level, for example, gn in gnɔ´ me , the first consonant g skips the s level and attaches directly to the pword level, giving the structure w[g .nɔ´ .me .]. Word-internally, for example,

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in hagnós ‘holy’, the g is syllabified into the coda of the preceding syllable: w[.hag.nós.]. As Steriade points out, independent evidence for the extrasyllabicity3 of the g in gnɔ´ me comes from the rules of Greek poetic scansion: the g in this word (and indeed any initial consonant when the word-initial cluster is heterosyllabic) is resyllabified as the coda of a preceding vowel-final word. Thus, for example, the phrase parà gnɔ´ me n ‘contrary to expectation’ is syllabified .pa.ràg.nɔ´ .me n. (Steriade 1982: 193). Furthermore, in Attic Greek, consonant-initial verbs form their perfect stem differently depending on whether the initial consonant is syllabified. When the verb root begins with a tautosyllabic cluster (voiceless stop + sonorant or voiced stop + r) or a single consonant, the perfect stem is formed by adding a reduplicating syllable of the form C1e, where C1 indicates the initial consonant of the stem. (Other changes not relevant to the discussion at hand may be made to the root as well.) Examples of reduplicating perfects are shown in (7). (7)

Reduplicating perfects in Attic Greek Root Perfect stem Gloss a. ly le-ly ‘to untie’ b. tla te-tla ‘to endure’ ‘to write’ c. graph ge-graph

If the verb root begins with a heterosyllabic cluster, the initial consonant of the stem cannot be copied onto the template C1e-, and the prefix surfaces as e- alone, as shown in (8).4 (8)

Nonreduplicating perfects in Attic Greek (Steriade 1982: 197) Root Perfect stem Gloss a. sper e-spar ‘to sow’ b. psau e-psau ‘to touch’ c. kten e-kton ‘to kill’ d. gnɔ e-gnɔ ‘to know’

I do not have space to go into an OT analysis of Attic Greek reduplication here, but the generalization seems to be that the root-initial consonant must also be syllable-initial to be copied into the reduplicant. The root-initial consonants in (8) are barred from syllable-initial position by the OWF constraints and can therefore not be reduplicated.5 Just as we saw in section 9.2 that the distribution of onset clusters in Icelandic can be accounted for by the ranking *s[kn >> NoCoda >> *s[tr, so for Greek we can propose that certain OWF constraints are ranked above Exhw and NoCoda, and others below them:

extrasyllabic consonants (9)

245

OWF constraints ranked with respect to NoCoda and Exhw in Greek a. *s[FricativeŸSonorant >> Exhw >> NoCoda des.mós ‘fitting’ b. *s[ObstŸObst >> Exhw >> NoCoda ok.tɔ´ ‘eight’ hag.nós ‘holy’ c. *s[VcdStopŸNas/Lat >> Exhw >> NoCoda a.pé.pni:.gon d. Exhw >> NoCoda >> *s[VclsStopŸSon ‘strangled’ a.grós ‘field’ e. Exhw >> NoCoda >> *s[VcdStopŸRhotic

It is crucial that Exhw is ranked above NoCoda in Greek to avoid extrasyllabic consonants in word-internal position. The tableaux in (10)–(13) show how the constraints interact. The constraints against onset clusters with shallow sonority rises are top ranked, excluding the candidates *ha.gnós in (10) and *.gnɔ´ .me in (12). Next is Exhw, which excludes the candidates that have extrasyllabic consonants. NoCoda comes into play with word-internal clusters that have steep rises, such as in (11): a.grós is picked over *ag.rós. The constraints against steep-rising onset clusters are ranked low. (10) *s[VcdStŸN/L

/hagnós/

Exhw

☞ .hag.nós. .ha.gnós.

NoCoda

*s[VcdStŸR

** *!

.ha. g .nós.

* *!

*

Exhw

NoCoda

(11) *s[VcdStŸN/L

/agrós/ .ag.rós.

*s[ VcdStŸR

**!

☞ .a.grós.

*

.a. g .rós.

*

*!

*

Exhw

NoCoda

*s[ VcdStŸR

NoCoda

*s[ VcdStŸR

(12) /gnɔ´me/

*s[VcdStŸN/L

.gnɔ´.me.

*!

☞ g .nɔ´.me.

*

(13) *s[VcdStŸN/L

/gráphɔ/

Exhw

☞ .grá.p ɔ. h

g .rá.p ɔ. h

* *!

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Antony Dubach Green

In this section, we have seen that one possible solution to the problem of illicit clusters is extrasyllabicity. The Attic Greek facts can be accounted for by an analysis that says the hierarchy of OWF constraints is divided by Exhw and NoCoda; when heterosyllabic clusters occur in word-initial position, the first consonant is extrasyllabic, as evidenced by syllabification across word boundaries as well as by the behavior of perfect stems. In the next section we shall see evidence from Munster Irish that not only the pword and syllable levels but the foot level as well have OWF constraints.

9.4. Syllabification and Epenthesis in Munster Irish So far, we have seen languages in which not all word-initial clusters may be word-internal onset clusters. In the Munster (or Southern) dialect of Irish Gaelic we find a three-way contrast: the set of tolerated onsets is different at the beginning of a word, an internal stressed syllable (i.e., the left edge of a foot), and an internal unstressed syllable. In this section I argue that there are foot-level OWF constraints too; as would be expected, the foot level is more tolerant of clusters than the syllable level but less tolerant than the pword level. Munster Irish uses different constraints from Icelandic and Greek to break up the set of OWF constraints and to determine onset wellformedness. In those languages, shallow-rising clusters are heterosyllabic word-internally, just as falling clusters (universally) are. In Munster Irish, however, no rising clusters are permitted across syllable breaks at all, indicating the influence of the Syllable Contact Law (Hooper 1976, Murray and Vennemann 1983, Vennemann 1988, Clements 1990, Rice 1992, among others). The role of the Syllable Contact Law within OT has been examined by Bat-El (1996), Bush (1997), and Davis et al. (1997); I follow the latter authors in defining the constraint SyllCont as “avoid rising sonority over a syllable boundary.” Word-initially, Munster Irish permits a variety of rising-sonority clusters: stop + liquid, m + coronal sonorant, fricative + liquid, and obstruent + nasal.6 The examples in (14) come from Sjoestedt 1931, Ó Briain and Ó Cuív 1947, and Breatnach 1961. (14) Word-initial onset clusters in Munster Irish a. Stop + liquid 3glan ‘clean’; 3kra ‘anguish’; kjrjə3xan ‘small potato’ b. m + cor. sonorant 3mjrji; ‘strength’ (ecl.); 3mni ‘woman’ (dat.) c. Fricative + liquid 3sradj ‘street’; 3xra ‘anguish’ (len.); 3hrjiəl ‘voyage’ (len.) d. Obstruent + nasal 3gjnjiv ‘deed’; knə3pan ‘flower bud’

extrasyllabic consonants

247

As we see in (15), word-internal stressed syllables permit only stop + liquid clusters (i.e., those with the steepest sonority rise) as onsets. As shown in Green 1997, noninitial stressed syllables in Munster are always heavy syllables and always correspond to trochaic feet made up of a single heavy syllable (3h). Trochees of two light syllables (3l l) are found only wordinitially. Therefore, the left edges of all noninitial stressed syllables correspond to the left edges of feet (marked f[ in (15)). (15) Only stop + liquid clusters permitted at f[ ‘April’ a. əf [3bran] b. ljaf [3dra]nəx ‘tedious’ c. pof [3kjljemj] ‘frolic’

When other rising-sonority clusters occur before stressed syllables, the cluster is broken up with an epenthetic schwa, as shown in (16). The Syllable Contact Law prevents these clusters from being divided by a syllable boundary, and they are too shallow to be onset clusters at the left edge of a foot. The dilemma is solved with epenthesis. (16) Other clusters potentially at f[ repaired by epenthesis a. amjəf [3ljixt] *af [3mjljixt], *amjf [3ljixt] ‘wretchedness’ *af [3vran], *avf [3ran] ‘song’ b. avəf [3ran]

Word-internal unstressed syllables, that is, syllables whose left edge does not correspond to either a foot or a pword, do not permit clusters at all. Any underlying rising-sonority clusters in this position are broken up with an epenthetic schwa, as shown in (17). Again, onset well-formedness considerations prohibit V.CCV syllabification, and the Syllable Contact Law prohibits VC.CV syllabification.7 (17) Epenthesis into prohibited clusters in Munster *f [3a.glə], *f [3ag.lə] ‘fear’ a. f [3agə]lə *f [3o.krəs], *f [3ok.rəs] ‘hunger’ b. f [3okə]rəs *f [3la.srəx], *f [3las.rəx] ‘flames’ c. f [3lasə]rəx *f [3a.xrən], *f [3ax.rən] ‘entanglement’ d. f [3axə]rən *f [3a.hrəʃ], *f [3ah.rəʃ] ‘imitation’ e. f [3ahə]rəʃ *f [3a.gjnjə], *f [3agj.njə] ‘mind’ f. f [3agjə]njə g. f [3ʃau]mərə *f [3ʃau]mrə, *f [3ʃaum]rə ‘room’

Munster thus provides evidence that not only the syllable but also the foot can dictate onset well-formedness. At the syllable level, the constraints NoCompOns and SyllCont outrank Dep-IO. Under my view, NoCompOns

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is not actually a single constraint, but a convenient cover term for the entire range of constraints against onset clusters. In Munster, these constraints are not distinguishable at the syllable level and so may conveniently be grouped together under this single heading. As shown in the tableau in (18), C-at-Margin, NoCompOns, and SyllCont are all ranked high. The optimal candidate, w[ f [a.gə .]lə ], violates only low-ranked Dep-IO.

(18) /aglə/

C-at-M

w[f[.a. g .lə.]]

NoCompOns

SyllCont

Dep-IO

*!

[ [.a.glə.]]

*!

w f

[ [.ag.lə.]]

*!

w f

☞ w[f[a.gə.]lə]

*

At the foot level, the OWF constraints are split into two groups: those ranked above Dep-IO, and those ranked below it. The tableau in (19) illustrates the high rank of *f[mŸSonorant for the form w[.i.mjə f[nji ]] ‘anxiety’; the constraint *f[FricativeŸSonorant is also ranked high, compelling epenthesis in /avran/ ‘song’ with output w[.a.və .f[ra n.]], though for lack of space I do not illustrate this in a tableau.

(19) *f[mŸSon

/imjnji/ j

j

[.i f[ m .n i.]]

w

j j

[.i f[.m n i.]]

w

j

j

[.i. m f[.n i.]]

w

j j w[.im f[.n i.]]

☞ w[.i.mjəf[.nji.]]

C-at-M

NoCompOns

Syll Cont

Dep-IO

*! *!

* *! *! *

The constraint against stop + liquid clusters at the foot level, however, is ranked below Dep-IO, as shown by the tableau in (20). In this case, the optimal candidate has the first consonant of the cluster linked to the foot node, indicating that Exhf (prohibiting the linking of extrasyllabic consonants directly to the foot) is low ranked.

extrasyllabic consonants

249

(20) /əbran/

C-at-M NoCompOns

SyllCont

Dep-IO

Exhf

*f[ StŸLq

*

*

☞ .ə.f[ b .ran.] .ə.f[.bran.] .ə. b f[.ran.]

*!

*

*!

.əb.f[.ran.]

*!

.ə.bə.f[.ran.]

*!

At the pword level, all the constraints against rising-sonority clusters (grouped together under the heading *w[TR) are ranked low, allowing these clusters to stand in word-initial position. In a form like glan ‘clean’, we know that the gl cluster is not permitted at s[, but it cannot be determined whether the g is linked to the foot or the pword. Since gl is a licit cluster at f[, it is tempting to assume that it is in fact located there. This is illustrated in the tableau in (21), where Exhw is ranked above Exhf, which in turn is ranked above the constraint against stop + liquid clusters at the foot level.8 (21) /glan/

NoCompOns

a.

[ [.glan.]]

w f

Dep-IO

Exhw

Exhf

w

d.

w

*w[TR

*

*

*

*

*!

b. ☞ w[f[ g .lan.]] c.

*f[ StopŸLiq

*

[ g f[.lan.]]

*!

[.gəf[.lan.]]

*

*!

If, however, the candidate in (21c) is correct, then either Exhf outranks Exhw, or the two are unranked with respect to each other, and the decision is made by the constraint against stop + liquid clusters at f[. That being said, however, I will continue to assume that stop + liquid clusters at w[f[ are parsed within the foot, as in (21b). The first consonant in a word-initial cluster is linked to the pword node if there is no word-initial foot or if the cluster is prohibited at f[, as shown in (22)–(23). (22) /kjrjəxan/

NoCompOns

[.k r əf[.xan.]]

w

j j

Dep-IO

*!

j

[.k ə.r əf[.xan.]]

w

j

j

*w[TR *

☞ w[ k .r əf[.xan.]] j

Exhw *

*!

*

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Antony Dubach Green

(23) /xra/

*f[ FrŸSon NoCompOns Dep-IO Exhw Exhf *w[TR

[ [.xra.]]

*!

[ [ x .ra.]]

*!

w f w f

*

* *

☞ w[ x f[.ra.]] [.xəf[.ra.]]

w

*

* *

*!

Unfortunately there is, to the best of my knowledge, no independent evidence for the extrasyllabicity of consonants in onset clusters in Irish, other than the small break between the consonants alluded to in note 8. Irish has no reduplication, for example, that could shed light on syllable structure the way we saw in Attic Greek in section 9.3. Nevertheless, the analysis proposed here is preferable to one in which all word-initial clusters are possible syllable onsets, in which case the facts of epenthesis must remain a mystery. In this section we have seen how OWF constraints apply not only at the syllable level but at higher levels as well. The ranking of Dep-IO with respect to the various constraints against clusters at syllable- and foot-initial positions in Munster Irish derives the observed pattern of epenthesis into illicit clusters. In Green 2000 I argue that the proclitic copula s in phrases like s fja r ljum ‘I prefer’ (literally ‘is better with-me’) is attached not to the syllable, foot, or pword node of the host, but rather directly to the phonological phrase (f): f[s w[fja r]], as evidenced by the fact that sf- clusters do not occur at pword-initial position. I do not have room to go into this topic further here, but the evidence suggests that the phonological phrase also can determine what onsets are well formed at its left edge, since sf- is permitted at f[ but not at w[.

9.5. Summary In this paper we have seen in general that more marked consonant clusters may be banned from syllable onset position while still tolerated at the left edges of higher prosodic categories like the foot or pword. Thus, in Icelandic and Attic Greek, both steeper and shallower clusters are permitted at w[, but only steeper clusters are permitted at s[ not coinciding with w[. In Munster Irish, both steeper and shallower clusters are permitted at w[, but only steeper clusters are permitted at f[ not coinciding with w[; no clusters at all are permitted at s[ not coinciding with f[ or w[. These facts can be accounted for by postulating a universally and intrinsically ranked set of constraints against onset clusters; the position of other constraints like faithfulness constraints, NoCoda, and SyllCont with respect to these OWF constraints determines which onset clusters are tolerated where in a given language. I have argued

extrasyllabic consonants

251

that there are separate OWF constraints against onset clusters at the left edges of syllables, feet, pwords, and possibly phonological phrases; see Wiltshire, this volume, for similar arguments regarding right edges.

notes 1. 2. 3.

4.

5.

6. 7.

8.

Vowels are lengthened in stressed monosyllables before a single word-final consonant, which is apparently nonmoraic or extrametrical. See Cho and King, this volume, for another analysis of extrasyllabic consonants in Polish. Under Steriade’s analysis, the first consonant in heterosyllabic clusters like gn is not technically extrasyllabic but rather is external to the Onset node. This is in contrast to tautosyllabic clusters like kr, in which both consonants are under the Onset node. My analysis does not assume an Onset node: rather, I maintain that the g of gn is extrasyllabic while both consonants in kr are under the s node. The difference between my analysis and Steriade’s is thus largely terminological. Actually, there are several exceptions to this generalization. As Steriade (1982: 206f.) points out, some roots in bl and gl do take reduplication: be-blais beside e-blais ‘to be crooked’, be-blaph beside e-blaph ‘to hinder’, be-blast beside e-blast ‘to sprout’, beblasphe me ‘to speak irreverently’, be-ble ph or be-bloph ‘to look’, ge-glyph beside eglyph ‘to carve’. Further exceptions are found in me-mne ‘to remember’, pe-ptɔ ‘to fall’, ke-kte beside e-kte ‘to possess’, he-ste (< /se-ste/) ‘to stand’. Kaye (1992) argues that the first consonant in sC clusters (and presumably by extension, all heterosyllabic clusters) in Greek is not extrasyllabic but rather forms the coda of an onsetless and nucleusless syllable. He claims that if, for example, the s in the root streph were extrasyllabic, the reduplicated perfect stem would be *te-stroph as the reduplicating syllable picks the first onset consonant to copy. Under Steriade’s analysis, however, this is not a problem: *te-stroph would involve illicit line crossing. See also Morelli (this volume) for a discussion of s + stop clusters. Also permitted are s + stop clusters, which I will not discuss for lack of space. It must be the Syllable Contact Law, rather than a ban on closed syllables generally, that prohibits VC.CV syllabification here, since falling-sonority clusters are freely allowed to cross syllable boundaries in Irish: cf. kjirj.kjə ‘hen’ (gen.), kaun.de ‘county’, etc. (Sjoestedt 1931, 112–114). Ó Briain and Ó Cuív (1947: 106) report a very slight vowel coming between a wordinitial voiced stop and a following sonorant, thus bəla h ‘flower’. These authors did not feel this sound was significant enough to include in transcriptions, whereas the epenthetic vowel in a word like agə lə was always transcribed. I believe this slight vowel sound is not a true epenthetic vowel and does not form a syllable; rather, it is the phonetic correlate to the break between the voiced stop, attached to the foot or pword, and the sonorant, attached to the syllable.

references Bat-El, Outi. (1996). Selecting the best of the worst: The grammar of Hebrew blends. Phonology 13: 283–328.

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Booij, Geert. (1983). Principles and parameters in prosodic phonology. Linguistics 21: 249–280. Booij, Geert. (1986). Icelandic vowel lengthening and prosodic phonology. In Linguistics in the Netherlands 1986, ed. F. Beukema and A. Hulk, 9–18. Dordrecht: Foris. 9– 18. Borowsky, Toni. (1986). Topics in the lexical phonology of English. Doctoral dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Breatnach, Risteard B. (1961). Seana-chaint na nDéise II: Studies in the Vocabulary and Idiom of Déise Irish. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. Bush, Ryan. (1997). Georgian syllable structure. Phonology at Santa Cruz 5: 1–13. Clements, George N. (1990). The role of the sonority cycle in core syllabification. In Papers in Laboratory Phonology I: Between the Grammar and Physics of Speech, ed. J. Kingston and M. E. Beckman, 283–333. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Clements, George N. (1997). Berber syllabification: Derivations or constraints? In Derivations and Constraints in Phonology, ed. I. Roca, 289–330. Oxford: Clarendon. Clements, George N., and Samuel J. Keyser. (1983). CV Phonology: A Generative Theory of the Syllable. Linguistic Inquiry Monograph 9. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Davis, Stuart, Alex Eulenberg, and Seung-Hoon Shin. (1997). On the role of syllable contact in Optimality Theory. Ms., Indiana University, Bloomington. Green, Antony D. (1997). The prosodic structure of Irish, Scots Gaelic, and Manx. Doctoral dissertation, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. Green, Antony D. (2000). The prosodic representation of clitics in Irish. In Clitics from Different Perspectives, ed. B. Gerlach and J. Grijzenhout, 181–218. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Hooper, Joan B. (1976). An Introduction to Natural Generative Phonology. New York: Academic Press. Hyman, Larry. (1985). A Theory of Phonological Weight. Dordrecht: Foris. Inkelas, Sharon, and Draga Zec. (1995). Syntax–phonology interface. In The Handbook of Phonological Theory, ed. John Goldsmith, 535–549. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell. Ito, Junko. (1986). Syllable theory in prosodic phonology. Doctoral dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. [Published by Garland, New York, 1988.] Ito, Junko, and Armin Mester. (1994). Reflections on CodaCond and alignment. Phonology at Santa Cruz 3: 27–46. [Also available as ROA-141-0996, Rutgers Optimality Archive, roa.rutgers.edu] Kaye, Jonathan. (1992). Do you believe in magic? The story of s + C sequences. SOAS Working Papers 3: 293–313. Kiparsky, Paul. (1984). On the lexical phonology of Icelandic. In Nordic Prosody III: Papers from a Symposium, ed. C.-C. Elert et al., 135–164. Umeå: University of Umeå. Kress, Bruno. (1963). Laut- und Formenlehre des Isländischen. Halle (Saale): Niemeyer. Kress, Bruno. (1982). Isländische Grammatik. Leipzig: Enzyklopädie. Lamontagne, Gregory A. (1993). Syllabification and consonant cooccurrence conditions. Doctoral dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. McCarthy, John J., and Alan Prince. (1995). Faithfulness and reduplicative identity. In Papers in Optimality Theory: University of Massachusetts Occasional Papers, Volume 18, ed. J. N. Beckman et al., 249–384. Amherst: GLSA, University of Massachusetts. Milliken, S. (1988). Protosyllables: A theory of underlying syllable structure in nonlinear phonology. Doctoral dissertation, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.

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Murray, R. W., and Theo Vennemann. (1983). Sound change and syllable structure in Germanic phonology. Language 59: 514–528. Ó Briain, Mícheál, and Briain Ó Cuív. (1947). Cnósach focal ó Bhaile Bhúirne i gCunndae Chorcaí. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. Oresˇnik, Janez, and Magnús Pétursson. (1977). Quantity in modern Icelandic. Arkiv för Nordisk Filologi 92: 155–171. Pétursson, Magnús. (1978). Isländisch. Hamburg: Buske. Prince, Alan, and Paul Smolensky. (1993). Optimality Theory: Constraint interaction in generative grammar. Ms., Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J., and University of Colorado, Boulder. Rialland, Annie. (1994). The phonology and phonetics of extrasyllabicity in French. In Phonological Structure and Phonetic Form: Papers in Laboratory Phonology III, ed. P. A. Keating, 136–159. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rice, Keren D. (1992). On deriving sonority: A structural account of sonority relationships. Phonology 9: 61–99. Rubach, Jerzy. (1997). Extrasyllabic consonants in Polish: Derivational Optimality Theory. In Derivations and Constraints in Phonology, ed. I. Roca, 551–581. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Rubach, Jerzy, and Geert Booij. (1990a). Edge of constituent effects in Polish. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 8: 427–463. Rubach, Jerzy, and Geert Booij. (1990b). Syllable structure assignment in Polish. Phonology 7: 121–158. Selkirk, Elisabeth O. (1980). Prosodic domains in phonology: Sanskrit revisited. In Juncture, ed. M. Aronoff and M.-L. Kean, 107–129. Saratoga, Calif.: Anma Libri. Selkirk, Elisabeth O. (1984). Phonology and Syntax: The Relation between Sound and Structure. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Selkirk, Elisabeth O. (1995). The prosodic structure of function words. In Papers in Optimality Theory: University of Massachusetts Occasional Papers, Volume 18, ed. J. N. Beckman et al. 439–469. Amherst: GLSA, University of Massachusetts. Sherer, Timothy D. (1994). Prosodic phonotactics. Doctoral dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Sjoestedt, M. L. (1931). Phonétique d’un parler irlandais de Kerry. Collection de Documents Linguistiques, 4. Paris: Leroux. Smolensky, Paul. (1995). On the internal structure of the constraint component Con of UG. Handout from presentation at University of California, Los Angeles, April 1995. [ROA-86-0000, Rutgers Optimality Archive, roa.rutgers.edu] Steriade, Donca. (1982). Greek prosodies and the nature of syllabification. Doctoral dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, Mass. Thráinsson, Höskuldur. (1978). On the phonology of Icelandic preaspiration. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 1: 3–54. Thráinsson, Höskuldur. (1994). Icelandic. In The Germanic Languages, ed. E. König and J. van der Auwera, 142–189. London: Routledge. Vennemann, Theo. (1972). On the theory of syllabic phonology. Linguistische Berichte 18: 1–18. Vennemann, Theo. (1988). Preference Laws for Syllable Structure and the Explanation of Sound Change with Special Reference to German, Germanic, Italian, and Latin. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

10 Beyond Codas Word and Phrase-Final Alignment Caroline R. Wiltshire

10.1. Introduction Cross-linguistically, syllable rhymes and codas are limited in both quantity and quality by constraints on length and sonority sequencing; the rhyme and coda also play a role in syllable weight and the resulting placement of stress (e.g., see Blevins 1995 and references therein). However, the use of the syllable alone to state phonotactics predicts that the segments permitted or required in word- and phrase-final positions match the segments permitted or required in syllable-final positions. If we base our phonotactics on wordinternal codas, we find abundant counterevidence. Words and phrases can end in additional segments, in violation of sonority sequencing or outside the calculation of weight, and, conversely, word- and phrase-final edges can impose additional restrictions beyond those on syllable-final segments, so that the same range of syllable types is not found in all positions in a single language.1 Optimality Theory (OT) allows for independent constraints on the edges of syllables and the edges of higher prosodic domains, such as words and phrases; factoring out the constraints on word and phrase edges will allow a clearer statement of the role of the syllable edge. In OT, syllable-final position can be constrained by alignment constraints (McCarthy and Prince 1993); for example, Align-R(s,V) requires the right edge of a syllable to align with a vowel, thereby penalizing consonantal codas. In this chapter, I augment the typology based on such coda alignment constraints by adding alignment constraints referring to the prosodic word and phrase (Nespor and Vogel 1986, Wiltshire 1998). Such constraints allow word- and phrase-final positions to impose distinct requirements from those obeyed by word-internal codas,

I thank the participants of the conference on The Syllable: Typology and Theory, held in Tübingen, Germany, in July 1998, and two anonymous reviewers for feedback on an earlier version of this chapter.

254

word and phrase-final alignment

255

so that the generalizations on syllable-final position can be maintained while capturing the additional phonotactics that are evident cross-linguistically. In derivational analyses, the additional possibilities of final position have been discussed under the terms extrametricality and extraprosodicity, while the additional restrictions are rarely systematically discussed. A unified alignment-based account captures how edges can place additional demands and edges allow for additional possibilities. Furthermore, these constraints provide the means to account for the apparent sensitivity of phonological rules to prosodic boundaries, while dispensing with derivational accounts of syllabification. This chapter is organized as follows: in section 10.2 I briefly describe the theoretical apparatus employed, namely monostratal Optimality Theory and Alignment Theory in an extended form. Section 10.3 investigates the typology given by four constraints aligning the right edges of words and phrases with consonants and vowels. I sketch analyses of four languages – Uradhi, Leti, Yapese, and Pitjantjatjara – in which these alignment constraints show themselves to be more highly ranked than a correspondence constraint, so that alternations support the existence of the proposed constraints. In section 10.4, I show that constraints aligning the right edges of words and phrases to smaller prosodic domains play a role in apparent extraprosodicity, and illustrate with two languages, Kamaiurá and Cairene Arabic. Section 10.5 supports the independence of the two families of constraints discussed in sections 10.3–10.4 and presents typological considerations and conclusions.

10.2. Theoretical Framework Although constraints on domain edges are logically independent from OT, I formulate the account in OT terms to use alignment constraints in their familiar context. I also employ a wholly parallel version of OT, in which we determine the phonology of a language in a single step, by submitting entire phrases to the constraint hierarchy and simultaneously evaluating constraints on all domains, rather than applying rules or constraints by a serial derivation to increasingly larger domains.2 Derivational theories have used a bottom-up approach: domains of analysis are equated with levels of analysis, and smaller domains undergo phonological rules before larger ones. If syllabification is limited to word domains before phrases are built, edge segments that do not fit into well-formed syllables must be temporarily hidden from syllabification. In OT, the domain of a constraint and its level of analysis need not be conflated. The edges of smaller domains do not necessarily take precedence over the edges of larger domains; higher-ranking constraints have precedence over lower-ranked constraints, regardless of the size of the domain being constrained.3

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Caroline R. Wiltshire

An OT analysis determines surface outputs by constraints; for a given input, a hierarchy of constraints chooses the optimal form from a set of candidate outputs. Typological generalizations result from the form of the constraints and the interactions that result from ranking them differently. Phonotactic constraints, such as those that evaluate syllable structure, are evaluated solely on candidate output forms. OT also posits correspondence constraints that govern the relationships between the candidates and related forms, such as inputs and bases (McCarthy and Prince 1995).4 Alignment theory constrains how morphological and prosodic edges interact with each other (McCarthy and Prince 1993); alignment constraints require an edge of a member of one category to align with an edge of a member of another category, where these categories are either phonological or morphological. McCarthy and Prince also use alignment to relate a prosodic category (the syllable) with subsyllabic units, such as consonants, vowels, and features. For example, Align-R(s,V) penalizes syllables for consonantal codas (= NoCoda), while Align-L(s,C) penalizes onsetless syllables (= Onset). Introducing prosodic and subprosodic elements in alignment constraints raises the issue of which phonological entities may appear as arguments. The prosodic hierarchy (Selkirk 1984, 1995, Nespor and Vogel 1986) includes domains larger than the syllable, including the prosodic word (PW) and phrase (Ph); I argue here that alignment constraints must also use these larger domains as arguments in order to capture the exceptional behaviors at word and phrase edges.

10.3. Aligning Edges to Consonants and Vowels The alignment of syllable edges with Cs and Vs results in the widely attested constraints Onset and NoCoda. Extending alignment constraints to larger domains, aligning the right edges of words and phrases with Cs and Vs, gives the constraints in (1), exemplified in the section indicated to the right. (1)

a. b. c. d.

Align-R(Ph,C) Align-R(Ph,V) Align-R(PW,C) Align-R(PW,V)

Phrases end with a consonant. Phrases end with a vowel. Words end with a consonant. Words end with a vowel.

10.3.1 10.3.2 10.3.3 10.3.4

These constraints prove necessary for capturing alternations that result from interactions of syllable, word, and phrase boundaries with the segment types vowel and consonant. I motivate these constraints by showing their effects in four languages, first aligning phrase edges with consonants (section 3.1) and vowels (section 3.2), and then aligning word edges with consonants (section 3.3) and vowels (section 3.4). In each case, the proposed constraints motivate

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257

alternations that could not be captured solely by reference to the syllable structure of the languages.5

10.3.1 Align-R(Phrase,C) >> Correspondence: Atampaya Uradhi Align-R(Ph,C) motivates unfaithful output in the Atampaya dialect of Uradhi, a Northern Paman language of Australia (Trigo 1988, Paradis and Prunet 1993). Atampaya permits open syllables word-medially and -finally, but not in phrase-final position. Phrase-finally, an epenthetic consonant appears if the underlying form of the word ends in a vowel. If a word ends in an underlying consonant, as in (2c), that final consonant C surfaces.6 (2)

Atampaya Uradhi / (Paradis and Prunet 1993: 427–429) Underlying Phrase-medial Phrase-final Gloss Representation (UR) a. /ama/ [ama] [amaŋ ] ‘person’ b. /iwi/ [iwi] [iwiŋ ] ‘morning bird’ c. /aŋ en/ [aŋ en] [aŋ en] ‘dig-past’

Syllable- and word-final positions may be occupied by a vowel; no epenthetic consonant appears in these positions. To enforce the phrase-final consonant requirement, Align-R(Ph,C) outranks the constraint against consonant epenthesis, Dep-IO(C). The constraint against deleting vowels, Max-IO(V), must also outrank Dep-IO(C), so that phrase-final vowels are not simply dropped. This gives us the ranking: (3)

Align-R(Ph,C), Max-IO(V) >> Dep-IO(C)

The tableaux in (4a–b) illustrate the ranking on an input word that ends in a vowel. In Tableau 1a, the input word is in a phrase-medial context, so that Align-R(Ph,C) is vacuously satisfied, and the optimal form is unchanged. In Tableau 1b, the word is in phrase-final position; here the high ranking of Align-R(Ph,C) forces a violation of the lower-ranked Dep-IO(C), resulting in an epenthetic consonant. (4)

Tableau 1a

Phrase-medial input: /ama# . . . / ‘person’ Align-R(Ph,C)

Max-IO(V)

Dep-IO(C)

☞ ama am(a) amaŋ

*! *!

258

Caroline R. Wiltshire Tableau 1b Phrase-final input: /ama##/ ‘person’ Align-R(Ph,C) ama

Max-IO(V)

Dep-IO(C)

*!

am(a)

*!

☞ amaŋ

*

Similar cases have been mentioned in the literature. Lombardi (1998) analyzes Tunica using a constraint Phrase-FinalC, which requires phrases to end in a consonant; this constraint motivates an epenthetic /n/ phrase-finally on vowel-final words, as in phrase-internal [hatika] versus phrase-final [hatikan] ‘again’. Yucatec Mayan adds an [h] after utterance final vowels (Trigo 1988), supporting the same constraint. Furthermore, these languages show that the phrase-edge requirement is independent from syllable- and word-final positions, which do not require consonants. An independent constraint relating phrase edges to consonants is thus well established.

10.3.2 Align-R(Phrase,V) >> Correspondence: Leti The case for Align-R(Ph,V) is also easy to support. Requiring phrase-final position to align with a vowel provides an explanation for languages in which syllables and words may end in consonants, but phrases do not, again illustrating the independence of the different boundaries. In Leti, an Austronesian language, we find phrase-final metathesis to satisfy AlignR(Ph,V) (Hume 1998). As shown in (5), both syllables and words can end in consonants, but phrases end only in vowels; the segments that have undergone metathesis are underlined. (5)

Leti (Hume 1997: 3) UR Phrase-medial a. /urun/ [urunmɔa] b. /bubur/ [buburvetra] c. /buar/ [buarlavna]

Phrase-final nu] [ur__ ru] [bub__ [bu:ra] __

Gloss ‘breadfruit + Moanese’ ‘porridge + maize’ ‘mountain, to be big’

Phrase-final metathesis does not affect vowel-final forms, but the final two segments of consonant-final words are metathesized when they appear phrase-finally. Metathesis violates a constraint that states that the output string (S2) follows the same linear order as the input string (S1): (6)

Linearity (McCarthy and Prince 1995) S1 is consistent with the precedence structure of S2 and vice versa.

Forcing the constraint on linearity to be violated is the more highly ranked phrasal alignment constraint, Align-R(Ph,V), independently proposed in

word and phrase-final alignment

259

Hume 1998. The alignment of phrase-final position with a vowel also could be satisfied by deleting a final consonant, violating Max-IO(C), or by inserting a final vowel, violating Dep-IO(V); hence these constraints must be ranked high so that such candidates will not be optimal. The overall ranking is therefore (7)

Align-R(Ph,V), Max-IO(C), Dep-IO(V) >> Linearity

Tableaux 2a–b in (8) illustrate the different results for the same input word in phrase-medial and phrase-final positions. Phrase-medially, in Tableau 2a, the Align-R(Ph,V) constraint is vacuously satisfied; phrase-finally, in Tableau 2b, the word surfaces with the final two segments reversed in order to end in a vowel. (8)

Tableau 2a

Phrase-medial input /bubur#vetra/ / ‘porridge + maize’ Align-R(Ph,V)

Max-IO(C)

Dep-IO(V)

Linearity

☞ bubur vetra bubu(r)vetra

*!

buburuvetra

*!

bubruvetra

*!

Tableau 2b Phrase-final input /bubur##/ ‘porridge’ Align-R(Ph,V) bubur bubu(r) buburu ☞ bubru __

Max-IO(C)

Dep-IO(V)

Linearity

*! *! *! *

The use of a phrase-based alignment constraint prevents the overgeneralization of metathesis; the realization of the same input word depends on its position in a phrase.7 The syllable and word structures of the input are therefore acceptable, as it is only in phrase-final position that they must be reversed. As with the Align-R(Ph,C) constraint, this Align-R(Ph,V) constraint can be motivated in other languages as well. Tamil, a Dravidian language, has syllable- and word-final sonorants, but phrase-finally such sonorants do not surface; instead there is vowel epenthesis or sonorant deletion (Wiltshire 1998). Thus, in both Leti and Tamil, phrasal alignment outranks faithfulness and imposes a constraint beyond that required by syllable- or word-final position, one that can only be captured by an alignment constraint on phrase edges. Furthermore, in such cases, syllabification of word-final consonants

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using only the word domain is unreliable, since the ultimate syllabification depends on the word’s position in a phrase. A bottom-up approach to syllabification, fully syllabifying words before phrases, would have to backtrack and resyllabify in phrases. By syllabifying an entire phrase in parallel, the location of a word-final consonant, whether in an onset, a coda, or deleted, is determined at a single step.

10.3.3 Align-R(PW,C) >> Correspondence: Yapese The next cases involve the constraints aligning word edges to Cs and Vs. First, languages may require words to end in consonants, although syllables are under no such obligation and may in fact obligatorily be vowel-final. One such example is Yapese, a Micronesian languages (Piggott 1991). Words that are vowel-final in UR lose the vowel in word-final position; Yapese also has compensatory lengthening, which is not analyzed here. (9)

Yapese UR (a) /robe/ (b) /ʔamiqi/

Word [roob] [ʔamiiq]

1 sg. poss. (+gu) [robeeg] [ʔamiquug]

Gloss ‘(my) beard’ ‘(my) pain’

Align-R(PW,C) forces the loss of the word-final vowel, although otherwise syllables end in vowels in Yapese. Although I will argue in section 10.4 that this does not necessarily constitute a violation of Align-R(s,V), we do need the ranking in (10). (10) Align-R(PW,C) >> Max-IO(V) (11) Tableau 3

Input: /robe+gu/ ‘beard + my’ Align-R(PW,C)

Max-IO(V)

☞ robeeg(u) robegu

* *!

Again, the final consonant requirement cannot be motivated by syllable structure. Similar cases supporting the Align-R(PW,C) constraint are found in McCarthy’s (1993) analysis of English and McCarthy and Prince’s (1994) analysis of Makassarese, although in both cases the constraint is dominated and not surface true. Such cases still provide additional motivation for AlignR(PW,C) as an independent constraint.

10.3.4 Align-R(PW,V) >> Correspondence: Pitjantjatjara The converse to Yapese are languages in which words are required to end in vowels. Australia has many such languages, in which word-medial syllables

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261

may have a coda, but only vowels are permitted word-finally. In Pitjantjatjara, augmenting suffixes, such as [-pa], are added to stems that end in a consonant (Hale 1973), so that word-final position is aligned with a vowel, whether underlying or epenthetic: (12) Pitjantjatjara (Hale 1973) Root abs. (+ø) a. /tjai/ [tjaipa] b. /punpun/ [punpunpa] c. /makur/ [makurpa]

dat. (+ku) [tjaiku] [punpunku] [makurku]

Gloss ‘tongue’ ‘fly’ ‘three’

As word-medial consonant codas are tolerated, Align-R(s,V) cannot motivate the epenthesis; it must rank lower than Dep-IO(V). To satisfy the word alignment constraint, however, Pitjantjatjara does resort to epenthetic vowels; thus Align-R(PW,V) outranks Dep-IO(V), giving (13) Align-R(PW,V), Max-IO(C) >> Dep-IO(V) >> Align-R(s,V) (14) Tableau 4a

Word-medial input: /tjai + ku/ ‘tongue + dative’ Align-R (PW,V)

Max-IO(C)

Dep-IO(V)

☞ tjaiku

Align-R (s,V) *

tjaiaku

*!

tjai()ku

*!

Tableau 4b Word-final input: /tjai#/ ‘tongue (abs)’ Align-R (PW,V) tjai tjai() ☞ tjaipa

Max-IO(C)

Dep-IO(V)

Align-R (s,V)

*

*

*! *!

Thus although codas are tolerated medially, the ranking ensures that an epenthetic vowel appears word-finally after consonant-final stems.8 The same ranking seems to be statically in control in many Australian languages, revealing itself only in borrowings or reconstructions. For example, in PittaPitta, borrowed consonant-final words have a final V added: English ‘walk’ became PittaPitta [waka] (Blake 1979). In Diyari, historical word-final Cs have been lost, although CVC syllables survive word-internally (Austin 1981). For example, Diyari [ŋa.Êa] ‘saliva’ is cognate with Ngiyambaa [ŋa.Êar] and

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preserves the syllable-final consonant internally while losing the word-final one. Ranking Align-R(PW,V) and Dep-IO(V) above Max-IO(C), with all outranking Align-R(s,V), produces this historical change. Again, the constraints on syllable-final position have been shown to be independent from word- and phrase-final position.

10.4. Toleration of Input: Extrametricality as Alignment In addition to restricting the syllable types that appear at the right edges of words and phrases, we need to capture the freedom that right edges allow in some languages. Such additional right-edge segments do not fit into the medial-syllable templates, as indicated by their ability to violate sonority sequencing or to fail to contribute to weight; therefore, they should be outside of the domain of syllabification. To explain their prosodic location, we must refer to the prosodic hierarchy, a simplified version of which is given in (15). (15) Simplified prosodic hierarchy (Selkirk 1984, Nespor and Vogel 1986) Prosodic phrase (Ph) Prosodic word (PW) s C,V

The Strict Layer Hypothesis (SLH) proposes that every element lower in this hierarchy is properly dominated by an element one level higher (Selkirk 1984). For use in OT, the SLH has been broken into violable subconstraints in Selkirk 1995. In alignment terms, violations of the SLH are limited by a family of constraints that require the edges of each level of the prosodic hierarchy to align with the edge of the level above, as governed by constraints such as (16a–b), a subset of those in Sherer 1994: 194. (16) a. Align-R(PW,s) b. Align-R(Ph,PW)

Words end at a R-edge of a s. (Section 10.4.1) Phrases end at a R-edge of a PW. (Section 10.4.2)

When ranked below correspondence and syllable constraints, additional segments may appear at the end of the word, phrase, and so on; these violations result in edge segments that have been labeled as extraprosodic, as shown in (17a–b). (17) a. [(ss)FC]PW b. [[(ss)Ft(s)]PW[(ss)Ft]PWC]Ph

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Directly attaching a consonant to a prosodic word rather than a coda violates (16a), since the consonant is not dominated by a prosodic unit in the layer immediately above it, the syllable. The structure in (17a) does not violate syllable structure constraints like NoCoda or *Complex because the word-final cluster does not occupy a syllable margin; as in Yapese (section 10.3.3) and Kamaiurá (section 10.4.1), a word-final consonant may be tolerated though syllable-final consonants are not. In some languages, like Cairene Arabic (section 10.4.2), however, such violation of strict layering is tolerated only in phrase-final position; thus we need the parallel structure in (17b) and the parallel constraint in (16b). A low ranking of Align-R(PW,Ft) would result in an additional word-final consonant regardless of a word’s position in a phrase, while a low ranking of Align-R(Ph,PW) allows an additional phrase-final consonant only, so that words produced phrase-internally must obey syllable constraints. Additional segments tolerated at the end of a domain have historically caused problems for a consistent theory of syllable codas. For example, while coda sequences generally decrease in sonority, many languages allow a wordfinal consonant that is more sonorous than the preceding segment. Such segments also may not count as adding weight to a syllable for considerations of stress and, if syllabified into a coda, would exceed the maximum number of segments allowed in codas word-medially. All of these problems occur in Cairene Arabic (section 10.4.2). In rule-based analyses, these segments have generally been treated as exceptions during core syllabification and tacked on to codas through some late adjunction rule. Rather than give such segments a temporary solution and later force them into syllables, we treat a final C as a member of the prosodic hierarchy but not as a syllable coda.

