Class 3: Contrast and neutralization (part 2) Adam Albright (albright@mit.edu) LSA 2017 Phonology University of Kentucky
Goals for today ▶ Continue discussion of markedness and contrast ▶ Licensing by cue: another example where neutralization correlates with diminished cues ▶ Constraining perceptual distance directly: dispersion theory ▶ Reminders ▶ Assignment 1 for “option 1” due on Monday (7/17) by PDF on Canvas ▶ My office hrs: Thurs 2-3pm (library basement, the Hub) and by appointment ▶ I’m happy to meet and talk about class or about your work! References 1/29
So far… ▶ A framework characterizing phonological restrictions ▶ Markedness constraints: *[ + spread glottis] (no aspirated segments), or *[spread glottis] (no s.g. specification) ▶ Contextual markedness: *[ + spread glottis]/ [ − sonorant] ▶ Faithfulness: Ident ([±spread glottis]) ▶ A result: with ranking and candidate competition, this system allows us to characterize phonological distributions ▶ Contrast ▶ Lack of contrast ▶ Contextual neutralization ▶ An assumption (to be discussed more in class 8) ▶ All human grammars contain or are drawn from the same constraints ▶ Defines a space of possible languages ▶ Reasoning about the constraint set: undergeneration, overgeneration References 2/29
The wide world of phonological restrictions Languages of the world exhibit numerous types of phonological restrictions ▶ Contrast vs. lack of contrast ▶ Positional neutralization ▶ No voiced obstruents word-finally (“final devoicing”) ▶ No voiceless obstruents after nasals (“post-nasal voicing”) ▶ No vowels other than [ə] in stresless syllables (“vowel reduction”) ▶ Assimilation and harmony ▶ No voiceless obstruents before a voiced obstruent, and vice versa (“voicing assimilation”) ▶ Prosody: stress, tone, etc. It would not be possible to do justice to surveying such restrictions in a class of this length. 1 Instead, we will focus here on a few selected restrictions, and how analysts haved reasoned about their analysis. 1 A nice set of summary articles can be found in the Blackwell Companion to Phonology. References 3/29
Reminder: licensing by cue ▶ Last time: two restrictions on voicing in Lithuanian ▶ Positional restriction: contextual neutralization word-finally ▶ Assimilation: obstruents must agree in voicing with a following obstruent ▶ What unifies these two restrictions ▶ Contrast is limited to pre-sonorant positions References 4/29
Reminder: licensing by cue ▶ The ‘licensing by cue’ hypothesis grounds the set of markedness constraints in considerations of perception (Steriade, 1997) ▶ Pay-off: derive asymmetries (contrast in a perceptually disadvantageous context implies contrast in perceptually more advantageous context) ▶ Interpretation of markedness as penalizing any specification directly captures insight that the markedness eliminates contrasts (not specific feature values) ▶ Caveat: both of these hypotheses are controversial ▶ Alternative: find other ways to limit set of markedness constraints, or simply allow a wide range of markedness constraints and seek typological explanations elsewhere (class 8) References 5/29
Contextual neutralization: place Navajo also shows neutralization for place of articulation in final position ▶ Final t, ʔ but no *p, *k ▶ Same questions as above ▶ Why does neutralization target some contexts (word-final/pre-pausal), but not others (word-initial/pre-vocalic)? ▶ When place is neutralized, why are t,ʔ favored? References 6/29
Contexts for neutralization Jun (1995, 2004) ▶ Place contrasts are typically maximal before vowels and sonorants, reduced before obstruents and word-finally E.g., English #C ▶ Stop place fully contrastive before vowels and ɹ, limited before l, banned before nasals and obstruents ▶ Fricative place fully contrastive before vowels, limited before ɹ and l, only [s] before nasals and obstruents ▶ Cues to place ▶ Formant transitions in preceding, following vowel (V2 privilege; Fujimura et al., 1978) ▶ Stops and nasals: release (strongest before V, also prominent finally in some lgs, weak or absent before C) ▶ Nasals: frequency of nasal resonances ▶ Liquids, glides: formants References 7/29
References 8/29
