We examine the derivation of intransitive verbs from adjectives in Hungarian. Two phonologically unrelated suffixes are added to adjectival stems in almost complementary distribution: -ul~ül and -od~ed~öd-. We show that this suffixation abides with various phonological and morphological constraints in addition to being lexically conservative: the stem of the intransitive verb must occur also as the stem of its transitive counterpart.

In both nominal and verbal paradigms of Hungarian a vowel may occur between the stem and the suffix. The presence and the quality of this vowel is determined by a wide array of phonological, morphological, lexical, even syntactic and semantic factors. In this paper we argue that this vowel functions as a paradigmatic class marker and that this status is responsible for the differences in the behaviour of linking vowels and other vowels in suffixes.

In addition to the common concatenative morphological system of Hungarian, there is a smaller portion of word forms that are templatic. These words satisfy requirements on their phonological shape. We here examine constraints on the number of syllables in templatic word forms. We observe that while the vowels in concatenative forms typically harmonize in backness (and in a more limited way also rounding), the vowels in nominal templatic forms often do not. On the other hand, the vowels in verbal templatic forms do harmonize. Furthermore, truncation is applied to satisfy the limit on word size in nominals, but truncation is generally not available as a repair for templatic verbal forms. We model our observations by a subsumption hierarchy of morphological layers: a concatenative layer, a (vowel) harmony layer, and a (stem) integrity layer.

Benjamin Macaulay advises us not to diagnose syllable structure, more specifically the distinction between vowel + vowel clusters and diphthongs in the Taiwanese language Budai Rukai, on the basis of speaker judgements. I fully endorse his approach, since much of current work in phonology unwarrantedly takes syllabification for granted, without arguing for its necessity.

This paper analyses linking vowels of Hungarian in a paradigm-based approach. We argue that the quality of linking vowels is determined by such a complex interaction of phonological, morphological, and morphophonological factors on both stems and suffixes that attributing them to individual morphemes is not plausible. Instead in the model proposed here linking vowels emerge from the identification of initial and final substrings within and across paradigms.

AbstractVowel harmony (VH) is a phonological phenomenon. However, many aspects of VH are governed by non‐phonological factors: morphological domains, roots/stems vs. affixes, their lexical properties, and so on. In this entry, the non‐phonological restrictions on VH by a well‐studied system, that of Hungarian, are surveyed and exemplified. It is concluded that in the majority of cases the non‐phonological factors influencing the selection of harmonic alternants aim to reduce the uncertainty that neutral vowels introduce in the system by creating disharmonic sequences and it is argued that Hungarian front–back harmony is best described with reference to lexically determined paradigm classes of roots associated with different harmonic behaviour.

There is a significant degree of phonological indeterminacy in front/back harmony in Hungarian (HVH), which manifests itself in lexical variation and/or vacillation. Harmonic behaviour in the zone of variation strongly supports the hypothesis that harmonic classes which individual roots belong to are organized as a paradigmatic system, very similar to inflectional classes. Such lexically determined declension classes are required independently of vowel harmony to account for various other lexically conditioned alternations in Hungarian, e.g., the alternations involving linking vowels in suffixes and yod in 3rd person possessives. A further evidence for the morphologisation of HVH is a paradigm uniformity effect, Harmonic Uniformity, which reduces harmonic uncertainty by making a stem’s harmonic behaviour predictable from that of its root. Thus, HVH is determined by morphology (paradigmatic classes and paradigm uniformity) in addition to (and sometimes overriding) phonology.

We look at the presuffixal vowels occurring after adjectival and nominal stems in Hungarian. We show that their ???low??? or ???nonlow??? status depends not only on the morphological category and arbitrary lexical properties of the stem, but also on its semantic properties and syntactic position, as well as the identity of the suffix and the typical environments in which the suffix occurs. Syntactic positions can be arranged in a scale ranging from more adjectival (less nominal) to less adjectival (more nominal). The same scale may be applied to suffixes typical of these syntactic positions. The lowness of the presuffixal vowels neatly follows these scales, with no variation at the two edges and a zone of variation in the middle of the scale.

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Following Trager & Bloch (1941), I argue that diphthongs in English are short vowels followed by a glide, that is, a consonant (Szigetvári 2016). In the present paper, I bring further evidence for this claim, based on the distribution of unstressed vowels in British English.

We survey templatic diminutive formation in Hungarian. We conclude that there is an intricate system of endings that are added to bases which are truncated if they contain more than one vowel. Bases are also subject to vowel length changes in both directions, as well as the palatalization of the last consonant. The templatic diminutive forms are not subject to vowel harmony occurring in suffixes which prevails in the regular additive morphology of the language. Nevertheless, these forms conform to the vowel patterns found in disyllabic monomorphemic or disyllabic suffixed word forms.

I argue that English has no voicing assimilation, in fact, it does not have phonologically voiced segments at all. Voicing in English is spontaneous in sonorants, while obstruents may be phonetically voiced only if lenis and surrounded by spontaneously or passively voiced sounds. The paper claims that most obstruent clusters of English are traditionally misanalysed as fortis+fortis clusters. These clusters are all either fortis+lenis or lenis+fortis; in fact, fortis+fortis clusters are completely ruled out in English.

I argue that English has no voicing assimilation, in fact, it does not have phonologically voiced segments at all. Voicing in English is spontaneous in sonorants, while obstruents may be phonetically voiced only if lenis and surrounded by spontaneously or passively voiced sounds. The paper claims that most obstruent clusters of English are traditionally misanalysed as fortis+fortis clusters. These clusters are all either fortis+lenis or lenis+fortis; in fact, fortis+fortis clusters are completely ruled out in English.

The neutral vowels in Hungarian front/back harmony a gradience in neutrality (from most neutral to least neutral) known as the Height Effect. In this paper we examine the relationship between two aspects of the Height Effect: disharmony associated with invariance in suffixes and the gradience in transparency in roots (the only aspect of the Height Effect that is usually analysed in the literature). We will show that there is a parallelism between the differences in the distribution of the various neutral vowels in invariant suffixes and the Height Effect as manifested in the gradience of transparency in roots and will argue that the latter is in fact motivated by the former due to an independently motivated general constraint, Harmonic Consistency, which regulates the harmonic behaviour suffixes in morphologically complex contexts.

There is an almost unanimous agreement among those concerned that English has clusters like [sp], [ft], [kt] (in, for example, sport, after, packed/act). Based on theoretical considerations, we contend that this is not the case, these words contain [sb], [fd], [kd], and [ɡt], respectively. In this paper we report on an experiment showing that the acoustic properties of the plosive clusters in the strings acting and packed in are different in a statistically significant way. The relative length of the vowel in acting is greater than in packed in, the voicing duration is longer in the cluster in acting, and VOT is larger before the /i/ in acting. This suggests that the former cluster is /ɡt/, while the latter is /kd/.

We are going to cast doubt on the standard analysis of “voiceless” obstruent clusters in English. There is an almost unanimous agreement among those concerned that the language has clusters like [sp], [ft], [kt] (in, for example, sport, after, packed, act). We contend that this is not the case, these words contain [sb], [fd], [kd], and [ɡt], respectively.1 We begin with a historical/theoretical introduction to the issue, partly based on Szigetvári (2020) in §1 and then describe an experiment in §2, the results of which corroborate that the plosive clusters in acting and packed in, both traditionally transcribed as [kt], are not identical, there is reason to believe that the first one is [ɡt] and the second one is [kd].