10.4.1 Align-R(s,V) >> Align-R(PW,s): Kamaiurá The tolerance for a word-final consonant in a language that has open syllables medially is evidenced by Kamaiurá (Everett and Seki 1985, McCarthy and Prince 1993). The language has strictly CV syllables word-internally, but an additional consonant is tolerated, but not required, in word-final position: (18) Kamaiurá (Everett and Seki 1985) a. [o-mo-tumuŋ] 3-it-shook ‘he shook it’ b. [o-mo-kon] 3-it-swallow ‘he swallowed it’ c. [je-umirik] I-tie-up ‘I tie up’ d. [o-huka] 3-laugh ‘he laughed’

As analyzed by McCarthy and Prince (1993), the basic syllable is constrained by NoCoda (a.k.a. Align-R(s,V)); this dominates Max-IO(C), as consonants in clusters created by reduplication are deleted. Reduplication copies the last

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CVCV(C); note that the C in a medial cluster is lost, due to Align-R(s,V): (19) Reduplicated-CVCV(C) in Kamaiurá a. [omotumuŋ]Æ[omo-tumu-tumuŋ] ‘he shook it repeatedly’ b. [je-umirik]Æ[jeu-miri-mirik] ‘I tie up repeatedly’

Align-R(s,V) also dominates Align-R(PW,s),9 which enforces alignment between the end of the word and the end of a syllable. As word-final Cs are not lost, they must be outside the syllable: (20) Align-R(s,V) >> Max-IO(C) >> Align-R(PW,s) (21) Tableau 5

Reduplicated /jeumirik-mirik#/ ‘I tie up repeatedly’ Align-R(s,V) Max-IO(C) Align-R(PW,s)

☞ .jeu.mi.ri(k).mi.ri.k

*

.jeu.mi.ri(k).mi.ri(k) .jeu.mi.rik.mi.ri.k

*

**! *!

*

Word-final consonants but not syllable-final consonants are tolerated.10 By treating these consonants as outside of syllables, we can properly characterize the language as having only CV syllables.

10.4.2 *Complex >> Align-R(Ph,PW): Cairene Arabic Cairene Arabic, like Kamaiurá, does not require final consonants, but it tolerates an additional consonant at phrase-final edge. Phrase-medially, complex onsets or codas are broken up by epenthetic [i]; phrase-finally, CVCC and CVVC are permitted (Wiltshire 1998). The epenthetic vowel appears after the first two consonants of a cluster, both within words and across word boundaries, as in (22). Words in isolation may end with two consonants. The phrases in (22c–d), however, reveal that word edges alone do not guarantee an extra position for a consonant; a word-final cluster may appear at a phrase boundary but requires an epenthetic vowel before a consonant-initial word phrase-internally. Phrase-final clusters need not be repaired: (22) Cairene Arabic (Wiltshire 1998) Word/phrase medial Phrase-final a. [ʔultilu] no change b. [katabtilha] no change c. [katabtigawaab] [katabt] d. [bintinabiiha] [bint]

Gloss ‘I said to him’ ‘I wrote to her’ ‘you wrote a letter’ ‘an intelligent girl’

Epenthetic vowels are forced by a constraint on syllables, *Complex.11

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265

(23) *Complex: No more than one C/V associates to any s position node (Prince and Smolensky 1993: 87).

Epenthetic vowels reduce violations of *Complex phrase-medially; AlignR(PW,s) is also high ranked, so that additional word-final consonants are not permitted. Phrase-finally, violating Align-R(Ph,PW) allows faithful output though the cluster does not fit into a coda; thus it is lowest in the ranking: (24) *Complex, Align-R(PW,s) >> Dep-IO(V) >> Align-R(Ph,PW) (25) Tableau 6

input: /#katabt#gawaab##/ = [katabtigawaab] *Complex Align-R Dep Align-R (PW,s) (V) (Ph,PW)

[[.ka.tabt.]w[.ga.waab.]w]Ph [[.katab.t]w [.ga.waab.]w]Ph [[.ka.tab.ti.]w[.gawaa.bi]w]Ph ☞ [[.ka.tab.ti]w[.ga.waa.]wb]Ph

*! *! **! *

*

Max(C) ranks high and rules out all candidates with deleted consonants; such candidates are ignored here. As in medial syllables, the constraint on complex margins rules out candidates that have a word-final consonant cluster in a coda, such as the first. Word-final consonants are not attached directly to the prosodic word due to Align-R(PW,Ft), but ranking Dep(V) above AlignR(Ph,PW) correctly allows the phrase-final consonant to attach to the phrase.

10.5. Conclusions I have demonstrated that the phonotactics of some languages are best analyzed with independent constraints on syllable-, word-, and phrase-final positions. The phonotactics of coda position are not necessarily equivalent to those of higher prosodic categories. Identifying the constraints on these higher categories, by means of alignment, allows for clearer generalizations about syllable typology; apparent exceptions to coda generalizations result from interactions among multiple constraints at the right edge. The two kinds of edge behavior, permissiveness and restrictiveness, have not been treated by exactly the same mechanism here, though they are treated similarly in terms of alignment constraints. Restrictiveness on final positions in syllables, words, and phrases has been addressed through constraints aligning these positions with Cs and Vs. Permissiveness at the edge of words and phrases is also handled with alignment but between edges of domains. Although both restrictiveness and permissiveness have been treated with alignment constraints, the two phenomena have not been conflated here

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because they seem to be independent. For example, both Yapese and Kamaiurá require syllables to end in vowels and allow words to end in consonants. Both therefore have a low ranking of Align-R(PW,s), allowing violations to surface. Only Yapese, however, requires words to end in consonants, so that Align-R(PW,C) ranks higher in Yapese than it does in Kamaiurá. A similar argument can be made using varieties of American English, all of which tolerate additional consonants word-finally, so that Align-R(PW,s) violations abound. However, some dialects of English require consonants word-finally, for example, Eastern Massachusetts English (McCarthy 1993), which epenthesizes /ɹ/ in order to satisfy the Align-R(PW,C). The use of distinct constraints for permissiveness and restrictiveness allows us to account for languages that show evidence for both, only one, or neither type of constraint. The phenomena in this chapter all reflect constraints on the right edges of prosodic units. As the form of alignment constraints allows for a parallel set of constraints on the left edge, we expect to find comparable phenomena at the beginnings of prosodic units, and such cases are discussed in Green, this volume. Thus at both edges, in languages in which PWs or Phs impose additional constraints, words in isolation give an inaccurate picture of possible syllables. As each word in isolation has a PW and Ph edge as well, basing a description of permitted syllables on data that include syllables at the edge may give us a too restricted syllable inventory. In languages in which AlignR(PW,s) and Align-R(Ph,PW) rank low, word-medial position provides the true typology of syllable types, and word- and phrase-final position gives an exaggerated sense of possible syllables. Analyzing all final-edge behavior as syllable-final behavior allows exceptions to the generalizations about the kinds of facts for which syllables are most useful, such as sonority sequencing, weight, and segmental or featural restrictions. To truly understand syllable-final position, we must factor out word- and phrase-final effects.

notes 1. The same principle applies to initial position in words and phrases (Green, this volume). 2. Goldston (1996), who argues for independent constraints on stem and word edges, points out that an OT that uses distinct levels for each domain allows each to be essentially a separate grammar, thus permitting unconstrained reranking and an unnecessarily powerful theory. 3. While my analysis is presented in OT, the argument that morphological domains, prosodic word and phrase boundaries, and syllabification interact holds also in other constraint-based approaches. 4. In the tableaux in this chapter, epenthetic segments appear in boldface type, while deleted segments are represented in parentheses; these representations, familiar

word and phrase-final alignment

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10. 11.

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from containment-based OT (Prince and Smolensky 1993), were used solely for ease of evaluation. Note that the constraints in (1) involve alignment of the right edge with a consonant. As pointed out by a reviewer, a comparable constraint for syllables (Align-R(s,C)) does not seem to be attested, thus further supporting the independence of syllable constraints from constraints on higher prosodic units. Underlying word-final Cs in Uradhi are strictly limited to coronals and glides, while the phrase-final epenthetic C is velar, further illustrating the independence of wordphrase-final constraints. Although Align-R(Ph,V) does not motivate metathesis phrase-internally, syllable structure constraints against complex onsets and codas do result in phrase-internal metathesis. For example, a word-final VC# metathesizes to CV# if the following word begins with a consonant cluster #CCV. The change takes an underlying -VCCCVstring to -CVCCV-, allowing for syllabification with simple onsets and simple codas. This metathesis does not occur if the following word begins with a single consonant. The reader is referred to Hume’s (1998) work for explicit discussion of the two kinds of metathesis. Apparently the right edge of the stem must also align with the edge of a syllable, so that an entire syllable (CV) is added rather than just a V. For a similar case, see the analysis of Ashininca Campa in McCarthy and Prince 1993: 40. McCarthy and Prince (1993: 48) actually propose a high ranking of either AlignR(PW,s) or Align-R(stem,s); their analysis would put final Cs into a syllable, and mine would not. Note the difference from a language that requires word-final consonants (section 10.3.3); Kamaiurá does not, as in (18d), so that Align-R(PW,C) is not active here. *Complex conflates two constraints, one banning complex onsets and one banning complex codas, which need not be ranked independently in this analysis.

references Austin, P. (1981). A Grammar of Diyari, South Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Blake, B. (1979). PittaPitta. In Handbook of Austalian Languages, Vol. 1, ed. R. M. W. Dixon and B. Blake, 183–242. Canberra: Australian National University Press. Blevins, J. (1995). The syllable in phonological theory. In The Handbook of Phonological Theory, ed. J. Goldsmith, 206–244. Oxford: Blackwell. Everett, D., and L. Seki. (1985). Reduplication and CV skeleta in Kamaiurá. Linguistic Inquiry 16: 326–330. Golston, Chris. (1996). Prosodic constraints on roots, stems, and words. In Interfaces in Phonology, ed. U. Kleinhenz, 172–193. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Hale, K. (1973). Deep-surface canonical disparities in relation to analysis and change: An Australian example. Current Trends in Linguistics 11: 401–458. Hayes, B. (1980). A metrical theory of stress rules. Doctoral dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, Mass. 1981, Indiana University Linguistics Club. Hume, E. (1998). Metathesis in phonological theory: The case of Leti. Lingua 104: 147–186. Lombardi, L. (1998). Coronal epenthesis and markedness. ROA-245. Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J.

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McCarthy, J. (1993). A case of surface constraint violation. Canadian Journal of Linguistics 38 (2): 169–196. McCarthy, J., and A. Prince. (1993). Generalized Alignment. TR-7. Rutgers, N.J.: RuCCS. McCarthy, J., and A. Prince. (1994). The Emergence of the unmarked: Optimality in prosodic morphology. NELS 24 (2): 333–379. McCarthy, J., and A. Prince. (1995). Faithfulness and reduplicative identity. In Papers in Optimality Theory, ed. J. Beckman et al., 249–384. UMOP 18. Amherst, Mass.: GLSA. Nespor, M., and I. Vogel. (1986). Prosodic Phonology. Dordrecht: Foris. Paradis, C., and J. Prunet. (1993). A note on velar nasals: The case of Uradhi. Canadian Journal of Linguistics 38 (4): 425–439. Piggott, G. (1991). Apocope and the licensing of empty-headed syllables. Linguistic Review 8: 287–318. Prince, A., and P. Smolensky. (1993). Optimality Theory. TR-2. Rutgers, N.J.: RuCCS. Selkirk, E. (1984). On the major class features and syllable theory. In Language Sound Structures, ed. M. Aronoff and R. Oehrle, 107–136. Cambridge: MIT Press. Selkirk, E. (1995). Prosodic structure of function words. In Papers in Optimality Theory, ed. J. Beckman et al., 439–469. UMOP 18. Amherst, Mass.: GLSA. Sherer, T. (1994). Prosodic phonotactics. Doctoral dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Trigo, R. (1988). On the phonological derivation and behavior of nasal glides. Doctoral dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, Mass. Wiltshire, C. (1998). Extending Align constraints to new domains. Linguistics 38 (3): 423–467.

part four SEGMENTS AND SYLLABLES

11 On the Sources of Opacity in OT Coda Processes in German Junko Ito and Armin Mester

11.1. Introduction Optimality Theory (OT) is built on output constraints. These constraints impose conflicting demands on candidates and are all violable, with precedence regulated by universal and language-particular ranking specifications (see Prince and Smolensky 1993). As a result, constraints are minimally violated in winning candidates. An output-oriented theory of this kind needs to pay special attention to patterns of phonological opacity, arising out of generalizations that apparently need to be stated at some nonsurface level of representation. Opacity constituted a central object of study in traditional generative phonology. In terms of the relevant portions of Kiparsky’s (1973: 79) definition in (1) that formed the basis of most subsequent work on the topic, two different types of opacity can be distinguished. (1)

A phonological rule P of the form A Æ B / C__D is opaque if there are surface structures with any of the following characteristics: a. Instances of A in the environment C__D b. Instances of B derived by P that occur in environments other than C__D.

On the one hand, there are patterns built on generalizations that are overtly violated in some output forms ((1a)); on the other hand, there This material was presented at the 1998 Tübinger Silbenkonferenz, the 1998 Berlin Prosodic Phonology Workshop, the 1998 Kobe Phonology Forum, and the 1999 Tsukuba Phonology Workshop, as well as in seminars at Tübingen University (summer 1998) and University of California, Santa Cruz (fall 1998 and fall 1999). We would like to thank the participants at these various occasions for helpful comments, in particular, Stuart Davis, Caroline Féry, Tracy Hall, Shosuke Haraguchi, Paul Kiparsky, Ursula Kleinhenz, Haruo Kubozono, John McCarthy, Jaye Padgett, Alan Prince, Philip Spaelti, Hubert Truckenbrodt, Ruben van de Vijver, Sten Vikner, and Richard Wiese. For helpful comments on an earlier version of this chapter, we are grateful to the editors, two anonymous reviewers, and Eric Bakovic´ .

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are patterns built on generalizations whose environment is only covertly fulfilled (not in the output, but in some other representation associated with the output representation, derivationally or otherwise (1b)). We will see later that this definition has its limitations for the way in which the opacity problem presents itself in OT: it does not cover some important types of cases (including the two interactions studied here) that are problematic for OT in that the “transparent” version of the theory (making use only of markedness constraints and standard faithfulness constraints) is unable to deal with them. One can approach the study of opacity in OT from different angles. One possibility, vigorously pursued in the work of McCarthy (1997, 1998) and further explored by several other researchers,1 is to construct a theoretical device – “Sympathy” – that strives to cover the same ground as the wellknown sequentialist account of opacity in rule-based generative phonology. Besides the empirical difficulties that Sympathy encounters if taken up on its claim to be a general-purpose opacity device,2 there is a conceptual doubt about the very idea of a single tool in OT responsible for opacity. It is a priori quite unlikely that two radically different theoretical paradigms like rulebased sequentialism and constraint-based parallelism would have mechanisms corresponding to each other in such a direct way, with ordered rules applying in a multistage derivation directly matched by sympathetic faithfulness to a specially selected candidate that fulfills the role of the abstract derivational stage. The problem lies not in the abstractness but in the very direct one-to-one matching of mechanisms. What would be expected, rather, is a situation where opacity arises out of independently existing components of an OT grammar, in such a way that there is no one-to-one correspondence to derivational theory. Such considerations suggest a different kind of approach, which will be explored in this chapter. Which elements of current OT architecture can in principle give rise to opaque output patterns? To what extent do the patterns of opacity derivable in this way cover the empirically existing patterns? This is a more open-ended enterprise, and a number of potential sources of opacity come to mind. On the one hand, the issue of levels of representation remains open to a large extent. OT holds that grammatical computation proceeds through the simultaneous optimization of a set of conflicting and strictly ranked output constraints. Even though it is reasonable to pursue radical parallelism instead of sequentialism as a research strategy, this does not make it an established result. The fundamental tenets of OT are compatible with a partitioning of the total computation into sequential subparts; the theory is not intrinsically committed to a wholesale rejection of derivational levels.3 In particular, the distinction between word phonology (lexical) and phrasal phonology (postlexical), which has been a cornerstone of virtually every

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approach to phonological structure in modern linguistics, is likely to maintain a legitimate place within OT. On the other hand, and this is the topic to be studied in this chapter, there is an interesting class of constraints locally conjoining markedness and faithfulness (studied by ´Lubowicz 1998) as sources of the derived environment syndrome. Here we show that this class of locally conjoined constraints is also responsible for opaque output patterns. As its empirical basis, this chapter studies the ways in which a group of coda conditions play out in the phonology of German (section 11.2), triggering processes that interact opaquely (sections 11.3.1 and 11.3.4). Sympathybased analyses are shown to be associated with unappealing stipulations and otherwise unmotivated rankings (section 11.3.2). The opacity is shown to arise, rather, in a very natural and simple way out of specific conjunctions of markedness and faithfulness constraints that are otherwise operative in German phonology (section 11.3.3). A few thoughts on the general status of opacity in OT and further theoretical ramifications conclude the paper (section 11.4).

11.2. Coda Conditions as [M&M] Conjunctions Conditions on the syllable coda are responsible for a number of processes in German, both in the standard language and in regional varieties. We will here focus on the three coda processes illustrated in (2): the well-known process of coda devoicing in (2a) turns underlying /ta:g/ into [ta:k]; spirantization in (2b) applies to underlying /g/ in the syllable coda, resulting in the alternation between the plural .Kö.ni.[g]e. and singular .Kö.ni[ç].; coda cluster simplification in (2c), similar to the corresponding alternation in English, is responsible for the alternation between Diphtho[ŋ] and diphtho[ŋg]ieren. (2)

a. Devoicing /ta:g/ /li:b/ /moti:v/ /li:z/

Æ Æ Æ Æ

.ta:k. .li:p. .mo.ti:f. .li:s.

‘day’ ‘dear’ ‘motive’ ‘read’, imp.

cf. .ta:.gə. cf. .li:.bən. cf. .mo.ti:.və. cf. .le:.zən.

‘days’ ‘to love’ ‘motives’ ‘to read’

.te:k.lç. .li:p.lç. .mo.ti:fs. .le:.s.bar.

‘daily’ ‘lovely’ ‘motive’s’ ‘readable’

b. Spirantization4 /kø:ng/ /ho:ng/ /ve:ng/ /angkat/ /entʃυldgt/ /zɔng/ /laptsg/

Æ Æ Æ Æ Æ Æ Æ

.kø:.nç. .ho:.nç. .ve:nç. .a.nç.kat. .ent.ʃυl.dçt. .zɔ.nç. .lap.tsç.

‘king’ ‘honey’ ‘little’ ‘unity’ ‘excuse’, 3sg. ‘sunny’, pred. ‘Leipzig’

cf. .kø:.n.gə. cf. .ho:n.gə. cf. .ve:n.gə. cf. .a.n.gən. cf. .ent.ʃυl.d.gən. cf. .zɔ.n.gə. cf. .lap.ts.gɐ.

‘kings’ ‘honey’, dat. ‘few’ ‘to unite’ ‘to excuse’ ‘sunny’, attrib. ‘Leipziger’

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Junko Ito and Armin Mester c. Cluster simplification /dftɔŋg/ /monɔftɔŋg/ /rŋg/ /eŋg/ /laŋg/ /laŋgmut/

Æ Æ Æ Æ Æ Æ

.df.tɔŋ. .mo.nɔf.tɔŋ. .rŋ. .eŋ. .laŋ. .laŋ.mu:t.

‘diphthong’ cf. .df.tɔŋ.gi:.rən. ‘to diphthongize’ ‘monophthong’ cf. .mo.nɔf.tɔŋ.gal. ‘monophthongal’ ‘ring’ ‘narrow’ ‘long’ ‘patience’

In so-called Standard German (henceforth, SG), the superregional standard language codified in semiofficial reference works, such as the Duden, and encountered in schools, much of the media, and other official venues, the spirantization process of (2b) is limited to underlying /g/ in the syllable coda after the lax vowel //. This limited spirantization is a faint echo of a more general spirantization process, illustrated by the examples in (3), that is encountered over large sections of the northern part of the Germanspeaking area, in what might be characterized as a regional colloquial standard (henceforth abbreviated as CNG for Colloquial Northern German). Here /g/ is replaced by a dorsal spirant in all syllable codas regardless of the preceding vowel. In derivational terms (see, e.g., Wiese 1996: 212), the immediate result of spirantization is [γ], which devoices to [x] and is further changed into [ç] everywhere except after back vowels by the well-known allophonic dorsal fricative alternation (ich-Laut, ach-Laut).5 Such acrossthe-board spirantization is a characteristic of many varieties of Northern speech, and it is this general version of spirantization that we will concentrate on. (3)

Spirantization in CNG6 tru:gən tru:x ‘carried’, 1 pl./1 sg. fra:gən fra:x ‘asked’, 1 pl./1 sg. ly:gən ly:çnɐ ‘lie’/‘liar’ tso:gən tso:x ‘pulled’, 1 pl./1 sg. ge:gən ge:çnɐ ‘against’/‘adversary’ re:gən re:çnən ‘rain’/‘to rain’ ze:gən ze:çnən ‘blessing’/‘to bless’ ve:gə ve:ç ‘way’, pl./sg. flygə flux ‘flight’, pl./sg. talgə talç ‘wax’, dat./nom. zergə zarç ‘coffin’, pl./sg. tsvergə tsvərç ‘dwarf’, pl./sg. hambυrgɐ hambυrç ‘resident of Hamburg’/‘Hamburg’ tagə taç ‘dough’, dat./nom. tsvagə tsvaç ‘branch’, pl./sg. ba:nʃtagə ba:nʃtaç ‘platform’, pl./sg.

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Turning to the basic analysis of the three processes, to be further modified and developed throughout the chapter, all three are triggered by conditions on the syllable coda, informally summarized in (4). (4)

X is disallowed in the syllable coda, where X = a. voiced obstruents b. the segment [g] c. the cluster [ŋg]

We can understand such empirical generalizations about codas as positional markedness effects reducible to more elementary constraints, combined in a constraint-conjunctive way (Smolensky 1995). They are analyzable as [M&M] conjunctions, with the structural markedness constraint *Cod locally conjoined with some segmental markedness constraint *X.7 Here and throughout we understand *Cod to be violated by any segment bearing a coda role. Taking up our earlier work, we analyze the coda condition responsible for devoicing (4a) as an [M&M] conjunction as in (5) (see Ito and Mester 1997b, 1998 for details of the constraint-conjunctive analysis; see also Féry 1998b and Kager 1999 for discussion). (5)

*VC: [*VoiObs&*Cod]

This conjoined constraint is violated by any voiced obstruent with a coda role. To simplify matters, we will set the local domain for the conjunction in (5), and for the conjoined constraints to follow, as the syllable coda, defined as the sequence of postnuclear segments in a syllable (in some cases, as in (5), the segment would also be a suitable local domain). Devoicing itself is the result of the ranking system in (6), where the conjoined constraint is crucially ranked higher than the relevant faithfulness constraint, which otherwise protects underlying voicing in obstruents. (6)

Ranking: *VC: [*VoiObs&*Cod] >> Ident(voi) >> *VoiObs, *Cod

The other two conditions have a similar constraint-conjunctive structure. Conjoining *DorsalPlosive with (5), we arrive at the triply conjoined constraint in (7) (assuming associativity of “&”), militating against voiced coda dorsal plosives. (7)

*VCD: [*VoiObs&*Cod&*DorsPlos]

Further conjoining the syllable margin constraint *Complex8 to (7), we have the quadruply conjoined constraint in (8) ruling out voiced dorsal plosives in a complex coda. (8)

*VCDC: [*VoiObs&*Cod&*DorsPlos&*Cmplx]

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Conjoined constraints are intrinsically, and without loss of generality, ranked higher than the elementary constraints that they are composed of (Smolensky 1995). The intrinsic ranking of the three conjoined constraints is therefore as in (9). (9)

Markedness ranking *VCDC: [*VoiObs&*Cod&*DorsPlos&*Cmplx] *VCD: [*VoiObs&*Cod&*DorsPlos] *VC: [*VoiObs&*Cod] *VoiObs

*Cod

*DorsPlos

*Cmplx

In OT, a phonological process is the result of a pair (M, F): a markedness constraint M and a relevant faithfulness constraint F.9 In this vein, the general ranking scheme in (10) triggers the relevant process, depending on the type of faithfulness constraint (Ident, Max, Dep) being dominated by [*X&*Cod] (see (11a–c)). (10) [*X&*Cod] >> F

X is changed in the coda, in violation of faithfulness constraint F.

(11) a. *VC >> Ident(voi) b. *VCD >> Ident(cont) c. *VCDC >> Max

Coda obstruents are devoiced. Coda g is spirantized. Postnasal coda g is deleted.

Illustrations of these preliminary analyses appear in (12a–c). (12) a. *VC >> Ident(voi) /hand/

‘hand’ [hand]

*VC

Ident(voi)

*!

☞ [hant]

*

b. *VCD >> Ident(cont) /kø:ng/

‘king’

[.kø:.ng.] ☞ [.kø:.nç.]

*VCD

Ident(cont)

*! *

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c. *VCDC >> Max /rŋg/

‘ring’

*VCDC

[rŋg]

Max

*!

☞ [rŋ]

*

In (12a), the coda condition against voiced obstruents dominates the faithfulness constraint against changes in voicing. The candidate [hant] wins because it fulfills the coda condition while [hand] violates it. In (12b), a coda condition against [g] dominates a faithfulness constraint militating against changes in continuancy, and the tableau shows the constraint interaction responsible for the selection of the spirantized output candidate. The tableau abstracts away from additional constraints leading to coda devoicing and dorsal fricative assimilation. In (12c), a coda condition against dorsal clusters of the form [ŋg] is violated in the first candidate [rŋg], and [rŋ] is the winner, at the price of a Max-violation. There is more to say about spirantization and cluster simplification, in particular with respect to devoicing, and we return to these issues in section 11.3. A possible (but on general grounds undesirable) ranking scheme literally depicting the three processes is given in (13), with each faithfulness constraint violated in the output immediately below the conjoined coda constraint to which it “belongs.” (13)

*VCDC: [*VoiObs&*Cod&*DorsPlos&*Cmplx Cluster Simplification (12c) Max *VCD: [*VoiObs&*Cod&*DorsPlos] Spirantization (12b) Ident(cont) *VC: [*VoiObs&*Cod] Devoicing (12a) Ident(voi) {*VoiObs, *Cod, *DorsPlos, *Cmplx}

This closely mimics traditional Sound Pattern of English (SPE)-style rules, which literally amalgamate markedness (the “structural description”) with faithfulness (the “structural change”). One of the important achievements of OT is the liberation of these components, so that there is no compulsion for

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the markedness constraint and the relevant faithfulness constraint to be adjacent to each other. Another possible, and we will argue, superior ranking scheme is given in (14), with each faithfulness constraint ranked as low as possible, following a general M >> F default ranking imperative. (14) Conjoined markedness:

Faithfulness constraints: Elementary markedness:

{

*VCDC: [*VoiObs&*Cod&*DorsPlos&*Cmplx] *VCD: [*VoiObs&*Cod&*DorsPlos] *VC: [*VoiObs&*Cod]

{Max, Ident(cont), Ident(voi)} {*VoiObs, *Cod, *DorsPlos, *Cmplx}

On the one hand, the ranking Faithfulness » Elementary Markedness is obvious since German in general allows voiced obstruents, dorsals, and both simple and complex codas – the faithfulness constraints protect the marked elements from being changed. On the other hand, the conjoined markedness constraints are stronger, and faithfulness cannot demand their violation. There are further rankings among the relevant faithfulness constraints themselves (to be motivated below), as indicated in (15). (15) Faithfulness ranking Max Ident(voi) Ident(cont)

The overall ranking scheme in (16) summarizes the preliminary analysis of the three processes. (16) Overall ranking scheme:

Conjoined Markedness:

Faithfulness:

Elementary Markedness:

{ {

*VCDC: [*VoiObs&*Cod&*DorsPlos&*Cmplx] *VCD: [*VoiObs&*Coda&*DorsPlos] *VC: [*VoiObs&*Cod] Max Ident(voi) Ident(cont) *VoiObs

*Cod *DorsPlos *Cmplx

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11.3. [M&F] Conjunctions and Opacity Having established the basic alternations to be studied, we are ready to turn to their interactions. They show opacity effects of a kind that leads us to cast a new look at the issue.

11.3.1 Opaque Interactions I: Cluster Simplification and Devoicing In rule terms, as shown in (17), cluster simplification bleeds devoicing in Standard German (SG) in the singular form [dŋ] by removing a segment (/g/) that would otherwise be a target for devoicing. In the plural [dŋə], /g/ deletes as well before the ending /-ə/. (17) SG: cluster simplification bleeds devoicing. /dŋg/ ‘thing’, sg. /dŋg+ə/ ‘thing’, pl. Ø Ø Cluster g Æ Ø/[+nas]_]s simplification: – – Devoicing: [-son] Æ [-voi]/_]s [dŋ] [dŋə]

A few words are in order regarding the deletion of /g/ in the plural form [dŋə], which we will here, sidestepping further analysis that would take us too far afield, subsume under the rubric of “coda effects.” Descriptively speaking, it is quite common in languages to find that the phonology of preschwa clusters is in many respects that of syllable codas (perhaps mediated through ambisyllabic parsing of pre-schwa consonants),10 which has led analysts in the past to regard schwa as invisible for the earlier parts of the phonological derivation (see Kager 1989 and references therein for further discussion). A more detailed analysis of German phonology would have to take full account of the fact that /ŋg/ reduces to /ŋ/ (and is in fact impossible) not only in syllable codas but also before schwa ((18a)) and other reduced vowels ((18b–c)). (18) a. Before [ə] Zunge [tsυŋə] *[tsυŋgə] ‘tongue’ Enge [eŋə] *[eŋgə] ‘narrowness’ b. Before the reduced low central vowel [ɐ] Finger [fŋɐ] *[fŋgɐ] ‘finger’ Hunger [hυŋɐ] *[hυŋgɐ] ‘hunger’ c. Before reduced [υ], [] Bedingung [bədŋυŋ] *[bədŋgυŋ] ‘condition’ abhängig [apheŋç] *[apheŋgç] ‘dependent’

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Different from English with its well-known contrasts of the fi[ŋg]er versus si[ŋ]+er variety, in German the ban against [ŋg] before reduced vowels holds even when no morphological boundary intervenes, as the parallel examples in (19) make clear. (19) English a. finger b. singer

*[fŋəɹ] [sŋ+əɹ]

[fŋgəɹ] *[sŋg+əɹ]

German Finger [fŋɐ] Sänger [zeŋ+ɐ]

*[fŋgɐ] *[zeŋg+ɐ]

Before full vowels, as in (20a), there is no deletion of [g] and no [ŋ] in onset position, leading to contrasts as in (20b–c) (see Hall 1992, Wiese 1996, and Féry 1998a). (20) a. Tango b. Inge Ingo c. Angelsachse Anglo

*[taŋo] [ŋə] *[ŋo] [aŋəlzaksə] *[aŋlo:]

[taŋgo] *[ŋgə] [ŋgo] *[aŋgəlzaksə] [aŋglo:]

‘tango’ (woman’s name) (man’s name)11 ‘Anglo-Saxon’ ‘Anglo’

Variant pronunciations such as [gaŋges] ~ [gaŋəs] for Ganges, where the absence of [g] depends on the reduction of the second syllable, make the same point. All of this shows that a strictly phonological markedness effect relating to differences between prosodically reduced and unreduced syllables is involved, not (or at least not exclusively) a faithfulness effect of the OutputOutput (“cyclic”) variety. Returning to the opacity issue, a further twist adds extra interest to the cluster simplification case. The output found in SG is shown in (17). In Colloquial Northern German (CNG), another outcome is usually encountered, as illustrated in (21). Here devoicing takes precedence over cluster simplification, resulting in a (historically older) [ŋk] ~ [ŋ] alternation ([dŋk], [dŋə], etc.). In rule terms, devoicing bleeds cluster simplification. (21) CNG Devoicing: Cluster simplification:

[-son] Æ [-voi]/_]s g Æ Ø /[+nas]_]s

/dŋg/ ‘thing’ /dŋg+ə/ ‘things’ k – – Ø [dŋk] [dŋə]

Since Kiparsky 1971 (see also Lass 1984 for detailed discussion), the relation between cluster simplification and devoicing in SG and CNG has served as one of the textbook examples for a mutually bleeding relation. What demands our attention, from an OT perspective, is that one of the two varieties of German, namely SG, as in (17), cannot be analyzed in transparent OT (understood here as consisting of nothing except markedness constraints and standard faithfulness constraints). Before showing why this is the case, it is worth pointing out that neither (17) nor (21) exhibits opacity in the sense of the formal definition

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given in (1) (repeated in (22)), showing its limited usefulness in an OT context. (22) A phonological rule P of the form A Æ B / C__D is opaque if there are surface structures with any of the following characteristics: a. Instances of A in the environment C__D b. Instances of B derived by P that occur in environments other than C__D.

Consider the output [dŋ] in (17): it does not show [g] in the environment /[+nas]__]s and hence does not fall under (22a). Cluster simplification is surface true, in McCarthy’s (1998) terminology. Even though it is formally not quite clear how (22) identifies deletion sites in surface structures, we observe that [dŋ] does not show deletion of /g/ due to cluster simplification in some other environment and therefore does not fall under (22b) either – the environment of cluster simplification is surface-apparent. Turning to devoicing, we find neither a voiced obstruent syllable-finally, nor a voiceless segment derived by devoicing in some other environment. The upshot is that (17) shows no opacity at all, in terms of the definition (the same holds for (21), as the reader can verify): mutual bleeding, in these terms, is not an issue of opacity but of paradigm uniformity. This way of partitioning the facts makes some sense from the perspective of rule ordering (since mutual bleeding cannot be cured by reordering), but it has no general claim to validity.12 In what way, then, does the opacity issue come up in the context of OT? In terms of the basic description arrived at in section 11.1 (see (11)), we need to combine two subrankings. On the one hand, there is the ranking responsible for devoicing ((2), expanded in (23) to show the position of Max). (23) Devoicing:

*VC: [*VoiObs&*Cod] Max Ident(voi)

Crucial for the analysis is the low position of Ident(voi), which is dominated by both *VC and Max. The ranking *VC >> Max follows from the general M >> F ranking scheme, and the basic effects of this ranking are illustrated in (24). (24) /tag/ ‘day’

*VC

[tag]

*!

Max

☞ [tak] [ta]

Ident(voi) *

*!

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The second ingredient is the ranking responsible for cluster simplification, shown in (25). (25) *VCDC: [*VoiObs&*Cod&*DorsPlos&*Cmplx] Max

Given that *VCDC contains *VC as a constituent constraint, *VCDC >> *VC holds on general grounds (Smolensky 1995). Overlaying the two partial rankings in a single unified hierarchy produces (26). (26) *VCDC: [*VoiObs&*Cod&*DorsPlos&*Cmplx] *VC: [*VoiObs&*Cod] Max Ident(voi)

The results are illustrated in (27). For the input /dŋg/, the winner is [dŋk]. (27) /dŋg/

*VCDC

*VC

*!

*

[dŋg]

Max

☞ CNG [dŋk] L SG

[dŋ]

Ident(voi) *

*!

This analysis chooses the correct winner [diŋk] for CNG but fails to select the correct winner [dŋ] for SG. The only way for [dŋ] to come out as the winner in SG is to rerank Max and Ident(voi), but this is not feasible: Max >> Ident(voi) is basic for both SG and CNG since it determines the correct way of dealing with syllable-final voiced obstruents (see (24): by devoicing not by deletion). This illustrates again the familiar failure of the basic model of OT (Prince and Smolensky 1993) to come to terms with opaque interactions, such as the one resulting in the SG form. Thus, an important result here is that the expectation that rule-reordering analyses (see (17) vs. (21)) will readily translate into straightforward constraint-reranking analyses turns out to be too simple.

11.3.2 Nonsolutions to Opacity At first glance, one might hope to make the whole opacity problem disappear by forcing inputs to be in some sense more concrete, more similar to the

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output. And indeed, once /dŋ/ is posited as the input for SG instead of /dŋg/,13 the opacity issue for this and similar examples goes away. This is certainly true – but such legislation on inputs fails to take into account Richness of the Base (Prince and Smolensky 1993), which requires grammars to be able to deal with all inputs, including /. . . ŋg/-inputs, such as /dŋg/. Nothing in an OT grammar is able to restrict the set of inputs to those with certain desirable properties. It is important to reason carefully at this point, since Richness of the Base is a concept that can be misunderstood. It does not per se require a grammar of SG to turn a hypothetical input /dŋg/ into [dŋ] – everything else being equal, any other phonotactically well-formed output would also do, including [dŋk], as in (27). But in this case, everything else is not equal since there are further demands on the grammar that disqualify [dŋk] as the output assigned to the input /dŋg/: we know from overt alternations like diphtho[ŋg]al ~ Diphtho[ŋ] that the outcome for actual /. . . ŋg/ inputs is in fact [. . . ŋ]. This is what a transparent analysis along the lines of (27) cannot deliver, as shown, and the insistence on /dŋ/ as the underlying form for surface [dŋ] does not change this. The concretist attempt to solve the opacity problem by denying it thus falters because of the presence of overt alternations. In keeping with one of the most basic insights of modern linguistics, we take such entirely regular cases of allomorphy to demand inputs that are potentially more abstract than any particular surface allomorph, in order to be able to express the constant morphemic element underlying its various surface exponents (see Kenstowicz and Kisseberth 1979 for a survey of the arguments, whose fundamental validity is not affected through the shift of perspective that comes with the ascent of OT as the guiding framework). How, then, can the opaque interaction be captured in OT? One line of attack consists in re-creating the conditions under which the alternation is obtained in a sequential system. Concretely speaking, one might try to set things up in such a way that devoicing does not come in the way of cluster simplification. The most direct method of achieving this is to import sequentialism into OT by setting up a word-internal level (by pure stipulation, it appears) where cluster simplification takes place but not devoicing. This requires two different constraint systems for the two levels, with different rankings, as in (28) and (29). The output of Level 1 serves as the input to Level 2. At Level 1, devoicing is turned off, but cluster simplification is in operation, so /dŋg/ will turn into /dŋ/ but /tag/ remains /tag/ as the output of Level 1. At Level 2, devoicing is active, so the final outputs emerge correctly as [dŋ] and [tak], respectively. This setup produces the right outcome and may sound attractive, but problems are not far afield. “Switching off” devoicing while keeping cluster simplification in operation at Level 1 appears

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innocuous as long as one thinks of them as traditional phonological operations, each with its own structural change and structural description. Operations are independent of each other, and it is natural that they should be assignable to different levels, as in rule-based Lexical Phonology. But OT is more interactive than that, and it turns out, as indicated in (28), that something more is needed besides the minimal reranking of the crucial faithfulness constraint Ident(voi) above*VC to turn off devoicing. (28) Level 1:

*VCDC: [*VoiObs&*Cod&*DorsPlos&*Cmplx]

Æ Ident(voi) (↕!!) Æ Max *VC: [*VoiObs&*Cod] Input-Output mappings at Level 1: /dŋg/ Æ /dŋ/, /tag/ Æ /tag/ (29) Level 2:

*VCDC: [*VoiObs&*Cod&*DorsPlos&*Cmplx] *VC: [*VoiObs&*Cod] Max

Ident(voi) Input-Output mappings at Level 2: /dŋ/ Æ [dŋ], /tag/ Æ [tak]

Not only must Max move along with Ident(voi) (otherwise all voiced coda obstruents would be deleted at Level 1 instead of waiting to be devoiced at Level 2) – in moving up the hierarchy together, the two faithfulness constraints must in addition be flipped in their ranking (as indicated by the arrows in (28)).14 Otherwise the /g/ of /ŋg/-clusters in codas would not be deleted, but, somewhat ironically, still be devoiced at Level 1. Besides the deus-ex-machina character of the level distinction itself, the additionally necessary manipulations indicate that this mode of phonological analysis, in spite of time-honored tradition, holds little promise as far as further insight into opaque interactions is concerned. Such are the reasons, more than any a priori objections to levels and derivations, that have led researchers to become widely disenchanted with sequential-level analyses.15 Surprisingly, the attempt to preserve the gist of the sequentialist account in a strictly parallelist setup by means of Sympathy (McCarthy 1997, 1998) fares little better than the sequential-level account. We argue elsewhere (Ito

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and Mester 2001) that Sympathy Theory is in principle unable to deal with all opacity phenomena and will therefore keep our remarks here to a minimum. The general problem lies, in a nutshell, in the restriction limiting the constraints responsible for selecting Sympathy candidates to the class of faithfulness constraints.16 This predicts that opaque interactions should always feature winners that are hyperfaithful to the input (more faithful than what the transparent faithfulness system predicts). Opacity as hyperfaithfulness works for many examples from the phonological literature involving morphophonemic processes, but it fails for a subclass of the perhaps most solid group of opaque interactions – those involving at least one allophonic alternation. The reason is that allophonic alternations involve features whose input specifications do not matter in OT (e.g., /x/ vs. /ç/ are both viable inputs for the German dorsal fricative) and are therefore “free.” This means that an opaquely appearing [ç] (i.e., in a surface context where [x] is expected) cannot be obtained by hyperfaithfulness to any input – there is no “right” input to inspect since nothing fixes the input specification as /ç/. An attempt to derive such effects by Sympathy would necessitate imposing specific constraints on inputs, contrary to the fundamental OT principle of Richness of the Base. Although Sympathy remains a candidate for the more modest role of a partial theory, it seems clear that it cannot be an exhaustive theory of opacity. The opacity case under discussion here does not belong to this intractable variety. Even so, a Sympathy analysis has problems of its own in terms of gratuitous stipulations that are quite similar to the sequentialist-level account. We do not have space here for a full exposition of the case, but the basic line of analysis is clear enough. To produce a more favorable playing field for *VCDC (disallowing voiced dorsal coda complexes) where devoicing does not interfere, the Sympathy candidate should be chosen among the nondevoicing candidates, which points to Ident(voi) as the selector constraint (indicated by superscripted ❀ in (30)). Since the intended Sympathy candidate shows deletion of /g/ instead of devoicing, we set the sympathetic faithfulness constraints as ❀O-Dep (in the notation introduced in Ito and Mester 1997b and used in a number of the works cited earlier). We continue to abide by the general ranking principle proposed and argued for in Ito and Mester 1999, that is, that faithfulness constraints are – ceteris paribus – always ranked as low as possible. Loosely speaking, the system always assumes the state with the lowest possible level of energy. In (30), the ranking responsible for the actual absence of [g] in the output is ❀O-Dep >> Max (since the Max-violation in (27) of the deletion candidate [dŋ] in SG has to be matched by a higher violation mark in [dŋk]).

