This article explores the role of token frequency and global prosodic length in conditioning optional paradigm uniformity in Japanese voiced velar nasalisation, with data from two wug-tests carried out with speakers of T & omacr;hoku Japanese. Experiment 1 demonstrates that frequency-conditioning observed in corpus data is reproduced in existing and novel compounds and holds at the level of the speaker. Experiment 2 focuses on a typologically unusual pattern where overall compound length in mora seems to influence nasalisation, a candidate for a 'counting' pattern in phonology. We find that instead of overall length, speakers are sensitive to the length of the second member of the compound, undercutting the viability of the mora-counting analysis. We discuss the importance of the results in adjudicating between existing models of how token frequency impacts the phonological grammar and suggest that only theories that allow individual morphemes to exhibit frequency-sensitive behaviour are sufficiently expressive to model the finding.
We discuss three patterns of palatalisation in Czech, each of which is associated with certain suffixes. The data suggest that the trigger of palatalisation is not the initial vowel of these suffixes, but different sets of floating melodic features. We provide a formal analysis of the palatalisation patterns, as well as of the internal structure of the Czech phoneme inventory, in terms of Element Theory and strict CV. This allows us to straightforwardly model their lateral (leftward) effect, as well as some peculiar behaviour in the context of labials and the lateral . Besides Element Theory and strict CV, we argue that this analysis provides further support to a substance-free view of phonology, in which phonological representations do not necessarily have a universal, fixed phonetic implementation.
The subregular hypothesis posits that all phonological markedness constraints can be described by some principled, learnable subclass of the regular languages. In this article, I classify a wide range of attested long-distance phonological markedness constraints, covering stress, harmony and tone, with focus on interactions of constraints over multiple tiers. To this end, connections are established between propositional logic over multiple tiers and algebraic properties of formal languages. These techniques allow for mechanical verification or refutation of membership in a class. Modelling the constraints and their induced patterns as formal languages, I demonstrate that the entire range lies within the propositional level, including Uyghur backness harmony and Karanga Shona tone, which have been presented as challenges to aspects of the subregular hypothesis.
This article investigates phonological complexity by using artificial neural network and Bayesian structural equation models to derive representations of phonological complexity from counts of the segments associated with particular features in languages' phonemic inventories. These latent representations can then be used alongside principal component analysis to further analyse how interactions between phonological features affect overall complexity, and what phonological complexity patterns a model can detect in a phonological feature data set. The results indicate that the per-feature segment counts investigated tend to contribute positively to a language's complexity, and that the latent complexity variables approximate a log-normal distribution. This implies that phonological complexifications co-occur with other complexifications diachronically while tending to be more constrained at the upper and lower ends of the complexity range.
This article examines the default stress pattern of Sentani (Papuan), situates it within the typology of iambic stress patterns, and provides an analysis within the Weak Bracketing framework for metrical stress theory. Sentani is unique in sometimes employing clash (adjacent stressed syllables) and other times employing lapse (adjacent stressless syllables) in an effort to avoid final stress in even-parity forms. Clash is employed in four-syllable forms, but lapse is employed in longer even-parity forms. Key to the analysis are constraints insisting that both the initial foot and the final foot carry a stress. When the initial and final foot are adjacent (i.e., in four-syllable forms), insisting that both be stressed results in a clash. When the initial and final foot are not adjacent (i.e., in longer even-parity forms), a medial foot emerges without stress in order to avoid clash.
This article tests theories of verb stress in the Northwest Caucasian language Abkhaz using a new database corpus of 3,115 inflected forms of 445 verbs. I describe the creation of the corpus and show how it can be used to gain new insights into principles of Abkhaz stress assignment, which depend on complex interactions between phonology and polysynthetic verbal morphology. I implement a previous theory of Abkhaz stress assignment (Dybo 1977) in a computer program and use the corpus to assess empirically how well it accounts for stress patterns across the lexicon of eventive verbs in Abkhaz. I show how this empirical evaluation identifies both strengths and weaknesses of the theory, and use these to propose a revised theory of Abkhaz stress assignment. The revised theory ties with or outperforms the original in all verb categories, accounting for the stress alternations in 40 additional verbs, which comprise almost 10% of the corpus. This shows that corpora, combined with computational implementations of phonological theories, can be used to further our understanding of highly complex phonological data sets.
