Adam Albright
Flapometry and palatography: An argument for surface identity between derived forms?
It is well-known that affixes may differ in the extent to which derived forms deviate from the realization of the base in isolation: suffixes like -ation attract stress, condition vowel changes, and aspiration (distíll ~ dìstillátion, provó[k]e ~ pròvo[kh]átion), while affixes like -ery do not (distíll ~ distíllery/*dìstilléry). Numerous mechanisms have been proposed to derive this difference, assigning affixes different morphological levels (Siegel 1970; Allen 1978; Pesetsky 1979; Kiparsky 1982), different syntactic structures (Marvin 2003), different prosodic structures (Raffelsiefen 1998), or different faithfulness conditions (Benua 1997). However, surprisingly little attention has been paid to affixes with mixed properties, such as attracting stress but not conditioning consonant alternations.
One such case, described by Bermúdez-Otero (2008), concerns learned affixes like -ómeter and -ógraphy. These affixes attract main stress (speedómeter), but unlike other stress-attracting affixes, they do not preserve final clusters of nasal + voiced stop: swi[?]ómeter/*swin[?g]ómeter. In this talk, I present data from American English showing that the phonological inconsistencies surrounding these affixes go well beyond nasal+stop clusters. For example, the suffix -ometer unexpectedly fails to condition aspiration (lea[p]ómeter/*lea[p?]ómeter) and does condition flapping (floa[?]ómeter/*floa[t?]ómeter), much like a word boundary; yet unlike a word boundary, it blocks t-deletion (cou[nt]ómeter/*cou[n]ómeter). The suffix -ograph(y) similarly blocks aspiration for non-coronal stops (lea[p]ógraphy/*lea[p?]ógraphy), but for coronal stops, aspiration is preferred over flapping: floa[t?]ógraphy. For /nt/ clusters, where flapping is blocked, this results in a subtle aspiration contrast: curren[t]ómeter vs. curren[t?]ógraphry. These differences are a challenge for syntactic or prosodic accounts, which generally rely on a two-way distinction of presence or absence of a boundary or spell-out domain. They also pose a challenge for the stratal account, since they appear to require additional levels with no external motivation. I show that they follow straightforwardly from an account in which learners must learn different rankings of OO faithfulness for different affixes, based on the available set of data.
Mahasen Abu-Mansour, Umm Al-Qura Univerty, M.I.T
Phrasal Syncope in Makkan Arabic: An Optimality Theoretic Account
In this talk I investigate the proper domain of the application of phrasal syncope in Makkan Arabic using Selkirk’s Edge-Based theory of the syntax-phonology interface as well as McCarthy and Prince’s theories of Correspondence and Generalized Alignment. I show that both word-level and phrasal syncope result from the interaction of the same syllable structure constraints. The alignment of the right edge of the prosodic constituent (the phonological phrase) with the right edge of a maximal projection in syntactic structure accounts for the under-application of phrasal syncope. The present analysis captures significant generalizations about syncope. It demonstrates that the domain of phrasal syncope is internal to the phonological phrase with the plausible consequence of substituting the traditional reference to right-hand and left-hand syncope with the application versus under-application of the process. In addition, it provides evidence that Makkan Arabic is among the languages that exhibit right-edge effects.
Anthi Revithiadou
Recessive accentuation in Ancient Greek revisited
The issue of accent assignment in Ancient Greek (AGr, 7th c. BC ? 3rd c. BC) has been a favorite topic of investigation both in generative (Kiparsky 1967, 1973, 2000, Kiparsky & Halle 1977, Steriade 1982, 1988, Golston 1989, a.o.) as well as in pre-generative phonology (Lejeune 1945, Vendryes 1945, Allen 1966, 1973, Devine and Stephens 1974, 1995, a.o.). AGr was a pitch-accent system which inherited its accents from Proto-Indo-European but also developed certain innovations that distinguish it from other IE accentual systems. More specifically, a cluster of changes took place in Proto-Greek (late 3rd millennium BC) which involved, among other things, the development of recessive accentuation, that is, the limitation of the accent on the last three syllables of the word (1).
(1) Attic (Bubenik 1983: 153)
a. pherómenos < pherómenos Proto-Greek
< *phéromen-o-s ?carried-MASC.NOM.SG?
b. ánthroopos ?man-NOM.SG?
c. patrída ?homeland-ACC.SG?
d. agorá ?market-NOM.SG?
What adds to the complexity of the system, however, is that weight distinctions, confined mainly to the right edge of the word, caused accent to shift if it was
too distanced (i.e. more than three moras) from the edge of the word (2).
(2) a. pheroménoo ?carried-MASC.GEN.SG?
b. anthróopou ?man-GEN.SG?
Previous accounts exploit a variety of analytical tools to account for the window and the restricted weight effects. In this talk, I will propose that a more efficient and straightforward analysis of the AGr facts can be made if we implement insights from a representational model that segregates metrical from prosodic structure (Hyde 2001, 2006). Moreover, I will propose that the same theory can also account for the intricate patterns of clitic accentuation:
(3) a. ánthroopós tinos ?someone?s man?
óikós tinos ?someone?s house?
b. phílos tinós ?someone?s friend?
phóiniks tinós ?someone?s phoenix?
daímoon tino?s ?someone?s god?