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(30) *VCDC: [*VoiObs&*Cod&*DorsPlos&*Cmplx] ❀O-Dep *VC: [*VoiObs&*Cod] Max IO-Ident(voi)❀

Under this analysis, the Sympathy candidate itself turns out to be the winner, as shown in (31a). (31) a. /dŋg/ *VCDC ❀O-Dep [dŋg]

*!

[dŋk]

*

*VC

Max

IO-Ident (voi)❀

*

*!

*

☞ ❀ [dŋ]

*

b. /tag/ L

[tag]

*!

[tak]

*!

☞!! ❀ [ta]

* * *

Notes: ☞!! wrong winner selected by the competition in the tableau L actual output form (a loser in the tableau)

But as (31b) shows, for the straightforward case of devoicing (/tag/ Æ [tak], etc.), which involves no opaque interaction, to come out correctly, the ranking in (30) will not do, since the deleting Sympathy candidate (here, ta ) again self-selects as the overall winner. It needs to be ensured, therefore, that [tag] becomes the ❀-candidate and not [ta]. This can be accomplished by ranking Max above *VC, deviating from the default ranking in (30), where Max is ranked as low as possible. (32) *VCDC: [*VoiObs&*Cod&*DorsPlos&*Cmplx] ❀O-Dep Max *VC: [*VoiObs&*Cod] IO-Ident(voi)❀

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The tableau in (33) shows how this ranking manages to produce the right winner for simple devoicing examples. (33) /tag/

*VCDC

❀O-Dep

Max

❀ [tag]

IO-Ident (voi)❀

*

☞ [tak] [ta]

*VC

* *!

The crucial point here is that the ranking Max >> *VC is imported into the system from outside to be able to choose the sympathy candidate, and is not preestablished by the transparent phonology (in fact, default M >> F ordering preestablishes the opposite ranking). (32) and (33) highlight the considerable cost incurred by the attempt to come to terms with phonological opacity by means of Sympathy. Upon closer inspection, Sympathy turns out to be not simply additive to the basic setup of the grammar induced on the basis of the transparent phonology (which surely takes acquisitional precedence). Rather, to be workable, Sympathy requires further reranking of constraints to ensure that basic properties of the language to be generated are still correctly captured. Looking beyond the not insignificant analytical accomplishment of producing the right result, the fundamental problem in terms of explanation is similar to the one encountered by the sequential-level approach (which is not too surprising, since Sympathy simulates sequentialism). Taken together with the fact that Sympathy Theory, in spite of its claim to provide a general solution to all of opacity, falls short of achieving this goal (see the earlier discussion and Ito and Mester 2001), this appears to be sufficient grounds to look for an explanation elsewhere.

11.3.3 Opacity as a Constraint Conjunction Effect To get started, let us approach the opacity issue from a new angle. The basic trouble is created because deletion is supposed to affect /g/ after /ŋ/, but in the output /g/ would independently turn into [k] by devoicing, so why delete anything? The sequentialist’s answer: because at the point of deletion, the devoicing option is still hidden behind the veil of ordering. A fundamentally different perspective emerges in cases like this one by asking a different question: why is the phenomenon under discussion conceived of as deletion specifically of /g/ in the first place? Why not instead as deletion of any dorsal plosive? After all, we find pervasive [k] ~ Ø alternations in CNG ([dŋk] ~

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[dŋə], etc.), and it would be natural to look at the SG variants as arising through deletion of [k] in these cases. At first glance, the idea behind the question seems hopelessly naive. Generalized post-ŋ deletion of dorsals simply cannot work since we know that deletion only affects those [k] that derive from underlying /g/, not [k] deriving from underlying /k/ (/baŋk/ Æ [baŋk], *[baŋ], etc.). This is what the sequentialist approach to opaque interactions capitalizes on, thriving on the hidden potentials of long and complex derivations, with operations applying to certain elements before they have turned into other elements (deleting post-ŋ /g/ before it has turned into /k/, etc.). The way we just stated the issue suggests another line of attack, however. Deletion applies to phonologically derived dorsals (derived by violating voicing faithfulness); it does not affect phonologically underived dorsals. Loosely speaking, instead of deleting /g/ before it turns into [k], one can also delete all post-ŋ dorsal plosives in syllable codas, whether voiced or voiceless, provided they are phonologically derived. We see here a new connection between two classical themes of phonological theory, opacity and phonological derivedness, that is worth exploring. Of course, the notion phonologically derived is itself a liability for an output-oriented framework like OT. To the extent that the theory can deal with the phonological derivedness issue, it can also deal with opaque interactions that can be characterized in such terms. It is at this point that recent work by ´Lubowicz (1998) on derived environments in OT becomes important. Consider first the generalization of the constraint against [ŋg]-codas to a constraint against all dorsal complexes in codas in (34). This is a conjunction of the three constraints *Cod, *DorsPlos, and *Cmplx (i.e., without *VoiObs), ruling out both [ŋg] and [ŋk] as complex codas.17 (34) *CDC: [*Cod&*DorsPlos&*Cmplx]

Substituting the new constraint *CDC for the previous *VCDC constraint, we derive the correct winner [dŋ] for SG, as shown in (35).18 (35) /dŋg/ ‘thing’

*CDC

*VC

[dŋg]

*!

*

[dŋk]

*!

☞ [dŋ]

Max

Ident(voi) *

*

As already pointed out, generalizing the constraint in this way and ruling out both [ŋg] and [ŋk] is problematic for underlying [ŋk], which wrongly also loses its final dorsal:

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(36) /baŋk/ ‘bank’ L

*CDC

*VC

[baŋg]

*!

*

[baŋk]

*!

☞!! [baŋ]

Max

Ident(voi) *

*

But all is not lost since the relevant distinction here can be made in terms of the notion ‘phonologically derived’: voiceless complex dorsal codas are disallowed when derived by devoicing (i.e., *[dŋk] from /dŋg/) but not when they are underlying (i.e., [baŋk] from /baŋk/). In OT, an output candidate’s profile of faithfulness violations is a direct and complete record of its derivedness. ´Lubowicz’s (1998) proposal makes use of this fact. Her idea is, in a nutshell, that a markedness constraint M will appear to apply only in phonologically derived environments when it is conjoined with some faithfulness constraint F. The crucial point is that the output candidates violating such an [M&F] constraint are those unfaithful candidates (i.e., not faithful to the input candidate with respect to F) that are in addition burdened with a violation of M. Phonological derivedness always involves a faithfulness violation: a segment has changed some of its properties from its input state. For the case at hand, the relevant [M&F] conjunction is [*CDC&Ident(voi)], conjoining *CDC, the constraint against coda dorsal complexes, with Ident(voi), the faith-fulness constraint against a change in voicing. It is clear that [ŋk]-codas “derived” by devoicing (i.e., [dŋk] from /dŋg/) will violate this conjoined constraint, but underlying (“underived”) [ŋk]-codas (i.e., [baŋk] from /baŋk/) will not, since they do not violate the faithfulness constraint Ident(voi). How do such conjoined constraints have an effect? Consider the constraint ranking configuration in (37). F1 and F2 are faithfulness constraints; M is a markedness constraint crucially dominated by F2, which will make M inactive under normal circumstances. M&F1, a conjunction of the markedness-cumfaithfulness variety, takes precedence over F2. This has an important consequence for situations where F1 is bound to be violated under the pressure of higher constraints (these situations include the derived environments that are of interest here): with M&F1 >> F2 and F1’s violation unavoidable, it becomes more important to fulfill M than F2. In other words, M has in effect been promoted beyond F2 – is active – in derived environments (i.e., when F1 is violated) and remains otherwise inactive because of F2 >> M. (37)

M&F1 F1

F2 M

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Returning to the concrete case at hand, our proposal appears in (38). It involves a conjunction of markedness (*CDC: [*Cod&*DorsPlos& *Cmplx]coda) and faithfulness (Ident(voi)), ranked as in (38). (38) *VC: [*VoiObs&*Cod] [*CDC: [*Cod&*DorsPlos&*Cmplx] & Ident(voi)] Max *CDC: [*Cod&*DorsPlos&*Cmplx] Ident(voi)

*CDC is ranked below Max, making segment deletion impossible in the general case. But [*CDC &Ident(voi)], its conjunction with the voicing faithfulness constraint, is ranked above Max. For a segment forced to violate Ident(voi) (because of *VC >> Ident(voi)), an additional violation of *CDC would trigger a violation of the conjoined constraint. It is therefore preferable to violate Max in this case. As a result, we find deletion of derived [k] in complex dorsal codas (cf. the diphthongization and palatalization cases in ´Lubowicz 1998). This M&F analysis is illustrated in (39). (39) /dŋg/ [dŋg]

*VC

[*CDC&Ident(voi)]

Max

*!

[dŋk]

*CDC

Ident(voi)

* *!

☞ [dŋ]

*

*

*

(40), the control case, shows that no deletion takes place when *CDC is not activated as part of the high-ranking M&F conjunction (because no violation of voicing faithfulness is forced in the winning candidate). (40) /baŋk/ [baŋg]

*VC

[*CDC&Ident(voi)]

*!

*

Max

☞ [baŋk] [baŋ]

*CDC

Ident(voi)

*

*

* *!

For CNG, the conjoined constraint ranks below Max, so segments are preserved in both cases, resulting in /dŋg/ Æ [dŋk] alongside /baŋk/ Æ [baŋk].

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The [M&F] conjunction analysis of the /dŋg/ Æ [dŋ], /baŋk/ Æ [baŋk] case brings out a crucial difference between the classical cases of phonologically derived environment effects reconsidered by ´Lubowicz 1998 and the general [M&F] situation (markedness constraints promoted by faithfulness). Note that the [M&F] analysis just given has no direct counterpart in a sequentialist rule approach: the mere fact that a /k/ has been derived from /g/ does not produce a phonologically derived environment for a general dorsal deletion process of the form: [+dorsal] Æ Ø/ŋ_]s. That the structural description of the rule is met by some /k/ has nothing to do with whether this /k/ has been derived from /g/ by an earlier application of a phonological rule. This would only be the case if the dorsal deletion rule were stated in a redundant way so as to specifically apply to /k/ and not to /g/, that is, by adding a (process-wise superfluous) reference to [-voiced]: [+dors, -voi] Æ Ø/ŋ_]s. In parallelist OT, however, a devoiced [k] in the output corresponding to a /g/ in the input triggers a faithfulness violation. This activates the markedness constraint *CDC through [M&F] conjunction even though the markedness constraint does not refer to the feature [voice]. It is perhaps an advantage of the parallelist [M&F] approach that it derives the result through the activity of the more general constraint.

11.3.4 Opaque Interactions II: Spirantization and Devoicing Devoicing also enters into an opaque interaction with spirantization. Concentrating again on the general and fully productive spirantization process (see (3)), we find this manifested in the fact that, instead of devoicing to [k], syllable-final /g/, if not postnasal, turns into a dorsal fricative (which is of course also devoiced). In rule terms, this is a counterbleeding interaction: (41) Spirantization: g Æ [+cont]/_]s Devoicing: [-son] Æ [-voi]/_]s (Dorsal fricative allophony)

/hong/ ‘honey’ γ x [honç]

/flug/ ‘flight’ γ x [flux]

Since the contrast between /g/ and /k/ is neutralized to /k/ syllable-finally, we note immediately, in light of the previous section, that the crucial point to be captured is that spirantization only affects [k] derived from underlying /g/, as in (41), not to [k] derived from underlying /k/, as in (42). (42) Derri[k] Bati[k] dick Plasti[k]

*Derri[ç] *Ba:ti[ç] *di[ç] *Plasti[ç]

(name of detective in TV series) ‘batik’ ‘fat’ ‘plastic’

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The parts of the hierarchy developed in section 11.2 relevant for spirantization (*VCD >> Ident(cont)) and coda devoicing (*VC >> Max >> Ident(voi)) are repeated in (43). (43) *VC: [*VoiObs&*Cod&*DorsPlos] *VC: [*VoiObs&*Cod] Max Ident(cont)

Ident(voi)

The tableau in (44) shows how this transparent analysis fails. The wrong winner [honik] is selected by the competition, and no reranking of constraints can ameliorate the situation since the violations of the wrong winner (Ident(voi)) constitute a proper subset of the violations of the actual output form (Ident(voi) and Ident(cont)).19 (44) /hong/ [hong] [hong] [hon]

*VCD

*VC

*!

*

Max

*!

Ident(cont) *

*!

☞ !! [honik] L

[honç]

Ident(voi)

* *!

*

At first glance, a workable Sympathy analysis appears within reach. If the spirantized nondevoiced candidate [ho:ng] is the ❀-candidate, then a sympathetic faithfulness constraint ❀O-Ident(cont) chooses the correct winner [ho:nç]. However, as things stand, no selector constraint picks out [ho:ng] as the ❀-candidate, as inspection of (44) makes clear. Max and Ident(cont) select [ho:nk], and Ident(voi) selects [ho:n] (the latter does not violate Ident(voi)). For the selector constraint Ident(voi) to pick out the desired ❀candidate, the ranking between *VC and Max would have to be reversed, against the general M >> F scheme. The same kind of issue arose in the previous section in connection with cluster simplification, and it appears that we are dealing with a problem of some generality. Even granting the ranking adjustment, the Sympathy analysis has another problem, which it shares with the derivational counterpart that it simulates. The segment [γ], which is not a possible surface segment in any of the vari-

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eties of German under consideration, appears at the intermediate stage of the derivational analysis (41), and in the ❀-candidate in the Sympathy analysis (45). This abstractness problem manifests itself in an odd property of the Sympathy analysis: the markedness constraint *γ must be dominated by *VCD (ruling out [g] in codas) for the desired ❀-candidate [ho:ng] to win over [ho:ng] – but *γ is otherwise entirely undominated in the language, whereas the segment [g] occurs freely outside of coda contexts. (45) /hong/ [hong]

*VCD

Max

*VC

❀OIdent(cont)

*

*

*!

❀ [hong]

IOIdent(cont)

*!

[hon]

IOIdent(voi)

*

*!

[honik]

*!

*

☞ [honç]

*

*

A far superior way of resolving the opacity issue is provided by the [M&F] approach developed earlier. The first step is to generalize the constraint *VCD in (46) targeting [g] in codas to *CD in (47) targeting both [g] and [k] in codas. (46) *VCD: [*VoiObs&*Cod&*DorsPlos] (47) *CD: [*Cod&*DorsPlos]

With this generalized constraint *CD, the tableau in (48) shows how the correct winning candidate is chosen. (48) /hong/

*VC

*CD

Max

[hong]

*!

*

*

[hong]

*!

☞ [honç]

Ident(voi)

*

[hon] [honk]

Ident(cont)

*! *!

* *

*

As before, this transparent analysis goes wrong for input /k/, as shown in (49).

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(49) /plastk/

*VC *CD Max

[plastg]

*!

[plastg]

*!

[plastk]

Ident(voi)

* *

[plast] L

Ident(cont)

*! *!

*

☞!! [plastç]

*

*

The [M&F] strategy is clear: the markedness constraint *CD is active only in conjunction with the faithfulness constraint Ident(voi) – that is, only when we encounter a derived [k] stemming from /g/, as in (48), and not from /k/, as in (49). The ranking in (50) places Ident(cont) between the conjoined constraint [*CD&Ident(voi)] and the unconjoined markedness constraint *CD, with the result that spirantization is forced by the [M&F] conjunction but not by the unadorned markedness constraint.20 (50) *VC

[*CD: [*Cod&*DorsPlos]&Ident(voi)] Max Ident(cont) *CD: [*Cod&*DorsPlos] Ident(voi)

The workings of this analysis can be verified in the tableaux in (51) and (52).21 (51) /hong/

*VC [*CD&Ident(voi)] Max Ident(cont) *CD Ident(voi)

[hong]

*!

[hong]

*!

* *

[hon] [honk] ☞ [honç]

*! *!

* *

* *

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(52) /[plastk/

*VC [*CD&Ident(voi)] Max Ident(cont) *CD Ident(voi)

[plastg]

*!

[plastg]

*!

[plast]

* *

* *

*!

☞ [plastk] [plastç]

* *!

The full constraint ranking for the two opaque interactions studied in this section and the previous one is given in (53). (53) *VC: [*VoiObs&*Cod] [*CDC: [*Cod&*DorsPlos&*Cmplx] & Ident(voi)] [*CD: [*Cod&*DorsPlos] & Ident(voi)] Max Ident(cont) *CDC: [*Cod&*DorsPlos&*Cmplx] *CD: [*Cod&*DorsPlos] Ident(voi)

Given the default ranking principle M >> F followed throughout this chapter, the pure markedness constraint *VC is ranked highest, dominating *CDC&Ident(voi), which contains a faithfulness component. Ident(cont) must be ranked above *CDC so that /baŋk/ does not become *[baŋx]. All other rankings are either intrinsic or motivated above. In a final step, we can now divorce empirical processes (such as dorsal spirantization or dorsal deletion) and the grammatical constraints underlying them even further, resulting in a significant simplification of the analysis. Looking at the integrated hierarchy in (53), we see that both alternations can be reduced to the action of the same constraint, *CD. The duplication in our analysis, made obvious in (53), arose because the constraint-based analysis was too closely modeled on processual precursors, usually a less than optimal way of proceeding. Reducing everything to *CD requires steering the

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outcome toward the right kind of repair in each case: the way to comply with the ban against coda dorsal plosives, with the derived environment proviso discussed, is in general by spirantization, but postnasally by deletion. If spirantization also affected postnasal dorsals in codas, the result would be a dorsal cluster of the form nasal + fricative (most plausibly, ŋç]s),22 violating a stricture-related ban against such sequences (see Padgett 1995). Pending further study of the clustering restriction, we invoke the composite constraint *NasFric&*Cod&*Dors against coda dorsal complexes of the form nasal + fricative. Ranking this constraint above Max, the hierarchy in (54) achieves the desired results. (54) *VC: [*VoiObs&*Cod]

*NFCD: [*NasFric&*Cod&*Dors]

[*CD: [*Cod&*DorsPlos]&Ident(voi)] Max Ident(cont) *CD: [*Cod&*DorsPlos] Ident(voi)

*CD is the trigger of all dorsal plosive processes under investigation. As seen earlier, its effects are limited by *CD&Ident(voi) (faithlessness-enhanced markedness), restricting its scope to voicewise derived [k]. The canonical way of resolving *CD-violations falls to Ident(cont), unless forstalled by *NFCD. We conclude with the two tableaux in (55) and (56) showing how the simplified hierachy derives the examples Honig and (SG) Ding. (55) /hong/

*VC *NFCD [*CD&Ident(voi)] Max Ident(cont) *CD Ident(voi)

[hong]

*!

[hong]

*!

* *

[hon] [honik] ☞ [honç]

*! *!

* *

* *

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(56) /dŋg/ SG *VC *NFCD [*CD&Ident(voi)] Max Ident(cont) *CD Ident(voi) [dŋg]

*!

[dŋg]

*!

* *

☞ [dŋ]

*

[dŋk]

*!

*

*

[dŋx]

*!

*

*

[dŋç]

*!

*

*

11.4. Conclusion We have attempted to use a small portion of the syllable-related phonology of German to cast some light on the general issue of opacity in phonology: how can opacity arise in an output-oriented framework such as OT? Our investigation underscores, first of all, the general finding that opacity is a solid fact of phonological life. It cannot be set aside as a phenomenon restricted to morphophonemic alternations of limited productivity, but it is found in interactions involving entirely productive and otherwise surface-true generalizations (see also McCarthy 1998). We have argued that the quest for a catchall mechanism able to deal with all facets of opacity – be it a scaled-down version of sequentialism imported into OT (McCarthy and Prince 1993, Kiparsky 1998) or Sympathy Theory (McCarthy 1998) – has remained unsuccessful and might be in principle incorrect. What emerges instead is a picture with several sources of opacity, where different components of an optimality-theoretic grammar contribute to the appearance of opaque patterns in outputs. On the one hand, we continue to assume that, within the overall computation of phonological form, word phonology and phrase phonology constitute separate modules whose interaction is serial. This immediately entails that some opaque patterns will find their explanation in the interaction of these two different phonological modules, much as in traditional derivational phonology (see Ito and Mester 2001 for possible examples of this kind). Identifying the serial character of the word/phrase interface with the specific framework of Lexical Phonology would be misleading, it harks back, rather, to a fundamental distinction made by most past and present models of phonology. Most important, it provides no grounds to expect that word phonology itself should have an internal serial (level-ordered) articulation. On the other hand, there are sources of opacity within OT’s parellelist architecture itself. Sympathy remains a live issue, even though fraught with

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problems, as we have shown. The most interesting result of our study is that certain types of constraint conjunction of the [M&F] type (markedness locally conjoined with faithfulness) that were originally studied for altogether different purposes turn out to be responsible for a certain type of opacity effect. Needless to say, many open questions remain. Most pressing, perhaps, is the further study of the power and limits of local constraint conjunction. Besides issues of conjoinability and locality (what kinds of constraints can be conjoined, and what are the local domains?), more specific questions arise in the area of [M&F]-conjunctions studied here and in ´Lubowicz’s 1998 work. The cases studied here all have the character of “M-over-F promotion,” as schematically indicated in (57): M, through conjunction with F2 whose violation is in certain environments unavoidable, becomes active in precisely those environments at the cost of F1. (57)

[M&F2] F1 F2

M

Pursuing an independent line of investigation, Ito and Mester (1998) found that the opposite kind of effect, “F-over-M-promotion,” as in (58), does not seem to be attested (see the work cited for an illustration).23 (58)

[M2&F] M1 M2

F

In (58), F is normally made inactive by M1, with one exception: when an M2 violation is unavoidable, it is being compensated for by extra F-faithfulness. This kind of faithfulness-for-markedness–exchange is apparently absent from the phonologies of natural languages. What is needed, then, is a method of constructing composite constraints out of elementary constraints in which it naturally, not stipulatorily, follows that (57) is licit, but (58) is not. This task, however, we must leave to future endeavors.

notes 1. These include Davis 1997, Ito and Mester 1997a, 1997b, Dinnsen et al. 1998, Karvonen and Sherman 1998, Katayama 1998, Walker 1998, and the papers collected in Karvonen et al. 1997. 2. The most serious problem arises with allophonic alternations involving featural distinctions whose input specifications do not matter in OT (see section 11.3.2 for discussion).

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3. See McCarthy and Prince 1993 for an early OT model with levels and Kiparsky 1998 for recent further developments. 4. There are many further examples of the syllable-final sequence [ç] deriving from /g/, such as (in orthography) Essig ‘vinegar’, sechzig ‘sixty’, ewig ‘eternal’, Hallig (small island in the North Sea), Hedwig (personal name), Käfig ‘cage’, Schleswig (name of province), Pfennig ‘penny’, Venedig ‘Venice’, etc. A recent computer-based backward dictionary of German lists almost 5,000 examples where this replacement is found in word-final position alone. Note that there are underlying /ç/s that do not alternate with [g], such as Krani[ç], Krani[ç]e ‘crane, sg./pl.’ (*Krani[g]e), or the adverb suffix -lich (e.g., freund-li[ç], freund-li[ç]e ‘friendly, attr./pred.’). 5. Interestingly, one of the intermediate steps, namely /γ/, is not a licit segment in the varieties of German under discussion here. Historically, the [g] ~ [x/ç] alternation seems to have developed in varieties of German that had a broader weakening of velars, not only in coda position. In these dialects, syllable-final [x/ç] corresponds to [γ/j] in other environments: [truγən] ~ [trux], [fraγən] ~ [frax], [lyjən] ~ [ly:çnɐ], etc. CNG has inherited only part of this transparent allophonic setup, lacking the segment [γ] (probably under the pressure of the standard) – hence the opacity of the interaction. Situations like this one are routinely found in sociolinguistic and dialect studies and show that phonology must be able to come to terms with opaque interactions, which requires a theory with a certain degree of abstraction and formal structure. 6. The last three examples might also belong in the /g/-group for many speakers of the standard dialect (see Wiese 1996). 7. For an alternative approach making use of positional faithfulness (where onset, as a prominent position, bestows higher faithfulness on segments than nonprominent positions), see Beckman 1997, Lombardi 1999, among others. As Zoll (1998) and Kager (1999) have shown, positional markedness is necessary independent of positional faithfulness. For the type of case under investigation here, laryngeally marked codas are avoided independent of faithfulness considerations. Thus different from onsets, codas are not suitable targets for the association of mobile aspiration or other laryngeal features in systems with “floating autosegments.” This cannot be understood as enhanced faithfulness in onsets (in fact, positional faithfulness makes counterfactual predictions in this area) and shows, rather, that the common thread uniting the greater inventory found in prominent positions and their greater capacity to absorb superimposed features must be sought not in faithfulness, but in a more basic phonetic/phonological factor, viz., the markedness differential between the two kinds of positions. 8. Even though we will refrain from doing so in the interest of perspicuity, *Complex can be reduced to the local conjunction of *Cod&*Cod, with *Cod understood as a constraint on segments with coda roles, as mentioned. 9. We assume that F is the lowest-ranking relevant faithfulness constraint, the one whose violation leads to a satisfaction of M. This is the case if the following holds (letting F stand for the set of faithfulness constraints conflicting with M): "GŒF [G >> F ⁄ G = F]. We will henceforth presuppose such obvious ancillary ranking conditions. 10. This is not true in every respect, though. For example, there is no variety of German where one finds devoicing instead of deletion before schwa in cases like (21) (*[dŋkə]). The absence of the devoicing option again makes sense from the

300

11.

12.

13. 14.

15.

16.

17. 18. 19.

20.

Junko Ito and Armin Mester perspective of the traditional ambisyllabic analysis of consonants before schwa (see van der Hulst 1984 for the first analysis of syllable-final devoicing along such lines). There is also a pronunciation [ŋo] in the case of this personal name – but interestingly the reduction of the [ŋg]-clusters to [ŋ] must go hand in hand with a strong reduction of the second syllable, as predicted by the basic prosodic generalization. In rule terms, the reordering of the processes in SG cannot be understood in terms of maximization of rule application. The driving force, according to Kiparsky (1971), is rather paradigm uniformity, with the singular (isolation) form [dŋ] analogically remodeled on the plural [dŋə]. Whatever the merits of this analogical account from a diachronic perspective, incorporating it directly into OT as a synchronic analysis is not possible under the more restrictive theories of OO (Output-Output) correspondence (e.g., Benua 1997), where the morphologically derived form (here, the plural) cannot serve as a base for the morphologically underived isolation form (here, the singular). Compare also the genuine OO-driven English case in (19) (si[ŋ] ~ si[ŋ]+er, etc.), which shows the expected direction (from base to derived form). CNG, with its [ŋk] ~ [ŋ] alternations, would probably still need a more abstract input. Note that strong versions of Lexical Phonology, such as the one developed in the work of Kiparsky (1985) and Borowsky (1986), do not allow any reordering of rules between levels. Rather, the phonological component consisted of a single ordered set of rules whose applicability at different levels is determined, besides the possibility of turning off rules, by independent principles like structure preservation or the Strict Cycle Condition. We are not assuming, on some a priori grounds, that OT grammars have no place whatsoever for derivational levels – in other words, our argumentation is not based on some kind of radical parallelism. In particular, the serial distinction between a lexical (word) level and a postlexical (sentence, phrasal) level seems well founded. But this is a different matter entirely from the postulation of wordinternal levels, with little independent justification beyond the phenomenon under discussion. This restriction does not hold in the variant of Sympathy Theory proposed in Ito and Mester 1997b (see also Walker 1998). While such richer variants do not suffer in the same way from insufficient coverage, they have the opposite problem of excessive power. A background assumption here is that Max-Place is high ranking, so that dorsals do not delete in other complex codas, such as the heterorganic clusters [lk] and [rk]. There is now no longer an intrinsic ranking between *CDC and *VC (since the latter is not included in the former), hence the broken lines between the two constraints. Again, we find that the rule-based conception of opacity diagnoses this case as opacity-free (see (22)): in [honç], spirantization and devoicing are both surface-true (no syllable-final [g], no syllable-final voiced obstruent) and surface-apparent (their environments are visible on the surface). The diagnosis here is very much dependent on how the rule is written (i.e., what appears to the left of Æ and what to the right of /), creating ambiguities in the usual rule-based conceptions of opacity encountered in the literature. Direct ranking argumentation supports only Max >> Ident(voi) – the ranking of Ident(voi) at the bottom of the hierarchy below *CD again follows the default M >> F scheme.

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In (50), we present the multiply conjoined constraint as [[*Cod&*DorsPlos]& Ident(voi)] with internal brackets, grouping the markedness constraints together, for reasons of perspicuity only. Given that & is associative, it is identical in force to [*Cod&*DorsPlos&Ident(voi)]. 21. This is another case where the parallelist [M&F] analysis has no direct counterpart in a sequentialist rule approach, since the arguments given for cluster simplification hold here as well. The rule cannot be stated simply as [+dorsal] Æ [+cont]/__]s but would need to be the voicing-specific [+dorsal, -voiced] Æ [+cont]/__]s. The advantage of the parallelist [M&F] approach in permitting the formulation of general constraint/process is again evident here. 22. The velar version of the fricative [ŋx] is already excluded by the general restrictions on the occurrence of [x], which is found only after back vowels. The underived sequence [nç] occurs (manch ‘many a’, Mönch ‘monk’), but neither [mç] nor [ŋç] is found syllable-finally. 23. Bakovi´c (1999) proposes that local conjunctions must be co-relevant in the sense that each conjunct makes explicit mention of a particular feature mentioned by the other conjunct, and goes on to point out that this explains the problematic local conjunction found in Ito and Mester 1998: 14–15, i.e., the conjuncts are in this case not corelevant. This is a very natural and attractive idea promising a reasonable solution to the overgeneration problem connected with M&F conjunctions. Unfortunately, it appears to err on the side of undergeneration, by excluding some attractive cases of M&F conjunctions – such as those proposed in this paper, which capture otherwise problematic opacity effects. None of the crucial conjunctions are co-relevant in the sense defined by Bakovi´c 1999. In fact, the analyses hinge on the very fact that the markedness constraint applies generally to a particular segment class (e.g., dorsals) irrespective of the feature whose faithfulness status is in question (e.g., voicing).

references Bakovi´c, Eric. (1999). Assimilation to the unmarked. Ms., Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J. [ROA-340-0899.] Beckman, Jill N. (1997). Positional faithfulness, positional neutralization, and Shona vowel harmony. Phonology 14: 1–46. Benua, Laura. (1997). Transderivational identity: Phonological relations between words. Doctoral dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. [ROA-259-0498.] Borowsky, Toni. (1986). Topics in the Lexical Phonology of English. Doctoral dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Davis, Stuart. (1997). The flowering of Optimality Theory: Ponapean nasal substitution and the problem of intermediate forms. Ms., Indiana University, Bloomington. Dinnsen, Daniel A., Laura Wilbur, Kim Swanson, and Kathleen O’Connor. (1998). On the role of sympathy in acquisition. Ms., Indiana University, Bloomington. Féry, Caroline. (1998a). Einführung in die Phonologie. Ms., University of Tübingen. [SfS-Report-01-98.] Féry, Caroline. (1998b). On the best optimality-theoretic account of German Final Devoicing. Ms., University of Tübingen. [ROA-274-0798.] Hall, Tracy Alan. (1992). Syllable Structure and Syllable-Related Processes in German. Tübingen: Niemeyer.

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van der Hulst, Harry. (1984). Syllable Structure and Stress in Dutch. Dordrecht: Foris. Ito, Junko, and Armin Mester. (1997a). Featural Sympathy. In Phonology at Santa Cruz (PASC) 5, ed. D. Karvonen et al., 29–36. Santa Cruz: Linguistic Research Center, University of California. Ito, Junko, and Armin Mester. (1997b). Sympathy theory and German truncations. In University of Maryland Working Papers in Linguistics 5. Selected Phonology Papers from Hopkins Optimality Theory Workshop 1997 / University of Maryland Mayfest 1997, ed. V. Miglio and B. Moreen, 117–139. College Park: University of Maryland. [ROA-211-0897.] Ito, Junko, and Armin Mester. (1998). Markedness and word structure: OCP effects in Japanese. Ms., University of California, Santa Cruz. [ROA-255-0498.] Ito, Junko, and Armin Mester. (1999). The phonological lexicon. In A Handbook of Japanese Linguistics, ed. N. Tsujimura, 62–100. Oxford: Blackwell. Ito, Junko, and Armin Mester. (2001). Structure preservation and stratal opacity in German. In Segmental Phonology in Optimality Theory, ed. L. Lombardi, 261–295. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kager, René. (1989). A Metrical Theory of Stress and Destressing in English and Dutch. Dordrecht: Foris. Kager, René. (1999). Optimality Theory: A Textbook. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Karvonen, Dan, and Adam Sherman. (1998). Opacity in Icelandic revisited: A Sympathy account. In Proceedings of NELS 28, 189–201. Amherst: GLSA, University of Massachusetts. Karvonen, Daniel, Motoko Katayama, and Rachel Walker, eds. (1997). Phonology at Santa Cruz 5. Santa Cruz: Linguistics Research Center, University of California. Katayama, Motoko. (1998). Optimality Theory and Japanese loanword phonology. Doctoral dissertation, Department of Linguistics, University of California, Santa Cruz. Kenstowicz, Michael, and Charles Kisseberth. (1979). Generative Phonology: Description and Theory. New York: Academic Press. Kiparsky, Paul. (1971). Historical linguistics. In A Survey of Linguistic Science, ed. W. O. Dingwall, 576–642. College Park: University of Maryland Linguistics Program. Kiparsky, Paul. (1973). Abstractness, opacity and global rules. In Three Dimensions of Linguistics Theory, ed. O. Fujimura, 57–86. Tokyo: TEC. Kiparsky, Paul. (1985). Some consequences of Lexical Phonology. Phonology 2: 85–138. Kiparsky, Paul. (1998). Paradigm effects and opacity. Ms., Stanford University, Stanford, Calif. Lass, Roger. (1984). Phonology: An Introduction to Basic Concepts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lombardi, Linda. (1999). Positional faithfulness and voicing assimilation in Optimality Theory. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 17: 267–302. ´Lubowicz, Anna. (1998). Derived environment effects in OT. Ms., University of Massachusetts, Amherst. [ROA-239-0198.] McCarthy, John J. (1997). Sympathy and phonological opacity. Handout of talk given at Hopkins Optimality Theory Workshop 1997 / University of Maryland Mayfest 1997. McCarthy, John J. (1998). Sympathy and phonological opacity. Ms., University of Massachusetts, Amherst. [ROA-252-0398.]

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McCarthy, John J., and Alan S. Prince. (1993). Prosodic Morphology I: Constraint Interaction and Satisfaction. Technical Report #3. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Center for Cognitive Science. Padgett, Jaye. (1995). Stricture in Feature Geometry. Dissertations in Linguistics Series. Stanford, Calif.: CSLI Publications. Prince, Alan, and Paul Smolensky. (1993). Optimality Theory: Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar. Technical Report #2. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Cognitive Science Center. Smolensky, Paul. (1995). On the internal structure of the constraint component Con of UG. Handout of talk given at University of Arizona, Tucson, March 1995. Walker, Rachel. (1995). Nasalization, neutral segments, and opacity effects. Doctoral dissertation, Department of Linguistics, University of California, Santa Cruz. Wiese, Richard. (1996). The Phonology of German. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Zoll, Cheryl. (1998). Positional asymmetries and licensing. Ms., MIT, Cambridge, Mass. [ROA-282-2998.]

12 Ambisyllabicity and Fricative Voicing in West Germanic Dialects Marc van Oostendorp

12.1. Introduction In most dialects of the West Germanic dialect continuum – the language area of genetically related dialects stretching out from Frisian at the Dutch and German borders of the North Sea to the Swiss German dialects in the Alps – the relation between voicing and frication is a problematic one: phonological contrasts between voiced and voiceless fricatives tend to get neutralized in many but usually not all positions. Interestingly, these neutralizations do not always occur in the same environment in different dialects, and, furthermore, sometimes one dialect seems to favor, for example, a voiced [z] in an environment in which other dialects show voiceless [s] only. In this chapter, I study the complex relation between voicing and frication in a number of representative dialects in the West Germanic dialect continuum, namely Frisian, Thurgovian German, Roermond Dutch, and Standard Dutch. My main hypothesis is that voicing does not play a distinctive role in the first three of these systems and only a limited role in the last one. Contrasts between voiced and voiceless fricatives can in almost all cases be reduced to a difference in syllabic affiliation. This hypothesis has a number of implications within the particular framework of phonology in which I present my ideas, Optimality Theory (OT – Prince and Smolensky 1993 and subsequent work): • First, saying that some phonological property is “distinctive” implies that it is at least potentially underlying within this framework, like in any

This chapter has benefited from comments from and discussion with Geert Booij, Caroline Féry, Ben Hermans, Ruben van de Vijver, Willem Visser, and two anonymous reviewers. All disclaimers apply. The research for this chapter has been carried out as part of NWO project 300 75 019, which is herewith gratefully acknowledged.

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other theory of generative phonology. My hypothesis thus implies that syllabification should be underlying, and this is a somewhat controversial point of view. Yet the type of syllabic information I posit as underlying is very restricted; it only involves specifying whether a consonant is potentially ambisyllabic, and this can be accomplished by specifying the consonant as a geminate. • Second, the analysis given in this chapter provides an argument to view geminates as bisegmental units, not as “moraic” consonants, and this chapter can thus be seen as a contribution to the ongoing discussion on the representation of geminate consonants. • Third, a basic tenet of OT is the so-called Richness of the Base Hypothesis: there are no restrictions on the input for the grammar. Anything that is a logically possible linguistic representation should also be a possible input for the grammar of any language. This in turn implies that, among other things, both voiced and voiceless fricatives can also be input to the phonological grammar of the Germanic languages in principle, even if there is no contrast on the surface. The claim that voicing is not distinctive for fricatives thus does not mean that voicing is absent from the underlying representation but rather that the underlying specification does not influence the output representation. Underlyingly voiced fricatives can surface as voiceless and vice versa.

The topic of obstruent voicing is rich and has been studied quite intensively in the literature. Not everything can be discussed here; most notably, I will (mostly) ignore issues pertaining to voicing assimilation within consonant clusters, because I think these can be seen as independent of the topics discussed here. I also do not discuss the phonetic variability in the implementation of (final) devoicing. Some voiceless fricatives are more voiced than others, but here I will only study a categoric binary distinction between voiced fricatives on the one hand and their voiceless counterparts on the other. Finally, in most of the languages discussed here, we can observe complicated and subtle differences between different places of articulation. Where this is relevant, I concentrate on the pair [s] – [z].

12.2. Frisian The facts of Frisian have been described in detail by Visser (1997).1 In this section I will first summarize Visser’s findings (section 12.2.1) and then provide an analysis of these facts in terms of underlying ambisyllabicity. In section 12.2.3. I briefly discuss some of the technical problems that are posed by the implementation of this idea in terms of moraic structure.

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12.2.1 Fricative Voicing in Frisian: Facts In Frisian, as in the other Germanic languages studied here, it is convenient to distinguish between three phonotactic positions: the syllable coda, the word-initial onset, and the intervocalic position. I will discuss these in turn.

12.2.1.1 The Regular Pattern In the coda, Frisian displays an effect of “Final Devoicing”: all obstruents (both stops and fricatives) in codas get devoiced. We thus do not find voiced obstruents in syllable codas: (1)

miich [mix] ‘urinate’ lis [ls] ‘lay (1 sg.)’

mige [miγən] ‘to urinate’ lizzen [lzən] ‘lay (ger.)’

In the word-initial syllable onset, voiced fricatives are equally disallowed in Frisian. There are no words starting with [z], [γ], or [v]. Loanwords (for instance, from Dutch) that start with a voiced fricative in the source language or words that have developed a voiced fricative in related Germanic dialects typically show up with a voiceless fricative in Frisian: (2)

sinke [snkə] ‘to sink’ (Dutch: zinken) seuren [sørə] ‘to nag’ (Dutch: zeuren) fluch [flœx] ‘quickly’ (Dutch: vlug) fioele [fijulə] ‘violin’ (Dutch: viool)

So far, the Frisian system of fricatives is not very exciting, since there is no voicing opposition at all. We could describe the Frisian system with the principle or constraint in (3). (3)

*Fricative/voice: Fricatives should not be voiced.

The really interesting part of the system is the behavior of fricatives in intervocalic position, or, to be more precise, in the position between a sonorant segment and a vowel (but I will concentrate on intervocalic positions only for the sake of brevity). Here we can find either voiced or voiceless fricatives: (4)

a. passer [pɒsər] ‘compass’ tas [tɒs] ‘bag’ – [tɒsən] ‘bags’ b. kavel [kavəl] ‘parcel’ kalvinisme [kɒlvinsmə] ‘Calvinism’ skeaf [skəf] ‘sheaf’ – [skəvən] ‘sheaves’

We find similar facts if a word-initial or word-final fricative becomes intervocalic in a phrasal context:2

ambisyllabicity and fricative voicing (5)

(6)

307

a. Doe groef er fierder. then digged he further ‘Then he digged further.’ em sa. b. Ik mis I miss him so [much] se wol a. Dat hie that had she indeed ‘She already thought so.’ b. Se hie dat wol tocht. ‘She already thought so.’

[gruvər – *grufər]

[msəm – *mzəm]

tocht. thought

[hiəzə – *hiəsə]

[səhi – *zəhi]

In these cases, it is possible to formulate a generalization: we find a voiceless fricative immediately following a short vowel and a voiced fricative in a position following a long vowel, a (vowel plus) sonorant consonant or a diphthong. As a first step in the formalization of this I formulate the following constraint:3 (7)

Voice Intervocalic Fricatives (VIF): Do not allow voiceless fricatives between sonorants.