This article presents a case of superadditive ganging-up cumulativity in the metrical phonology of Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian (BCMS). BCMS individually permits monomoraic feet and feet with a toneless head mora, but prohibits toneless monomoraic feet. Across BCMS dialects, several prosodic processes conspire against this doubly marked structure. Because of the superadditive character of this interaction, both Optimality Theory and, importantly, Harmonic Grammar require local constraint conjunction to capture the ban on toneless monomoraic feet in BCMS. This demonstration constitutes evidence for conjoined constraints in weighted constraint grammar. The study contributes to the typology of cumulativity effects by documenting superadditive ganging up in a categorical prosodic pattern, whereas virtually all previously reported cases of superadditivity have been observed in variable phonological patterns.
Poko (Skou, Papua New Guinea) displays a complex tone system, with three contrastive levels, toneless syllables and floating tones. Lexical tone is characterised by robust patterns of anti-alignment, wherein high (H) tones may not be initial and low (L) tones may not be final (McPherson & Dryer 2021; McPherson 2022). This article analyses the postlexical realisation of tone, especially the behaviour of floating tones, rising tones and toneless syllables. The Poko tone system shows unique twists on cross-linguistic patterns, such as the OCP, tone raising before L and the avoidance of non-final rising tones. We demonstrate that the behaviour of floating tones cannot be accounted for in a constraint-based theory with global evaluation, as in traditional Optimality Theory or Harmonic Grammar. Instead, the data motivate the use of directional Harmonic Serialism (Lamont 2022b), wherein changes are made incrementally and directionally, thus avoiding the creation of ties among otherwise similar candidates.
This study investigates how stress and metathesis interact in Sevillian Spanish, focusing on how their interaction sheds light on representation. Metathesis affects /s/-voiceless stop sequences, moving a debuccalised coda /s/ to the release of the following stop ( -> [patha]). This process plausibly changes syllable structure: the syllable where /s/ originated is closed at one representational level, but open on the surface ([pah.ta] -> [pa.tha]). The change in syllable structure could affect weight-sensitive stress, depending on the level speakers refer to in assigning stress. In a stress judgement task, Sevillian listeners treated syllables from which an /s/ had metathesised out similarly to heavy penults and differently from light penults. I outline a range of analyses to account for their behaviour, and suggest that a comprehensive analysis could include gestural representations and separate stress from metathesis, so that phonetic variability in the realisation of metathesis is permitted but does not affect stress.
High-vowel laxing in Laurentian French is notoriously variable and complex: while high-vowel tenseness is categorically predictable in final syllables, speakers seemingly apply distinct combinations of optional processes in non-final syllables (see, e.g., Dumas 1987 and Poliquin 2006). The current study investigates laxing in non-final syllables with two core objectives: (a) to determine which grammars individual speakers have acquired, and (b) to elucidate whether subgroups within the community have distinct grammars as suggested by Poliquin or instead these subgroups are superficial categorisations (e.g., emerging from a shared community with wide distributions of possible weightings for constraints). The results reveal that a larger number of superficially distinct individual grammars emerge than were proposed in existing literature, but that these patterns fall on a spectrum centred on a shared community grammar. They also provide new evidence for the importance of prosody in conditioning phonological processes in this variety of French.
