DIRECTIONAL, LEXICAL AtfD POSTLEXICAL SYLLABIFICATION AND VOWEL DELETION (original) (raw)
Related papers
Directional, Lexical and Postlexical Syllabification and Vowel Deletion
Proceedings XIth International Congress of Phonetics Sciences, vol. 2, 295-298, Tallinn : Estonian Academy of Sciences., 1987
In this paper it will be shown that the concept of syllabifieation, i.e. the assignment of sylïable structure, can account for the at first sight diaparate vowel deletion pKenomena in a much discussed Amerindian language, viz. Tonkawa. More speciflcally, it will be shown that the specif ication of the direction, the domain of application and the elements triggering the syllabification can account for the data in question, The Tonkawa case thus provides a good illustration for the view that certain phonological processes involving syllable structure, like vowel deletion, epenthesis and semivocalization, are typically the result of the assignment of syllabic structure, and need not be stated as independent rules.
Syllabification and prosodic templates in Yawelmani
Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 1991
This article addresses the interaction of syllabification and templatic morphology in Yawelmani. The morphological templates (in CV terms, CVCC, CVVCC, and CVCVVC) do not parse directly into well-formed Yawelmani surface syllables (CV, CVV, CVC). Nonetheless, as argued here, these templates can be expressed in terms of legitimate prosodic units, thereby supporting the prosodic morphology hypothesis (McCarthy and Prince 1986, 1987, 1990). The basic idea is that segments map from left to right to the template, but if a template is too small, any leftover stem consonants simply undergo right to left syllabification. This analysis accounts for the general templatic mapping of verbs and nouns as well as the different kinds of reduplication in Yawelmani. It also provides a more explanatory account of the "ghost' consonantsinitial consonants of some of the suffixes which surface only when the stem is biconsonantal, but not if the stem is larger. The analysis not only provides support for the prosodic morphology hypothesis, it also argues in favor of a templatic view of syllabification (It6 1986, 1989) and a rule of Weight-by-Position (Hayes 1989) operating independently of the general syllabification process.
Syllabification of intervocalic consonants
1988
Two tasks were used to study the syllabification of intervocalic consonants like the /V's of melon and collide. In an oral task, subjects reversed the syllables in words; in a written task, they selected between alternative syllabifications. Even in the oral task, subjects' responses were influenced by whether their spellings of the words contained a single letter (r) or a double letter (10. Responses in the two tasks were also affected by the stress pattern of the word, the phonetic category of the intervocalic consonant, and the nature of the preceding vowel. The results are discussed in relation to theories of syllabification. o 1988
1997
A similar point is made about apocope in Lardil by Wilkinson (1986). 1 We might say µ= in such cases. 2 'chicken, nom.sg.' b. /konna/ kon:n 'pig, nom.sg.' c. /tänava/ tänav 'street, nom.sg.' Final consonants are provably extrametrical, so that no form like *kan is admissible as a noun. In Kyoto (Kansai) Japanese, where the one allowed final consonant (N) is fully moraic, content words shaped CV are excluded: all historically monomoraic items have been lengthened (CV > CV:) to conform to the 2 µ limit. A typical variation is reported for Caughnawaga Mohawk in Michelson (1981): verbs must be disyllabic, and undersized collocations of morphemes are expanded by epenthesis. (2) Mohawk Word Minimality a. /k + tats + s/ iktats 'I offer' b. /hs + yaYks + s/ ihsyaYks 'you are cutting' Crucially, Mohawk prosody is insensitive to the light/heavy distinction, so that F is minimally []. 2 Here we sketch the system of available categories and the principles of mapping that accommodate a base to a prosodically specified template. 'syllable' 'light (monomoraic) syllable' µ 'heavy (bimoraic) syllable' µµ 'core syllable' c These elements are well-established outside of morphology. The theory of phonology uncontroversially recognizes the categories 'prosodic word' (Wd) and 'syllable' (). Stress theory provides the categories 'foot' (F), 'light syllable', and 'heavy syllable'. We adopt the traditional moraic terminology: light syllables () contain µ one mora, heavy syllables () two (v. Hyman (1985), Prince (1983) for recent discussion). Studies of µµ syllabification proper have long recognized the centrality of the syllable CV, the 'core syllable' (). We interpret c to include = V in languages which allow optionality of onsets. The prosodic units are arranged hierarchically c 7
Linguistica, 2005
It is a well-known fact that in English, syllabification of derived words differs according to the attaching affix, Chomsky and Halle (1968). In words such as hinder, meter, burgle the final sonorant of the roots /hindr/, /mitr/, /burgl/ is syllabic in word final position, following the rule of schwa insertion that makes a final sonorant preceded by a consonant syllabic. However, in related forms where these roots are followed by a vowel-initial affix, such as hindrance, metric, burglar, the sonorants in question are not syllabic, butare syllabified as onsets of the following syllable. Not all affixes beginning in a vowel have the same effect on syllabification. The participle forming affixing triggers the schwa-insertion regardless of its vowel-initial status, e.g. (hinder /hindgr/: hindrance /hindrans/, but hindering /hindgril]/, */hindril]/). Chomsky and Halle (1968) treat this property as inherent to the attaching affix; i.e.-ance in hindrance differs from-ing in hindering with respect to the triggering of the schwa-insertion rule. Using a finer-grained syntax of words, this paper derives the differences in pronunciation of the above mentioned words as following not exclusively from a diacritic on the affix, as in Chomsky and Halle (1968), but rather from the attachment position of the affix in the syntactic structure of the word.
Languages 2021, 6(4), 158., 2021
This study documents and accounts for the behavior of the place of articulation of latent segments in the Panoan languages Shipibo-Konibo and Capanahua. In these languages, the lexical category of the word governs the place of articulation (PoA) of latent consonants. Latent segments only surface when they are syllabified as syllable onsets. They surface as coronal consonants when they are part of verbs; but they occur as non-coronal consonants when they belong to nouns or adjectives. In non-verb forms, by default, they are neutralized to dorsal in Shipibo-Konibo, and to labial in Capanahua. The analysis proposed consists in using the well-known markedness hierarchy on PoA, |Labial, Dorsal > Coronal > Pharyngeal|, and harmonically aligning it with a morphological markedness hierarchy in which non-verb forms are more marked than verb forms: |NonVerb > Verb|. This creates two fixed rankings of markedness constraints: one on verb forms in which, as expected, coronal/laryngeal is deemed the least marked PoA, and another one on non-verb forms in which the familiar markedness on PoA is reversed so that labial and dorsal become the least marked places of articulation. The study shows that although both Panoan languages follow the general cross-linguistic tendency to have coronal as a default PoA, this default can be overridden by morphology.