It is possible that VIF is a separate constraint, but it is also possible that we need to derive it from other more basic constraints: (8)

a. *(w[voice]: Do not allow voice at the beginning of the phonological word. b. vV: Voice a fricative before a vowel.

The ranking vV >> *(w[voice] gives us (almost) the same result as VIF.4 There are independent reasons to believe that (8a) and (8b) have some status in the grammar: we can see their effects separately. For instance, in many Indo-European languages [s] but not [z] is allowed to occur in complex word-initial clusters street/*zdreet in English – a fact that may be attributed to the interaction of (8a) with constraints on the exceptional “extrasyllabic” position for coronal fricatives; however there are some cases of general prevocalic voicing (see section 12.3.2), giving evidence for an independent status of (8b). To not make my tableaux overly complicated, I will shorthand the constraint ranking vV » *(w[voice] as VIF in most of the discussion that follows, separating the two only if this turns out to be necessary. This constraint, or these constraints, then, would account straightforwardly for the facts in (4b), as well as for the well-known facts of s-voicing in (northern dialects of) Italian (cf. Nespor and Vogel 1986):

308 (9)

Marc van Oostendorp Italian (Northern Italian dialects) di[s]+contento di[z]+uguale discontent unequal

In these dialects of Italian, an [s] becomes voiced in certain intervocalic positions. The same does not happen to [f]; this implies that VIF is somehow restricted to the coronal place of articulation in these dialects (but this is not the case in Frisian).5 In any case, the process is very similar and thus may be due to similar restrictions on surface structure. The facts in (4b) thus need not be seen as very problematic. As for the facts in (4a), we should take into account the syllable structure of Frisian. Just like in most, if not all, Germanic languages, many words in Frisian obey Prokosch’s Law: stressed syllables should be heavy and contain either a long vowel or a coda consonant.6 This means that stressed syllables with a short vowel are probably closed: the fricative in [pɒsər] is in the coda of the first syllable. There is also a strong argument for the assumption that the fricative in [pɒsər] is in the onset of the second syllable: schwa syllables in Frisian are demonstrably never onsetless (Visser 1997). For instance, while Frisian has words starting with a vowel, and words in which the first syllable contains a schwa, there are no (lexical) words beginning with schwa (*[ə . . .]). Furthermore, even if the second vowel is not schwa, Frisian is not like all other human languages in that consonants in a VCV context are (also) syllabified in an onset. There is thus one reason to believe that the fricative in (4a) is in the coda of the first syllable and another reason to believe that it is in the onset of the second syllable. These two facts are usually accommodated by assuming that the fricative is in both positions at the same time: it is ambisyllabic. This in itself seems to be hardly a controversial assumption for Germanic languages anymore (cf. van der Hulst 1985 for Dutch, Hammond 1999 for English). Most important for us, however, is that the fricative is in a coda position, in which it therefore is subject to a Final Devoicing constraint, briefly discussed in section 12.2.1.1 and possibly formalized as in (10).7 (10) FinalDevoicing (FD): A voiced obstruent (fricative) may not occur in the coda position.

Ranking FD above VIF, we get the required result: fricatives in intervocalic positions are voiced, except if they occur in a coda position (cf. Féry, this volume). This accounts for the facts in (4a) and (4b).

12.2.1.2 Exceptions The generalization that voiced fricatives are absent from the beginning and from the end of the word is virtually exceptionless, but this is definitely not

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the case with the generalizations about intervocalic fricatives. As a matter of fact, exceptions abound in these positions. An analysis of the Frisian facts should be able to deal with the exceptions as well as with the regular cases. It should explain why there are exceptionally voiced (or voiceless) fricatives in intervocalic positions but not elsewhere. Furthermore, it should explain the distribution of these exceptions in intervocalic position itself. There is a large group of words with a voiced fricative after a short vowel: (11) mig [mx] ‘midge’ – miggen [mγən] ‘midges’ bedrag [bədrax] ‘amount’ – bedraggen [bədraγən] ‘amounts’ hazze [hazə] ‘hare’

The number of exceptions of this type is quite considerable. There are also exceptions involving a voiceless fricative after a long vowel or a sonorant, but their number is much smaller. Visser (1997) claims the following list in (12) is exhaustive.8 (12) goochem [goxəm] ‘smart’ sjofel [sjofəl] ‘shabby’ tafel [tafəl] ‘table’

rimfel [rmfəl] ‘wrinkle’ (sk)romfel [(sk)romfəl] ‘wrinkle’ (sk)ronfel [(sk)ronfəl] ‘wrinkle’ ka(a)mfer [ka()mfər] ‘camphor’ ka(a)nfer [ka()nfər] ‘camphor’

A few remarks need to be made about these forms: • First, Visser (1997) observes that most of these words (all of them, except for the three words for ‘wrinkle’) are loans from Dutch and Yiddish. Yet it should be observed that at least the word goochem has been adapted to Frisian phonology. The word starts with a velar fricative in the source language (Yiddish), which has turned into a voiced stop because velar fricatives are not allowed in the initial position of the word in Frisian. From this we can conclude that apparently the occurrence of voiceless fricatives after a long vowel or a sonorant consonant is not as foreign to the Frisian system as the occurrence of velar fricatives in the beginning of the word. • Second, the pronunciations [kamfər] and [kanfər] are problematic from the point of view of the general syllable theory of Frisian. The only possible syllabifications for these words are [kam.fər] and [kan.fər], respectively. The rhyme of the first syllables would contain three positions (two for the long vowel and one for the nasal consonant), and this is unusual, to say the least. It may be no coincidence that these problematic cases involve the low vowel and a sequence of a nasal and a fricative. Low vowels tend to get tensed in

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this environment also in dialects of American English (Trager 1934), and, furthermore, the relation between tenseness and length is a very intimate one in the dialect area under discussion here, especially for low vowels (van Oostendorp 1995). I will therefore ignore the forms [kamfər] and [kanfər] in the remainder of this chapter. • Third, in all of the cases listed by Visser (1997) the voiceless fricative is followed by a schwa and a fricative (but see note 6). This is probably not a coincidence: historically, these forms had a syllabic sonorant, and fricatives in such a position preferred to stay (or turn) voiceless, perhaps because they did not satisfy the requirements of VIF. Since we have only a handful of exceptions now, and since there clearly is a schwa in these words, at least on the surface, I suppose that this historic account no longer has any explanatory value for these synchronic facts.

Having stated these restrictions, three questions can be asked about these data: • First: why are there so many exceptions in intervocalic postion while there are no (or hardly any) exceptions in other positions?9 It looks as if voicing is phonemic intervocalically but not elsewhere. But such a generalization seems hard to state without being ad hoc. • A second question, closely connected to the first, is: why is the number of words involving a voiced fricative after a short vowel much larger than the number of words involving a voiceless fricative after a long vowel? Again, it looks as if some restriction should be imposed on the positions where voicing can be phonemic, and it is hard to see how this could be accomplished. • The third question is: why do we find “exceptionally voiced” fricatives both inside a morpheme (hazze) and at the end of one (mig – miggen) – can exceptionally voiceless fricatives only be found within morphemes (goochem)? In other words, why are there no examples of a word ending in a long vowel and a fricative, in which the fricative shows up as voiceless in a derived form (e.g., a noun *gooch with a plural *goochen)?10

12.2.2 A Solution Based on Ambisyllabicity 12.2.2.1 The General Pattern In this section I propose an analysis of the facts just sketched, which is based on the assumption that the feature [voice] is not phonemic for fricatives in Frisian. I argue that this analysis answers the three questions posed in the previous section. Within the theoretical framework of OT, adopted here, claiming that [voice] is not phonemic implies that it can be underlying, but

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the faithfulness constraints governing its occurrence and feature value setting are ranked in a very low position. I assume the constraint ranking in (13) to account for the basic patterns of Frisian fricative voicing and devoicing. (13) FinalDevoicing >> VIF >> *Fricative/voice >> Faithful(voice)

The assumption that *Fricative/voice >> Faithful(voice) gives as a result that fricatives tend to be voiceless on the surface, even if they are voiced underlyingly. The assumption that VIF outranks these two constraints describes the fact that intervocalic fricatives can be voiced, and the assumption that FinalDevoicing takes the highest position in the hierarchy gives as a result that intervocalic fricatives are not voiced if they are in the coda. In the case of these Frisian facts, we are obviously dealing with a complicated pattern of conditions on general rules and metaconditions imposed in turn on those conditions. OT is an adequate theoretical tool to describe such patterns.11 The tableaux in (14)–(16) illustrate the constraint ranking in (13).12 (14) /iz/ or /is/ iz

FinalDevoicing

VIF

*!

*Fricative/ voice

Faithful(voice)

*

(*)

☞ is

(*)

(15) /zør/ or /sør/ FinalDevoicing

VIF

zør

*Fricative/ voice

Faithful(voice)

*!

(*)

☞ sør

(*)

(16) /miγən/ or /miγən/

FinalDevoicing

VIF

☞ mi.γ+ən mi.x+ən

*!

*Fricative/ voice

Faithful(voice)

*

(*) (*)

Note that in each of these cases the underlying specification for [voice] is irrelevant, because Faithful(voice) never plays a role in the evaluation. This is what it means to say that a contrast is not phonemic: its distribution is fully governed by well-formedness constraints, and faithfulness does not play a role.

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To also deal with intervocalic fricatives following a short vowel, we could incorporate Prokosch’s Law into our analysis.13 (17) Prokosch’s Law: (Stressed) syllables should be heavy.

If we start with an underlying sequence consisting of a short vowel, a fricative, and another vowel (say /pɒsər/), and if the short vowel gets stressed, the second mora in its syllable needs to be filled. Apparently, this is accomplished not by lengthening the vowel but rather by making the fricative ambisyllabic.14 Ranking Prokosch’s Law above VIF would give us the required result: (18) /pɑsər/ or /pɑzər/

FinalDevoicing

Prokosch’s Law

☞ pɑs.sər

VIF *

pɑ.zər

*!

pɑz.zər

*!

I will show in the next section, however, that Prokosch’s Law may have a lower ranking in Frisian than the one given here. It is possible that the fricative is not long or ambisyllabic because of this constraint but because it is underlyingly specified as such. This possibility will be explored shortly.

12.2.2.2 Long Consonants and Exceptions within a Morpheme As explained, I assume that the winning candidate in (18) has a long or ambisyllabic consonant. What is the appropriate representation for this ambisyllabic consonant? I will use a representation where long segments are attached to two positions (e.g., two X-slots or two root nodes). The remainder of the syllable structure I will leave unspecified, since it is irrelevant for my present concerns. The assumption I need to make is that long segments (either vowels or consonants) are attached to two positions also underlyingly. This is difficult to implement in a moraic framework (e.g., Hayes 1989), where it is usually assumed that underlying long consonants occupy exactly one position, albeit a special one (viz., a mora): (19)

s oo m i

s o

s

o

o

o

γ

ə n

s

o o o o o o p ɒ

s

ə

r

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313

This is not the kind of representation of ambisyllabicity that is currently considered mainstream within generative phonology (although it has been adopted in Selkirk 1990, among others). Most theorists seem more inclined to follow Hayes 1989 in assuming that geminate or ambisyllabic consonants have an underlying mora (cf. Davis 1999 for recent discussion). Although it seems feasible to express the generalizations made here in the moraic framework, I will discuss some of the problems that may arise while doing this in section 12.2.3. The forms in (19) are output representations, but given our present assumptions, they could be input representations as well. In particular, nothing prevents us from assuming that fricatives can be attached to two positions already in underlying structure. Indeed, this is a standard assumption for languages that have an underlying contrast between long and short consonants; furthermore, it is also the way in which the contrast between long and short vowels is dealt with here. I propose that the difference plays a role as well and that it is responsible for all the superficial distinctions between voiced and voiceless fricatives in Frisian. To accomplish this, I assume there is a faithfulness constraint on segmental length in this language: (20) Faith-length: The number of positions for a segment S in the output should equal the number of positions for the correspondent of S in the input.

The assumption of underlying length, combined with a (high-ranking) constraint Faith-length, gives us the required result in the cases in (14)–(16), where we may safely assume that the underlying fricatives are not long. In the case of (18), the assumption of a strong Faith-length implies that we also need to assume that the fricative is long (moraic) underlyingly. This in turn means that the relative ranking of Prokosch’s Law is not very important for our concerns after all, even if it may express a (weak) generalization about the relation between stress and syllable structure in Frisian: (21) /pɔsər/ or /pɑzər/

Faithlength

FinalDevoicing

Prokosch’s Law

☞ pɔs.sər pɔ.sər pɔz.zər

VIF *

*!

* *!

It does not matter where exactly Prokosch’s Law is ranked in (21). If a form does not have an underlyingly long fricative, this fricative will surface as voiced, even if the preceding vowel is short. This is the case with exceptional forms like hazze:

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(22) /hazə/ or /hasə/

Faithlength

has.sə

FinalDevoicing

Prokosch’s Law

*!

VIF *

ha.sə

*

☞ ha.zə

*

*!

There is only one way in which the forms in (22) could be considered more marked than those in (21):15 on the one hand the first syllable in the word does not obey Prokosch’s Law, which need not be very high ranking in Frisian but which can still be active in the language. On the other hand, it does obey VIF, which is not true for the winning candidate in (21). This unresolvedness may actually be a desirable feature of the present analysis, however, since the number of exceptions in this case is almost as large as the number of nonexceptions. We may wonder whether it is allowed to violate Prokosch’s Law at all in Frisian; it is certainly not allowed in other dialects of Germanic. Visser (1997: 174–175) lists tens of examples, such as teory [teorí] ‘theory’. I thus propose that the exceptionality of hazze is on a par with that of teory. A similar story applies to cases involving long vowels. These too can obviously be followed by either a long or short fricative. The first type will show up as voiceless (because it is in a coda position; this is the case of sjofel ‘shabby’ [sjofəl]), the second type as voiced (because it is uniquely in an onset position; this is the case of kavel ‘parcel’ [kavəl]). However, in this case the first option seems to definitely count as more marked. I suppose that the reason for this is because they involve a word-internal syllable with a threepositional rhyme: s

(23)

s

o o o o oo o o sj

o

f

ə

l

All syllables with three positions in the rhyme, including those not involving geminate fricatives, are marginal in Frisian: they usually occur only at the (right-hand-side) margin of the word; it is rather marked for them to occur elsewhere. I propose that this marginality accounts for the relative rarity of structures like [sjofəl].

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12.2.2.3 Fricatives at the End of a Morpheme We can now turn to the cases where the fricative is at the end of a morpheme. One of the key observations made in the previous sections was that in these cases we do find exceptionally voiced fricatives after a short vowel but no exceptionally voiceless fricatives after a long vowel. We are now ready to account for these facts. First, let us consider the cases involving short vowels. These can be followed obviously by either a long fricative or a short one: s

(24) a.

oo o o s

ta s

b. o

o

o

m i

x

I assume both parts of a long fricative are attached to the previous syllable in the absence of a long vowel. We thus get a long, superheavy structure, with three positions in the rhyme. This type of structure might be somewhat marginal but is still possible at the right-hand side of the word, as we have just seen. If a suffix is attached to structures like those in (24), we get the results in (25) s

(25) a.

b.

s

o

oo o o

o

t

a

n

s

ə

s

s

o o

o o o

m i

x

ə n

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The ambisyllabic fricative in (25a) surfaces as voiceless, while the monosyllabic fricative in (25b) surfaces as voiced. These cases thus pose no special problem to our analysis. Second, let us consider what happens to candidates that have a long vowel. Again, there are two logical possibilities: the fricative is either long or short: (26) a. * s ooo o o m i

x

s

b.

o o m

o o x

i

There is a problem with the structure in (26a): it contains too much material. If we incorporated the second segment of the fricative into the syllable structure, we would get a four segments in the rhyme, and this is too much. Superheavy syllables with three positions in the rhyme may be somewhat marked, but longer structures are plainly impossible in all West Germanic dialects discussed here. (This may even be universal and because a universally inviolable constraint defines the maximum template for a syllable rhyme in natural language.) This does not mean, of course, that structures such as these are impossible inputs. We will have to investigate what happens to them on their way to the phonological output. I find it useful to compare them with potential inputs of the type */mork/. These should also be possible inputs according to the Richness of the Base Hypothesis, but they never surface as such. Furthermore, they have almost the same structure as (26a): (27) *

s

ooo o

o

m o

k

r

Of course, we can assume that the “extrasyllabic” segment gets deleted (or that the other consonant in the cluster gets deleted, or that the vowel gets

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317

shortened, or that we have vowel epenthesis, etc.). The question then arises, however, about what happens in the plural of this putative form (the plural suffix is vowel-initial -ən): why are there no alternating pairs *[mor] (singular) – *[morkən] (plural)? In itself, the plural form may be a little bit marked (since it involves a superheavy syllable that is not in the right-hand-side margin) but not more so than, for instance, the word oarloch [or.lɔx], which has the same structure in all relevant respects: s

(28) a.

s

o oo o o oo m s

b.

ə n

o r k s

o o o

o o o

o

l

r

ə

x

It is as if the structure in (28a) cannot appear, because it reflects the impossible input form too closely. The way to capture this is by a faithfulness constraint:16 (29) Faith(singular/plural): All segments in the plural form of W, W a noun or verb, should have a correspondent in the singular form of W.

(28a) violates this faithfulness constraint because it contains a k, which is presumably not present in the output of the singular form of (27). (29) can now serve as a tool to explain why there are no exceptionally voiceless fricatives at the end of a morpheme after a long vowel. This voiceless fricative would have to be ambisyllabic, and therefore we could only see its effect in a derived context; for example, the plural: (30)

s

s oo o o m i

o x

o o ə n

Yet this form would have a segment – the second half of the fricative – that would not correspond to anything in the singular form of this word, since

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(26a) cannot surface as such. Voiceless fricatives thus cannot surface after long vowels for the same reason that consonant clusters cannot surface in that position: there is no room for them in the singular, and we are not allowed to make room for them in the plural. I think that this similarity between voiceless fricatives and consonant clusters is among the more convincing arguments for the position adopted here.

12.2.2.4 Fricatives in the Coda and in the Word-Initial Onset Basing ourselves on the assumption that fricative length rather than voicing is distinctive in Frisian, I have explained the basic pattern for fricative voicing in all positions in the word. I have also explained how exceptions can arise in intervocalic position. It is easy to see why there are no voiced fricatives word-finally: no matter how long or how short the fricative in that position is, it will always be subject to the requirements of FinalDevoicing. Another question that remains to be considered briefly is: why are there no voiced fricatives in the onset position? The only way in which a Frisian fricative can get voiced is by being in an intervocalic position, and word-initial onsets are not in such a position by definition, unless they are phrased with a preceding vowel-final word, in which case they get voiced indeed, as can be seen in hie [z]e (see (6)). We can now wonder why there are no exceptionally voiceless fricatives in this position, namely, fricatives that would stay voiceless even in an intervocalic context. If long fricatives are a possibility and if we assume Richness of the Base, long fricatives should also be able to occur in word-initial position underlyingly, and there should be some constraint that degeminates them on their way to the surface. One solution may be statistical. The phrasal context in which VIF applies is possibly restricted to structures involving a phonological enclitic like se. The number of such clitics is small; hence, it may be just a coincidence that there are no underlyingly long fricatives. A more principled reason may be that putative long fricatives in word-initial position would have to fill two positions in the onset: (31)

*

o

s

o o

s a Perhaps geminate structures are not allowed in onset positions in Frisian, and perhaps we can postulate a constraint to this effect:

ambisyllabicity and fricative voicing

319

(32) NoOnsetGeminates: Geminate consonants are not allowed in the onset.

If this is the right analysis, faithfulness of words in a derived context to their form in underived contexts (i.e., something like OO Faithfulness or Faith (singular/plural)) may explain why voiceless fricatives do not occur at the beginning of words. It is unfortunate that I cannot really test the prediction for lack of sufficient testable material, but on the other hand the assumption is not refutable, and it is consistent with the rest of the analysis.

12.2.3 Moras The analysis provided here is based on a two-root theory of length of Selkirk 1990 (or could alternatively be based on analyses using a separate timing tier). Among generative phonologists, it seems more common nowadays, however, to accept an analysis in terms of moraic structure, as originally put forward in the work of McCarthy and Prince (1986) and Hayes (1989), and defended by Davis (1994, 1999), among others. In this type of analysis, geminate consonants are represented underlyingly as moraic (whereas nongeminates do not have an extra mora). Let us try to evaluate how this would work for the Frisian facts. The difference between [tɒs] – [tɒsən] ‘bag(s)’ on the one hand and [mx] – [mγən] ‘midge(s)’ on the other could be represented as in (33). s

(33) a.

m m t ɒ s s

b.

m m

I

x

Provided we would introduce a faithfulness constraint on underlying moras rather than on underlying length, the plural forms of these would be as in (34) (the syllabic status of schwa is disregarded, since this is an independent topic of controversy).

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Marc van Oostendorp s

s

(34) a.

m

m

tɒ

s

ə n

s

b.

s

m m

I

γ ən

Fricatives that are ambisyllabic get voiced (because they are in the syllable coda), but fricatives that are only in an intervocalic onset get voiced, just as in the approach presented in section 2.2. Suppose now that we want to exclude forms like (35), *miich, with a plural form *miichen. What we have to exclude, then, is a structure as in (35a), with a long vowel plus a moraic consonant. (35b), though, with a long vowel plus a nonmoraic consonant should be allowed. *s

(35) a.

m m

m

i

x

m

s

b.

m

m

m i

γ

There is a straightforward way of dealing with this: trimoraic syllables are disallowed, but syllables can have (at most) one noncoronal nonmoraic consonant at the end of the syllable.

ambisyllabicity and fricative voicing

321

A potential problem now arises with sjofel. This form has a voiceless intervocalic fricative that should be ambisyllabic for this analysis to work. But if ambisyllabicity means moraicity and the preceding vowel is long, we get the representation in (36). s

(36)

s

m m m sj

o

ə

f

l

In other words, trimoraic syllables would be possible inside a morpheme, but not at the edge of a morpheme. Given what we know about the behavior of superheavy syllables in the languages of the world, this is quite implausible: usually it is the other way around (e.g., in Arabic; Hayes 1989). There is an alternative, of course, and this is to see the [f] in (36) as ambisyllabic, without attaching a mora to it: (37)

s

s

m m s j o

f ə l

Yet, in this case, we need to explain why the fricative in (35b) does not stay attached to the coda in the plural form (thus surfacing as voiceless, which never happens by definition) whereas the fricative in (37) does stick to its ambisyllabic affiliation. There are probably technical ways to do this, but none of them is very elegant. Furthermore, we now need two different mechanisms to make fricative surfaces as voiceless intervocalically: we have to posit a mora in cases like (33), and we have to specify ambisyllabicity in (37). Thus, while it is possible to reformulate the analysis proposed here in terms of mora theory, it does not seem to lead to an analysis as elegant as an analysis in terms of Selkirkian length. Insofar as the analyses presented here are plausible, they lend some support to a length-based analysis of geminate consonants.

12.2.4 Conclusion and Remaining Issues In this section I have provided an overview of voicing in Frisian fricatives, and I have argued that to analyze them we need to assume that some minimal

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information on their syllabic status needs to be underlying (viz., that they are ambisyllabic). I have also argued that this type of analysis should be couched in a framework based on consonantal length rather than on mora structure. A few puzzles remain. First, I have argued that voiceless fricatives are long and that voiced fricatives are short. It would be interesting (although, in my view, not absolutely crucial) to have some phonetic evidence supporting this position, but unfortunately such evidence is not available (since serious phonetic studies are lacking on this point). We will see in section 3 that related West Germanic dialects to show evidence of the required type, however. A more complicated issue, brought to my attention by Willem Visser (personal communication; see also Visser 1998), involves the distribution of the plural past tense morpheme in Frisian. This morpheme takes the form -ten if it is preceded by a voiceless obstruent and the form -den in all other cases (i.e., after a vowel, a sonorant consonant, or a voiced obstruent). In particular, it takes the form -den after a stem ending in a long vowel plus a fricative and the form -ten in all other cases:17 (38) a. raas+den /raz+dən/ ‘shouted’ b. paf+ten /pɑf+tən/ ‘puffed’

This clearly looks like a case of voicing assimilation, but there are several problems. In the first place, this would be an instance of progressive assimilation to a stop, but this is a pattern not otherwise found in Frisian (the language does have regressive assimilation to stops and also progressive assimilation to fricatives).18 A second problem is that the fricatives in these cases should be the source of the assimilation, but since the /s/ in (38a) is not intervocalic, there is no particular reason why it should be voiced. There is an easy way out of the problem if we accept the kind of templatic faithfulness informally discussed in section 2.2.3. If we can implement something like Faith(singular/plural), we can possibly also implement something like Faith(present/past).19 Furthermore, we need some constraint accomplishing various forms of obstruent voice assimilation: (39) a. Faith(present/past): A [+voice] segment in the past tense form of a verb should have a [+voice] correspondent in the present tense form of the verb. b. Assimilation: Two adjacent obstruents should have the same specification for voice.

Assuming, for the sake of concreteness, that -de and -te are allomorphs (i.e., competing outputs) (cf. Booij 1998) and that we can establish an independent reason why -de behaves as the default allomorph (an effect accomplished here by the stand-in constraint ChooseDe but probably related to VIF in

ambisyllabicity and fricative voicing

323

some way or another), we get the tableaux in (40a) and (40b) for (38a) and (38b), respectively. (40) a. /raz+{dən,tən}/ or /ras+{dən,tən}/

Faith(present/ past)

Assimilation

ChooseDe

fi raz+dən ras+dən

*!

raz+tən ras+tən

*! *!

*!

* *

b. /pɑf+{dən, tən}/ or /pɑf +{dən, tən}/

Faith(present/ past)

/pɑv+dən/

*!

/pɑf+dən/ /pɑv+tən/

Assimilation

ChooseDe

*! *!

fi /pɑf+tən/

*!

* *

Even though the analysis in (40) admittedly is not very sophisticated, it shows that an account of these facts does not have to be incompatible with the analysis of intervocalic voicing discussed here.

12.3. Other West Germanic Dialects OT is a theory of language variation: the basic mechanism of the theory, the ranking of violable constraints, is intended to account for the differences between languages and grammars. In principle, it is possible to formulate an analysis based on Richness of the Base in other frameworks as well; if we want to see the advantages of framing the analysis in terms of OT, it is useful to look at the way in which other languages are treated. Interestingly, there is much subtle variation in the distribution of voiced and voiceless fricatives in West Germanic dialects beyond Frisian, even though there are many similarities as well. In this section I will examine the range of variation and possible ways to account for the facts of Thurgovian German (section 12.3.1), Roermond Dutch (section 12.3.2), and Standard Dutch (section 12.3.3). These systems have been chosen because they are spoken in geographically distant areas and because they are presumably representative of the variation that we find within the West Germanic dialect

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continuum. I claim that the phonological differences between these systems can be accounted for by postulating a few small differences in their respective phonological grammars. These dialects, furthermore, provide direct evidence for some of the claims made for Frisian, for instance, with respect to length.

12.3.1 Thurgovian German Thurgovian German belongs to the High Alemannic group of Swiss German dialects.20 Even though this dialect is spoken at the opposite end of the West Germanic dialect continuum, the behavior of fricatives is similar in some crucial respects to what we have seen in Frisian. In particular, the distribution of voiced and voiceless fricatives in intervocalic contexts is the same: we find a voiced fricative after a long vowel and a voiceless fricative after a short vowel. (I do not know whether there are any exceptions to this generalization; I would expect the pattern of such fricatives to be similar to Frisian as well.) Another interesting aspect of Thurgovian is that voiced fricatives are shorter than the voiceless fricatives; as a matter of fact, length is often taken to be the relevant phonemic factor in the literature on Swiss German fricatives (the usual terms are “fortis” for long, voiceless fricatives and “lenis” for short, voiced ones). Even though no sufficiently reliable data can be provided on the relative length of the fricatives in Frisian dialects, Thurgovian seems to give some indirect evidence for the approach taken here. There are, however, a few marked differences between Thurgovian and Frisian. Most important, Thurgovian does allow word-initial fricatives and word-final long fricatives after long vowels, at least if they occur in a context where they can get syllabified (i.e., if they end up intervocalically in a string). In all other contexts these long fricatives are degeminated: (41) a. /ruuʃʃ/ ‘intoxication’ in.nə] b. [i. zim. ruuʃ.ʃ in his intoxication within ‘while being intoxicated’ c. [i. zim. ruuʃ. faa.rə] in his intoxication drive ‘drive while being intoxicated’ d. [i. zim. ruuʃ] in his intoxication ‘while being intoxicated’ (42) a. /ʃʃarff/ ‘sharp’ b. [niəʃ.ʃarf] ‘never sharp’ c. [və.rukxt.ʃarf] ‘very sharp’

ambisyllabicity and fricative voicing

325

d. [ʃarf.fi.əz] sharp it is ‘It is sharp.’

Thus, we find long fricatives only in an ambisyllabic position in Thurgovian, just as in Frisian. However, Thurgovian allows resyllabification across the word boundary, whereas Frisian does not, or alternatively, the kind of OO faithfulness attested in Frisian is not attested in Thurgovian. This is a rather marginal difference, of course, involving only the domains of application of a certain phonological process.

12.3.2 Roermond Dutch The phonological system of Roermond Dutch has been carefully described in a structuralist framework by Kats (1939).21 To avoid complication, I will concentrate here on the pair /s/ versus /z/. Kats provides a few possible minimal pairs for /f/ versus /v/ in the word-initial onset (e.g., vee ‘cattle’ – fee ‘fairy’), but he also notes that there is much variation (speakers saying [fe] rather than [ve] or the other way around) and that his informants get confused and even irritated if he asks them about possible contrasts. He concludes that there is only one “labiodental spirant” in Roermond. The same conclusion is reached, after having mentioned a few exceptional cases with a voiceless fricative after a long vowel, for the pair [x] – [γ]. The facts about [s] – [z] seem to be the most complicated, hence the most interesting.

12.3.2.1 Basic Patterns and Possible Exceptions in Intervocalic Contexts Like all other West Germanic dialects, Roermond Dutch displays unambiguous and unexceptional final devoicing effects; hence we only find voiceless [s] in word-final position. Intervocalically, we find [s] after a short vowel and [z] after a long vowel. This is the familiar pattern, but interestingly, Kats (1939) only found a few exceptional cases of [s] after a long vowel: aosem ‘breathe’, breesem ‘bream’, geisele ‘to whip’, iesel ‘glaze ice’, heise ‘hoarse’, Paose ‘Easter’, haase ‘handshoes’. The last form is a minimal pair with haaze ‘hares’. There are some interesting aspects about this. In the first place, haas+e with an exceptionally voiceless fricative at the end of a morpheme is an impossibility in Frisian, as we have seen. In the second place, if Kats (1939) is right (and we have no reason to assume that he is not, certainly not about the dialect as it was spoken in his own time22), there are no exceptionally voiced fricatives after short vowels.

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I think that these two facts are connected to each other and to a third fact: unlike Frisian, Dutch dialects hardly display distinctive vowel length anymore. Phonetically, some of the “long” vowels are shorter than the “short” ones, and there are also phonological arguments to assume that the real distinction is one of tense versus lax vowels. Furthermore, lax vowels prefer to be in closed syllables and tense vowels in open syllables. Van Oostendorp (1995) and Gussenhoven (1998) extensively argue in favor of this analysis. Here I will simply assume that (Roermond) Dutch does not have long vowels; in terms of constraints, we might say that NoLongVowels is undominated. The connection between the specification for tenseness and syllable structure can be expressed as in (43).23 (43) a. Project([tense]): [tense] vowels need to be in an open syllable. b. Project([lax]): [lax] vowels need to be in a closed syllable.

The constraint in (43a) may be violable in Roermond Dutch, since there clearly are tense vowels in closed syllables on the surface ([lop] ‘walk’). (43b), in contrast, is exceptionless in Roermond. There are no words ending in a short or lax vowel.24 Frisian has quite a few exceptions to the generalization that syllables want to be bimoraic; as we saw in section 12.2.3, there are a large number of Frisian syllables, even stressed syllables, that end in a short vowel. Thus, Frisian exceptionally allows short vowels in open syllables; Roermond Dutch does not allow lax vowels in that position. This explains why the former but not the latter system allows exceptionally voiced fricatives after short vowels as well. Note the necessary configuration for this: (44)

s

m

a z

s ə l

([lax])

(44) is not allowed in Roermond because Project([lax]) is unviolable in the language; it is exceptionally possible in Frisian, because Prokosch’s Law allows exceptions. In my view, this is a strong argument in favor of the analysis of the voiced/voiceless fricatives presented here. In an analysis based on the feature [voice], it would be less clear, to me, how we could relate the difference in acceptability of final short (lax) vowels to the difference in acceptability of intervocalic voiced fricatives. That Roermond does allow exceptional word-final voiceless fricatives (haas – haa[s]e) whereas Frisian does not also follows from a difference in

ambisyllabicity and fricative voicing

327

syllable structure between the two languages. This is where it becomes relevant that the long vowels in Roermond are not really long, but tense. The word haas thus gets a different structure in Roermond than it would in Frisian: (45) a. Roermond Dutch s oo

o o

h a

s

[tense] b.

Frisian s o o h

o a

o

o

s

The structure in (45a) may be extremely marked, consisting of a trimoraic syllable that violates Project([tense]), but it is not impossible in the same way that (45b) is. To syllabify (45b) we need a syllable that may even be universally ruled out, namely, a quadrimoraic structure. This explains why exceptional word-final voiceless fricatives are possible in a language with a tense/lax distinction, such as Roermond, but not in a language with real length, such as Frisian. Again, it is hard to see how such facts are to be accounted for in an analysis that bases itself on a distinctive feature ([voice]) for the systems at hand.

12.3.2.2 The Word-Initial Position Another important fact about Roermond fricatives is that word-initially they are typically voiced rather than voiceless. Words starting with a voiceless [s] are exceptions. Kats (1939: 21) mentions three cases: 1. In loanwords [Kats does not provide examples] 2. In the well-known cases in which [Standard] Dutch also has s: a. repeatedly in syllables with a short [i.e., lax] vowel, followed by a geminate: beseffe ‘to realize’, sippe ‘to sip [. . .]’, sommege ‘some’, soppe ‘to sop’ [. . .]

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Marc van Oostendorp

b. onomatopes: soeze ‘to drowse’, susse ‘to soothe’ c. by assimilation: saame ‘together’ [probably derives from t(e)saame], [. . .], sestich ‘sixty’ [probably derives from tsestich], [. . .] 3. In the following words: saaraa ‘good-for-nothing, [. . .]’, saarze (strike forcefully, in particular with a hammer), sap ‘sap’, soes (a kind of pastry; [. . .]). (Kats 1939: 21, my translation) It thus seems that voiceless fricatives are the exception. Note that it is quite hard to account for some of the classes of exceptions mentioned here. For 2a, it is not clear why the syllable structure of the vowel and consonant following a fricative should matter to the voicing specification of that fricative.25 Similarly, I know of no theory that could account for the special behavior of onomatopes in this particular case (it is as if there were some correspondence between the acoustic properties of an activity and its phonological features, but given the independence of phonological and semantic representation, it is unclear how this could be accomplished). In any case, I assume that in all of these instances, some higher constraint forces the fricative to get (or to stay) voiceless, where normally it would stay (or turn) voiced. It now becomes useful to write out the shorthand constraint VIF for Frisian as a ranking of the two constraints given in (8a–b) and repeated here in (46a–b) for convenience. (46) a. *(w[voice]: Do not allow voice at the beginning of the phonological word. b. vV: Voice a fricative before a vowel.

In Frisian we have seen the ranking *(w[voice] >> vV. This gives us (almost) the effects of VIF: fricatives get voiced before a vowel, except at the beginning of a word. If we have the reversed ranking vV >> *(w[voice] in Roermond, we get another result: fricatives in an onset always get voiced (except if they are subject to FinalDevoicing). The effect of the two rankings is demonstrated on the hypothetical input /sasa/ in (47). (47) a. Frisian /sasa/ (or /zaza/)

*(w[voice]

vV

sasa

**!

saza

*

zasa

*!

zaza

*!

*

ambisyllabicity and fricative voicing

329

b. Roermond Dutch /sasa/ (or /zaza/)

vV

sasa

**!

saza

*!

zasa

*!

zaza

*(w[voice]

* *

The Roermond facts may thus provide us with an indication that a refinement of VIF along these lines is indeed desirable.26 The question arises, however, about how to account for the exceptionally voiceless fricatives in loanwords and in the few other exceptional cases. It looks as if Roermond does allow word-initial geminates (which presumably are not voiced because their first part does not precede a vowel by definition). We have postulated a constraint NoOnsetGeminates for Frisian. Perhaps this constraint is violated in Roermond. It is interesting that according to Kats’s (1939) structuralist analysis, Roermond has two coronal fricative phonemes, /z/ and /s/, the latter of which may show up as [ʃ] in certain contexts, in particular the onset.27 [sˇ] is a complex segment that may be seen to behave as a bisegmental unit; as a matter of fact, Peeters (1951), in his analysis of the phonological systems of Venlo, a neighboring town to Roermond, discusses the issue of whether [ʃ] should be seen as one segment or two ([sj]). We may assume, then, that [ʃ] is the standard realization of a bisegmental coronal fricative in the onset. s

(48)

o o o

o

Ú

f

a

It is important to observe that a voiced counterpart to [ʃ] ([]) is apparently missing from the Roermond system: if such a segment is necessarily bisegmental, we would not want it to surface as voiced in a system such as this. This is yet another fact that is hard to account for if we do not assume a relation between (underlying) fricative length and fricative voicing.

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12.3.2.3 The Roermond Dutch Pattern Even though Roermond Dutch displays the same basic patterns in all positions in the word as the other West-Germanic dialects discussed so far, there also are some marked differences: • First, Roermond Dutch allows a few exceptions in intervocalic contexts that Frisian does not allow (voiceless fricatives after a long vowel at the end of a morpheme) and disallows a class of exceptions that occur freely in Frisian (voiced fricatives after a short vowel). I postulate the reason for this lies in an independently identifiable difference in syllable structure between Frisian and Dutch dialects. • Second, in the status of word-initial fricatives, we have seen that Roermond allows word-initial voiceless fricatives, which often surface as [ʃ] if they have a coronal place of articulation. It looks as if Roermond thus marginally allows geminate fricatives in a word-initial onset position. That it is exactly [ʃ] that surfaces in this position may be taken as an indication that the present approach is in the right direction. The issue remains, however, that Kats (1939) sometimes still found [s] in this position. According to my own impressionistic observation, present-day speakers of Roermond Dutch may have even more instances of [s]-initial words today: sauna [sauna], super [sypər], and so on. It may be that all present-day speakers of Roermond Dutch also have a good working knowledge of Standard Dutch, a language that on the surface is very similar – as the names and the geographic spreading of the two systems may suggest – but that I think has a phonology of voiced fricatives that is quite different from the original Roermond system; furthermore, the Standard Dutch system itself seems to be changing (in the direction of a Frisian-type system), as I briefly discuss in the next section. The facts, therefore, may be rather confusing, and the judgments may differ from speaker to speaker.

12.3.3 Standard Dutch The last system I discuss here is Standard Dutch. The discussion is brief, because this system is the simplest of all of those under discussion. I assume that Standard Dutch, like the Roermond dialect, has a tense/lax distinction rather than a distinction of length in the consonantal realm. Except in the syllable coda – where we see the effects of Final Devoicing – voicing is distinctive in almost all positions in the word (I show this for the pair /z/ – /s/, but it is also true for /v/ – /f/ and /γ/ – /x/): (49) As a word-initial onset zend [zent] ‘send’ cent [sent] (cent)

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(50) Intervocalically after a tense (‘long’) vowel a. bazel [bazəl] ‘talk stupidly’ Pasen [pasən] ‘Eastern’ b. lees [les] ‘I read’ race [res] ‘(I) race’ lezen [lezən] ‘to read’ racen [resən] ‘to race’ (51) Intervocalically after a lax (short) vowel a. mazzel [mɑzəl] ‘luck’ passer [pɑsər] ‘compass’ b. – pas [pɑs] ‘(I) fit’; passen[pɑsən] ‘to fit’ (52) In coda –

lees [les] ‘(I) read’

If we had not examined the other West Germanic dialects earlier, the gap in (51b) would probably have gone unnoticed. The system, as depicted here, could simply be described as one with strong faithfulness to underlying specifications for [voice], dominated only by Final Devoicing. VIF also plays a role but only as a tendency: the words disobeying it are usually loans, but some of these loans (such as the ones mentioned here) seem to have become current in Dutch; I think there is no reason to exclude them from our analysis. It is no surprise that Standard Dutch allows for exceptionally voiceless fricatives in (50); Standard Dutch is like Roermond in this respect. Yet there are a few things to be noted: • In the first place, Standard Dutch is the only language discussed here for which I have been able to track down reliable phonetic data about the realization of voiced versus voiceless fricatives (Slis and van Heugten 1989). Slis and van Heugten found that duration is one of the most important cues for the voiced voiceless distinction: [-voice] fricatives are significantly longer than [+voiced] ones, just as we have come to expect. Even though the phonological need for consonant length is not as strong in Dutch as it is in other languages discussed here, length still seems to play a role. • Also, there is a phonological problem, namely, the word mazzel ‘good luck’. Since this word has a short lax vowel and since Standard Dutch differs from Frisian and is like Roermond Dutch in that it does not allow such vowels at the end of the syllable, we are led to believe that the structure of this word should be as in (53). s

(53) o

o

m ɑ

s o

o o o

z

[+voice]

ə l

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However, (53) should be ruled out by the constraint on Final Devoicing in Standard Dutch, just as it is in all other dialects discussed here. It may be important that mazzel (along with puzzel ([pzəl] ‘puzzle’, which is often pronounced with a long vowel, [pyzəl])), seems to be the only convincing example of this phenomenon, and that this word involves [ɑ].28 First, the pair of low vowels [a] – [ɑ] is the most problematic one for the tense/lax distinction (tense [a] can occur in a syllable that is too long in twaalf ‘twelve’ [twalf], for instance; cf. also the problematic [ka()mfər] and [ka()nfər] in the Frisian example (12)); second, the ɑ can marginally occur at the end of a few words in some informal varieties of Dutch: wa [wɑ] ‘what’, da [dɑ] ‘that’ (in more formal varieties, one says [wɑt] and [dɑt]). The exceptional behavior in one case may be linked to the exceptional behavior in the other case, but of course it is difficult to draw firm conclusions from such a small set of examples. In any case, the Standard Dutch system discussed does not seem to pose serious problems. Even though the systems of other West Germanic dialects have a lot of similarities, I have come to the conclusion that Standard Dutch and Frisian are radically different: the former system is based on a feature [tense] (or [lax]) for vowels and a feature [voice] for fricatives, and underlying contrasts do not surface per se (NoLongVowel and NoGeminate are very active); the latter system is based on both vocalic and consonantal length. There is one quite interesting aspect of the Standard Dutch system that I want to mention, even though I cannot go into it: on Netherlandish territory (a different story seems to hold for Flanders; Van de Velde 1996), it seems to be heading in the direction of a Frisian-type system: voiced fricatives turn voiceless, in particular in word-initial onset position and after a short vowel or a sonorant consonant.29 It is not clear to me how to exactly describe the ongoing change; the details of the emerging system are not yet clear (possibly, neither length nor [voice] will be distinctive in New Dutch, for instance, but there is also some evidence that hypercorrectly voiced fricatives are gaining ground in some contexts; Van de Velde 1996: 111).