In Paraguayan Guaran & iacute; (PG), nasalisation processes affect material to both the left and right of a stressed nasal vowel. While some prior literature has claimed that bidirectional harmony is active in the language, others have noted that progressive nasalisation appears to be morpheme-specific and likely dependent on a different mechanism from regressive nasal harmony. Recent work shows that Spanish-origin lexical items participate in regressive nasal harmony, but the interactions of etymological origin and progressive nasalisation remain unclear. Drawing on a corpus of 26 sociolinguistic interviews as well as elicitation with native speakers of PG, I argue that the mechanisms underlying the two types of nasalisation in the language are in fact different. I propose that PG regressive nasalisation is best analysed as productive nasal harmony, while progressive nasalisation represents a case of morpheme-specific allomorphy. Additionally, though the PG pattern of regressive nasal harmony has been extended to items of Spanish origin, this is not the case for progressive nasalisation. This corpus study provides insight into the specific factors that condition variation in nasalisation processes, contributing to a growing literature investigating variable application of harmony.
In this article, I analyse the word-prosodic system of Drubea and Num & egrave;& egrave;, two of the rare tonal Oceanic languages. Building on Rivierre's (1973) seminal work, I show that the word-prosodic system of these two languages can be analysed as involving only register features: an underlying downstep and a postlexical epenthetic upstep. Drubea and Num & egrave;& egrave; are thus tonal languages without tones stricto sensu. This new type of word-prosodic system has both theoretical and typological implications: (i) register features, defined as in Snider's (1999) Register Tier Theory, need not be subordinate to or associated with tones, and may exist in the absence of tone, including in underlying representation; (ii) tonal systems come in two types: tone-based systems in which the tonal contrasts are defined paradigmatically, as in most tone languages, and register-based systems where tonal contrasts are defined syntagmatically, as in Drubea and Num & egrave;& egrave;.
The C2 dominance effect in cluster simplification, in which the second consonant is preserved over the first (V1C1C2V2 -> V1C2V2), has been attributed to the perceptual salience of prevocalic consonants. However, this P-map account fails in classic Optimality Theory when syncope feeds cluster simplification (V1C1V0C2V2 -> V1C1C2V2 -> V1C2V2), as the input and output contexts do not differentiate C1 from C2. This article proposes a solution to this problem using correspondence constraints that reference acoustic transitions from and to vowels. Since syncope removes the targeted vowel and its associated transitions, Ident [transition] constraints cannot refer to the eliminated transitions. Specifically, the transition from C2 is protected by the relevant Ident [release transition] constraint, while C1's transition is not. Thus, under the ranking of Ident [release transition] over Ident [closure transition], C1, despite being underlyingly prevocalic, remains subject to the C2 dominance effect and is targeted for deletion. This proposal also addresses interactions between syncope and other cluster reduction processes, such as major place assimilation and debuccalisation.
This article presents a dictionary-based study of vowel reduction and preservation in British English in initial pretonic position and intertonic position. The different variables which have been claimed to influence those processes are tested on a data set of over 4,500 words using regression analyses. Our results confirm the significant effects of syllable structure, position of the vowel, word frequency and opaque prefixation. They also provide weak evidence for other factors such as vowel features and the existence of a base in which the vowel bears a stress, although no clear effects of word segmentability could be found. We also report new findings, as we find that foreign words reduce less than non-foreign words; we find that [+back] vowels reduce less than [-back] vowels in initial pretonic position; and we find a difference in behaviour for vowels followed by /sC/ clusters between non-derived words and stress-shifted derivatives.
Phonotactic patterns are commonly constrained by morphology. In English, for example, non-homorganic nasal-stop sequences are disallowed within morphemes but may occur across morpheme boundaries. This article demonstrates that similar effects of morphology on phonotactics can be found with non-concatenative morphology, even though they involve morphological domains that are more difficult to identify on the surface. Specifically, vowel alternation in a class of Egyptian Arabic verbs is affected by gradient phonotactic restrictions on consonant-vowel co-occurrence. However, such restrictions are only active in the imperfective form (e.g., [-rga?] 'return.ipfv'), not the perfective (e.g., [rigi?] 'return.pfv'). Using a lexicon study and a wug test, I show that this pattern is in fact bounded by morphological domains and is reliably generalised by speakers when deriving novel forms. I compare accounts of this effect that differ on whether they require abstract morphosyntactic representations and non-concatenative morphemes and discuss their implications.