Olga Vaysman
Segmental Alternations and Metrical Theory
This talk focuses on segmental alternations that are dependent on word-internal prosody, such as prominence and foot boundaries. Ever since the earliest work in metrical theory that introduced metrical foot (e.g. Liberman and Prince 1977) and in contemporary metrical theory (Hayes (1995), de Lacy (2004), among others) stress has customarily been considered to be synonymous to the notion of the head of the foot; stress is the main diagnostic for foot assignment in languages, as well as the main argument for the very existence of feet as constituents in the grammar. Some researchers, like Gordon (2003) argue that foot structure is not a notion we need to use to account for stress patterns at all.
Stress assignment, however, is not the only evidence for foot structure; segmental phenomena can be sensitive to foot structure as well. If, indeed, stressed vowels head feet, then rhythm-sensitive segmental alternations should follow the same footing pattern. If, on the other hand, the notion of prosodic constituency is independent from stress, we can expect mismatch between stress placement and foot assignment.
By exploring prosody-sensitive segmental alternations, I show that there is empirical, in addition to theory-internal, evidence that prominence and foot structure are distinct entities in the grammar. I further propose an OT-based model to account for the interaction of prosodic constituency and stress assignment.
Stefano Versace
Metrical form and Montale’s meter
(1) nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita “in the middle of our life’s stride”
(2) mi ritrovai per una selva oscura “I found myself in a dark wood”
(3) e tu seguissi le fragili architetture “would you follow the frail architectures”
At first blush, the three lines above may appear to be written in the same meter, but in fact they are not. Famously, example (1) and (2) are the first two lines of Dante’s Divine Comedy, and instantiate two different patterns of endecasillabo, the most common meter in the Italian tradition: Generative Metrics (Cf. Nespor & Vogel (1986)) has provided a scansion of this meter in terms of an abstract iambic pattern, elaborating on Halle & Keyser (1966) proposal. Example (3) instead is a line from Montale’s poetry, and it differs from an endecasillabo in that it has more syllables than expected. It therefore exemplifies what the metrical tradition has labelled tredecasillabo (i.e. a 13- syllable line), simply acknowledging a difference in measure. Here I am going to claim instead that such lines can be scanned as endecasillabi by applying some deletion (Δ-) rules (as proposed by Fabb & Halle (2008)). After providing the necessary specifics about scansion rules in Italian metrics, the talk will focus on the interpretation of this meter, also discussing different frameworks for motivating the deletion. Beside the aforementioned Fabb & Halle (2008) modular approach, they mainly include constraint-based and prosodic-constituency-based interpretations; here, I will argue for the first one to be the most appropriate.
Larry Hyman, UC Berkeley
Situating Phonologization: The role of Contrast
Time and Location: 10-12pm in 26-142, Please note special time and place!
In this talk I have three goals: (i) to define and delimit the notion of "phonologization"; (ii) to determine how phonologization fits into the bigger picture; (iii) to discuss a few examples of (continued) interest to me, e.g. the effects of voiced obstruents ("depressor consonants") on pitch; vowel harmony; word- and utterance demarcation. I begin by considering the original definition of phonologization ("A universal phonetic tendency is said to become 'phonologized' when language-specific reference must be made to it, as in a phonological rule." (Hyman 1972:170)), a concept which can be traced back at least as far as Baudouin de Courtenay (1895 [1972:184]). Particular attention is paid to the role of contrast in the phonologization process. After presenting canonical examples of phonologization (particularly transphonologizations, whereby a contrast is shifted or transformed but maintained), I suggest that the term "phonologization" needs to be extended to cover other ways that phonological structure either changes or comes into being. Throughout the talk emphasis is on what Hopper (1987:148) identifies as "movements towards structure": the emergence of grammar (grammaticalization) and its subsequent transformations (regrammaticalization, degrammaticalization). After showing that phonologization has important parallels to well-known aspects of "grammaticalization" (Hyman 1984), I conclude that phonologization is but one aspect of the larger issue of how (phonetic, semantic, pragmatic) substance becomes linguistically codified into form.
Jonah Katz
Phonetic similarity in an English hip-hop corpus Time
In this talk, I present preliminary results from a corpus study of hip-hop. Previous studies on half-rhyme in Romanian poetry (Steriade 2003) and Japanese hip-hop and imperfect puns (Kawahara 2007, 2008) have established that the frequency of specific imperfect rhymes varies with the phonetic distance between the correspondents involved in the rhyme. The current study extends that finding to English hip-hop. The complex nature of the data poses special challenges for data extraction and analysis. I’ll discuss in some detail how the corpus was constructed and what the proper statistical methods are for testing generalizations about half-rhymes.
Giorgio Magri
The Ranking Problem in Optimality Theory
Every learning problem can be formulated as an optimization problem: within a given typology, pick the grammar that is best given the data. Very little work has been done within Generative Grammar on how to actually solve the optimization problem itself. Recently, a small but growing body of literature within the framework of Optimality Theory (OT) has started to study the optimization problem itself. I will introduce the main ideas of this enterprise and I will illustrate it by focusing on a problem currently open in computational OT, namely that of devising incremental ranking algorithms that perform both promotion and demotion. I will explain why the problem is interesting. I will review one such algorithm, namely Boersma’s (1994) GLA. I will discuss why the algorithm does not work, by explaining in detail what goes wrong in the case of a counterexample discovered by Pater (2007). I will then note that the ranking problem within OT can be described as a linear feasibility problem. This very simple observation has far reaching consquences. In particular, it offers a straightforward way do device the desired incremental algorithm.