12.4. Conclusions My goals in this chapter have been twofold. First, I have argued that distinctive feature specifications on the surface can sometimes be due to different type of constraint than mere faithfulness to the underlying value of that feature. In the cases of Frisian, Thurgovian German, and Roermond Dutch, the surface differences between voiced and voiceless fricatives are derived from an underlying contrast between ambisyllabic and monosyllabic segments rather than from Ident-[voice] or some other constraint on underlying specifications for [voice].

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Second, I have been concerned with the underlying syllabic affiliation of fricatives itself. Even within the framework of OT, in which Richness of the Base plays the role almost of an axiom, most authors are quite hesitant to assume underlying syllable (or prosodic) structure. Of course, the proposal made here is quite restricted: there is no need for underlying syllable nodes, for instance, since the syllabic status of the fricatives discussed can be encoded as if it were in the segmental structure. It remains to be seen whether we ever need to stipulate more underlying structure than this, and if we need not, how we can accommodate underspecification for syllabic structure with the Richness of the Base hypothesis.

notes 1. Cf. van Oostendorp (1998) for a more detailed review of Visser’s own analysis of these facts, which uses morpheme structure constraints (MSCs) as its basis. In Visser’s actual analysis, these constraints are called SSCs – syllable structure constraints – applying at a level after initial syllabification. As far as I can see, this level is indistinguishable from the one to which MSCs apply, except that it has syllable structure. In other words, the only reason to distinguish between SSCs and MSCs is that, by assumption, there is no underlying syllable structure. 2. In (6), notice that Frisian is different from northern Italian in this respect: in dialects of the latter type, the initial fricative of the reflexive clitic si does not get voiced in an intervocalic position (lavando [s]i ‘washing himself’). This is one of Nespor and Vogel’s (1986) most famous arguments for the existence of a clitic group in (the dialects of) Italian. 3. The facts involving a fricative following another obstruent are not discussed, because these are probably obscured by voicing assimilation, which is disregarded in this chapter. 4. One difference between the two ranked constraints and single VIF involves the voicing of onset fricatives after an obstruent. Since this context always involves a presumably separate process of voicing assimilation in the cases I am interested in here, it is difficult to test which of the two proposals makes the right predictions. 5. Italian voicing displays some complicated interaction with morphology, because in certain morphological contexts, /s/ does not turn into [z] (e.g., ri+[s]alare ‘to jump again’; cf. Nespor and Vogel 1986, Peperkamp 1997, and references cited there). Within OT, these complications should be derived by ranking some relevant constraints above VIF in the grammar of Northern Italian. 6. As a matter of fact, Visser (1997) claims that syllables in all positions of the Frisian word tend to be bipositional (this claim has been made by, e.g., van der Hulst (1984) for Dutch and Hammond (1999) for English as well), but since we are not dealing with stressless syllables, I will not go into this here. Actually, Visser gives a large list of examples of exceptions to Prokosch’s Law, as I will discuss in section 2.1.2. 7. This definition is inspired by Lombardi (1991). Cf. Féry, this volume, for discussion. I will not go into the way this constraint should interact with other factors for stops.

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8. Elsewhere in Visser 1997, I have also found the example gêstje [gesjə] ‘gather yeast’. Visser (personal communication) notes that this form has to be analyzed as /gestsjə/ underlyingly and that this may be the cause for the devoicing here. 9. A possible exception in the word-final coda is jazz, which may sometimes be pronounced with a voiced fricative. I have nothing to say about this. 10. Visser (1997: 52) notes that in some dialects (but not his own) certain nouns ending in /af/ or /of/, which are borrowed from Romance, do get a voiceless fricative in the plural. I assume that such – very rare – loanwords may be subject to some exceptionally high-ranking faithfulness constraint but have no explanation as to why this would only involve /f/ and only in this context (notice that the context somewhat resembles that of kaamfer, which is also problematic). 11. This is not to say that ordered rules could not account for these patterns just as well. We could first have a rule devoicing all fricatives, followed by a rule voicing the intervocalic fricatives, followed by a rule of Final Devoicing. This system would give exactly the same outcome as the constraint ranking provided in the text. 12. An asterisk in parentheses in the tableaux means that the candidate violates the constraint in one of the two input forms given, but not in the other. 13. In addition, the Onset constraint is needed to force the fricative to be really ambisyllabic. Since this fact is actually irrelevant for my purposes (the analysis would work just as well if the fricative would only occur in the coda), I will assume that Onset is inviolalable in Frisian and not incorporate the constraint in my tableaux. 14. For reasons that will be explained in section 2.2.2, this assumption is actually not very important for the remainder of the analysis, which would also work if Frisian had vowel lengthening everywhere, except in those cases where we already have an ambisyllabic consonant. I keep to the analysis given in the text for the sake of concreteness. 15. As a matter of fact, under a certain view the input in (21) is more marked than its counterpart in (22): the former contains an extra consonantal position that is lacking from the latter. Since constraints on underlying forms do not play a role in the theory presented here (and more specifically, since there is no theory of underspecification) this criterion does not seem to really make sense. 16. Several mechanisms can be found in the OT literature to implement and formalize (29). For instance, (29) can be seen as a type of Output/Output (OO)-faithfulness (Benua 1997, Kager 1999; McCarthy (1998) argues that MSCs in general can be analyzed in terms of OO-faithfulness). Alternatively, one could also analyze this as a kind of cyclicity effect; for instance, along the lines of Orgun’s (1996) representational approach. The empirical differences between these approaches are subtle, and I will not attempt to choose between them; I will rather stick to the more informal (29), which of course is most similar to the OO formalism as far as outward appearances are concerned. 17. The singular suffix displays the alternation -te/-de in the same context. 18. For this reason, Zonneveld (1983) proposed for similar facts of Dutch that the first segment of the suffix is a fricative /ð/ underlyingly, which hardens after having undergone assimilation. Visser (personal communication) notes that there are a few function words in Frisian that seem to display the same behavior: dër ha’k dy [hakti] net sjoen ‘I have not seen you there’ (there have-I you not seen). I assume that these function words also have two allomorphs.

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19. This seems easier in an OO interpretation of this kind of faithfulness than in a representational one like that proposed by Orgun (1996). I will not go into this here. 20. All the information on this dialect has been derived from Kraehenmann 1998, which deals with the “fortis-lenis” distinction in the Thurgovian lexicon in general; i.e., it discusses the opposition in sonorants and stops as well as in fricatives. Cf. also Winteler 1876 and Goblirsch 1994 for descriptions of very similar systems. 21. These facts are very similar to those of (Standard High) German (see Féry, this volume). Roermond is a town in the Dutch province of Limburg, approximately 10 miles from the German border. 22. Kats was a native speaker of Roermond. I get the impression from informal contact with a few informants that the present-day system is more similar to Standard Dutch (Peeters [1951] notes that things were changing in the early 1950s in the neighboring town of Venlo.) There might be one more caveat: Kats has the habit of putting loanwords separate from the real system, and for this reason he might have overlooked Yiddish loanwords like mazzel that are exceptional in many Dutch dialects. The town of Roermond had a small Jewish community before World War II. Since we do not have any evidence as to the status and pronunciation of these words in the local dialect, however, I will follow Kats (1939) in all respects. 23. For the sake of concreteness, I assume that all vowels have a specification [tense] or [lax], but not both. As a matter of fact, there are reasons to assume that only [lax] is active; the constraint in (43b) then needs to be defined in some other way (e.g., a vowel in a closed syllable should be lax); cf. van Oostendorp 1995. 24. An exception needs to be made for schwa, which behaves like a tense vowel in this respect. 25. One possibility is to equate [voice] on consonants and [tense] on vowels ([+voice] = [tense], [-voice] = [lax]). We then could get a kind of syllable harmony effect: if the vowel and the coda consonant share a specification, this specification also turns up on the onset consonant. I have no idea as to the feasibility of this solution. 26. As far as I can tell, Thurgovian patterns with Roermond Dutch in this respect: short fricatives get voiced at the beginning of the word. 27. Another context where [ʃ] may surface is after a short rounded vowel (broesje [bruʃə] ‘to foam’). That this concerns round vowels should probably be ascribed to the fact that [ʃ] sounds are usually rounded, but it is probably not a coincidence that the environment concerns exactly those rounded vowels that are short. 28. Yet I have ignored all examples with velar fricatives, where there is much uncertainty as to whether a particular segment is voiced or voiceless. 29. The most widespread explanation for this change, at least in the popular press in which the phenomenon is noted with some disgust, is that Amsterdam Dutch has a system of the Frisian type and is the system most often heard on the radio.

references Benua, Laura. (1997). Transderivational identity: phonological relations between words. Doctoral dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

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Booij, Geert. (1998). Prosodic output constraints in morphology. In Phonology and Morphology of the German Languages, ed. Wolfgang Kehrein and Richard Wiese, 1–20. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Cohen, A., C. L. Ebeling, K. Fokkema, and A. G. F. van Holk. (1972). Fonologie van het Nederlands en het Fries: Inleiding tot de moderne klankleer. ’s Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff. Davis, Stuart. (1994). Geminate consonants in moraic phonology. WCFFL 13: 32–45. Davis, Stuart. (1999). On the moraic representation of underlying geminates: Evidence from prosodic morphology. In The Prosody Morphology Interface, ed. René Kager et al., 39–61. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goblirsch, Kurt Gustav. (1994). Consonant Strength in Upper German Dialects. Odense, Denmark: Odense University Press. Gussenhoven, Carlos. (1998). Vowel duration, syllable quantity and stress in Dutch. Ms., Catholic University of Nijmegen. Hammond, Michael. (1999). The Phonology of English: A Prosodic Optimality-Theoretic Approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hayes, Bruce. (1989). Compensatory lengthening in moraic phonology. Linguistic Inquiry 20: 253–306. van der Hulst, Harry. (1985). Ambisyllabicity in Dutch. In Linguistics in the Netherlands 1985, ed. H. Bennis and F. Beukema, 57–66. Dordrecht: Foris. Kager, René. (1999). Surface opacity of metrical structure in Optimality Theory. In The Derivational Residue in Phonological Optimality Theory, ed. Ben Hermans and Marc van Oostendorp, 205–242. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Kats, J. C. P. (1939). Het phonologisch en morphonologisch systeem van het Roermondsch dialect. Roermond/Maaseik: J. J. Romen and Zonen. [Doctoral dissertation, Catholic University of Nijmegen.] Kraehenmann, Astrid. (1998). Geminates are not all created equal. Ms., University of Konstanz. Lombardi, Linda. (1991). Laryngeal features and laryngeal neutralisation. Doctoral dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. McCarthy, John. (1998). Morpheme structure constraints and paradigm occultation. In CLS 32, Vol. 2: The Panels, ed. M. Catherine Gruber et al., 231–271. Chicago: Chicago Linguistics Society. McCarthy, John, and Alan Prince. (1986). Prosodic morphology. Ms., University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Brandeis University, Waltham, Mass. Nespor, Marina, and Irene Vogel. (1986). Prosodic Phonology. Dordrecht: Foris. Oostendorp, Marc van. (1995). Vowel quality and phonological projection. Doctoral dissertation, Tilburg University. Oostendorp, Marc van. (1998). Review of “The syllable in Frisian” by W. Vissner. It Beaken 60 (1): 60–65. Orgun, Orhan. (1996). Sign-based morphology: A declarative theory of the phonology-morphology interface. Doctoral dissertation, University of California, San Diego. Peeters, F. J. P. (1951). Het klankkarakter van het Venloos. Nijmegen: Centrale drukkerij. Doctoral dissertation, Catholic University of Nijmegen. Peperkamp, Sharon. (1997). Prosodic words. Doctoral dissertation, University of Amsterdam.

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Prince, Alan, and Paul Smolensky. (1993). Optimality Theory: Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar. Report RUCCS TR-2. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University. [To appear, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.] Selkirk, Lisa. (1990). A two root theory of length. University of Massachusetts Occasional Papers 14: 123–171. Slis, I. H., and M. van Heugten. (1989). Voiced-voiceless distinction in Dutch fricatives. In Linguistics in the Netherlands 1989, ed. H. Bennis and M. van Heugten, 21–32. Dordrecht: Foris. Trager, George L. (1934). What conditions limit variants of a phoneme? American Speech 9: 313–315. Van de Velde, Hans. (1996). Variatie en verandering in het gesproken StandaardNederlands (1935–1993). Doctoral dissertation, Catholic University of Nijmegen. Visser, Willem. (1997). The syllable in Frisian. Doctoral dissertation, Free University, Amsterdam. Visser, Willem. (1998). De woordinterne realisering van obstruenten en obstruentclusters in het Fries. Ms., Fryske Akademy. Winteler, J. (1876). Die Kerenzer Mundart des Kantons Glarus in ihren Gundzügen dargestellt. Leipzig und Heidelberg: C.F. Winter’sche Verlagshandlung. Zonneveld, W. (1983). Lexical and phonological properties of Dutch voicing assimilation. In Sound Structures: Studies for Antonie Cohen, ed. M. van den Broecke et al., 281–327. Dordrecht: Foris.

13 The CiV-Generalization in Dutch What Petunia, Mafia, and Sovjet Tell Us about Dutch Syllable Structure Ruben van de Vijver

13.1. Introduction Phonotactic considerations suggest that vowels in Germanic languages can be divided into two groups. Characterization of the contrast between these groups is a matter of debate, and it is to this debate that this chapter wants to contribute. Some scholars defend the view that the two groups contrast in length. The members of one group are long while the members of the other group are short (for Dutch: van der Hulst 1984, Kager 1989, Booij 1995; for German: Féry 1995, 1998, Wiese 1996; and for English: Myers 1987, Hammond 1997). Others take the position that the distinction between the groups is a quality distinction. The members of one group are tense, while the members of the other group are lax (for Dutch: van der Hulst 1994, van Oostendorp 1995; for German: Trubetzkoy 1939; and for English: Chomsky and Halle 1968). A lexical pattern in Dutch, exemplified in section 13.2.2, will be the empirical focus of this chapter. The framework in which the data are analyzed is Optimality Theory (OT – Prince and Smolensky 1993). It might seem strange to use this theory, which is apt at comparing languages, to discuss a lexical pattern in a single language. However, OT is capable of explaining these data in a unified way by means of ranked and violable constraints. In this way OT can characterize a lexical pattern in a single language. Moreover, it does so more insightfully than theories in which lexical generalizations have to be stated as morpheme structure constraints (MSC).

13.2. The CiV-Generalization The CiV-generalization presented in this chapter suggests that the difference between the two sets of vowels is best analyzed as a contrast of quality. This This chapter has benefitted from the comments of Kirsten Brock, Caroline Féry, Marc van Oostendorp, and two anonymous reviewers.

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The CiV-generalization in dutch

339

generalization, which has been formulated for English only (cf. Chomsky and Halle 1968), states that a vowel in a syllable immediately preceding a consonant (C), a high vowel (i), and another vowel (V), is always tense.1 Although the generalization is formulated for English, its range is much wider: the same tendencies are found in most Germanic languages, specifically in Dutch, as I will show. (1)

CiV-generalization A vowel that immediately precedes a CiV-context is tense.

13.2.1 Tense and Lax Vowels in Dutch At this point it is time to reveal what vowels are tense and what vowels are lax and why. It seems very difficult to define the difference between the two sets of the Dutch vowels in (2) in a phonetically adequate way, even though there have been many attempts at it (see van Oostendorp 1995 for a discussion). There is, however, a clear phonotactic difference between the vowels in (2a) and (2b). (2)

Monophthongal vowels of Dutch a. Tense vowels front back i, y u e, ø o a b. Lax vowels front back , e y ɔ ɑ

Tense vowels may occur at the end of a syllable: they are allowed at the end of a word (3a) and as the first vowel in hiatus ((3b); syllable boundaries are indicated by a “.”). Lax vowels, however, are not found in such positions.2 (3)

A syllable may end in a tense vowel but not in a lax vowel. a. salie [sa.li] *[sa.l] ‘sage’ b. chaos [xa.ɔs] *[xa.ɔs] ‘chaos’

Lax vowels may be followed by two tautosyllabic noncoronal consonants (4a), while tense vowels may be followed by at most one tautosyllabic noncoronal consonant (4b).

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(4)

Lax vowels may be followed by two noncoronals, tense vowels by only one. a. stom [stɔm] ‘stupid’ stomp [stɔmp] ‘punch’ b. stoom [stom] ‘steam’ stoomp *[stomp]

Much of the literature on the phonology of Dutch focuses on the explanation of the facts in (3) and (4). Although the solutions offered may differ considerably, the general idea embraced by all is that a lax vowel must form a nucleus with the following consonant, while a tense vowel forms a nucleus on its own. These requirements must be met for a syllable to be well formed. In other words, lax vowels will always be followed by a consonant in the nucleus, and tense vowels are never followed by a consonant in the nucleus. The nucleus may be followed by one noncoronal consonant. As a result, a syllable with a lax vowel may be followed by two consonants (one inside the nucleus and one outside the nucleus), and a syllable with a tense vowel may be followed by only one consonant (one outside the nucleus). This solution is summarized in (5). (5)

Distribution of vowels across syllable types a. Lax vowels cannot occur in open syllables. b. Tense vowels can occur in open syllables.

In a number of words in Dutch, such as modder [mɔdər] ‘mud’, lax vowels seem to occur in open syllables, apparently contradicting (5a). However, there are a number of arguments justifying the assumption that the d in modder is in the coda of the first syllable, as well as in the onset of the second syllable (van der Hulst 1984, 1985, Kager 1989, Booij 1995, van Oostendorp 1995). This phenomenon, called ambisyllabicity, is supported with arguments from syllable structure and stress. Syllables with a schwa are never onsetless (van Oostendorp 1995, Féry, this volume). If, on the one hand, the d in modder were only in the coda of the first syllable, there would be such an onsetless schwa syllable, and phonologists would have the difficult task of explaining why such syllables only occur word-internally. If, on the other hand, the d in modder were only in the onset of the second syllable, the preceding syllable would be open and have a lax vowel as head, thus challenging (5a). Again, phonologists would have to face the unpleasant task of explaining why such syllables (open syllables with a lax vowel) only occur word-internally. Another argument in favor of ambisyllabicity comes from stress (van der Hulst 1985). In Dutch, stress is on one of the last three syllables, and if the penultimate syllable is closed, it is stressed (Booij 1981, van der Hulst 1984, 1985, Kager 1989). In words like dilemma [dil
ma] ‘dilemma’ or colonne [kolɔ´nə] ‘column’, the penultimate syllable, which has a lax vowel, is always stressed. When it is assumed that such syllables are closed, this observation

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can easily be explained: all words with a penultimate syllable that is closed have stress on that syllable, and since the penultimate syllables in the words just mentioned are no different, they are stressed. The consequence of the CiV-generalization in (1) is that syllables preceding a CiV-context must be open. This is a mysterious statement, since it is hard to think of a reason why this would have to be the case. I will, therefore, consider (1) in more detail and show that it is in need of refinement. There are two main reasons to reconsider the CiV-generalization. First, there are three major problems with the generalization as it stands, the most important being that it does not give any insight into the question of why syllables preceding a CiV-context should be open. Second, the phenomenon under discussion sheds light on the structure of vowels in Dutch; in particular, it suggests that a theory of the structure of Dutch vowels based on quality is to be preferred over a theory explaining the difference between the two set of vowels in (2) as a difference in length.

13.2.2 The Data The words in (6) are representative of a tendency found not only in Dutch but in other Germanic languages, such as English and German, as well. The vowel in the syllable preceding the CiV-context is tense. (6)

Data that conform to the CiV-generalization f[i]liáal ‘branch office’ pet[y´]nia ‘petunia’ r[é]mia brand of butter f[ó]lio ‘gloss’ ger[á]nium ‘geranium’

J[ú]lio name

However, even though the tendency is rather strong, it is not exceptionless. In some words, the vowel preceding the CiV-context is lax, as in (7a); in others the preceding vowel is lax, and in addition the i of the context is realized as a glide, as in (7b). (7)

a.

pr[y´]llio Tsj[
]chië ‘Czech Republic’ Pin[ɔ´]kkio m[ɑ´]fia b. M[]rjam name H[´e]njo name S[ɔ´]vjet M[ɑ´]rja

satire on a name of a car ‘Pinocchio’ ‘mafia’ ‘sovjet’ name

At first sight, the words in (7b) lack the appropriate context. However, according to what is called Sievers’s Law (Sievers 1878), the segments [i] and [j] have the same segmental makeup and differ only in their syllabic position. The vowel [i] surfaces if the segment occupies the nucleus of a syllable, while the glide [j] is realized when it occurs in a marginal position of the syllable.

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A clear example of such an interaction comes from Gothic (taken from Riad 1992). (8)

Alternation of [i] and [j] in Gothic a. /sook+iis/ [soo.kiis] ‘you seek’ b. /stoo+iis/ [stoo.jis] ‘you judge’

When /i/ is preceded by a consonant, and hence in the nucleus, it is realized as a vowel, as in (8a). When it is the first segment of a syllable, as in (8b), it is an onset and realized as a glide. I will argue in section 13.2.3.1 that [i] and [j] are in complementary distribution in Dutch and conclude that Sievers’s Law holds in Dutch as well. As a consequence, a more precise formulation of (1) is “Vowels preceding a C-high coronal-V context are tense.” The words in (7b) are therefore not inappropriate and should be accounted for as well. Foreshadowing the analysis a bit, the explanation of each pattern in (6) and (7) involves markedness and syllable structure. I will argue that tense vowels are unmarked and that if a vowel has no lexical specification, it is tense. This is in agreement with the findings of van Oostendorp (1995), who concludes that the relationship between vowels and syllable structure is better explained in a theory distinguishing vowels on the basis of quality rather than quantity. Words like those in (6), in which the vowel preceding the CiVcontext does not have a specification, will conform to the CiV-generalization. To capture the difference between the words in (7a) and (7b), one must explain the difference between the words in (6) and (7) on the one hand, and the difference between (7a) and (7b) on the other. The difference between the words in (6) and (7) is that in the words in (7) the vowels preceding the CiV-context are in a closed syllable. However, (7a) and (7b) differ in the reason for the closed syllable. In (7a), the consonant preceding the CiVcontext is assumed to be underlyingly ambisyllabic. That is, it is both in the coda of the first syllable and in the onset of the next syllable. The first syllable is therefore closed, and, according to the generalization in (5b), the vowel has to be lax. The ambisyllabicity of the consonant in the CiV-context will also explain the realization of [i], as we will see in section 13.3. In (7b), the vowel preceding the CiV-context is lexically specified for the feature lax. Given (5a), the vowel must be in a closed syllable. This explains why the first syllable is closed and also why the /i/ is realized as a glide.

13.2.3 Why the CiV-Generalization Is in Need of Closer Scrutiny The data in (7) show clearly that the CiV-generalization must be revised. Even apart from the fact that there are perfectly grammatical words that do not conform to the generalization in (1), there are other important reasons to revise it.

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First, (1) does not offer an explanation of why the vowel preceding the context belongs to the group of tense vowels. One could easily imagine a world in which the reverse is true. Second, there are quite a few words in which a lax vowel precedes the CiV-context. Such words are said to be ungrammatical by (1), and their existence has to be explained. Third, (1) and Sievers’s Law (Sievers 1878, Riad 1992, Calabrese 1994, van Oostendorp 1995) have a difficult relationship. This point can be explained with the aid of the word radio. The first vowel is tense, and it is uncontroversial to say that it is in an open syllable. The CiV-generalization makes the tenseness of the first vowel a direct consequence of the following context. To explain this (which has not been done in the literature), one needs to assume that the [i] in radio is lexically in a nucleus. Sievers’s Law, however, suggests that [i] and [j] are always in complementary distribution: the vowel [i] shows up where the consonant [j] fears to tread. The syllabification of this high coronal segment cannot be underlying. But if that is true, then the CiV-generalization becomes circular: the [a] is tense because the [i] is in the nucleus, and the [i] is realized as a vowel because the [a] is tense. In short, there are two questions that arise from considering the data in (6) and (7). First, why is there a tendency for vowels preceding a CiVcontext to be tense in the Germanic languages? Second, how can the exceptions to this tendency be explained? These questions are answered in section 13.3.

13.2.3.1 Sievers’s Law in Dutch One of the problems with (1) is its relationship with Sievers’s Law, as was explained in section 13.2.2. This law states that a high coronal segment is realized as a vowel when it appears in the nucleus of a syllable or as a glide when it appears in the margin of a syllable. The words in (9) show that in Dutch, too, a high coronal segment is realized as a vowel after an onset ((9a)) and as a glide when it is in the margin of a syllable ((9b)). (9)

a. After a consonant Mieke [mikə] name vliko [vliko] ‘container’ vies [fis] ‘dirty, filthy’ b. Before a vowel ja [ja] ‘yes’ jaap [jaap] ‘gash’ jicht [jxt] ‘gloss’ mayo [majo] ‘mayonnaise jojo [jojo] ‘yoyo’

piek wielewaal lief

[pik] ‘1 guilder coin’ [uiləual] ‘oriole’ [lif] ‘sweet, cute’

jambe jeugd jong klojo aio

[jɑmbə] [jøxt] [jɔŋ] [klojo] [ajo]

‘iamb’ ‘youth’ ‘young’ ‘dork’ ‘PhD student’

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Word- or phrase-intially before a vowel, there are no instances of [i].3 Apart from this distributional argument, there is also an argument from the structure of vowels (see Van Oostendorp 1995 for the same argument for Rotterdam Dutch). If [i] and [j] have the same structure, it is expected that the Obligatory Contour Principle (OCP) prohibits them from being strictly adjacent. This is precisely what is found in Dutch: a [j] never precedes a [i]. However, there are words with [j], as in j[]cht ‘gout’. In short, Sievers’s Law holds in Dutch. It is therefore safe to assume that [i] and [j] are the same segment and that the different realization corresponds to a different position in the syllable.4

13.2.4 Markedness Before I embark on the analysis of the data presented in 13.2.1, I will discuss the issue of markedness and its relation to the problem at hand. In phonology, the concept markedness has a respectable history, and it was intended to designate soft phonological universals. A soft linguistic universal is a linguistic structure that has two appearances, one of which is cross-linguistically preferred. The preferred appearance is unmarked, and its dispreferred counterpart is marked. Of course, it would be interesting to know how a marked structure can be distinguished from an unmarked structure. Trubetzkoy (1939) identifies a number of features by which unmarked structures can be distinguished from marked structures; among them are two that will be relevant for the following discussion. One feature of unmarked linguistic structures is the number of occurrences relative to the marked structures. Unmarked structures appear in higher numbers than marked structures. Dutch has 12 vowels: 7 tense vowels and 5 lax vowels. Tense vowels are unmarked, while lax vowels are marked. Another feature of unmarked structures is their linguistic simplicity compared to that of marked structures. A branching node, which dominates two terminal nodes, is therefore more marked than a nonbranching node dominating only one terminal node. Since branching and nonbranching nodes are used to distinguish long vowels from short vowels, long vowels (assumed to be tense by default; see Booij 1995) are marked while short vowels would be unmarked. These are contradictory conclusions, and one would like to have additional arguments to settle the matter. One such argument to say that lax vowels are marked is that they occur in the structurally more complex closed syllables while tense vowels occur in the structurally simpler open syllable. Another argument is provided by the analysis presented in section 13.3. With all this in mind – the difference between tense and lax vowels, the relevant CiV-data, the validity of Sievers’s Law, and a short introduction of the notion of markedness – I will turn to the analysis of the data.

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13.3. The Analysis of CiV-Data As the data in (6) and (7) show, three patterns have to be discussed in this section. First, there are words like petunia (as in (6)) in which a tense vowel precedes a CiV-context. These words will be analyzed as the unmarked case, with the vowel not specified for lax, nor any segment specified for underlying syllable structure. Second, there are words like sovjet (as in (7b)) in which the vowel preceding the CiV-context is lax and the i of the CiV-context is realized as a glide. In these cases the vowel preceding the CiV-context will be specified as lax. Finally, there are words like mafia (as in (7a)) in which the vowel preceding the CiV-context is lax and the i of the context is realized as a vowel. The C of the CiV-context is analyzed as being underlyingly ambisyllabic. Let’s start with the analysis of petunia. A first step is to consider the constraints that drive the tense/lax distinction. I assume that a markedness constraint prohibits vowels to be lax. (10) *Lax Vowels are not lax.

Since there happen to be lax vowels in Dutch, the constraint in (10) must be outranked by a constraint stating that lax features of the input must be present in the output. (11) Max-lax Do not delete the feature lax.

Whatever the ranking of these constraints, petunia will always surface without a lax vowel. The ranking of these constraints can, however, be deduced from the evaluation of the word sovjet. For the lax vowel to surface, it must be underlyingly present, so that a candidate that preserves it in the output, as in (12a), is better than a candidate that has lost it in the output, as in (12b). Max-lax must therefore be ranked above *Lax. (12) Tableau of the lax first vowel in sovjet a. sɔvjet

Max-lax

b. ☞ sɔvjet | lax sovjet

*Lax *

*!

Note: The first vowel of sovjet is the focus of this tableau; therefore this vowel is the only one on the candidate set that has been given a phonetic transcription.

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Returning to petunia, we will see that, since there is no lax vowel on the surface, there is no feature lax to be preserved in the underlying form. Consequently, Max-lax does not play a role in deciding which candidate is the optimal one. This is taken care of by *Lax, which will block any candidate with a lax feature, and the winning candidate will therefore have a tense vowel. In this approach lax vowels are marked in the sense that they always incur a violation of a markedness constraint, whereas tense vowels incur neither a faithfulness violation nor a markedness violation. Other generalizations to be captured are that lax vowels only appear in closed syllables and that if a syllable is closed, its vowel is lax. The constraint given in (13), which is stated in a format first proposed by van Oostendorp (1995), shows this. It says that a syllable with a lax vowel has a branching nucleus – is closed – and that a lax vowel may only appear in branching nucleus. (13) Connect (Lax, Branching Nucleus) (Connect (Lax, BN)) A lax vowel appears in a branching nucleus, and when a nucleus branches, its vowel is lax.

When ranked high enough, this constraint will ensure that lax vowels appear in closed syllables and tense vowels in open syllables. Its role can be seen in (14). The constraint is violated in (14b), because a tense vowel occurs in a closed syllable, and in (14c) because a lax vowel occurs in an open syllable. (14) Tableau of the openness of the second syllable of petunia petunia

Max-lax

*Lax

Connect (Lax, BN)

a. ☞ pe.tu.ni.a b. pe.tun.ni.a

*!

c. pe.tun.ni.a | lax

*!

d. pe.tu.ni.a | lax

*!

The last issue to be looked at in connection with the word petunia is why the vowel of the CiV-context is realized as a vowel and not as a glide. A contextsensitive markedness constraint prohibits complex onsets of which the second consonant is a [j].

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(15) *Cj No complex onset has a [j] as its second member.

This constraint is active in many Germanic languages and has even been reported for Gothic (Kiparsky 1997). In Dutch, Cj onsets are avoided if possible. An example of such an avoidance is the word fierljeppen [fi.rəl.jepə] ‘to pole vault over a ditch (Frisian sport)’, a loan from Frisian. In Frisian this word is pronounced [fir.ljep.m], with a complex onset. The constraint in (15) must rank above the general constraint Onset, which requires syllables to start with a (consonantal) onset. This can be seen in (16), where this ranking determines that petunia is better than petunja.5 (16) Tableau of i versus j *Cj ☞ pe.tu.ni.a pe.tu.nja

Onset *

*!

The ranking in (17) summarizes the grammar for words with the form petunia. Petunia, and its likes, have no lax vowel because of *Lax; the syllable of the vowel preceding the CiV-context is open due to Connect (Lax, BN), and the i of the context is realized as a vowel due to the ranking *Cj >> Onset. (17) Ranking for words of the pattern petunia Max-Lax *Lax

(Connect (Lax, BN)

*Cj Onset

In fact, the leftmost part of (17) also accounts for the lax vowel in words of the pattern sovjet. The crucial difference with words like petunia is that in the input of sovjet, the vowel preceding the CiV-context must be underlyingly lax. The input allowing the feature lax to be preserved will yield the optimal output. This can be seen in (12). What still needs to be explained is the realization of the i of the context as a [j]. This, too, can be understood with the constraints already introduced. The realization of [j] is a consequence of the fact that lax vowels occur in closed syllables (Connect (Lax, BN)) and that syllables must have consonantal onsets (Onset). Since the only difference between [i] and [j] is that the root node of [i] is [-consonantal] and that of [j] is [+consonantal], the i of the context will be best realized as a glide. Due to Connect (Lax, BN) the first syllable, which contains a lax vowel, is closed. The syllable structure of the remaining stretch of segments, iet, is determined by Onset. When the i is parsed as a vowel, Onset is violated; when it is parsed as a consonant,

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however, Onset is satisfied. The better candidate, therefore, is [sɔf.jet]. Under this analysis, Sievers’s Law is completely upheld. The time has come to discuss the final pattern, that of mafia. Words of this pattern have a lax vowel preceding the CiV-context, but, contrary to sovjet, the i of the context is realized as a vowel. The important difference between mafia and sovjet is that in the former the consonant of the context is long but is not the latter. I will assume that the f in mafia is attached to two root nodes in the underlying form (for an application of this idea to a different problem, see van Oostendorp, this volume).6 A few arguments in support of the assumption that there are ambisyllabic consonants in Dutch have been given in section 13.2.1. As shown in that section, the behavior of ambisyllabic consonants suggests that they simultaneously occupy a coda and an onset. This makes them phonologically long, although they are phonetically not longer than other consonants. This observation is the key to explaining why long consonants are always heterosyllabic. There is no phonological reason to distinguish between long and short onset consonants, or between long and short coda consonants. There is no phonetic reason either. So, since they cannot be tautosyllabic, the conclusion must be that long consonants are always heterosyllabic. There must be constraints that guarantee this, but I will not discuss them here. I will simply assume that all long consonants are ambisyllabic. Since a consonant can only be long at the surface if its length is preserved from the input, there must be a faithfulness constraint that states that consonants linked to two root nodes in the input must be linked to two root nodes in the output as well. (18) Faith-Consonantal Length (Faith-Console) A consonant linked to two root nodes in the output must be linked to two root nodes in the input Ÿ a consonant linked to two root nodes in the input must be linked to two root nodes in the output.

The joint effects of the constraint in (18) and Connect (Lax, BN) result in the attested surface form of mafia. The former constraint ensures that the long consonant f is parsed as an ambisyllabic consonant. Consequently, the first syllable is closed and, due to the effect of Connect (Lax, BN), its vowel is lax. The ambisyllabic f is the onset of the i, which must be in the nucleus, where it is realized as a vowel. In (19) four candidates are compared with one another in relation to the constraints just mentioned. In (19a) the vowel is tense, but it is in a closed syllable (ambisyllabicity is indicated by a branch over the relevant consonant), a violation of Connect (Lax, BN). The candidates in (19b) and (19d) violate Faith-Console, since they do not have an ambisyllabic consonant. The optimal candidate (19c) satisfies both constraints.

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(19) Tableau of mafia Rootnode -son +cons

关

兴

Rootnode -son +cons

关

Faith-Console

Connect (Lax, BN)

兴

m a f i a a. Rootnode -son +cons

关

兴

Rootnode -son +cons

关

*!

兴

m a f i a b. m a. f i a ☞ c. Rootnode -son +cons

关

兴

*!

Rootnode -son +cons

关

兴

m a f i a | lax d. m a. f i a | lax

*!

This concludes the analysis of the three types of CiV-words. An account is given of words that have a tense vowel preceding a CiV-context and also of words that have a lax vowel in that context. Moreover, the analysis does not need to assume that there is an underlying difference between [i] and [j], in conformity with Sievers’s Law. The observation that most words seem to have tense vowels in a CiV-context is explained by the fact that tense is the unmarked vowel quality.7 This markedness can be interpreted quite literally in OT (Smolensky 1994): marked structures violate a markedness constraint; unmarked structures do not. A lax vowel will always violate at least one constraint (*Lax), while a tense vowel does not necessarily violate a constraint. In other words, a tense vowel is unmarked compared to a lax vowel. Unmarked linguistic structures do tend to be more frequent, which is reflected by the tendency of vowels preceding a CiV-context to be tense. In the next section I will turn my attention to an analysis in which the distinction between the two groups of vowels in Dutch is one of length, rather

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than of quality. I will show that such an approach cannot explain the lexical patterns found in CiV-words.

13.4. Two Alternative Approaches In this section I will argue that two alternative approaches fail to account for the attested tendency. An approach with a vowel theory based on length rather than on quality cannot appeal to markedness to account for the observed tendency (section 13.4.1). A second alternative, based on morpheme structure constraints, ensures that morphemes have a certain structure. These are language-specific constraints that prohibit certain structures at the level of the input. Such constraints are ruled out in OT, because they are not output oriented. Even apart from this objection, MSCs are unable to insightfully account for the data in (6)–(7) (section 13.4.2).

13.4.1 CiV and the Issue of Tenseness versus Length The facts in (3) and (4), repeated here as (20a–b), are usually interpreted as showing that vowels in Dutch contrast in length (van der Hulst 1984, Kager 1989, Booij 1995). (20) a. A syllable may end in a tense vowel, but not in a lax vowel. salie [sa.li] ‘sage’ *[sɑ.li] chaos [xa.ɔs] *[xɑ.ɔs] ‘chaos’ b. Lax vowels may be followed by two noncoronals, tense vowels by one. stom [stɔm] ‘stupid’ stomp [stɔmp] ‘punch’ stoom [stom] ‘steam’ stoomp *[stomp]

Length theory states that a nucleus contains exactly two positions. Furthermore, it is assumed that a lax vowel has one root node and a tense vowel has two. In (21a) an absolute well-formedness condition is stated: any nucleus must conform to this structure. (21a–b) are vowel representations. (21) a. nucleus x x b. tense vowel x x c. lax vowel | x

This means that a tense vowel fills up the nucleus all by itself, while a lax vowel needs company. This companion is necessarily a consonant, since if the

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lax vowel were lengthened (in other words, if a root node were added), it would not have the representation of a lax vowel anymore. There are two other assumptions: that in the position following the nucleus there is room for one more noncoronal consonant and that there is a rule saying that all long vowels are tense and all short vowels are lax. Undoubtedly, this covers the facts in (20a–b). Words cannot end in a lax vowel because a nucleus must have two positions and a lax vowel has only one. Lengthening the vowel will not help, since, as already indicated, this would alter the representation of the lax vowel and change into a tense vowel. The first vowel in hiatus cannot be lax for the same reason. A syllable with a lax vowel can be followed by two noncoronal consonants: one is its companion in the nucleus, and the other is the only other possible noncoronal consonant outside of the nucleus. A tense vowel can only be followed by one noncoronal consonant since a nucleus with a tense vowel cannot contain any consonants, and there is only one remaining position for a noncoronal. Although this analysis describes in an elegant way an important generalization concerning the phonology of Dutch, it is not clear whether it is the most insightful way to characterize the difference between the two sets of vowels. It does not shed a great deal of light on the CiV-data, as I will show now. In the analysis presented in section 13.3, the tendency observed in the CiVdata (namely, that vowels tend to be tense rather than lax before a CiVcontext) is explained in terms of markedness. It is not immediately obvious how a theory based on length would fare in this respect. First of all, it is not clear what counts as marked/unmarked in a theory based on length. The nucleus is equally marked for both types of vowels, since a nucleus consists always of two positions. With respect to the vowels themselves, it could be argued that the linguistic structure of lax vowels is simpler than that of tense vowels. This, however, is a surprising result, since cross-linguistically tense vowels seem less marked than lax vowels. If a language has lax vowels, it will also have tense vowels, but not the other way around. Moreover, I know of no language in which the number of lax vowels is higher than the number of tense vowels. Length theory can therefore not appeal to markedness as an explanation for the observed tendency in the CiV-data. Obviously, one would want a grammar to reflect tendencies found in a language if one wanted to understand the system properly. Therefore, a theory of vowels explaining their difference in quality terms is to be preferred over a theory of vowels distinguishing the two sets of vowels on the basis of length.

13.4.2 An Alternative Based on Morpheme Structure Constraints The patterns exhibited by the words in (6)–(7) are static: there are no alternations in the phonology of Dutch that actively produce any of these pat-

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terns. MSCs have been used to capture such patterns in the generative phonological theory preceding OT, and it is therefore interesting to compare the approach advanced here with an account based on MSCs. Another reason for looking at an analysis based on MSCs is that it is impossible to characterize the string VciV in a syllabic (or any other prosodic) format. It is easy to formulate an MSC for a static generalization that is true without any exceptions. For example, in Dutch diphthongs are never adjacent. There are also no alternations involved, since no morphological process yields a situation in which two diphthongs are adjacent. Yet, monophthongal vowels can be adjacent. One could, in principle, ascribe the possibility of adjacent monophthongal vowels and the nonoccurrence of adjacent diphthongs to an MSC that prohibits the latter constellation. The case at hand, however, is more complicated: a tendency needs to be explained. MSCs are inviolable constraints that hold sway over the input. As a consequence, once one of the patterns in (6)–(7) is captured by an MSC, the other patterns should, strictly speaking, not exist. However, it is possible to take a more lenient position and argue that there is an MSC saying that the first V in the string VCiV is always tense. The exceptions could then be accounted for in the same way, as has been done in the analysis in section 13.3, namely, by assuming that they must have a certain amount of underlying structure. The presence of this structure makes the exceptional words immune to the effects of the MSC. This solution has an important drawback, though. There is no explanation for the question of why most words have a tense vowel before a CiV-context. It would have been just as easy to formulate an MSC in which vowels before a CiV-context were lax. In short, neither alternative approach explains the facts introduced in (6)–(7). The crucial difference with the theory proposed in section 13.3 is the role of markedness. In both alternative approaches markedness plays no role, and there is therefore no reason for the observed tendency. In the theory defended here, markedness is the reason for the tendency. Unmarked vowels occur more often than marked vowels.

