Stem and Initial Segment Faithfulness in Kanien’kéha (original) (raw)

The Typology of Phonological Segment Borrowing

The Typology of Phonological Segment Borrowing, 2020

All languages change, and these changes are often induced by language contact. A common contact-induced change is lexical borrowing, the introduction of a foreign word into a language. When a foreign sound is introduced to a language through lexical borrowing, the language is said to have borrowed a phonological segment, i.e., a contrastive speech sound. So far, the phenomenon of phonological segment borrowing has not been the object of a wide-scale typological study. This work introduces SEGBO, a first-of-its-kind database of borrowed segments in the world’s languages, that addresses this lacuna (Grossman et al. 2020). I present a descriptive analysis of the data collected so far, focusing on prominent target and source languages and frequently borrowed segments, both globally and areally. The second part of this work presents three studies that tackle focused research questions regarding segment borrowing, demonstrating various ways in which the SEGBO data can be utilized. These studies address the notion of borrowability, the role of phonological features in borrowing, and the borrowing of rhotic phonemes. This work demonstrates the broad spectrum of possibilities for research that can be made using SEGBO, and sheds light on a hitherto under-explored domain at the intersection of phonology, language change, typology and language contact.

The onset of the prosodic word

Phonological argumentation: Essays on evidence …, 2009

In one of the pioneering works of Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolen sky 1993/2004), McCarthy (1993a) offers a comprehensive analysis of r-insertion in non-rhotic dialects of English, and suggests that the constraint driving the process is not an onset-related constraint, but rather a constraint requiring prosodic words to end in a consonant('FINAL-C'). While morphological categories such as roots or stems are sometimes subject to templatic requirements involving an obligatory final consonant, independent evidence for a requirement ofthis kind on genuine prosodic constituents, such as surface prosodic words, is sparse. This paper shows that, while McCarthy's treatment remains, in its essentials, a model of optimality-theoretic analysis, it is unnecessary to take recourse to FINAL-C once the onset requirements for different levels ofthe prosodic hierarchy, together with their associated faithfulness properties, are better understood.

The phonology of Japanese /r/: A panchronic account

Journal of East Asian Linguistics, 2013

The aim of this study is to understand how /r/ emerged and developed in Proto-Japanese, and how the conditions of its emergence shed light on its present phonological behavior. The paper first offers a review of the phonetic, phonological and morphophonological characteristics of /r/ in Japanese, through examination of a large array of empirical evidence. The picture that emerges is that of an unmarked, phonologically empty segment, confirming a number of previous studies, in particular that by Mester and Ito (1989). I argue that /r/ primarily developed in Japanese as a default, epenthetic consonant in the intervocalic position within the morphological domain of a stem and its affixes, through an « Emergence of the Unmarked » mechanism before becoming a fully contrastive phoneme later on by virtue of a phonologization process. A formal account of this proposal within the framework of Optimality Theory is offered. It is shown that the phonological content of /r/ is acquired due to the application of well-formedness constraints (ONSET, ALIGN, MAXIO, DEPIO) as well as that of two sets of markedness constraints (FEATURAL AGREEMENT and HARMONY SCALE), which ensure that the null input is mapped to the least marked output in terms of phonological features.

Intrusive vowels preceding /R/ in Quebec French

2019

It has been observed (e.g. [2]) that an intrusive vowel (Vi) is frequently produced in obstruent+/R/ clusters, which is interpreted as a cluster simplification process. Here we look at Vi next to /R/ in a broader variety of contexts, in a corpus of 12,981 words read by 103 speakers of Quebec French [3, 4]. LMM shows that Vi is more likely to appear wordinitially than in clusters, which questions the interpretation of Vi in terms of simplification. Vi is also more likely to appear with apical than dorsal /R/ (both attested in Quebec French) and, in clusters, after voiced obstruents. Vi is significantly more frequent in monosyllabic than in polysyllabic words. Regarding the quality of Vi, t-tests between Vi and the following vowel’s mean F1 and F2 (Hz) and duration show that there is little to no difference between the quality of the two vowels, though Vi is significantly shorter.

R vocalisation, linking R and intrusive R: accounting for final schwa in RP English1

Transactions of the Philological Society, 2009

Word-form-final schwas are argued to be vocalised realisations of ⁄ r ⁄ in RP English. Phonetic similarity of [ e ] and [¤], their distribution, and the phenomenon of R-sandhi provide evidence to support the analysis. A new way of modelling the development of intrusive R word-internally and word-finally is presented, as is a new phonological interpretation of pre-R-breaking in Early Modern English. The continuous presence since fully rhotic times of stem-final ⁄ r ⁄ in the context of a following vowel-initial suffix or word, and the merger of commA words with lettER words beginning around the time of the loss of rhoticity in the eighteenth century, are key factors in an analysis which is generalised to all word-forms with final non-high vowels. Various objections to an R-vocalisation analysis that have been voiced in the literature are countered.

Morpheme Realization and Direction of Vowel Harmony.

2005

In this paper I will argue that regressive harmony in Assamese verbs and other derived environments is a result of morpheme realization. Drawing evidence from/i/deletion and/a/adaptation, I show that these cases of vowel harmony demonstrate the operation of a highly ranked constraint called 'Realize Head Morpheme'. This reformulated Realize Morpheme constraint states that the phonological features of the morpheme head in the input form must be expressed in the output form.

Patterns of segmental modification in consonant inventories: a cross-linguistic study

Linguistics, 2003

Segmental modification types, such as labialization, aspiration and prenasalization, usually appear on natural classes in consonantal inventories. There appear to be two typical situations in which segmental modifications pattern, which can be referred to as 'redundant' and 'contrastive': in redundant systems the segmental modification is superimposed on another, primary distinction, and therefore acts like an additional way of making a segmental contrast, while in contrastive systems there is no distinction between two (sets of) segments other than the segmental modification. In this paper we investigate the cross-linguistic occurrence of both types of systems, and offer a formalization couched in Optimality Theory, involving faithfulness constraints relativized for natural class.