13.5. Conclusion The so-called CiV-generalization has been taken as a touchstone for a comparison between two theories of vowel representation. The theory, which is defended in this chapter, explains the attested pattern best and captures the difference between the two sets of vowels in Dutch, given in (2), as a difference in quality. This theory appeals to markedness to clarify a tendency in CiV-data, namely, that the vowel preceding the CiV-context is often tense. A theory of vowel representation that describes the difference between the two sets of vowels as a difference in length can make no such appeal.

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Apart from this main issue, other issues have also been addressed. First, another argument has been given in support of the notion of ambisyllabicity. The difference between the patterns exemplified by the words sovjet and mafia can only be understood if it is assumed that the f in mafia is ambisyllabic. Second, it has been argued that Sievers’s Law holds in Dutch. The vowel [i] and the glide [j] are different instantiations of the same segment. The vowel surfaces if the segment is parsed in a nucleus; the glide surfaces if the segment is parsed in the margin of a syllable. This has allowed me to compare sovjet and mafia since both instantiate a CiV-pattern. Finally, the analysis has shown that OT is capable of capturing lexical tendencies. In the case of the CiV-data discussed in this chapter, three different MSCs would be necessary. This shows that constraints pertaining to the surface, such as used in OT, can provide a deeper insight into the nature of the lexical form than constraints, which pertain to lexical forms.

notes 1.

2.

3. 4.

5.

Later in this chapter I will argue that the difference between two groups of vowels in Dutch is best analyzed in terms of quality rather than quantity. For this reason, I use the terms tense and lax in this section, although no arguments have yet been given to favor any theory explaining the distribution of vowels. A few words that end in a lax vowel followed by a consonant can be pronounced with bidet or without the consonant: bide (which, as far as I am concerned, is much more formal, to the point of being very affected). No one would ever dream of saying *toile for toilet. Stressed [i], as in ía [i.a] ‘to bray, to go hee-haw’, are not considered, since stressed vowels are always a nucleus. There are a few words that might seem problematic at first sight, e.g., fjord and fjeld or a name like Kjell. In these words the high coronal segment is in the onset and it never alternates, which seems to suggest that the [j] must also be underlying. However, one could also assume that the high coronal segment is lexically specified for onset. Given the principle of Richness of the Base, which says that inputs are free, this is certainly a possible input. An argument in favor of this analysis comes from a comparison with words like piano [piáno] or pyjama [piáma]. In informal or fast speech the latter words are pronounced with a glide: [pjano] and [pjama]. This may be because the constraint requiring syllables to have onsets (Onset) is ranked higher in informal speech than it is in more formal speech. No such alternative realization in informal or in formal speech is possible for words like fjord, fjeld, or Kjell. These words can have an underlying complex onset, which contains the high coronal segment. Words like piano or piyama, though, do not have such an underlying complex onset, and therein lies the difference between the two sets of words. Unfortunately, a complete analysis would take me too far astray. In fast or informal speech, the ranking of these constraints is reversed. Moreover, in fast or informal speech a constraint must ensure that only stressed syllables can have

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6.

7.

Ruben van de Vijver a Cj onset. So, although [pjáno] is acceptable in fast speech, *[petúnja] is not. See also note 4. Instead of being attached to two root nodes, it could have been assumed that the relevant segment has an underlying mora. Such an approach would make the same predictions, as far as I can see. However, earlier in this chapter I chose to consider a branching linguistic structure as more marked than an nonbranching structure. In a mora approach it is unclear how branchingness and markedness are related. Therefore, I have chosen to represent consonantal length as a consonantal feature tree, which is linked to two root nodes. As far as I know, there are no statistics available for this observation. Nevertheless, I think the observation is basically correct, since I find it harder to come up with examples that have a lax vowel preceding a CiV-context than to come up with examples of words that have a tense vowel preceding a CiV-context.

references Booij, G. (1981). Rule ordering, rule application, and the organization of grammars. In Phonologica 1980, ed. W. Dressler, 45–56. Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft. Booij, G. (1995). The Phonology of Dutch. Oxford: Clarendon. Calabrese, A. (1994). Sievers’s Law in Gothic: A synchronic analysis with some notes on its diachronic development. Linguistic Review 11: 149–194. Chomsky, N., and M. Halle. (1968). The Sound Pattern of English. Cambridge: MIT Press. Féry, C. (1995). Alignment, syllable and metrical structure in German. Doctoral dissertation, University of Tübingen. Féry, C. (1998). German word stress in Optimality Theory. Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 2: 101–142. Hammond, M. (1997). Vowel quantity and syllabification in English. Language 73: 1–17. van der Hulst, H. (1984). Syllable Structure and Stress in Dutch. Dordrecht: Foris. van der Hulst, H. (1985). Ambisyllabicity in Dutch. Linguistics in the Netherlands 1985: 195–210. van der Hulst, H. (1994). Radical CV phonology. Ms., Algemene Taalwetenschap, Rijksuniversiteit Leiden. Kager, R. (1989). A Metrical Theory of Stress and Destressing in English and Dutch. Dordrecht: Foris. Kiparsky, Paul. (1997). Sievers’ Law as prosodic optimization. Paper presented at Conference on Comparative Germanic, Marburg, Germany. Myers, S. (1987). Vowel shortening in English. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory. 5: 485–518. van Oostendorp, M. (1995). Vowel quality and syllable projection. Doctoral dissertation, Katholieke Universiteit Brabant, Tilburg. Prince, A., and P. Smolensky. (1993). Optimality Theory: Constraint interaction in generative grammar. Ms., Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J., and University of Colorado, Boulder. Riad, T. (1992). Stuctures in Germanic prosody: A diachronic study with special reference to the Nordic languages. Doctoral dissertation, Stockholm University, Stockholm. Sievers, E. (1878). “Zur Accent- und Lautlehre der Germanischen Sprachen.” Beiträge zur geschichte der Deutschen Sprachen Sprachen und Literatur 5: 63–163.

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Smolensky, Paul. (1994). Harmony, markedness and phonological activity. Ms., Johns Hopkins University. [Available from http://ruccs.rutgers.edu/roa-nog.html.] Trubetzkoy, N. (1939). Grundzüge der Phonologie. Prague: TCLP7. [6th ed Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1977.] Wiese, R. (1996). The Phonology of German. Oxford: Clarendon.

14 The Relative Harmony of /s+Stop/ Onsets Obstruent Clusters and the Sonority Sequencing Principle Frida Morelli

14.1. Introduction The organization of segments within the syllable and across syllables is traditionally assumed to be driven by principles of sonority, a property that ranks segments along a scale from most sonorous to least sonorous. Although the nature of sonority itself is highly controversial, a fairly uncontroversial scale ranks stops, fricatives, nasals, liquids, glides, and vowels in order of increasing sonority, as shown in the scale in (1):1 (1)

Stops < Fricatives < Nasals < Liquids < Glides < Vowels

A number of cross-linguistic tendencies on the distribution and sequencing of segments is expressed with reference to sonority scales of the type in (1). In particular, the Sonority Sequencing Principle (SSP) (Hooper 1976, Kiparsky 1979, Steriade 1982, Selkirk 1984, Clements 1990, Zec 1995, among others) states that in a syllable, the segment ranking highest on the sonority scale constitutes the syllable peak, with all other segments organized around it in such a way that the most sonorous segments are closer to the peak and the least sonorous ones are farthest away from it. A relatively significant number of languages show the phonotactic pattern in (2), whereby three basic types of consonant clusters occur in the onset.2 (2)

a. Stop + Sonorant b. Fricative + Sonorant c. Fricative + Stop/(Fricative)

Whereas clusters of the type (2a) and (2b) conform to the SSP (henceforth core clusters),3 because they show a rise in sonority toward the peak, clusters of the type (2c) are problematic because they represent a sonority reversal. Under the scale in (1), these clusters show a sonority fall toward the peak rather than a rise and are therefore not predicted by the SSP. Languages that 356

the relative harmony of / s+stop / onsets

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show this phonotactic pattern include Dutch, English, French, German, Haida, Havasupai, Hindi, Hungarian, Isthmus Zapotec, Italian, Mohave, Misantla Totonac, Swedish, Telugu, and Yuchi. On the contrary, the phonotactic pattern in (3) is predicted but, to the best of my knowledge, never found.4 (3)

a. Stop + Sonorant b. Fricative + Sonorant c. Stop + Fricative

The pattern in (3) would, indeed, be the preferred pattern under the scale in (1), because clusters of the form stop+fricative would be well formed in terms of sonority. In these clusters the more sonorous segment, that is, the fricative, occurs closer to the peak than the less sonorous one. The SSP predicts that stop+fricative clusters, rather than fricative+stop clusters, should co-occur with core clusters. Many researchers (Fudge 1969, Selkirk 1982, Steriade 1982, 1988, Chierchia 1984, Clements 1990, among others) have explained the occurrence of the pattern in (2) by arguing that fricative+stop clusters enjoy a special status in phonology and are, consequently, immune to the SSP. The arguments supporting the view that such clusters are special are mostly based on the fact that in many languages only /s/ can precede the stop in a fricative+stop cluster. In addition, these clusters show a different phonological behavior than that of core clusters, which has led to the conclusion that fricative+stop clusters are different from core clusters. In Italian, for example, s+Stop clusters, unlike core clusters, are unambiguously syllabified heterosyllabically when they occur in medial position (Chierchia 1984). Moreover, in Sanskrit, the perfect reduplicative prefix consists of a CV-syllable whose segmental material is entirely copied from the verbal root. When the root begins with a core cluster, the first member of the cluster is consistently copied into the reduplicant. If the root begins with an obstruent cluster, the stop is always copied into the reduplicant, regardless of whether it constitutes the first or second member of the cluster (Steriade 1982). In both circumstances the special behavior of fricative+stop clusters has been analyzed as a consequence of the heterosyllabicity of such clusters at the level where the SSP applies. In Morelli 1999, I argue that both phenomena do not bear on the issue of whether fricative+stop clusters form regular onsets in the language in question. In the case of Italian, I show that medial syllabification of fricative+stop clusters follows from the interaction of basic constraints on syllable structure.5 In the case of Sanskrit, instead, I argue that the different reduplicative pattern is a clear case of the emergence of the unmarked (TETU – McCarthy and Prince 1994, Struijke 1998). I argue that reduplication is not about the first or second member of the cluster but rather about relative markedness

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between fricatives and stops. Stops are consistently copied into the reduplicant because they are less marked segments than fricatives.6 Although the proposal that fricative+stop clusters are special and therefore immune to the SSP can explain the pattern in (2), as well as some of the facts related to such clusters, it does not say anything about the absence of the pattern in (3). Such proposals fail to establish the connection between the presence of the pattern in (2) with the absence of the pattern in (3). In this chapter I will propose that fricative+stop but not stop+fricative clusters are actually the unmarked case along the dimension of obstruent clusters. This proposal will establish the missing connection and explain straightforwardly why fricative+stop but not stop+fricative clusters can freely co-occur with core clusters. The chapter is organized as follows. In section 14.2 I will first discuss syllable phonotactics and reevaluate the SSP in terms of Optimality Theory (OT). In section 14.3 I will present the results of a typological study on the occurrence of obstruent clusters and provide an analysis that derives the unmarkedness of fricative+stop clusters, and in particular the s+Stop clusters. Section 14.4 concludes the chapter.

14.2. The Sonority Sequencing Principle and Optimality Theory The SSP has been known for over a century (Sievers 1881, Jespersen 1904, Sausurre 1914, Grammont 1933, and more recently Hooper 1976, Kiparsky 1979, Steriade 1982, Selkirk 1982, Clements 1990, among others). This principle captures the well-known generalization that the preferred order of segments within a syllable shows a rise in sonority toward the syllable peak. Such a principle is best regarded as expressing a strong universal tendency rather than an absolute universal of segment organization, due to the fact that violations are attested across languages. However, when the violations occur in a language, core clusters also occur (Greenberg 1978, Clements 1990). A number of researchers have attempted to preserve the universality of the SSP by arguing that common sonority violations, such as s+Stop clusters, are indeed special and do not really constitute violations of the SSP. Within the framework of lexical phonology (Pesetsky 1979, Kiparsky 1982, Mohanan 1982), in which different levels of representations are allowed, Steriade (1982) and Clements (1990), for example, propose that the SSP holds only at the level of core syllabification, that is, at the level where the cyclic or lexical syllabification rules apply. Postcyclic syllabification rules, in their proposal, are not constrained by relative sonority. More complex clusters are created by later adjunction rules applying at the periphery of the syllabification domain. By restricting the domain of application of the SSP to the level of core syllabification, both authors aim at preserving the universality of the SSP at the

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level where the principle applies. Universality of the SSP is also preserved in the proposals that treat sonority violations as single units. In such approaches, the SSP is not violated in as far as the clusters violating the SSP are considered monosegmental rather than bisegmental (Fudge 1969, Selkirk 1982). In OT (Prince and Smolensky 1993) all constraints are in principle violable. A constraint can be violated to avoid violation of a higher-ranked constraint. This means that the condition under which violations of the SSP are admitted in a grammar is that the SSP constraint is dominated by a faithfulness constraint that requires preservation of input clusters. Note, however, that constraint violability does not exhaustively solve the problem of SSP violations. The question of why fricative+stop clusters, but not other types of clusters, are more likely to co-occur with core clusters is still an open question. Before answering this question, it is important to understand the role the SSP plays in syllable phonotactics and how SSP violations are evaluated. As a starting point of our discussion, the SSP can be formulated as a positive markedness constraint as follows: (4)

Sonority Sequencing Principle (SSP) In a syllable, sonority increases toward the peak and decreases toward the margins.

The SSP constraint in an OT grammar has the same role as Clements’s Core Syllabification Principle. It classifies clusters into two types, those that conform to the SSP and those that violate it, as shown in the tableau in (5). (5) SSP a. tra b. rta

*

c. sta

*

Candidate (5a) is an example of an onset core cluster. Both (5b) and (5c) are examples of clusters that violate the SSP. Under the assumption that fricatives and stops constitute a single class with respect to sonority, candidates (5b) and (5c) represent two different types of violations. Candidate (5b) represents a sonority reversal – the least sonorous segment in the cluster occurs closer to the syllable peak than the most sonorous one; whereas candidate (5c) represents an example of a sonority plateau, that is, a cluster in which there is no difference in sonority between the members of the cluster.

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The SSP constraint, as stated, can only evaluate whether a cluster is well formed or ill formed with respect to the sonority generalization expressed by the constraint. The constraint, however, does not say anything about the relative harmony of the various core clusters, nor can it distinguish between the two types of violations that candidates (5b) and (5c) represent in the tableau. A system that only consisted of the SSP constraint would not be able to distinguish plateau violations from reversal violations. Moreover, such a system would imply that grammars either disallow or admit any type of sonority violations, which does not seem to be true because there are certain violations that are more common than others, and the presence of one type of violation does not necessarily imply the presence of another type. For this reason, I believe that the SSP can be best understood as a portmanteau constraint for a whole family of phonotactic constraints. As a first attempt I will assume that the SSP is actually two separate constraints, which are most likely portmanteau constraints themselves. The two constraints are formulated as negative markedness constraints and, in their simplest form, they ban plateaus and reversals as follows: (6)

*Plateau – Sonority plateaus are disallowed.

(7)

*Reversal – Sonority reversals are disallowed.

This system of constraints can now formally distinguish the three types of clusters as in the tableau in (8). (8) *Reversal

*Plateau

a. tra b. rta c. sta

* *

As (8) shows, this system of constraints can distinguish between marked and unmarked clusters with respect to sonority. As a matter of fact, markedness in OT corresponds to the presence of a mark with respect to a given constraint (defined as harmony). A form is, therefore, said to be marked with respect to some constraint C if it violates it and hence receives a mark. The form is unmarked with respect to that constraint if it does not violate it and therefore does not receive any marks. Core clusters are the unmarked cluster types, because they satisfy both *Reversal and *Plateau, whereas both sonority plateaus and reversals are marked because they violate the relevant constraint, respectively.7

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Surface phonotactic patterns are derived via the interaction of the two sonority constraints with Faithfulness. In the case of core clusters, there is no condition on the ranking between these constraints and Faithfulness, because core clusters satisfy both markedness constraints. For either plateaus or reversals to be admitted in a language it is necessary that Faithfulness dominate the relevant constraint. This is shown in the representative tableau in (9). (9) /rta/ a.

Faithfulness tra

*Reversal

*!

b. ☞ rta

*

In the same grammar, if /rta/ surfaces faithfully, an input /tra/ would as well, given that it is a more harmonic candidate with respect to the sonority constraints than a cluster containing a reversal. This is shown in (10). (10) /rta/

Faithfulness

*Reversal

*!

*

a. ☞ tra b.

rta

The implicational universal of the type observed in Greenberg 1978 and Clements 1990 that clusters violating sonority always imply the presence of core clusters (see Steriade 1994 for a different view) follows directly from the construction of the grammar.8 Whereas core clusters and reversals involve a change in sonority between the two members of the cluster, plateaus are different. Both members of the cluster have the same sonority rank; therefore any evaluation metrics of these types of clusters cannot possibly make reference to sonority. Some other parameter must be relevant in the evaluation of plateaus. Assuming a sonority scale such as the one in Clements 1990, which only refers to the major classes of segments (O < N < L < G), any two-member cluster containing two obstruents, two nasals, two liquids, or two glides would be classified as plateaus.9 Of these four types of plateaus, I will focus on obstruent clusters only. Obstruent clusters constitute an intriguing phenomenon because of their complex phonotactics and asymmetric phonological behavior with respect to core clusters in a number of languages. Moreover, if a connection can be established between the occurrence of the pattern in (2) and the

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absence of the pattern in (3), such a connection must be found within obstruent clusters first. In the rest of the chapter I will argue that the phonotactics of obstruent clusters must be analyzed in sonority independent terms. I will show that of all the obstruent clusters fricative+stop clusters are the unmarked cluster type along the dimension of the feature [continuant]. Among the fricative+stop clusters, s+Stop clusters are the least marked of all on the place dimension. Under this view, s+Stop clusters are expected to co-occur with core clusters.

14.3. The Typology of Obstruent Clusters As argued elsewhere (Morelli 1998, 1999), obstruent clusters are intended as combinations of fricatives (F) and stops (S). Such combinations can be of the following forms: • • • •

FS (e.g., English /st/, Havasupai /qp/, Haida /l´k/, German /ʃt/) SF (e.g., Wichita /ks/, Paipai /px/) FF (e.g., Italian /sf/, Nisqually /sc/) SS (e.g., Khasi /pt/, Georgian /t’ph/)

In syllable onsets,10 all 4 possible clusters are attested. However, only 6, out of the 15 possible co-occurrence combinations are attested. In other words, when languages allow plateaus of this kind, only a limited number of patterns are attested, as shown in (11).11 (11) FS

SF

SS

Type 1

✓

Type 2

✓

Type 3

✓

✓

Type 4

✓

✓

Type 5

✓

✓

✓

Type 6

✓

✓

✓

FF ✓ ✓ ✓

The pattern of occurrence in (11) shows that languages that only allow one type of obstruent cluster always allow a sequence containing a fricative and a stop. A cluster of the form FS is the only cluster that can occur in isolation, it is always present, and the presence of other types of combinations always implies its presence. In particular, a sequence of two fricatives always implies the presence of FS. Moreover, the presence of SF clusters implies the pres-

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ence of FS but does not imply the presence of either FF or SS. SS sequences imply the presence of SF sequences and consequently the presence of FS clusters. There seems to be no implicational relation between FF and SS clusters, nor between FF and SF clusters. The implications observed are schematized in (12). (12)

SS fl SF fl FF fi FS

Under the assumption that implicational universals can tell us something about the relative markedness of these types of clusters, it is established that FS are the least marked. FF are more marked than FS because they require the presence of the latter to occur in a language. Independently, SF are more marked than FS because SF only occur where FS also occur. Finally, SS are the most marked of all because they require the presence of both SF and FS to occur in a language. The generalizations represented in (12) cannot be explained in terms of sonority. If it is assumed that fricatives are more sonorous than stops (Steriade 1982, Selkirk 1984, among others), we would expect to find languages where core clusters co-occurred with SF clusters, the unattested pattern in (3). Such a pattern would be expected given that, under sonority, SF clusters, rather than FS clusters, would be the unmarked case, since they show a rise in sonority toward the syllable peak. However, as noted before, this is not an attested pattern. As a matter of fact, cross-linguistically the presence of FS clusters does not necessarily imply the presence of SF clusters. Moreover, if sonority were really at stake we would expect to find some implication of the type SF fi FS or FS fi SF in coda clusters. The implication SF fi FS could be interpreted as evidence that fricatives are indeed more sonorous than stops. The implication FS fi SF in coda clusters could also suggest that sonority is at stake. SF could be argued to be the unmarked type in the coda, which would represent the reversal pattern of the onset. However, neither implication has been observed in the coda. There are languages that allow FS (Mongolian) or SF coda clusters (Attic Greek), independently of each other. All these observations lead to the conclusion that sonority is not relevant to obstruent clusters. I propose, instead, to analyze these types of clusters within a domain in which parameters other than sonority hold. In particular I will account for the generalizations observed in obstruent clusters in terms of manner and place features.

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14.3.1 The Analysis The markedness relationships established for obstruent clusters can be expressed in terms of harmonic orderings, as in (13). (13) a. FS Ɑ FF b. FS Ɑ SF Ɑ SS

The harmonic orderings represented in (13) are derived by the set of markedness constraints12 given in the following bulleted list. The constraints are two OCP constraints (Leben 1973, Goldsmith 1979, McCarthy 1986, Yip 1988, Odden 1988) on each value of the feature [continuant] and a constraint that disallows a tautosyllabic sequence of a stop followed by an obstruent.13 • OCP[-cont] – Tautosyllabic [-continuant] segments are disallowed in onset. • OCP[+cont] – Tautosyllabic [+continuant] segments are disallowed in onset. • SO – A tautosyllabic sequence of a stop followed by any obstruent is disallowed in onset.

These constraints14 characterize the harmonic orderings in (13), or in other words, the markedness relationships among the four types of obstruent clusters that have been derived from the implicational universals observed. Universal markedness relations are characterized by means of a strategy of analysis, which is formalized in (14).15 (14) The Subset Strategy S1 ⱮUG S2 iff the marks of S2 Ã marks of S1. A Structure S1 is universally less harmonic, and hence more marked, than a Structure S2 if and only if the list of marks assigned to S2 is a proper subset of the list of marks assigned to S1.

This strategy characterizes universal markedness relationships among forms and is implicit in the harmony evaluation metric of Prince and Smolensky (1993), that is, the “Cancellation Lemma.” This strategy derives universal markedness without fixed rankings, as in the case of the place hierarchy in Prince and Smolensky. This strategy consists in showing that structures for which markedness relationships hold are evaluated against sets of constraints that are in a stringency relationship (Prince 1997). Two constraints are in a stringency relationship when they are in a special to general relationship, and they disagree on some candidate set, but do not conflict, with the general assigning a proper superset of the marks assigned by the specific constraint. The markedness relationships among the four different types of

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obstruent clusters are therefore obtained by evaluating them against the three markedness constraints, as the tableau in (15) shows. (15) OCP[+cont]

*SO

OCP[-cont]

a. FS b. FF

*

c. SF

*

d. SS

*

*

As (15) shows, the set of constraints proposed can derive the harmonic orderings represented in (13). FS is the most harmonic of all the clusters because it receives no marks on any of the constraints. For this reason, FS are the unmarked clusters among the obstruent clusters. Both FF and SF are less harmonic than FS because both candidates contain a mark that FS does not contain. In particular FF is marked with respect to OCP[+cont] and SF is marked with respect to *SO. The marks that FF and SF receive are not identical; therefore there is no harmonic ordering (Prince and Smolensky 1993: chapter 5) between the two clusters. No relative harmony can therefore be established between FF and SF. Harmonic ordering, on the contrary, exists between SF and SS. SS is less harmonic than SF because the list of marks of SS includes all of the marks assigned to SF plus one, that is, the mark assigned by OCP[-cont]. Note that, since the list of marks of FS is empty, FS is obviously more harmonic than SS, as well as SF. To sum up, I have shown that there are markedness relations holding among the different types of obstruent clusters. Of the four obstruent clusters, FS onsets are the unmarked case for obstruent clusters on the dimension where the feature [continuant] is relevant. On the place dimension, the only clusters that show systematic place restrictions in the onset are FS sequences.16 Whereas there are no major place restrictions on the place of articulation of the stop in an FS cluster, the study confirms the well-known fact that, in most languages, the only fricative that occurs in an FS cluster is /s/. I propose that the place of articulation asymmetry between the fricative and the stop in an FS cluster is due to neutralization of place in a position of weak perceptibility. I propose a system of constraints that incorporates the notion of segmental release, following on work in the OT literature by Lombardi (1995), Padgett (1995), and Steriade (1997). Segmental release, that is, the burst that accompanies the offset phase of a consonantal constriction, has been known to provide important acoustic cues to place contrast and laryngeal features (Kingston 1990, Ohala 1990,

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Steriade 1993a, 1993b, 1994, 1995a, 1955b, Lombardi 1995, Padgett 1995). As pointed out by Padgett (1995), release is “virtually phonetically inevitable” in presonorant position, whereas it can be masked by the presence of a following consonant. The latter position is the environment in which consonants are less likely to be perceived because the perceptual cues are impoverished. Padgett (1995) proposes to implement the idea that features under release are perceptually more salient by release-sensitive faithfulness. His system for place features assumes that all consonants are released before a tautosyllabic sonorant; otherwise they are unreleased. The system consists of a special release-sensitive faithfulness constraint, FaithREL, and a general faithfulness constraint, Faith, with the fixed ranking in (16). (16) FaithREL >> Faith is universally fixed.

Following Padgett’s work, I propose that the pattern observed in onset obstruent clusters can be modeled on the basis of the constraints in (17)–(19). (17) IdentRelPlace : Released obstruents and their input correspondents must agree in place feature.

This constraint requires that obstruents occurring in a release position, that is, presonorant, must maintain their input place of articulation. This constraint basically reflects the fact that segmental release contains the strongest cues and is therefore given a prominent status in the system. The other constraint in the system is a general constraint that ranges over obstruents only, following Padgett (1995): (18) Ident-Obstruent-Place Correspondent obstruents must agree in place features.

The ranking between these two constraints is universally fixed on the basis of Padgett’s model: (19) IdentRelPlace >> Ident-Obstruent-Place

The tableau in (20) shows how the interaction of these two faithfulness constraints with the place hierarchy of Prince and Smolensky (1993) derives the asymmetry in place between the two members of an FS cluster. (20) /fpV/

IdentRelPlace

*Lab

Ident-Obs-Place

*Cor

a. ☞ spV

*

*

**

b.

fpV

**!

c.

ftV

*!

d.

stV

*!

*

* *

*

**

**

the relative harmony of / s+stop / onsets

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In (20), an input of the form /fp/ that contains a labial in both preobstruent and prevocalic positions surfaces as /sp/ with a coronal in preobstruent position due to place neutralization in the position not protected by the releasesensitive faithfulness constraint. Candidates (20c) and (20d) both incur a violation of the higher-ranked release-sensitive faithfulness constraint because the prevocalic /p/ is neutralized to /t/, thus violating the constraint that preserves place contrast in the release-sensitive position. Candidate (20b), instead, satisfies IdentRelPlace, but violates *Lab twice, once because of the labial fricative and the other because of the labial stop. Notice, however, that the fatal violation is actually the one incurred because of the labial fricative and not the one incurred because of the labial stop, which is incurred by the winning candidate as well. Parsing a labial in prevocalic position is better than neutralizing it to coronal to avoid violation of the higher-ranked IdentRelPlace constraint. On the contrary, parsing a labial in preobstruent position is worse than neutralizing it, because place in that position is only preserved by the general constraint Ident-Obstruent-Place, which is, however, dominated by the *Lab constraint. Candidate (20a), in which place is preserved in the segment occurring adjacent to a vowel, but neutralized in preobstruent position, is the optimal candidate because it only incurs violations of lower-ranked constraints. To conclude this section, I have shown that the fact that /s/ rather than /f/ or /x/ is the preferred fricative in FS clusters follows from the fact that /s/ is the least-marked fricative and thus able to survive in a position where neutralization of place is likely to occur.

14.4. Conclusion In this chapter I have proposed that s+Stop clusters are the unmarked obstruent clusters. They are unmarked along the manner dimension, because they are FS clusters, which are argued to be the unmarked case for obstruent clusters. They are unmarked on the place dimension, because the least marked place of articulation (i.e., coronal) occurs in a position in which place is not protected by a special faithfulness constraint. Under this view, then, the common pattern attested across languages in which s+Stop clusters co-occur in a grammar with core clusters is not only predicted but also expected.

notes 1. Quite controversial is whether stops and fricatives should constitute a single class with respect to sonority. I will argue that the facts observed for obstruent clusters strongly suggest that these classes of segments form a single class with respect to sonority.

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2. The use of parentheses in (2c) will become clear later. 3. In this chapter, I will not be concerned with the relative well-formedness of core clusters. 4. The pattern in (3c) should not be confused with the one in which stop+fricative sequences are clearly affricates. Stop+fricative sequences are analyzed as affricates when they pattern with single segments with respect to syllabification, reduplication, or other phonological processes. Lombardi (1991) provides a full list of diagnostics to determine affricate-hood. 5. The hierarchy that accounts for the different syllabification of medial core clusters and s+Stop clusters is Syllable-Contact-Law >> *Complex >> NoCoda. The Syllable-Contact-Law constraint is crucially formulated as a negative constraint: a preceding coda must not be lower in sonority than the following onset. As stated the constraint applies nonvacuously only if the segment in the coda is lower in sonority than the segment of the following onset (see tableaux in (i) and (ii)). On the contrary, the constraint is vacuously satisfied both if the segment in the coda is higher in sonority than the one in the following onset or if the segments are equal in sonority (see tableaux in (iii) and (iv)). (i) /metro/

Syll-Contact-Law

a. ☞ me:.tro b.

met.ro

*Complex

Nocoda

* *!

*

(ii) /africa/

Syll-Contact-Law

a. ☞ a:.frica b.

af.rica

*Complex

Nocoda

* *!

*

(iii) /sarto/

Syll-Contact-Law

a. ☞ sar.to b.

sa.rto

*Complex

Nocoda

*

*

*Complex

Nocoda

*!

(iv) /pasta/

Syll-Contact-Law

a. ☞ pas.ta b.

pa.sta

* *

6. Based on inventory considerations, I argue for the fixed universal ranking *[+continuant] >> *[-continuant] in Morelli 1999. 7. Determining whether the two constraints are universally ranked is beyond the scope of this chapter. However, if we adopt Clements’s intuition that sonority reversals are more complex then sonority plateaus then a fixed ranking between the two constraints could be proposed whereby *Reversal » *Plateau. This would, however, predict that reversals only occur if plateaus also occur. Currently, I am not aware of such an implication.

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8. By decomposing the SSP constraint into two separate unranked constraints, four types of languages are predicted: languages that allow core clusters only (*Plateau, *Reversal >> Faithfulness); languages that allow core clusters and plateaus (*Reversal >> Faithfulness >> *Plateau); languages that allow core clusters and reversals (*Plateau » Faithfulness » *Reversal); and finally languages that allow all three types of clusters (Faithfulness >> *Plateau, *Reversal). 9. The question whether nasal clusters or liquid clusters, or sonorant clusters in general, exhibit generalizations comparable to the ones observed for obstruent clusters still remains an open question. I know of no literature that specifically deals with sonorant plateaus. 10. The typology is limited to sequences of length two in syllable onsets. I use syllable onset for both word-initial and medial onsets. The typology differs from Greenberg (1978), because he includes also affricates in his universals. Unlike Greenberg, and following Sagey (1986) and Lombardi (1990), affricates are viewed as single units with two value specifications for the feature [continuant], rather than as a combination of two distinct segments that form a sequence of a stop and a fricative. Affricates, therefore, do not form clusters of their own but can be one of the members of an obstruent cluster. 11. Because of space limitations I list the languages in the typology without their references. See Morelli 1999 for the specific references. Type 1: English, Haida, Havasupai, Hindi, Isthmus Zapotec, Italian, Mazateco, Mislanta Totonac, Modern Greek, Telugu, and Yuchi. Type 2: Dutch. Type 3: Wichita. Type 4: Nisqually, Paipai, and Pashto. Type 5: Attic Greek, Dakota, and Khasi. Type 6: Georgian, SerboCroatian, Seri, Tsou, and Yateé Zapotec. 12. These constraints are actually relativized to onset since the generalizations observed in the coda appear to be different from the ones observed in the onset. 13. A similar constraint is proposed in Steriade 1994. 14. For a discussion of the factorial typology generated by these constraints, see Morelli 1999. 15. A more detailed discussion of this subset strategy is provided in Morelli 1999. 16. The languages that I have surveyed do not in general display any restriction on the place of articulation of the second stop in an SS cluster. See Morelli 1999 for charts of obstruent clusters in those languages.

references Chierchia, G. (1984). Length, syllabification and the phonological cycle in Italian. Journal of Italian Linguistics 8: 5–34. Clements, G. N. (1990). The role of the sonority cycle in core syllabification. In Papers in Laboratory Phonology I: Between the Grammar and Physics of Speech, ed. J. Kingston and M. Beckman, 282–333. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fudge, E. (1969). Syllables. Journal of Linguistics 5: 253–286. Goldsmith, J. (1979). Autosegmental Phonology. New York: Garland. [Doctoral dissertation, 1976.] Grammont, M. (1933). Traité de phonétique. Paris: Libraire Delagrave. Greenberg, J. H. (1978). Some generalizations concerning initial and final consonant clusters. In Universals of Human Language, Vol. 2: Phonology, ed. J. H. Greenberg, 243–279. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.

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Hooper, J. B. (1976). An Introduction to Natural Generative Phonology. New York: Academic Press. Jespersen, O. (1904). Lehrbuch der Phonetik. Leipzig and Berlin. Kingston, J. (1990). Articulatory binding. In Papers in Laboratory Phonology I, ed. J. Kinston and M. E. Beckman, 406–434. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kiparsky, P. (1979). Metrical structure assignment is cyclic. Linguistic Inquiry 10: 421–441. Kiparsky, P. (1982). Lexical phonology and morphology. In Linguistics in the Morning Calm, ed. I. S. Yang, 3–91. Seoul: Hanshin. Leben, W. (1973). Suprasegmental phonology. Doctoral dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, Mass. Lombardi, L. (1990). The non-linear organization of the affricate. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 8: 375–425. Lombardi, L. (1991). On the representation of the affricate. In University of Massachusetts Occasional Papers 13, ed. G. Lamontagne and A. Taub, 87–135. Amherst, Mass.: GLSA. Lombardi, L. (1995). Positional faithfulness and the phonology of voicing in OT. Ms., University of Maryland, College Park. McCarthy, J. (1986). OCP effects: Gemination and antigemination. Linguistic Inquiry 17: 207–263. McCarthy, J., and A. Prince. (1994). The emergence of the unmarked. Ms., University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J. Mohanan, K. P. (1982). Lexical phonology. Doctoral dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, Mass. Morelli, F. (1998). Markedness relations and implicational universals in the factorial typology of onset obstruent clusters. NELS 28 2: 107–120. Morelli, F. (1999). The phonotactics and phonology of obstruent clusters in optimality theory. Doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park. Odden, D. (1988). Anti antigemination and the OCP. Linguistic Inquiry 19: 451–475. Ohala, J. (1990). The phonetics and phonology of aspects of assimilation. In Papers in Laboratory Phonology I, ed. J. Kingston and M. E. Beckman, 258–275. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Padgett, J. (1995). Partial class behavior and nasal place assimilation. In Proceedings of the Arizona Phonology Conference: Workshop on Features in Optimality Theory. Coyote Working Papers. Tucson: University of Arizona. Pesetsky, D. (1979). Russian morphology and lexical theory. Ms., MIT, Cambridge, Mass. Prince, A. (1997). Stringency and anti-Paninian hierarchies. Handout from the 1997 Institute. Prince, A., and P. Smolensky. (1993). Optimality theory: Constraint interaction in generative grammar. Ms., Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J., and University of Colorado, Boulder. Sagey, E. (1986). The representation of features and relations in nonlinear phonology. Doctoral dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, Mass. [Published by Garland Publications, New York, 1991.] Sausurre, F. de. (1914). Cours de Linguistique Générale. Lausanne and Paris: Payot. Selkirk, E. O. (1982). The syllable: The structure of phonological representations. In Advances in Nonlinear Phonology (part 2), ed. H. van der Hulst and N. Smith, 337–383. Dordrecht: Foris. Selkirk, E. O. (1984). On the major class features and syllable theory. In Language Sound Structure, ed. M. Aronoff and R. Oehrle, 107–135. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

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Sievers, E. (1881). Grundzüge der Phonetik. Leipzig: Breitkopf and Hartel. Steriade, D. (1982). Greek prosodies and the nature of syllabification. Doctoral dissertation, MIT, Cambridge, Mass. Steriade, D. (1988). Reduplication and syllable transfer in Sanskrit and elsewhere. Phonology 5: 73–155. Steriade, D. (1993a). Closure, release and nasal contours. In Nasality, ed. M. Huffman and R. Krakow, 401–470. San Diego: Academic Press. Steriade, D. (1993b). Positional neutralization. Ms., University of California, Los Angeles. Steriade, D. (1994). Complex onsets as single segments: The Mazateco pattern. In Perspectives in Phonology, ed. J. Cole and C. Kisseberth, 203–291. Stanford, Calif.: CSLI Publications. Steriade, D. (1995a). Underspecification and markedness. In Handbook of Phonological Theory, ed. J. Goldsmith, 114–174. Oxford: Blackwell. Steriade, D. (1995b). Laryngeal neutralization and laryngeal features. Paper presented at the Arizona Phonology Conference, University of Arizona, Tucson. Steriade, D. (1997). Phonetics in phonology: The case of laryngeal neutralization. Ms., University of California, Los Angeles. Struijke, C. (1998). Reduplicant and output TETU in Kwakwala: A new model of Correspondence. In University of Maryland Working Papers in Linguistics 7: Papers in Phonology, ed. H. Fukazawa et al., 150–178. College Park: Department of Linguistics, University of Maryland. Yip, M. (1988). The obligatory contour principle and phonological rules: A loss of identity. Linguistic Inquiry 19: 65–100. Zec, D. (1995). Sonority constraints on syllable structure. Phonology 12: 85–129.

part five HOW CONCRETE IS PHONOTACTICS?

15 The Independent Nature of Phonotactic Constraints An Alternative to Syllable-Based Approaches Juliette Blevins

15.1. Introduction This chapter questions one of the most basic assumptions within syllable theory: namely that phonotactic constraints are largely syllable-based.1 In this chapter I argue that segmental and feature-based phonotactic constraints on consonant sequencing are most profitably viewed as syllable-independent statements. Evidence for the syllable-independent nature of phonotactics comes from three domains. First, it can be demonstrated that, languageinternally, the syllable-based view of phonotactics is, in many cases, empirically inadequate. Second, cross-linguistic comparisons demonstrate that languages with arguably distinct syllabifications have identical phonotactic constraints. Third, emergent phonotactic universals on consonant sequencing are only evident when phonotactics are stated independent of syllable structure. Three important points need to be made at the outset. First, though I present evidence that phonotactics are to a large extent independent of syllable structure, I am not denying the existence of syllables. On the contrary, in many of the languages examined in this study, evidence for phonological syllables exists in the form of syllable-sensitive rules of stress assignment, syncope, vowel reduction, reduplication, and consistent judgments of syllabifications across speakers. Second, in languages where phonotactic statements and other arguably syllable-based statements do not converge on a single syllable structure, one might argue for “basic” and “derived” syllabifications for distinct phonological domains. However, if two distinct syllabifications are Earlier versions of this chapter were presented at the University of York; GLOW, Potsdam; University of California, Berkeley; University of Texas, Austin; and Phonology Round Table, Nice in the spring of 1999. I am grateful to these audiences for valuable discussion and give special thanks to Larry Hyman for inviting me to Berkeley to spend several weeks discussing these topics. Finally, the intellectual debt to Donca Steriade should be clear throughout, but it is worth highlighting here.

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needed for many of the world’s languages precisely where phonotactics are involved, then one alternative strategy is to consider the possibility that phonotactics are not syllable based. This is the strategy adopted here. Third, though native speaker intuitions regarding word-internal syllabifications will be used as evidence where available, there is a growing body of literature suggesting that these judgments are variable across speakers in many languages and that this variability reflects inference strategies based on wordedge phonotactics (see Steriade 1999). The chapter is organized as follows. In section 15.2, I highlight certain empirical inadequacies of the syllable-based view of phonotactics. I present examples of languages in which the syllable structure required for phonotactic constraints does not converge with that required for metrical structure, native speaker syllabifications, or other aspects of phonotactics. In addition, identical or parallel phonotactic constraints are adduced in languages with distinct syllabifications, providing cross-linguistic evidence for the independence of consonant phonotactics and syllable structure. Finally, I present phonotactics that defy syllabic statements altogether. Section 15.3 provides motivation for the approach in the form of emergent cross-linguistic phonotactic universals that reveal themselves only when phonotactics are liberated from syllable-based statements. These phonotactics include the distribution of contrastive laryngeal features, the distribution of contrastive place features, and the distribution of medial CCC and/or word-edge CC clusters. In section 15.4 I briefly comment on the nature of the phonotactic constraints identified. While these constraints may have clear phonetic origins, their synchronic statement is purely phonological, with no reference to phonetic features. Finally, in section 15.5 the implications of these findings for Optimality Theory (OT) are discussed. Though this volume is primarily devoted to studies of the syllable within OT, I have tried to remain relatively theory neutral in presentation and analysis, since the major finding of this study is to a great extent theory independent. Given the existence of syllables, some means of representing them, and some means of representing string-based phonotactic constraints, the conclusion that phonotactic constraints are best expressed as string-based statements without reference to syllables is easily adapted to a variety of theoretical frameworks.

15.2. Where Syllable-Based Phonotactics Fail The strongest empirical support for theories of syllable structure lies in their potential to simultaneously generate predictions in three distinct empirical domains: word-based phonotactics; the stress-attracting or tone-bearing properties of V and VX sequences in distinct cluster environments; and native

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speaker intuitions as to where syllable breaks fall. If phonotactics are stated with reference to syllable structure, as in (1), then this syllable structure should be the same as that referred to by other arguably syllable-sensitive processes. Studies supporting this approach include Kahn 1976 for English, Broselow 1979 for Cairene Arabic, and Harris 1983 for Spanish. (1)

Syllable-based phonotactics Phonotactics are determined by phonotactic constraints of the sort [aF] is/is not licensed in P(s) where [aF] is a set of feature values and P(s) is a syllabic position (e.g., syllable-initially, syllable-finally, in the Onset, in the Coda, in the same Onset as [bG]).

(2)

String-based phonotactics Phonotactics are determined by phonotactic constraints of the sort [aF] is/is not licensed in K2 where [aF] is a set of feature values and K is a description of a string of features, segments, and identifiable (word, morpheme) boundaries.

However, cases in which rhythmic patterns, phonotactics, and speaker intuitions fail to converge on one set of syllabic structures suggest the need to explore alternatives. This study explores an alternative approach in which syllabifications necessary for phonotactic statements may diverge from those necessary for other phonological statements precisely because these phonotactics are defined independent of syllable structure, as shown in (2).3 The phonological literature contains many examples of ostensibly syllablesensitive phonotactic patterns. A common cross-linguistic case is word-final laryngeal neutralization (devoicing, deglottalization, deaspiration), which also commonly occurs in preobstruent position. To generalize over these two seemingly disparate environments, syllable structure is invoked. The claim is that neutralization occurs syllable-finally (or in the coda). However, detailed studies of these phonotactic patterns demonstrate that not all patterns of laryngeal feature distribution can be stated in terms of syllable structure because the syllable structure necessary for phonotactic constraints is distinct from that required for other phonological patterns (Blevins 1993, Steriade 1997). A well-studied case of this kind is Klamath. Blevins (1993) argues that the Klamath facts strongly support a syllable-independent statement of laryngeal feature distribution, as in (2). This is because in one and the same language, identical VTRV sequences (T an oral stop, R a plain sonorant)4 must be analyzed sometimes as VT.RV and other times as V.TRV (where a period indicates a syllable boundary). In particular, distinctive aspiration and ejection on obstruents are licensed only before plain (nonlaryngealized) sonorants,

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never before obstruents. Syllable-based accounts of this neutralization have been proposed (e.g., Steriade 1982, Kingston 1985, 1990, Lombardi 1991), all requiring that VTRV sequences be syllabified as V.TRV. However, the stress rule in Klamath allows vowels in _CCV to attract stress, where CC includes TR.5 This is also the context for reduction of /a/ to schwa, which also applies word-finally before a consonant or consonant cluster. A rule of vowel syncope applies under prefixation, just in case the vowel is in the context _CV. This rule never applies in _TRV. Finally, the pattern of preobstruent neutralization observed word-medially is paralleled in word-initial CC clusters. In this case, the syllable-based accounts are forced to treat word-initial TT clusters as sequences of coda + onset, despite the fact that under reduplication all CC clusters are copied, independent of their featural content. (3)

Divergent syllabifications in Klamath (where [,] are word boundaries) Syllable-based laryngeal neutralization V.TRV VT.TV [.TRV [T.TV Stress VT.RV VT.TV Vowel reduction VT.RV VT.TV Syncope VT.RV VT.TV Reduplication [.TRV [.TTV

Assuming syllable-based neutralization, we are faced with the divergent and problematic syllabifications shown in (3). Four independent processes refer to syllabifications that are distinct from those necessary for a syllable-based account of laryngeal neutralization. Instead of insisting on a syllable-based account of laryngeal neutralization, and proposing two levels of syllabification for a single language, Blevins (1993) suggests a syllable-independent constraint on Klamath laryngeal feature distribution, as in (4). With this constraint, VC.CV syllabification can be viewed as exceptionless and follows from a simple constraint ranking where *Complex Onset dominates *NoCoda. (4)

Laryngeal phonotactics [L-O1] (an inviolable synchronic constraint) An obstruent with specified laryngeal features must be followed by a plain sonorant: [-son, LAR] is licensed only /_[+son, ØLAR]

A similar pattern is found in Lithuanian (Steriade 1997: 16–20), where native speaker intuitions are available. In Lithuanian, as in Klamath, an obstruent voicing contrast is present only in presonorant environments. At the same time, speakers break all VCCV sequences into VC.CV (despite the existence of certain word-initial TR clusters). The situation is entirely parallel to Klamath. A syllable-based statement of neutralization, where devoicing occurs in the coda, requires V.TRV syllabifications to block neutralization.

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But native speakers syllabify these strings as VT.RV, just like all other VCCV sequences. Again, by proposing the syllable-independent statement in (4), we can adopt the convergent intuitions of VC.CV syllabification without compromise. Among Indo-European languages, what makes Lithuanian somewhat unique is not its overall pattern of laryngeal feature distribution but its regular splitting of consonant sequences C.C (including T.R) between syllables.6 The parallel distribution of laryngeal features in Lithuanian and German constitute additional evidence for syllable-independent phonotactics. In both languages, obstruent voicing contrasts are found in presonorant position only, despite the fact that intervocalic VTRV can be tautosyllabic in German (e.g., pl, bl, kl, gl, pr, br, kr, gr tr, dr) but not in Lithuanian. Compare Lithuanian res.pùb.li.ka ‘republic’ with German Re.pu.blik.7 The Klamath and Lithuanian examples both involve laryngeal features, but the same sorts of divergent language-internal syllabifications are necessary in syllable-based analyses of place-of-articulation phonotactics. Consider Manam (Lichtenberk 1983) where, nonfinally, the only codas are nasals homorganic with following Cs: embeʔ i ‘sacred flute’, lunta ‘moss’, uŋ guma ‘person from a village other than one’s own’, m-panana ‘I will run’, n-doʔ -i ‘I will take them’, ŋ -ŋ ara ‘I will swim’ (/m/ 1 sg. irr.), and so on. Word-finally, the only codas are nasals. In absolute word-final position, that is, before pause, m and ŋ occur (but not n), and these two nasals are in free variation (Lichtenberk 1983: 30). Syllable-based analyses of nasal-stop homorganicity constraints (Ito 1986, Goldsmith 1990) take the form of coda constraints. These constraints typically prohibit major place features licensed solely by association with coda position (e.g., *Place in the coda); surface place features in the coda are licensed only by their association with the following syllable onset position. While it is clear that nasal place of articulation is noncontrastive in all Manam codas, what the syllable-based analysis cannot handle straightforwardly is the occurrence of labial or dorsal place features in word-final codas only.8 On the other hand, a syllable-independent analysis invokes *[+nas, COR] word-finally, and *[+nas, PLACE] before all obstruents. Compare this with a coda-based licensing account, where word-final codas are treated as extrametrical or as onsets of degenerate syllables.9 The problem with these syllable-based accounts is that stress in Manam is attracted to word-final VN]; stress falls on a final “heavy” syllable, otherwise on the penultimate. Here again, a syllable-based phonotactic constraint results in divergent syllabifications of word-final VN sequences, while a syllable-independent approach does not. Manam is not unusual in barring place contrasts before obstruents. Many languages show this pattern for nasal-place, obstruent-place, or both. In Japanese, /p, t, k/ contrast in presonorant position (intervocalically and wordinitially before a vowel), but no place contrast is possible word-finally, where

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obstruents are absent, or in preobstruent position, where an obstruent is always homorganic to the following consonant forming the first half of a geminate. Woleaian (Sohn 1984,Tawerilmang and Sohn 1984, Harrison 1995a), a Western Trukic language, shows exactly the same distribution of place features as Japanese but allows (tautosyllabic) word-initial geminates as well: kkii ‘spicy’, ttoo ‘deep’, and so on. And in Saipan Carolinian (Jackson 1984a, 1984b), a Trukic language closely related to Woleaian, with the same distribution of place features, word-final voiceless vowels have been lost, resulting in wordfinal consonants with contrastive place features (sœœt ‘sea’, arap ‘next’, etc.) and word-final tautosyllabic geminates as well (takk ‘finished’, xacc ‘good’, etc.). My account of these languages (and many others; see 15.3.2) is that major place features are licensed only prevocalically: [+cons, PLACE] is licensed only /_V. Syllable-based analyses of the Japanese pattern (Ito 1986, Goldsmith 1990, Ito and Mester 1993) take the form of coda constraints, as for Manam. In the case of Japanese, a constraint disallows major place features licensed solely by association with coda position; surface place features in the coda are licensed only by their association with the following syllable onset position. A problem arises when we attempt to extend this analysis to Woleaian and Saipan Carolinian, since the syllable-based analysis requires that all geminates constitute heterosyllabic clusters. We are forced to adopt k.kii, t.too, and so forth for Woleaian and sœœ.t, ara.p, tak.k, xac.c for Saipan Carolinian, though Trukic phonology supports the analysis of word-initial and medial geminates as complex onsets (Harrison 1995a: 915, Churchyard 1991).10 Finally, certain phonotactic patterns defy even the cleverest syllable-based treatment. Consider, for example, a common pattern for the distribution of laryngeal features on sonorants. In Yowlumne (Yokuts) (Newman 1944, Archangeli 1984, Archangeli and Pulleyblank 1994, Steriade 1997), the contrast between glottalized (or laryngealized) sonorants and nonglottalized sonorants is limited to postvocalic position: VR’V, VR’CV, and VR’]. In intervocalic position, the glottalized sonorant is arguably an onset, while postvocalically before another consonant or word-finally, it is a coda. Looking at positions of neutralization, we can compare word-initial position, where the consonant is an onset, to postconsonantal position, where the sonorant is also an onset. However, *[+son, LAR]/Onset is too strong, since this will incorrectly predict neutralization of intervocalic sonorants. No syllable-based account is possible, and to my knowledge, none has been proposed. I suggest that the Yowlumne constraint be formulated as in (5).11 (5)

Laryngeal phonotactics [L-S1] (an inviolable synchronic constraint) A sonorant with specified laryngeal features must be preceded by a vowel: [+son, LAR] is licensed only /V_

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A similar pattern of distribution is evident for the contrast between apicoalveolar and apicopostalveolar coronal consonants in many Australian Aboriginal, Indic, and Dravidian languages (Dixon 1980, Hamilton 1995, Steriade 1998). For example, in Gujarati (Indo-European), Toda (Dravidian), and Diyari (Pama-Nyungan), the alveolar/postalveolar contrast is distinctive only after vowels. The argument for syllable-independent phonotactics for Australian languages goes back at least to Dixon (1980: 159) in his discussion of words of the form (C1VC2C3V(C4): “It is thus not possible, for an Australian language, to give a structure C1V(C2) for syllables, and then to describe a word as a sequence of these syllables. The possibilities at C3 may be similar to those at C1, but they never coincide; similar remarks apply to C2 and C4. . . .” Simply put, the apical contrast is licensed postvocalically. For many languages then, the phonotactic constraint in (6) is motivated. (6)

Place phonotactics [AP-1] (an inviolable synchronic constraint) Contrastive [anterior] for apicals is licensed only after a vowel: [COR,aant] is licensed only /V_

In sum, syllable-based phonotactics are unable to account systematically for languages where the syllable structures they necessitate differ from those required for other syllable-based processes in those languages. Syllable-based phonotactics are also unable to account for the fact that identical phonotactics occur across languages with seemingly distinct syllabifications. Finally, there are inviolable phonotactic constraints in many languages that defy a syllabic characterization. The alternative I propose is that phonotactics are defined by syllable-independent constraints like those suggested in (4)–(6). These constraints are inviolable, allow unique language-internal syllabifications, and permit cross-linguistic differences in syllabification for languages exhibiting the same phonotactic patterns. In the following section I explore further cross-linguistic evidence for general statements of the sort schematized in (2).

15.3. Phonotactic Patterns and Emergent Universals Steriade (1997), in her survey of laryngeal neutralization, shows not only that certain patterns of neutralization defy syllable-based statements but also that cross-linguistic universal patterns emerge only when syllable-independent string-based contexts are examined. Building on Steriade’s (1997) conclusions for laryngeal feature distribution, this section demonstrates how phonotactic patterns involving laryngeal and place features can be viewed as instances of the same string-based phonotactic constraints, independent of syllable structure.

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15.3.1 Laryngeal Features The distribution of distinctive laryngeal features on consonants is severely limited in many languages. As documented by Steriade (1997) and summarized in Table 15.1 for obstruent voicing, a universal implicational hierarchy is in evidence: if a laryngeal contrast on obstruents is possible in environment n, then it is also possible in environment n + 1.12 For example, in all languages where voicing is neutralized word-finally, it is also neutralized postsonorantly before obstruents, initially before obstruents, and finally after obstruents. Notice that the string-based environments in Table 15.1 make no reference to syllable structure. For example, the presonorant environment, 4, could be an instance of a tautosyllabic cluster or a heterosyllabic cluster, and within a single language could have distinct syllabifications depending on segmental content. In French, German, and many other Indo-European languages TR (T an oral stop; R a consonantal sonorant) is syllabified as VT.RV if it is a stop-nasal cluster or an alveolarlateral cluster, but elsewhere, the (presumably unmarked) syllabification is V.TRV. The most common patterns cross-linguistically are those exemplified by Lithuanian, where laryngeal contrasts are licensed by a following (plain) sonorant, and French, where laryngeal contrasts are absent in obstruent clusters.13 Less common patterns are those of Tamazight Berber, where voicing is present only when a sonorant precedes or follows, and Nhanta, where a voicing contrast for obstruents is found only intervocalically. The Khasi Table 15.1. Worst-to-Best Environments for Laryngeal Obstruents Contrasts: Is There a Voicing Contrast in Environment n? Environment

Nhanta

Lithuanian

French

Tamazight Berber

Khasi

1 2 3 4 5

no no no no yes

no no no yes yes

no no yes yes yes

no yes yes yes yes

yes (n.a.) yes yes yes

[_O, O_], O_O R_O R_] _R R_R

Note: R = plain sonorant; O = obstruent; [,] = phonological word boundaries More languages and data sources (Steriade 1997 and references therein) is abbreviated (S97): Lithuanian pattern (S97): German (S97); Kiowa (Watkins 1984); Klamath (Blevins 1993); Sanskrit (S97); Russian (S97); Dinka (Nebel 1948);Afar (Bliese 1981); Korean (Kim-Renaud 1974). French pattern (S97): Hungarian (S97); Kolami (S97). Tamazight Berber pattern (Saib 1976, 1978): English (Kahn 1976, S97), Maithili, Lamani (S97), Syrian, Eastern, Moroccan, and Iraqi Arabic (S97). Nhanta pattern (Blevins 1999b): Totontepec Mixe (S97), Lac Simon (S97)

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pattern, where a voicing contrast is possible even in obstruent clusters, appears to be the rarest of all. An obvious question that arises is how the implicational hierarchy apparent in Table 15.1 is to be captured grammar-internally. I suggest the inviolable constraints in (7).14 Notice that all of the constraints in (7) are stated with respect to well-recognized phonological categories (sonorant, obstruent) and adjacency (“precedes,” “follows,” or for Tamazight Berber “is adjacent to”), and all are claimed to be inviolable for the relevant class of languages. Where statement of phonological position of neutralization is simpler than that of contrast (e.g., 7-[Vd-O2]), the phonotactic constraint is negative, while the default statement is one of positive licensing constraints. (7)

Voiced phonotactics for oral stops (inviolable synchronic constraints) Table 15.1 Envir. Index 1–5 2–5 [Vd-O4] 3–5

[Vd-O2]

4–5

[Vd-O1]

5 only

[Vd-O3]

Phonotactic constraint None Contrastive voicing is licensed only /R: [-son, avd] is licensed only /[+son] Contrastive voicing is not licensed in _O: [-son, avd] is not licensed /_[-son] Contrastive voicing is licensed only in _R: [-son, avd] is licensed only /_[+son] Contrastive voicing is licensed only in R_R: [-son, avd] is licensed only /[+son]_[+son]

Language Khasi Tamazight French Lithuanian Nhanta

Steriade (1997) details similar recurrent patterns for ejective/nonejective contrasts and postaspirated/nonaspirated contrasts for obstruents. She also demonstrates that languages allowing postconsonantal laryngealized sonorants also allow postvocalic sonorants, but that the reverse is not true. Steriade (1999) complements her earlier study by illustrating distinct cross-linguistic generalizations for preaspiration and postaspiration. Postaspiration follows the general constraint hierarchy in (7), while preaspiration is often limited to postvocalic or postsonorant contexts (cf. (5)). In sum, recurrent patterns of laryngeal feature distribution and implicational universals reveal themselves when phonotactics are stated independent of syllable structure. What determines positions of contrast or neutralization is the presence/absence and quality (sonorant, obstruent, etc.) of the immediately following or preceding segment.

15.3.2 Place Features The distribution of contrastive place features for obstruents is also severely limited in many languages, as shown in Table 15.2.

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Table 15.2. Best-to-Worst Environments for Major P, T, K Place Contrasts in Obstruents: Is There a Major Place Contrast in Environment n? Environment

Japanese

Saipan Carolinian

Tamazight Berber

Klamath

1 2 3 4

n.a. no no yes

n.a. no yes yes

no yes yes yes

yes yes yes yes

[_O, O_O R_O R_] _R

Note: R = sonorant; O = oral stop; [,] = phonological word boundaries More languages and data sources: Japanese pattern (Ito 1986): Italian (Ito 1986); Woleaian (Sohn 1984, Tawerilmang and Sohn 1984, Harrison 1995a); Selayar, Konjo, Makasar, Bugis, Uma (Mills 1975a, 1975b, Sneddon 1993); Minangkabau (Moussay 1981, Adelaar 1995). Saipan Carolinian pattern (Jackson 1984a, 1984b): Acehnese (Durie 1985); Diola Fogny (Sapir 1965); Arctic Quebec and Greenlandic Eskimo (Dorais 1976, 1985, Creider 1981). Tamazight Berber pattern (Saib 1976, 1978): Toba Batak (van der Tuuk 1971, Adelaar 1981, Nababan 1981); Lake Miwok (Callaghan 1963); Yokuts (Newman 1944); Western Canadian Eskimo (Dorais 1976, 1985, Creider 1981). (N.B. none of these languages have initial OO or medial OOO, so they could be of the Klamath type.) Klamath pattern (Barker 1964): English (Kahn 1976, Oxford English Dictionary 1971); Leti (van Engelenhoven 1995).

As with laryngeal contrasts, a string-based universal implicational hierarchy is in evidence: if a major (labial/coronal/dorsal) place contrast on obstruents is possible in environment n, then it is also possible in environment n + 1.15 For example, in all languages where major place contrasts are neutralized word-finally after sonorants, they are also neutralized postsonorantly before obstruents, initially before obstruents, and finally after obstruents and between obstruents. Conversely, there are many languages where major place of articulation for obstruents is contrastive word-finally, but not wordmedially before another obstruent. As in Table 15.1, the string-based environments in Table 15.2 make no reference to syllable structure. The languages chosen to illustrate limitations on the distribution of major place contrast in Table 15.2 all have geminate obstruents; this is the case where, in an oral stop cluster T1T2, no major place feature contrast is possible in T1. In Japanese, /p, t, k/ contrast in presonorant position (intervocalically and word-initially before a vowel), but no place contrast is possible word-finally, where obstruents are absent, or in preobstruent position, where an obstruent is always homorganic to the following consonant forming the first half of a geminate.16 While all medial geminate obstruent sequences in Japanese are heterosyllabic, Woleaian, a Western Trukic language, shows exactly the same distribution of place features as Japanese but allows

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(tautosyllabic) word-initial geminates as well: kkii ‘spicy’, ttoo ‘deep’, and so on. In Saipan Carolinian, a Trukic language closely related to Woleaian with the same distribution of place features, word-final voiceless vowels have been lost, resulting in word-final consonants with contrastive place features (sœœt ‘sea’, arap ‘next’, etc.), and word-final tautosyllabic geminates as well (takk ‘finished’, xacc ‘good’, etc.) In Tamazight Berber, the maximal syllable shape is CVCC, but the only possible (nonfinal) coda clusters are geminates. In heterosyllabic T1. T2, however, there are no constraints on major place for T1. For major place features, I propose constraints identical in form to those limiting the distribution of voicing in (7). The constraint set is shown in (8). Note that languages with contrastive place only in the R_R environment are missing from this table. As far as I am aware, there are no languages in which /P, T, K/ contrast in V_V, but not word-initially.17 Interestingly, identical environments of minimal contrast to those in (8) are found in languages that fall midway between the extreme neutralization of Japanese and the freely occurring place contrasts in Tamazight Berber (simple) codas. (8)

Place phonotactics for oral stops (inviolable synchronic constraints) Table 15.2 Envir. Index Phonotactic constraint Language 1–4 None Klamath 2–4 [PL-O3] Contrastive place is licensed only in /R: Tamazight [-son, PL] is licensed only /[+son] 3–4 [PL-O2] Contrastive place is not licensed in _O: Saipan [-son, PL] is not licensed /_[-son] Carolinian 4 only [PL-O1] Contrastive place is licensed only in _R: Japanese [-son, PL] is licensed only /_[+son]

Consider the consonantal phonotactics of Toba Batak (van der Tuuk 1971, Adelaar 1981, Nababan 1981). The full consonant inventory of Toba Batak is /p, b, m, t, d, s, n, l, r, j, k, g, ŋ /. In Toba Batak, as in Saipan Carolinian, word-final (postvocalic) consonants occur with contrastive place features (ulak ‘come back’, surut ‘retreat’, tarup ‘roof’). However, unlike Saipan Carolinian, place is contrastive preconsonantally, but minimally so. In medial C1.C2, C1 can be the first half of a geminate or one of the set /s, l, r, k, ŋ /.18 In heterorganic clusters then, C1 may be a fricative, lateral, trill, oral stop, or nasal, but place contrasts among these manner classes are absent. With respect to the distribution of major place features for oral stops, Toba Batak is almost identical to Saipan Carolinian, except that in preconsonantal position there is a minimal contrast between stops homorganic with the following consonant and stops that are not homorganic but whose place is predictable. Toba Batak,

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with intervocalic obstruent sequences /pp, tt, kk, kp, kt/ falls between Tamazight Berber, which allows /pp, tp, kp, tt, pt, kt, kk, pk, tk/, and Saipan Carolinian, which allows only /pp, tt, kk/. I suggest that this aspect of Toba Batak phonotactics be accounted for by the same constraint evident in Saipan Carolinian [PL-O3] of (8): Contrastive place is not licensed in _O: [-son, PL] is not licensed /_[-son]. Because contrastive [PL] is not licensed in preobstruent position, a place feature will either be shared with the following obstruent (a homorganic cluster), or the default (noncontrastive) place feature, dorsal, will emerge.19 The phenomena of “minimal contrast,” then, is the consequence of phonotactic statements like the one in [PL-O3] of (8), combined with two distinct phonological implementations of nondistinctiveness: for a given segment, a feature can be nondistinctive when it is predictably shared with a neighboring segment or when it is predictable (by default). Once it is recognized that general phonotactic constraints are independent of syllable structure, the pattern of minimal contrast in Toba Batak can be shown for other phonotactic positions. Word-finally, a similar continuum is found. Languages like Toba Batak allow the full range of place contrasts, while related Minangkabau (Moussay 1981, Adelaar 1995), where historical final *p, *t, and *k have neutralized to glottal stop, allows none. Between these extremes, there are languages like Fúzho¯u (Norman 1988: 235–239), where, among nonnasal consonants, the only contrast found wordfinally is that between /k/ and glottal stop. Both Minangkabau and Fúzho¯u arguably instantiate the same constraint as Japanese (see (8)-PL-O1): Contrastive place is licensed only in _R. The significant difference between these languages is the existence of place-neutral obstruents (/k/ in Fúzho¯u) or placeless stops (glottal stop in Minangkabau and Fúzho¯u). An additional implicational universal emerges from these patterns: if a maximal major place contrast on oral stops is possible in environment n in Table 15.2, then a maximal contrast is also possible in environment n + 1. The discussion has centered on major place of articulation for oral stops, but similar constraints hold for nasals as well, as shown in Table 15.3. Again, an implicational hierarchy emerges: if a major place contrast on nasal stops is possible in environment n in Table 15.3, then it is also possible in environment n + 1. In Japanese, nasal place contrasts between /m/ and /n/ are found only in prevocalic position; word-finally a nasal glide occurs, and place is neutralized. In Ponapean (Rehg 1981), place is contrastive for nasals before vowels and word-finally, but not before obstruents, where NC clusters are homorganic and occur word-finally (emp ‘coconut crab’), intervocalically (tempel ‘kava pounding rhythm’), and word-initially (mpe ‘next to it’). In many Australian languages, nasal place is contrastive before vowels and (to a lesser extent)

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Table 15.3. Worst-to-Best Environments for Major Place Contrasts in Nasals: Is There a Major Place Contrast for Nasals in Environment n? Environment

Japanese

Ponapean

Mbabaram

Arrernte

1 2 3 4

n.a. no no yes

no no yes yes

no yes yes yes

yes yes yes yes

[_O, O_O R_O R_] _R

Note: R = sonorant; O = oral stop; [,] = phonological word boundaries

before consonants word-medially (where apical nasals contrast with nasals homorganic to the following consonant). For example, in Mbabaram (Dixon 1991), with contrastive nasals /m, n, , n, nw, ŋ /, all nasals are found wordinitially before a vowel, and all except nw are found word-finally. Intervocalically n.g contrasts with ŋ .g, and n.b with m.b. But word-initially, only homorganic NC clusters are found. The distribution of contrastive nasal place in Mbabaram then follows stepwise the contrastive hierarchy shown in Table 15.3: in environment 4, there is a maximal contrast among place features for nasals; in environment 3, the maximal contrast is diminished with the /n, nw/ contrast neutralized; in environment 2, a minimal contrast is found between n and a nasal homorganic with the following C; and in environment 1, word-initially before a stop, no place contrasts are possible. In Arrernte (Henderson and Dobson 1994), another language of Australia, the distribution of place contrasts in nasals is even freer, with word-initial nonhomorganic NC clusters as well: compare mpe ‘come on!’ and (r)npernpe ‘yellow-throated miner’. Suggested phonotactic constraints for nasal place are given in (9). These constraints make use of the same string-based environments suggested in (7) and (8).20 (9)

Place phonotactics for nasals (inviolable synchronic constraints) Table 15.3 Envir. Index Phonotactic constraint Language 1–4 None Arrernte 2–4 [PL-N3] Contrastive place is licensed only in /R: Mbabaram [+nas, PL] is licensed only /[+son] 3–4 [PL-N2] Contrastive place is not licensed in _O: Ponapean [+nas, PL] is not licensed /_[-son] 4 only [PL-N1] Contrastive place is licensed only in _R: Japanese [+nas, PL] is licensed only /_[+son]

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15.3.3 Extensions of Place Distribution Section 15.3.2 shows that major place features are limited in distribution in many languages in a highly structured and predictable way. In a position where no place contrast between /p, t, k/ is possible, there are three basic patterns: (i) a place-neutral segment occurs, such as word-final glottal stop in Minangkabau; (ii) a segment homorganic with the following segment occurs, such as the medial geminate obstruents of Japanese; or (iii) no segment at all occurs, as is the case for Japanese word-finally, where obstruents are prohibited.21 If the third “no-segment” option is one instantiation of general limitations on the contrastiveness of major place features, then certain widespread phonotactic patterns of segment distribution may be viewed as extensions of the hierarchies seen in Tables 15.2 and 15.3. Consider that many languages disallow initial and final biconsonantal clusters and/or medial triconsonantal clusters. If geminate structures are not possible in a given language, then these general anticluster constraints could be viewed as extensions of the constraints on place proposed in (8). String-based formulations of these general constraints are given in (10). (10) String-based cluster constraints a) *CCC b) *[CC c) *CC]

If we limit consideration to vocalic environments,*VCCCV, *[CCV, and *VCC], it is clear that the bold C in each string is a potential target of placelicensing constraint (8)-[PL-O3]: contrastive place is licensed only in /R. Given this, it is not difficult to see how the string-based constraints in (10) could arise from original place-licensing constraints. Compare the constraints in (10) with syllable-based approaches making use of *Complex Onset and/or *Complex Coda. Under these accounts, no constraint *CCC is posited, since the prohibition of CCC clusters is claimed to follow from the ill-formedness of complex onsets, complex codas, or both. The syllable-independent constraints in (10) make very different predictions from the syllable-based approach incorporating *Complex Onset and *Complex Coda. The strictly segmental appoach predicts the existence of languages that allow complex onsets and/or complex codas but still bar triconsonantal sequences by the independent *CCC. At the same time, in languages in which *CCC is inactive, the segmental approach allows triconsonantal CCC independent of the occurrence of complex onsets or codas elsewhere in the language. A range of facts supports the string-based approach over a syllable-based model. First, there are languages that allow initial and/or final CC clusters but

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that do not allow medial *CCC clusters. Second, there are languages in which word-initial and word-final CC clusters are not permitted but medial CCC is. Finally, in languages that allow medial CCC clusters but do not exhibit wordedge clusters, homorganicity constraints are in evidence, suggesting a relationship between whole-segment and place-based constraints. In Lenakel (Lynch 1978), initial and final CC clusters occur, but there are no medial CCC clusters. When morpheme concatenation yields a medial CCC cluster, epenthesis occurs to break up the sequence. Similarly, in Leti (van Engelenhoven 1995), word-initial CC clusters occur, and word-final single consonants are found, but no word-medial CCC clusters are found. Phonological vowel loss is regular in Leti, unless it would create a CCC cluster. Formally, one could simply dictate that *Complex holds in both languages and that initial and final consonants within CC clusters are extrasyllabic (or exceptionally licensed by their word-peripheral position). But why do such patterns exist? Why is special word-edge licensing a necessary ingredient of so many syllabic analyses? I return to these questions in section 15.5. Here, I simply mean to demonstrate that languages with *CCC include those with wordinitial and word-final CC clusters. Many Australian Aboriginal languages exhibit medial CCC clusters, but independent of these, show no evidence of complex codas or onsets. PamaNyungan languages with medial CCC clusters include Umpila, Gugu-Yalanji, Guugu Yimidhirr, Djabugay, Wargamay, Yidiny, Dyirbal, Wembawemba, and Woiwurrung. None of these languages allow word-initial or word-final CC clusters. Hamilton (1995) provides the key to understanding these phonotactic patterns: intervocalic triconsonantal clusters have the same place contours as biconsonantal clusters. In all of the Pama-Nyungan languages listed here, the situation is parallel: intervocalic C1C2C3 clusters contain at most two place specifications, and all consist of an initial sonorant C1 followed by a homorganic NC sequence for C2C3. O’Grady and Fitzgerald (1995) show that many of these clusters have been inherited from Proto-Pama-Nyungan, which also excluded initial and final CC clusters but allowed C1C2C3 clusters provided that C2C3 was a homorganic NC cluster. The maintenance of this general phonotactic pattern in so many daughter languages illustrates not only that is it a possible type, but also that it is relatively stable. Despite the existence of medial triconsonantal clusters, there is no pressure to reanalyze strings in terms of complex onsets or complex codas.22

15.4. The Nature of Phonotactic Constraints The explanation for phonological patterns can reside in synchronic analysis or diachronic evolution, and the appropriate locus of such explanations is an empirical issue. Originally, syllables were invoked in synchronic accounts of

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phonotactics for their explanatory value. However, I have summarized in sections 15.2 and 15.3 evidence that many phonotactic patterns are independent of syllable structure.23 In what way do string-based phonotactics themselves have explanatory value? What are their origins? Steriade (1994, 1997, 1998, 1999) presents plausible phonetic explanations for the evolution of many of the phonotactic constraints discussed in sections 15.2 and 15.3.24 The guiding principle is that positions of neutralization are those where the phonetic (acoustic/perceptual) cues for a specific feature contrast are least salient, while positions of contrast are those where phonetic cues for the same features are most robust. An important finding is the existence of directional asymmetries in contexts for feature distribution. Steriade argues persuasively that these directional asymmetries have phonetic origins, origins that have no direct account in syllable-based statements of laryngeal or place phonotactics. However, it is well known that phonetic systems change over time and that phonological systems may represent fossils of once-regular phonetic patterns. Given this, we should not be surprised to find synchronic counterexamples to Steriade’s general cue-based model of phonotactic constraints. Phonetic cues for a feature like glottalization or aspiration may shift temporally over time; preaspiration may shift to postaspiration, postglottalization may shift to preglottalization, and so on. Diachronic changes of this sort can result in systems where phonotactic constraints are no longer representations of phonetic optimality. Though in many cases, as documented by Steriade (1997, 1998, 1999), the phonetic optimality approach finds synchronic support, counterexamples force us to accept that phonological statements like those in (4)–(9) are statements about the distribution of phonological features independent of their synchronic phonetic instantiation or diachronic phonetic origins. Howe and Pulleyblank’s (2001) survey of glottalization in a number of Amerindian languages of the Northwest Pacific Coast presents just such a counterexample. In Ahousaht, as in Yowlumne, Klamath, and many other Pacific Coast languages, obstruents produced with glottal constriction are realized as ejectives, while glottalized sonorants are normally preglottalized. If the position of phonetic cues is the sole factor determining the nature of phonological constraints on distribution, then we expect neutralization of ejectives in preconsonantal position where release cues are least salient, and neutralization of laryngealized sonorants in postconsonantal position, where preceding VC transitional laryngealization is least salient. However Howe and Pulleyblank (2001) demonstrate that Ahousaht ejectives and laryngealized sonorants have the same distribution: both sets occur word-initially (before a vowel) and intervocalically, but not word-finally or preconsonantally. The relevant constraint is similar to that for Lithuanian voicing:

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contrastive glottalization is licensed only /_V. In other words, the general synchronic phonological pattern is that expected for release features, even though sonorants are clearly preglottalized. Counterexamples like this one are still amenable to cue-based phonetic explanations in the diachronic dimension. Imagine that, in pre-Ahousaht, laryngealized sonorants were the result of sonorant-glottal stop clusters and were all postlaryngealized. Alternations in pre-Ahousaht would result in preV and pre-C environments for ejectives and postlaryngealized sonorants, and the weaker release cues in pre-C environments would result in laryngeal neutralization for obstruents and sonorants. Over time, sonorant laryngealization would shift to its “optimal” position (Kingston 1990), resulting in the current Ahousaht system.25 A weaker version of Steriade’s proposal is, then, that phonotactic constraints on feature distribution are the result of phonetic optimality in the diachronic dimension. Within synchronic phonologies, these constraints are necessarily expressed in terms of phonological primitives (distinctive features, prosodic constituents, etc.) and given the course of sound change, may not transparently reflect their phonetic origins. A synchronic constraint that licenses voicing before sonorants only (as proposed for Lithuanian, Klamath, and many other languages) is transparent, while one that licenses contrastive glottalization on ejectives and preglottalized sonorants before vowels only in Ahousaht is not. Given that the phonological alternations involved are productive and robustly cued, there is no poverty of the stimulus. Both statements are simple and easily learned. Now consider that the Ahousaht generalization permits both a stringbased and syllable-based formulation. Given that C1 of all C1C2 clusters is a coda (Howe and Pulleyblank, 2001), we can compare the statements in (11). (11) Ahousaht laryngeal neutralization a. Contrastive glottalization is licensed only /_V. b. Contrastive glottalization is neutralized in the coda.

The arguments for (11a) over (11b) are not internal to Ahousaht, because these two statements are equivalent. Rather, following Steriade (1997, 1999), the argument in favor of (11a) centers on the fact that there are many recurrent patterns that must be stated independent of syllable structure, as in (4)–(9), and that, in many cases, these syllable-independent statements directly reflect underlying phonetic explanations. In some cases, underlying phonetic explanations are not forthcoming. For example, in Catalan intervocalic heterosyllabic clusters include all T.T and T.N clusters and t.l.26 (The sequence dl is absent in underlying and surface forms within and across morphemes, so neutralization of /d/ before /l/ cannot

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be assessed.) Well-formed onsets include intervocalic and word-initial clusters: /pl, bl, kl, gl, pr, br, kr, gr, tr, dr/. Catalan is similar to Lithuanian with respect to its general distribution of distinctive voicing, though there are important differences. Distinctive voicing is only found preceding a following sonorant, provided the sonorant is nonnasal. A syllable-base account is straightforward: voicing is prohibited in syllable codas. An alternative to a syllable-based account is to refine further the set of relevant environments in Table 15.1. A subcategorization of the class of sonorant consonants (R) into nasals and the more sonorous liquids, glides, and vowels will suffice. The Catalan variant of constraint [Vd-O1] in (7) is then [-son, avoiced] is licensed only /_[+son,-nas]. The question is why nasals pattern with obstruents. The operative generalization appears to be that the more vowel-like the formant structure of the neighboring segment, the stronger the perceptual cues for voicing. However, this generalization awaits confirmation in the form of experimental evidence. Finally, a note is in order regarding a fairly eclectic class of phonotactic constraints not yet mentioned. These are purported constraints on coda elements that do not refer specifically to laryngeal features, nor to place of articulation, and often involve manner or major class features. For example, in the Yecuatla dialect of Misantla Totonac (Mackay 1994), nonnasal sonorants /w, y, l, h/ are not possible codas, but glottal stop, nasals, fricatives, and oral stops are.27 The restriction on /h/ is arguably a constraint on the laryngeal feature [spread glottis], so let us focus on the phonotactics of /w, y, l/.28 As in Ahousaht, a syllable-independent statement ((12a)) and a syllable-based statement ((12b)) are both possible, as both are consistent with languageinternal evidence. (12) Misantla Totonac constraint on /w, y, l/ a. [+son,-nas] is licensed only /_V. b. *[+son,-nas]/Coda.

We are left to ask whether there is any reason to prefer one over the other. Until we have more cases of this type and understand the phonetic conditioning factors for fortition and lenition in similar contexts, a choice between the two phonotactic constraints seems arbitrary. In contrast to the Misantla Totonac case, where high-sonority codas appear to be disfavored, syllable-based statements involving restrictions of codas to high-sonority segments have been motivated by their instantiation of the general constraint that high-sonority codas are preferred over lowsonority codas (Hooper 1972, Murray and Vennemann 1983, Clements 1990). However Blevins (1999a) demonstrates that few, if any, languages show pure instantiations of sonority-based coda constraints and that, in most languages where codas are limited to high-sonority segments, the mora is the significant

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determinant of phonotactics. This follows from Zec’s (1988, 1995) sonority principle stated in (13). (13) Mora sonority principle If Q is a possible mora (i.e., a weight- or tone-bearing unit), then all segments of equal or greater sonority than Q are also possible moras.

For example, in Gilbertese (Harrison 1995b, Blevins 1997, Blevins and Harrison 1999), moraic consonants are restricted to the class of nasals and constitute the only occurring syllable codas. If we adopt the constraints in (14), which are independently necessary, then there is no need for an independent syllable-based constraint restricting codas to the class of [+nasal] segments; this distributional fact follows from the fact that all codas will be moraic, and only [+nasal] consonants can be moraic in Gilbertese.29 (14) Deriving Gilbertese nasal codas a. Possible mora = [+nasal]. b. Weight-by-position: if X is rhyme-internal, then X is moraic.

Finally, if phonotactics are stated independent of syllable structure, why are there languages like Ahousaht, Catalan, Totonac, and Gilbertese where phonotactic constraints and syllable structure appear to converge? I suggest this is because syllabifications are derivative of phonotactics, not vice versa. Word-initial and word-final consonants and clusters are taken as attested onsets and codas respectively; when a medial cluster cannot be parsed into these attested constituents, other ranked phonological constraints come into play. If none of these is decisive, word-medial syllable divisions can remain ambiguous. A detailed investigation of this hypothesis, along with supporting experimental evidence, can be found in Steriade 1999. In sum, the phonotactics discussed in sections 15.2 and 15.3 involve recurrent cross-linguistic patterns with fairly transparent phonetic origins. Syllable-independent statements of these phonotactics allow direct comparisons across languages and reflect underlying phonetic explanations, where relevant, though their synchronic statement is purely phonological. The syllable-independent nature of phonotactics is not restricted to laryngeal and place features. Manner-based phonotactics are also amenable to syllableindependent statements, or, where sonority based, more appropriately represented as constraints on possible moras.

15.5. Phonotactic Constraints in Optimality Theory The primary finding of this study is that the majority of phonotactic constraints are string-based statements, as schematized in (2). The implications for OT are straightforward. Wherever a syllable-based phonotactic constraint

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of the form in (1) has been proposed in an OT analysis, it should be examined closely and weighed against the alternative constraint types illustrated here. Two additional issues are raised by the string-based constraints suggested in (4)–(9). One is constraint violability and interaction; the second is the extent to which a theory of phonotactic markedness can be extracted from an OT grammar. I address each of these issues in turn.

15.5.1 Constraint Violability An important observation concerning the phonotactic constraints suggested in (4)–(9) is that they are all inviolable. Within OT, where it is generally assumed that all constraints are violable, particular syllable-based analyses of phonotactic patterns examined in sections 15.2–15.3 can only be accounted for with violable constraints. Consider, for example, the distribution of voiced obstruents in French, Hungarian, and Kolami as described in Table 1: they occur word-finally, but not syllable-finally before another obstruent. The constraint proposed in (7) is [-son, avoiced] is not licensed /_[-son]. Any syllable-based analysis of this phenomenon will require a way of excluding word-final obstruents from examination. However, there is ample evidence that word-final consonants are codas (Steriade 1997). Here, I consider OT approaches in which the exclusion of word edges follows from particular constraint rankings. In the case of French-type languages the syllable-based constraint can be stated either in terms of syllabic markedness (e.g., Steriade 1997) or syllabic faithfulness (e.g., Beckman 1997). (15) OT approaches to French-type languages a. Syllabic markedness approach ident [a voiced]-wdfin > *[voiced]-in-coda > ident [a voiced] b. Syllabic faithfulness approach ident [a voiced]-in-onset, ident [a voiced]-wdfin > *[+voiced]

The two general approaches are compared in (15). One problem arising under both approaches is that once phonotactics are viewed as violable constraints, predictions are made involving unattested systems. Consider the very simple case of four constraints with a syllabic markedness approach: Onset, *Complex Onset, NoCoda, and a syllablebased phonotactic constraint prohibiting distinctive voicing in the coda, *[voiced]-in-Coda (*Vd/Coda). Of interest is the ranking where Onset is undominated, and *Vd/Coda dominates *Complex Onset, with NoCoda ranked lowest. The constraint ranking and predicted syllabifications are shown in (16).

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(16) Defeasible phonotactic constraints: syllabic markedness a. constraint ranking: Onset > *Vd/Coda > *Complex Onset > NoCoda b. resultant syllabifications: V.dCV V.bCV V.gCV Vt.CV Vp.CV Vk.CV

The significant feature of this ranking is the ability of a coda constraint to force segments into a complex onset, just in case the coda segment/feature is ruled out. A similar case can be made for faithfulness approaches, as shown in (17), where IdentVd/Ons abbreviates Ident [a voiced]-in-Onset, and *Vd abbreviates *[+voiced]. (17) Defeasible phonotactic constraints: syllabic faithfulness a. constraint ranking: Onset > IdentVd/Ons > * Vd, NoCoda > *Complex Onset b. resultant syllabifications: Input: /VdCV/ /VbCV/ /VtCV/ /VpCV/ Output: Vt.CV Vp.CV V.tCV V.pCV

Significantly, in all the work on syllable-based phenomena and syllabification, there are no reported cases where laryngeal features of C1 in VC1C2V regularly determine coda versus onset, as in (16), or where the presence versus absence of neutralization determines distinct syllabifications, as in (17).30 The same is true of place features of C1. A general argument, then, against phonotactics of the sort examined in sections 15.2–15.3 as violable syllable-based constraints is that the introduction of violable phonotactic constraints predicts unattested systems of syllabification. Given this, the introduction of potential subsystems of inviolable constraints within OT should be considered.

15.5.2 Toward a Theory of Markedness The syllable-independent statement of phonotactics is one component of a theory of phonotactic markedness in which unmarked constraints directly reflect phonetic origins, while marked constraints do not. Unmarked constraints have the widest distribution cross-linguistically, while marked constraints (e.g., the distribution of sonorant laryngealization in Ahousaht) are rare. Most important, perhaps, the implicational universals in feature distribution seen in Tables 1–3 are incorporated directly into phonotactic constraints, such as those proposed in (4)–(9). Within OT syllable-based approaches to phonotactics, active constraints like *[F]/Coda suggest (along with NoCoda) that the best syllables are open

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and that syllables are more marked as their codas acquire more distinctive features. Similarly, active faithfulness constraints like Ident [F]-in-Onset (along with Onset) suggest that onsetless syllables are marked, and that as an onset acquires more distinctive features, it is less marked. However, as demonstrated in Steriade (1994, 1997, 1998, 1999), positions of neutralization relate directly to phonetic conditioning environments that are entirely independent of syllable structure. An initial step in establishing a theory of phonotactic markedness within OT, then, is to attempt to restate syllable-based markedness and faithfulness constraints in string-based terms. If this is done and if these constraints are inviolable as suggested here, constraint ranking will be shown to be irrelevant to the assessment of cross-linguistic phonotactic markedness in consonant clusters.31 The real challenge, then, is not to describe common and rare crosslinguistic phonotactics solely as the output of a ranked set of markedness and faithfulness constraints but to discover principles underlying these phonotactics, their roles within individual grammars, and any consistent or recurrent relationships that exist between phonotactics and syllable structure.

notes 1. The syllable-independent nature of phonotactic constraints is proposed in Blevins 1993 for Klamath and further supported by the studies of Steriade (1994, 1997, 1998, 1999). 2. Or “[aF] is/is not contrastive in K,” or both. See Steriade 1994, 1997 for further discussion. Note that in contrast to standard OT approaches, I admit the possibility of positive licensing/markedness constraints like “[+voiced] is licensed only before sonorants.” Indeed, reference to positions of contrast is often straightforward, whereas reference to positions of neutralization is not. For example, in languages like Gujarati, where an alveolar vs. postalveolar contrast is distinctive only after vowels (Steriade 1998), reference to the postvocalic context is simpler than reference to the disjunction “word-initial or postconsonantal” where the contrast is neutralized. 3. I do not rule out the possibility that some phonotactic statements are syllable based. Inviolable syllable-based constraints are possible for the Ahousaht dialect of Wakashan and Catalan, as discussed in section 15.4. However, such cases are rare and can always be stated in independent string-based terms. As noted in section 15.1, syllable-based generalizations concerning stress and vowel distribution are also common. (Note that processes like closed-syllable laxing are not pure phonotactics of the kind examined here: segmental statements of these processes demand reference to nonadjacent segments.) I also accept that higher-level prosodic categories (foot, prosodic word, etc.) may play a role in phonotactics. However, the range of constraints examined in this chapter do not lend themselves to such alternatives. The constraints in (1)–(2) are phrased within OT positional markedness approaches. However, the criticisms against syllable-based statements of phonotactics hold for

the independent nature of phonotactic constraints

4. 5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

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both positional markedness and positional faithfulness accounts. See section 15.5 for further discussion. Plain sonorants in Klamath are nonlaryngealized, nonbreathy ones, i.e., those without specified laryngeal features. Klamath stress is described in Barker 1964: 35–38, and confirmed by study of his field tapes (Blevins 1993: 237, note 1, and 256–257). Main stress falls on the last long vowel in the word and, where there is no long vowel, on the penultimate syllable if it is heavy (i.e., closed) and elsewhere on the antepenult. The Lithuanian pattern could well be inherited. Other Indo-European languages where VT.RV is a possible syllabification, but where a voicing contrast is maintained for T in this context and neutralized before obstruents and word-finally, are Sanskrit, Attic Greek, Russian, and Polish (Steriade 1997: 23–31). In Gujarati, where distinctive aspiration is also neutralized in preobstruent position, native speakers syllabify VORV clusters as VO.RV. See Steriade 1999 for further discussion of the Sanskrit, Homeric Greek, and Gujarati cases. Even the descriptive generalization that obstruents are devoiced syllable-finally in German meets with counterexamples within the native vocabulary. Consider A[d]ler ‘eagle’ (cf. A[t]las ‘atlas; silk’). At least some German speakers syllabify this as A[d].ler. In this case then, native speaker intuitions diverge from the syllabification required for coda devoicing. Other counterexamples to surface syllable-final neutralization involve morphologically complex forms: Han[t] ‘hand’, Hän[d]e ‘hand, pl’, han[t]-lich ‘handy’ vs. han[d]el-n ‘to act’, Han[d]l-ung ‘plot; act’. (See Rubach 1990, Hall 1992, Wiese 1996, and Steriade 1997 for accounts of these and other cyclic effects.) None of these are counterexamples to the statement in (4), which, as far as I am aware, is exceptionless in German as well. If only one place feature occurred, the syllable-based licensing account could argue that this was the default place of articulation for Manam, inserted in the absence of a phonologically licensed feature. An additional strategy is to propose a general *Place/Coda account, dominated by a word-final faithfulness constraint leading to violation of this phonotactic constraint word-finally. General problems with this strategy are discussed in section 15.5. Again, see section 15.5 for a critique of the general OT strategy of accounting for divergent word-edge effects by incorporating word-edge faithfulness constraints that dominate general syllable-based phonotactic constraints. Comparison of Manam and Woleaian is instructive: in Manam, a word edge shows an unexpected violation of an otherwise inviolable constraint, while in Woleaian, a word edge shows adherence to a phonotactic constraint in an unexpected position. Constraint violations are of an entirely different sort in the two languages, with both types exhibited word-finally in Saipan Carolinian. See Steriade 1999 for a discussion of left- vs. right-anchored contexts for feature distribution. She argues persuasively that these directional asymmetries have phonetic origins, origins that have no direct account in syllable-based statements of laryngeal phonotactics. In Table 1 R stands for sonorant. However, in some languages, only a subset of sonorants will be involved due to independent aspects of phonotactics. For example, in a language that lacks CC clusters altogether, the only relevant intersonorant environment for the obstruent voicing contrast is V_V. Environments involving preceding

398

13.

14. 15.

16.

17.

18. 19. 20.

21.

22.

23.

Juliette Blevins and following fricatives are not included in this survey, so that O is more properly interpreted as “oral stop or affricate.” Dell (1995: 12–13) notes that in terms of pronunciation, regressive voicing in obstruent clusters is highly preferred; however, “in careful pronunciation it is possible to pronounce a voiceless obstruent immediately before a voiced one (e.g., in anecdote, aqueduc). . . .” These clusters contrast phonetically with [kt] of actif and [gz] of exacte. However, despite this pronunciation, there is no apparent phonological contrast between word-internal [kd] and [gd], representing /kd/ and /gd/ respectively. Again, as in Table 15.1, R stands for sonorant, though in some languages, only a subset of sonorants will be involved due to independent aspects of phonotactics. Environments involving preceding and following fricatives are not discussed here for reasons of space. Pre- and postfricative environments appear to be favored over preand poststop environments in many languages. For example, in Finnish (Karttunen 1970) /p, t, k/ may precede /s/, but only /t/ may precede a nonhomorganic stop. The presence or absence of a place-neutral segment word-finally appears to be a language-specific property of Japanese-type languages. Japanese lacks a placeneutral obstruent but allows a place-neutral nasal-finally. And in loans, epenthetic final vowels occur, allowing the place contrast to be maintained. Minangkabau has the same pattern of major place distribution for obstruents as Japanese but allows glottal stop word-finally (the historical merger of *p, *t, and *k.) In the many Australian Aboriginal languages that have a six-way place contrast between /p, t, t·, t, !, k/ intervocalically, the only common neutralization wordinitially is between the apical series /t, !/ (Dixon 1980, Steriade 1998). Generalizations like those in (8) emerge only when major place contrasts (coronal/labial/dorsal) are distinguished from place-internal contrasts (alveolar/postalveolar; laminodental/ laminopalatal; velar/uvular) or secondary place features (palatalization, labialization, velarization). In many dialects of Toba Batak /k/ in heterorganic clusters is realized as glottal stop, consistent with the view that place is minimally contrastive preconsonantally. Or, in the dialects described by note 18, no place feature is present, and a glottal stop surfaces. As described in the text, “none” for phonotactic constraints in environments 1–4 in (9) is not entirely accurate. There is some place neutralization preconsonantally, where only coronals contrast with homorganic nasals, but it is not total. Nasal place is still contrastive in this position. Another logical possibility is that a “middling” segment between two categories occurs. In some Australian languages, a segment in between the extreme alveolar and postalveolar points of articulation is found in positions of neutralization (Butcher 1992). However, given the noncontinuity (in articulatory terms) of the major place contrasts, this option does not appear to be available. Whether these strings are fully syllabified is unclear. However, the initial and final Cs of C1C2C3 clusters appear to be syllabified, since, for example, in Umpila, C1 will block tonic lengthening of a preceding vowel, while C3 can serve as an onset for final -CV reduplication. A referee comments that the phonotactic constraints illustrated in this study make exclusive reference to major class features in defining phonological contexts and that

the independent nature of phonotactic constraints

24. 25.

26.

27. 28.

29.

399

this may, in a sense, double aspects of syllable theory. However, exclusive reference to major class features is not a general property of phonotactic constraints and occurs here only because the focus of this study is constraints that have previously been analyzed as syllable based. Many phonotactic constraints must mention place and/or manner features. For example, in Pero, a West Chadic language, there is a constraint against consonant clusters in which the first segment is nondorsal and the second is dorsal (*pk, *bg, *vγ, *dg, etc.). Frajzyngier (1980: 40) highlights this in his discussion of vowel epenthesis: “The constraints that require vowel insertion are of two kinds: (a) syllable structure constraints and (b) consonant cluster constraints . . . the conditions of this constraint have nothing to do with syllable structure, but rather with the phonological features present in the consonants involved.” In addition, though sonority is expressed in terms of major class features, there are no languages in which, for example, sonorants are excluded from onset position, and very few where all and only sonorants are allowed in coda position (Blevins 1999a). Hence, though syllables appear to be organizational units of sonority, what is of relevance are relative and not absolute values of sonority. See also Flemming (1995) and Hamilton (1995) for treatment of other phonological patterns within the cue-based model of phonetic OT. This scenario is hypothetical, but the absence of C ʔ clusters in Heiltsuk, another northern Wakashan language, is suggestive. Another possibility, suggested by the Class I glottalizing suffixes that derive glottalized sonorants from obstruent + ʔ sequences is that glottalized sonorants derive historically from ejectives and, hence, inherit their general phonotactics. Future historical work on northern Wakashan languages will, we hope, shed light on the evolution of the intriguing and highly marked pattern of Ahousaht. For a historical discussion of sonorant glottalization in southern Wakashan, see Gamble 1977. While voiced/voiceless pairs neutralize in Catalan syllable-finally, what the surface phonetics are of neutralized stops in cluster environments is unclear and may be subject to dialect variation. For Catalan data, I am grateful to Ruth CatalàFerràndez, Maria Jesus Segura, and Esther Monzo. Catalan syllabification judgments were entirely consistent across speakers. Underlying coda glides delete, while /l/ and /h/ are neutralized to obstruent [L] in the coda. As always, there is the possibility that these are instances of general markedness constraints, *h and *[+son, -nas], which are high ranking, but themselves dominated by an onset-specific positional faithfulness constraint. Word-initial preconsonantal nasals are clearly moraic in Gilbertese words like mka ‘compost’ and ŋ .ŋ ai ‘l sg pronoun’. Within a traditional syllable-based analysis, one is forced to analyze these as syllable codas of highly marked degenerate syllables. The analysis in (14), in contrast, allows word-initial nasals to be analyzed as syllabic (nuclear) elements. Note that Gilbertese is not a pure instantiation of sonority-based moras, since the phoneme /r/, an alveolar tap, is excluded from coda position (there are no phonemic glides in Gilbertese and no other liquids). Under the analysis suggested in the text, no explicit coda constraint is necessary, since /r/ is not defined as a mora in Gilbertese. For historical explanations of languages that allow nasal codas, but not more sonorous codas, see Blevins 1997, 1999a.

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30. Wilson (1999: 7) makes a similar point about positional faithfulness constraints when he says, “under certain rankings, Onset-based positional faithfulness . . . can cause underlyingly-voiced (but not underlyingly voiceless) consonants to actively avoid being parsed in Onset position. This pattern is not attested. . . .” 31. Wilson (1999) does just this and shows the extent to which OT must still be modified with the introduction of “targeted constraints” to incorporate a theory of phonotactic markedness.

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Author Index

Abboud, P., 66n. 10 Abdul-Karim, K., 160, 168 Abu-Haidar, F., 168 Abu-Mansour, M., 32, 173 Abu-Salim, I., 166, 173 Adelaar, K. A., 384–6 Alderete, J., 68n. 26, 204 Alfonso, A., 119 Allen, G., 119 Al-Mozainy, H., 26, 33, 36–7, 39, 66–7nn. 10, 11 Anderson, S. R., 28 Aoun, Y., 41 Aquilina, J., 149 Archangeli, D., 34, 380 Aronson, H., 206 Austin, P., 261 Bach, E., 33–4 Bagemihl, B., 155, 183, 185–6, 201–4 Baker, B., 78–9, 92, 95–7 Bakovic, E., 26, 28, 34 Barker, M. A. R., 384, 397 Bat-El, O., 246 Beckman, J., 49, 59–61, 204, 394 Behnstedt, P., 147–50, 161, 174, 176–8nn. 3, 8, 17, 20, 26 Benua, L., 35, 58–9, 334 Bermúdez-Otero, R., 68n. 19 Bethin, C. Y., 136, 141n. 13 Black, H. A., 67n. 17 Blake, B., 261 Blanc, H., 66n. 10, 147, 169, 174 Blevins, J., 4, 6, 18, 54, 60, 254, 377–8, 382, 392–3, 396–7, 399 Bliese, L. F., 382

Booij, G., 26, 68n. 19, 15, 185–6, 199–200, 209n. 10, 238, 240, 322, 338, 340, 344, 350 Borgstrøm, C. H., 59 Borkovskij, V. I., 136 Borowsky, T., 59, 238 Bosch, A., 59–60 Brame, M., 150–1 Breatnach, R. B., 246 Broselow, E., 41, 148, 150–1, 160, 186, 377 Buckley, E., 154 Bush, R., 209n. 10, 246 Butcher, A., 398 Butskhrikidze, M., 191 Bye, P., 68n. 26, 154 Calabrese, A., 343 Callaghan, C., 384 Campbell, L., 26, 65n. 5 Cantineau, J., 177n. 22 Carlson, K., 204 Causley, T., 56 Chierchia, G., 185, 357–8 Cho, Y. Y., 11, 13–15, 41, 155, 185, 206, 213, 238, 251 Chomsky, N., 38, 52, 338–9 Churchyard, H., 92, 97, 380 Clayton, M., L., 29 Clements, G. N., 54–5, 59, 68–9nn. 19, 32, 77–8, 94, 140n. 2, 147, 166, 184–5, 238, 242–3, 246, 356–7, 360–1, 364–5, 392 Cohen, D., 147, 170–1, 177–8nn. 16, 22, 29 Cohn, A., 68n. 19 Cowell, M. W., 147, 149

405

406 Creider, C., 384 Crowhurst, M., 33 Davey, B. A., 68n. 23 Davis, S., 10, 60, 79, 89, 92–4, 97, 167, 185, 231, 234, 246, 313, 319 Debaev, C. Z., 128 Dell, F., 147, 398 Deprez, V., 190 Dixon, R. M. W., 381, 387, 398 Dobson, V., 387 Dorais, L.-J., 384 Downing, L. J., 156 Dresher, B. E., 26, 28 Durie, M., 384 Dyen, I., 92, 97 Eisenberg, J., 228–9 Elmedlaoui, M., 147 Engelenhoven, A. van, 98, 384, 389 Erwin, W. M., 147, 149, 165, 169, 174, 178n. 30 Everett, D., 263 Fairbanks, G., 89, 97 Farwaneh, S., 41, 151, 173, 175, 177n. 28 Feinstein, M., 79, 89, 97 Féry, C., 11, 14–15, 41, 213, 216–18, 238, 308, 335, 338, 340 Fischer, W., 148, 170, 174 Fitzgerald, S., 389 Fleisch, H., 177n. 29 Flemming, E., 399 Frajzyngier, Z., 399 Fudge, E., 357, 361 Fujimura, O., 185 Gafos, A., 34, 66n. 11 Gair, J., 97 Gamble, G., 399 Geilfuß, W., 235 Giegerich, H., 222, 234 Gnadadesikan, A., 41–2, 56, 67–8nn. 15, 30, 114 Goblirsch, K. G., 335 Goldsmith, J., 378–80 Goldston, C., 266n. 2 Goodenough, W., 92, 97 Gordon, M. K., 33, 123, 127 Grammont, M., 360 Green, A. D., 11, 14, 59, 247, 266n. 1 Greenberg, J. H., 360, 364, 377

author index Grotzfeld, H., 147, 149, 165, 178n. 30 Guerssel, M., 58 Gussenhoven, C., 326 Gussmann, E., 199–200, 209n. 10 Haddad, S., 169, 173 Hagstrom, P., 176n. 4 Hale, K., 68n. 19, 261 Hall, T. A., 222–3, 397 Halle, M. 26, 28, 38, 66n. 9, 94, 97, 185, 338–9 Hamid, A.-H., 169 Hamilton, P., 381, 389, 399 Hammond, M., 308, 333, 338 Han, E., 176n. 5 Harrell, R. S., 147, 170 Harris, J., 30, 58–9, 65n. 7, 185, 377 Harrison, S. P., 380, 384, 393 Hart, M. I., 92, 97, 167 Hastings, A., 28 Hawkins, S., 119 Hayashi, A., 108 Hayes, B., 33, 36–9, 41, 54–5, 58, 60, 68n. 31, 77–8, 91, 96–8, 100–1, 110–11, 123, 126–7, 142n. 16, 209n. 3, 312–13, 319 Henderson, J., 387 Heugten, M. van, 331 Hewitt, B. G., 188 Hiller, M., 232 Hogg, R. M., 26 Hooper, J. B., 246, 356, 360, 392 Hooper, J. L., 3 Howe, D., 390–1 Hulst, H. van der, 176n. 6, 308, 338, 340, 350 Hume, E., 78–9, 92–3, 96–8, 166–7, 258, 259, 267n. 7 Hung, H., 39 Hyman, L., 41, 123, 154, 156, 183–4, 209n. 1, 239 Idsardi, W., 26, 28, 66n. 9 Ingham, B., 66n. 10 Inkelas, S., 68n. 26, 238 Irshied, O., 26, 36, 66n. 10, 147 Isacenko, A. V., 131 Ito, J., 9, 15–16, 67–8nn. 19, 26, 100–2, 104–5, 112, 119–20, 125, 151–4, 176n. 5, 215, 222, 224, 233, 238, 240–2, 379–80, 384 Iverson, G. K., 23 Jackson, F. H., 380, 384 Jakobson, R., 6

author index Jastrow, O., 147–8, 157–8, 161, 169–70, 174, 176–7n. 2, 10 Jespersen, O., 360 Johnson, C. D., 169, 177n. 29 Johnstone, T. M., 66n. 10 Jong, K. de, 59–60 Jusczyk, P., 108 Kager, R., 38, 41, 101–2, 151, 234, 334, 338, 340, 350 Kahn, D., 3, 127, 141n. 5, 377, 384 Karttunen, F., 398 Katayama, M., 119 Kats, J. C. P., 325 Kaye, J., 251 Keer, E., 54, 56, 62 Kenstowicz, M., 6, 26, 29, 36, 59, 66nn. 10, 11, 68n. 19, 128, 141n. 6, 147, 150–1, 160, 168 Kessler, B., 209n. 2 Keyser, S. J., 69n. 32, 77–8, 97, 166, 238 Kim-Renaud, Y.-K., 382 King, T. H., 11, 13–15, 41, 155, 213, 238, 251 Kingston, J., 371, 378, 391 Kiparsky, P., 9, 11, 13, 15, 26, 28, 32, 37, 41, 44, 47, 66–8nn. 10, 12, 19, 136, 140n. 2, 152, 234, 238, 240, 347, 356, 360 Kirchner, R., 41–2, 67nn. 15, 19, 156 Kisseberth, C., 6, 29, 59 Kissock, M., 68n. 19 Kloeke, W., 223 Klokeid, T., 65n. 5 Koutsoudas, A., 28 Kraehenmann, A., 335 Kress, B., 240 Kubozono, H., 11, 99, 101, 116, 118–20 Kurisu, K., 114 Kuznecov, P. S., 136 Lacy, P. de, 33 Ladefoged, P., 81, 98 Lamontagne, G. A., 56, 238 Lass, R., 224 Leben, W., 378 Lehiste, I., 42 Letterman, R. 79, 89, 98 Levin, J., 58, 140n. 1, 166, 185–6 Lichtenberk, F., 379 Liewehr, F., 170 Lin, Y.-H., 168, 177n. 15 Lombardi, L., 26, 66n. 11, 258, 333, 371, 375, 377–8

407 Lovins, J., 185 ~ Lubowicz, A., 31 Lunt, H., 141n. 7 Lynch, J., 389 Mackay, C., J., 392 Maddieson, I., 81, 98 Mansour, J., 168 Marantz, A., 59 Marçais, P., 147, 149 Mascaró, J., 30, 65n. 7 Mazuka, R., 108 McCarthy, J., 3, 9–10, 25–6, 38–9, 41, 44–6, 51, 54, 56, 59–60, 64, 65–8nn. 6, 11, 18, 19, 24, 26, 82, 98, 123–4, 129, 133, 141n. 11, 156, 183, 197, 204, 209n. 9, 218, 232, 234, 241, 254, 256, 258, 260, 263, 266, 267nn. 8, 9, 319, 334, 359, 378 McCoy, P., 206 Merchant, J., 65n. 7 Mester, R. A., 9, 15–16, 67n. 19, 100–2, 104–5, 112, 119–20, 125, 151, 153–4, 176n. 5, 215, 222, 224, 233, 238, 240–2, 379–80, 384 Milliken, S. R., 243 Mills, R. F., 384 Mitchell, T. F., 66n. 10, 147–8, 159–60, 162, 164–5, 169, 170–1, 176n. 11 Mohanan, K. P., 59, 360 Moravcsik, E., 59 Morelli, F., 16–17, 67n. 16, 186, 251, 358, 365, 376–8 Moreton, E., 63–4, 69n. 33 Moulton, W. G., 214, 232–3 Moussay, G., 384, 386 Müller, J., 93, 98 Murray, R., 246, 392 Mutaka, N., 156 Myers, S., 38, 338 Nababan, P. W. J., 384–5 Nasu, A., 112–13, 120 Nebel, P. A., 382 Nepveu, D., 187–92, 203 Nespor, M., 123, 153, 218, 254, 256, 262, 307, 333 Newman, S., 380, 384 Ní Chiosáin, M., 34 Nishio, T., 150 Norman, J., 386 Noyer, R., 68n. 19

408 Ó Briain, M., 246, 251 Ó Cuív, B., 246, 251 Odden, D., 156, 378 O’Grady, G., 389 Ohala, J., 371 Olsen, S., 224 Oostendorp, M. van, 10, 15–16, 54, 215, 310, 326, 333, 335, 338–40, 342–3, 346, 348 Orecnik, J., 240 Orgun, O., 334–5 Ossner, J., 228–9 Owens, J., 147, 149, 164, 166, 175, 176n. 12 Padgett, J., 34, 151, 235, 371–2 Palva, H., 147, 169, 176–7nn. 9, 19 Paradis, C., 68n. 19, 257 Pater, J., 56, 68n. 26 Payne, J., 138–9, 141–2n. 14 Peeters, F. J. P., 329 Peperkamp, S., 333 Pesetsky, D., 360 Pétursson, M., 240 Piggott, G. L., 41, 260 Plank, F., 224 Poser, W., 100, 102, 104 Potter, B., 68n. 19 Priestley, H. A., 68n. 23 Primus, B., 228 Prince, A., 3, 6, 24–6, 28–9, 33–4, 38–9, 41, 46, 51–3, 55–6, 58–61, 63, 65–6n. 6, 82, 98–101, 110–11, 123–4, 129, 133, 140n. 3, 156, 183, 196–7, 204, 209n. 9, 218, 234, 239, 241–2, 254, 256, 258, 260, 263, 265, 267nn. 8, 9, 304, 319, 338, 359, 361, 369–70 Prochazka, T., 66n. 10, 149 Prokosch, E., 308 Prunet, J., 257 Pulleyblank, D., 34, 380, 390–1 Pullum, G., 10, 24, 36, 62–3 Pyatt, E., 77, 89, 98 Ramers, K.-H., 215, 223, 228–9 Redford, M., 176n. 12 Rehg, K. L., 386 Reynolds, C., 79–80, 98 Riad, T., 342–3 Rialland, A., 238 Rice, K. D., 56, 246 Ritter, N., 176n. 6 Robins, R. H., 191, 206 Roca, I., 68n. 19

author index Rosenthall, S., 55, 58, 60–1, 68n. 28, 79, 82, 89, 98 Rubach, J., 31, 68n. 19, 155, 185–6, 199–200, 210n. 10, 238, 243, 397 Sagey, E., 377 Saib, J., 384 Samek-Lodovici, V., 67n. 16, 114 Sanders, G., 28 Sapir, E., 26 Sapir, J. D., 384 Sausurre, F., 360 Scobbie, J., 52 Seki, L., 263 Selkirk, E. O., 41, 77–8, 94, 98, 125, 140n. 2, 151–3, 184–5, 215, 218, 225, 238, 242, 256, 262, 313, 356–7, 360–1, 367 Shaw, P., 155 Sherer, T. D., 60–1, 238, 262 Shevelov, J., 136 Sievers, E., 154, 187, 225, 341, 343, 360 Silva, M. W. S. de, 97 Singer, H.-R., 147, 149, 165, 170 Sjoestedt, M.-L., 246, 251 Slis, I., 331 Smolensky, P., 3, 6, 16, 24–5, 30, 39, 55, 61, 63, 67–8nn. 15, 16, 30, 99, 101, 124, 133, 140n. 3, 147, 156, 183, 196, 234, 239–42, 265, 267n. 4, 304, 338, 349, 361, 369–70 Sneddon, J. N., 384 Sohn, H., 380, 384 Steriade, D., 79, 81, 89, 95, 98, 140n. 1, 185–6, 238, 243–4, 251, 356–8, 360, 367, 371, 376–8, 380–3, 390–1, 393–4, 396–8 Sternefeld, W., 235 Struijke, C., 359 Sugita, H., 92, 97 Sukegawa, Y., 110 Svantesson, J.-O., 155 Swadesh, M., 26 Tangi, O., 147 Tateichi, K., 104 Tawerilmang, A. F., 380, 384 Thráinsson, H., 240 Tomosada, K., 107 Torretta, G., 92, 97 Trager, G., 310 Tranel, B., 94–5, 98 Trigo, L., 85, 98 Trigo, R., 257, 258 Trubetzkoy, N., 99, 206, 338, 344

author index Tsygankin, P. J., 128 Tuuk, H. N. van de, 384–5 Vater, H., 223 Velde, H. van de, 332 Vennemann, T., 3, 224–5, 240, 242, 246, 392 Vergnaud, J.-R., 185 Vijver, R. van de, 10, 15, 17 Visser, W., 305–23, 333–4 Vogel, I., 123, 153, 185, 218, 254, 256, 262, 307, 333 Vogt, H., 188–90 Walker, R., 34 Waterson, N., 191, 206 Watkins, L., 382

409 Wiese, R., 215, 229, 338, 397 Wilson, C., 34, 400 Wiltshire, C., 11–12, 14, 37, 55, 66–7n. 10, 238, 254, 258, 264 Winteler, J., 335 Woidich, M., 147–8, 150, 160–1, 173–4, 176–7n. 3 Wurzel, W. V., 218, 222–4 Yip, M., 378 Zec, D., 11, 30, 95, 98, 123, 125, 140–1nn. 2, 4, 154, 162, 196, 209n. 8, 238, 356, 393 Zoll, C., 69n. 32 Zonneveld, W., 235, 334 Zwicky, A. M., 66n. 8

Languages Index

Achenese, 384 Afar, 382 Ahousaht, 390–3, 395–6, 399 Algerian, 165 Arabic, 13, 147–8, 152, 154, 157, 160, 164–72, 174, 175 Bagdad Christian, 168 Bagdad Jewish, 168 Bagdad Moslem, 169 Bedouin, 13, 25–6, 33, 35–46, 51, 65–8n, 147 Bedouin-type, 147–8; Bani-Hassan, 147 Cairene, 15, 377 Central Arabia, 147; Hijazi, 147 Eastern Morroccan, 382 Gokana, 154 Iraq, 147 Lebanon, 147 Lybia, 147 Maghrebi, 170, 172 Maltese, 148 Mauretanian, 147, 170 Mekkan, 32 Morocco, 147 Northern Iraqi Jewish, 174 Palestine, 147 sedentary dialects, 37, 41, 66n. 10 Syria, 147 Tunis, 147, 165 Turkey, 147 Arrernte, 387 Asheninca, 126, 137–40 Attic Greek, 368, 377 Australian, 381, 389, 398 Bedouin, 166 Cyrenaican, 166

410

Bella Coola, 13, 155, 183, 201–5 Benghazi, 165, 175 Berber, 58, 147 Tamazight, 382–6 Biblical Hebrew, 82 Bugis, 384 Bulgarian, 154 Cairene Arabic, 255, 264–5 Cairene, 150, 163 Carib, Macushi, 39, 41 Carolinian Saipan, 397n. 10 Catalan, 30, 65n. 7, 391–3, 396, 399 Czech, 155, 206–7 Dakota, 377 Delaware, 39 Dinka, 382 Diola Fogny, 208, 384 Diyari, 381 Djabugay, 389 Dravidian, 381 Dutch, 16–17, 26, 215, 338–40, 343–5, 350–3, 357, 377 Roermond, 16, 325–30 Rotterdam, 344 Standard, 330–2 Dyirbal, 389 Egyptian, 150, 159, 161, 165, 172–4 Middle Egyptian, 159 English, 4, 11, 24, 26, 38, 41, 58–9, 108, 123, 125–7, 130, 140, 170, 172, 215, 280, 338, 357, 366, 377, 382, 384 Old English, 26 Eskimo, 384 Arctic Quebec, 384

languages index Greenlandic, 384 Western Canadian, 384 Estonian, 155 Finnish, 33–4, 398 French, 5–6, 213, 215, 357, 382–3, 394 Frisian, 16, 305–23, 347 Fúzh¯ou, 386 Gaelic, Barra, 58–60 Georgian, 13, 188–99, 366, 377 German, 5–6, 9, 14–15, 213, 273–97, 338, 357, 366, 379, 382, 397 Northern, 16 Thurgovian, 16 Germanic, 338–9, 343 West Germanic dialects, 16 Gilbertese, 393, 399 Gothic, 342 Greek, 377 Attic, 239, 241, 242–6, 250–1, 397 Gugu-Yalanji, 389 Gujarati, 381, 396–7 Guugu Yimidhirr, 389 Haida, 357, 366, 377 Havasupai, 357, 366, 377 Hawaiian, 5 Hebrew, Tiberian, 32–5, 50 Heiltsuk, 399 Hindi, 357, 377 Hungarian, 357, 382, 394

411 Klamath, 377–9, 382, 384–5, 390–1, 396–7nn. 1, 4 Kolami, 382, 394 Konjo, 384 Korean, 30, 208, 382 Lac Simon, 382 Lake Miwok, 384 Lamani, 382 Latin, 4 Lenakel, 389 Leti, 10, 78, 92–4, 97, 255, 258–9, 384, 389 Levantine, 151, 162, 164–5, 173–4 Lithuanian, 378–9, 382–3, 391–2, 397n. 6 Luganda, 55–8, 68nn. 28, 30 Lybian, 175 Maithili, 382 Makasar, 384 Makkan, 173 Manam, 379–80, 397 Mazateco, 377 Mbabaram, 387 Minangkabau, 384, 386, 388, 398 Misantla Totonac, 392–3, 357, 377 Mohave, 357 Mongolian, 9, 368 Mon-Khmer, 155 Mordwin, 125–6, 128–30, 134–5, 140 Moroccan, 147, 150, 160, 164–6, 170 Mokshan, 128 Munster Irish, see Irish, Munster

Icelandic, 239, 240–2, 244, 246, 250 Ilokano, 58 Indic, 381 Iraqi, 147, 150, 164–6, 172, 174, 382 Irish, Munster, 14, 239, 243, 246–51 Isthmus Zapotec, 357, 377 Italian, 82, 307–8, 357–8, 366, 377, 384

Ngalakan, 10 Nhanta, 382–3 Nisqually, 366, 377 Nootka, 26–9, 44, 65n. 5

Japanese, 10, 82, 99–122, 379–80, 384–5, 387–8, 398 motherese, 11 zuzya-go, 11, 104–6, 118

Paipai, 366, 377 Palastian, 169, 174 Pama-Nyungan, 389 Pashto, 377 Pero, 399 Piro, 168 Pitjantjatjara, 255, 261–2 Polish, 13, 31, 199–201, 397 Poneapean, 386–7

Kamaiurá, 15, 255, 263–4, 266–7 Kammu, 155 Kashaya, 154 Khasi, 366, 377, 382–3 Kinande, 156 Kiowa, 30, 382

Old Church Slavonic, 125–6, 130–1, 134–5, 140

Qartm¯ın, 169

412 Russian, 155, 382, 397 Saami, 154 Saipan Carolinian, 380, 384–6, 397 Sanskrit, 358, 382, 397 Vedic, 26 Selayar, 384 Selkup, 94–5 Serbo-Croatian, 377 Seri, 377 Sinhala, 10, 78–91, 96 Slavic, 155, 170 Common Slavic, 131, 136 East Slavic, 131, 136 Slovak, 31 Spanish, 58, 377 Sudanese, 169 Swabian, 9 Swedish, 357 Syrian, 157, 165–6, 174, 382 D¯er izZor, ¯ 157–8 Telugu, 357, 377 Toba Batak, 384–6, 398

languages index Toda, 381 Totontepec Mixe, 382 Trukese, 78, 82, 92–4, 167–8 Tsou, 377 Tübatulabal, 33–4 Uma, 384 Umpila, 389, 398 Uradhi, 255, 257–8, 267 Wakashan, 396, 399 Wargamay, 389 Wembawemba, 389 West Germanic dialects, 16 Wichita, 366, 377 Woiwurrung, 389 Woleaian, 380, 384, 397 Yapese, 255, 260, 266 Yidih, 389 Yokuts, 32, 68n. 24, 380, 384 Yowlumne, 380, 390 Yuchi, 357, 377

Subject Index

alignment, 59 constraints, 129, 133, 241–2 ambisyllabic, 348–9 ambisyllabicity, 312, 215, 340, 353 appendices, 234 assimilation, 165–6 baseball chanting, 117 C-dialects, 147, 149–51, 159–61, 172, 175 chain shift, 35, 41–3 CiV-generalization, 339, 341–5, 350–2 CiV-sequence, 17 clusters, 239–51 simplification, 273–91 coalescence, 56–8 coda, 4 condition, 30, 273–8 compensatory lengthening, 55–8 compound formation, 116 conjunction M&F, 279, 287–98, 301 M&M, 273–279 consonant gemination, 110, 113 constraint reranking, 282 contrastive syllabification, 54–62 Correspondence Theory, 35, 46–8, 53 counterbleeding, 175 cumulativity, 25–6, 48–54, 56–8 CV-dialects, 147–9, 151, 157, 161, 165, 169, 172, 175 declarative phonology, 52 deletion, 259 derived environment, 288–91 desonorization, 150, 161

devoicing, 273–97 dorsal nasal, 222 Duke-of-York gambit, 24–36, 38, 43–4, 48, 56 duplication problem, 29 economy of derivation, 52 elsewere condition, 28–9 emergent universals, 381–8 epenthesis, 150, 172–3, 238–9, 246–8, 250–1, 257–9, 261 exceptions, 310, 332 exhaustive syllabification, 184, 186 exhaustivity constraints, 242 extrametricality, 37–9 extraprosodicity, 94, 97, 126, 255, 262 extrasyllabicity, 238–51 faithfulness, 220 and syllabification, 49, 54–62 final devoicing, 306, 308 foot, 101–2, 119, 123–39, 218 feet, 238–9, 243, 246–51 head, 102 free ranking, 102, 116 geminates, 10, 54, 58, 60–2, 77–97 initial, 13 gemination, 164 georgian harmonic clusters, 189–91 glottal stop, 232 grouping harmony, 38, 43 harmonic ascent, 63–5 Havlik’s Law, 131, 136–7 headedness, 125, 129

413

subject index

414 hiatus avoidance, 5 hyperfaithfulness, 285 iambic lengthening, 100–11 Iambic/Trochaic Law, 38 intervocalic voicin, 304–37 inviolable constraints, 394–5 labialization, 26–9 laryngeal phonotactics, 377–9 segments, 228 lengthening, 157 levels, 283–4, 297 Lexical Phonology, 13, 35, 284, 297 loanword phonology, 327–8 truncation, 11 locality, 34–5, 38, 40 M;F ranking, default, 278, 281, 287, 295 markedness, 220, 344, 358–62, 377, 395–6 metathesis, 150, 160, 258–9 mimetics, 99, 112–16, 118 minimal sonority threshold, 123–8, 130, 133, 137–40 violation, 154 word, 92–4 minimality constraint, 101 monophtongal, 340 mora, 99, 118–19, 123–5, 137, 140 assignment, 33–4 language, 99 Moraic Theory, 239 moraicity, 194, 197, 205 moraless syllable, see semisyllable morpheme structure constraints, 351, 352 motherese, 99, 107–9, 118 MSC, 333 mutual bleeding, 281 nonmoraic syllables, 12, 219 Obligatory Contour Principle, 344 obstruent clusters, 356–71 onset, 217 well-formedness, 239–51 opacity, 9–10, 271–3, 379–98 phonological, 36, 44–6, 56 output-output faithfulness, 35, 58–9

palatalization, 31 phonetic length of fricatives, 331 phonological phrase, 239, 250–1 phonotactics, 18, 254–6, 265 place phonotactics, 379–80 string-based, 18 pleophony, 136 prenasalization, 55–8 Prokosch’s Law, 308, 312 prosodic asymmetry, 99, 116 constituency, 124–5, 137, 140 hierarchy, 188, 218, 238–9 weight, 11 word, 102, 116, 123–4, 126, 129, 135, 137, 139–40, 238–9, 243, 246–7, 249–51 Prosodic Hierarchy, 123–6, 137, 139–40 Prosodic Licensing, 152–3, 167 Prosodic Peak Transparency, 125 quantity-sensitive, 94 reduplication, 59, 244, 250–1 Richness of the Base, 17, 283, 285, 316, 353 root nodes, 348 rule ordering, 23–4, 26–35, 37, 55 disjunctive, 28–9 reordering, 282 scale, phonological, 42 segmental length, 304–37 semisyllable, 13, 40–1, 43, 147, 152, 154–5, 157, 163, 187, 213 serial derivation, 23–4, 26–35, 37, 44, 55, 62 monotonic, 52 shortening, 150, 172–5 Sievers’s Law, 342–4, 348–9, 353 sonority, 123–7, 130, 137, 139–40, 239–51 peaks, 125 restriction, 93 Sonority Sequencing Principle, 13, 184, 356–60 speech perception, 108 spirantization, 30, 33–5, 273–8, 291–7 stray erasure, 238 stress affecting syllable structure, 35, 38, 40–1, 43 assignment, 37, 39, 60 metrical feet, 35, 37–9 Strict Layer Hypothesis, 12, 125, 262

subject index strict layering, 151, 153–4 string-based cluster constraints, 388–9 phonotactics, 375–403 syllabification, 148, 152 syllable, 3, 99, 118–19, 123, 125–30, 132–3, 136–9, 238–9, 243, 246–7, 250–1, 340 contact, 240, 246–7, 251 edges, 12 head syllable, 102 heavy syllable, 100, 119, 124, 136 language, 99 light syllable, 100, 119 superheavy, 13 typology, 6–8 weight, 10, 123 Syllable Contact Law, 14 sympathy, 272, 284–7, 292–3, 297, 300 Sympathy Theory, 25, 31, 45–54, 56–8 trisyllabic shortening, 38 trochaic feet, 11 trochaic lengthening, 109 shortening, 100, 110

415 trochee, 102 truncation, 99, 101–4, 118 typology, 254–6 VC-dialects, 147–9, 151, 159–51, 165–6, 169, 172, 175 vocalic length, 131 voicing, 30 fricative, 304–37 vowel, 124, 126–33, 138, 338, 344 epenthesis, 34–5, 37, 49–50, 59–60 glide vocalization, 25, 51 harmony, 33–4 lax, 214, 326, 340–1 lengthening, 100, 109, 118 neutral, 33–4 raising, 36–7, 41–3 reduction, 42 shortening, 100, 109, 118 syncope, 33–5, 36–7, 43 tense, 326, 340–2, 344–5, 346–51 weak layering, 153–4 weight-by-position, 55–8, 61–2 word-initial position, 327–8 word-minimality, 194