Example: nasal place contrasts Nasal place contrasts: a mini-typology (de Lacy 2002) V # C (V)mV ∼ (V)nV Vm ∼ Vn VmtV ∼ VntV Japanese, Spanish * (neutr.) * (assim.) ✓ Latin, Diola Fogny ✓ ✓ * (assim.) Russian, English ✓ ✓ ✓ ▶ Neutralization targets worse-cued positions over better-cued positions ▶ Worst: no following transitions and no release ▶ Better: no following transitions, but audible release ▶ Best: following transitions and release References 9/29
Not all C2’s are equal ▶ Although consonants/ C 2 are generally prone to place assimilation, some places of articulation are more likely trigger assimilation than others ▶ Dorsals > Labials > Coronals ▶ Korean place assimilation ▶ Coronals assimilate to labials and dorsals, and not vice versa ▶ Labials assimilate to Dorsals (for some speakers, esp. in casual speech) and not vice versa + e + to + pota + kwa ‘ loc ’ ‘too’ ‘more than’ ‘and’ /mitʰ-/ ‘bottom’ mitʰe mi(t)t’o mipp’oda mikkwa /apʰ-/ ‘front’ apʰe apt’o app’oda akk’wa /sok-/ ‘inside’ soge sokt’o sokp’oda sokk’wa + ə/a + ta + ko ‘ Inf ’ ‘ decl ’ ‘and’ /mit/ ‘believe’ midə mi(t)t’a mikk’o /ip-/ ‘wear’ ibə ipt’a ikk’o /mək-/ ‘eat’ məɡə məkt’a məkk’o References 10/29
Latin place assimilation ▶ Coronals assimilate to labials and dorsals ad- ‘towards’ / [lab] / [dors] ap-par-ere ‘gain in addition’ ak-kept-aːre ‘take’ ap-pend-ere ‘hang upon’ ak-klaːm-aːre ‘call to’ ap-plaud-ere ‘strike upon’ ak-kliːn-aːre ‘lean on’ ap-prim-ere ‘press close’ ag-gluːtin-aːre ‘glue to’ ab-brewi-aːre ‘shorten’ ag-ger-ere ‘carry towards’ ▶ Labials assimilate to dorsals (but not coronals) sub- ‘under’ / [cor] / [dors] sub-teg-ere ‘cover beneath’ suk-kend-ere ‘kindle beneath’ sub-tend-ere ‘stretch beneath ’ suk-kiːd-ere ‘cut below’ sub-deːlig-ere ‘choose’ sug-ger-ere ‘carry below’ sub-dubit-aːre ‘be a little doubtful’ sug-gluːt-iːre ‘hiccup a little’ sub-dok-eːre ‘teach as an assistant’ sug-grunn-iːre ‘grunt a little’ ▶ Not just verbs: /sub-grundaːri-um/ → suggrundaːrium ‘grave of a child less than 40 days old’ References 11/29
Jun’s hypothesis ▶ Susceptibility to assimilation correlates with gestural duration ▶ Dorsal > Labial > Coronal ▶ T argets: shorter gestures are more significantly affected/eclipsed by adjacent gestures ▶ Triggers: longer gestures are more likely to affect/eclipse an adjacent gesture References 12/29
The consequence for markedness constraints ▶ A (non-necessary) assumption about features ▶ [PLACE] is a feature, can have values [dorsal], [labial], [coronal] ▶ Equivalent: feature geometric interpretation (cf. LARYNGEAL) ▶ Fixed rankings reflecting cue availability ▶ *PLACE/ C ≫ *PLACE/ # ≫ *PLACE/ [ + son] ≫ *PLACE/ V ▶ *PLACE/ [ − syl,dors] ≫ *PLACE/ [ − syl,lab] ≫ *PLACE/ [ − syl,cor] ▶ Implicational relations ▶ Ident (PLACE) may be ranked at various points along hierarchy ▶ Assimilation before labials implies assimilation before dorsals ▶ Why assimilation? ▶ Steriade’s proposal for voicing is useful here too: underspecification ▶ Consonant with no independent place specification is realized with articulatorily simplest interpolation: same gesture as adjacent consonant References 13/29
Additional asymmetries Place assimilation is often limited to particular classes of segments, confirming that less well cued contrasts are dispreferred ▶ Nasals more likely to assimilate than stops ▶ Formant transitions in preceding vowel are less clear when it is nasalized ▶ Better cues for oral stops than for nasal stops ▶ *[PLACE, + nas]/ X ≫ *[PLACE, − nas]/ X ▶ Stops more likely to assimilate than Fricatives ▶ Both stops and fricatives have external cue of preceding formant transitions ▶ Fricatives have additional internal cue: frequency distribution of aperiodic noise ▶ *[PLACE, − continuant]/ X ≫ *[PLACE, + continuant]/ X References 14/29
More generally: eliminating some places, favoring others What about cases where we see a reduced range of contrasts, but not total assimilation to a following consonant? Which places of articulation are more marked? ▶ *[PLACE] won’t do the trick ▶ Just yields one outcome, perhaps [ʔ] (no oral stricture) 2 ▶ Markedness constraints for specific places? ▶ *[+labial], *[+coronal], *[+dorsal], etc. ▶ Does not predict any implicational asymmetries ▶ Is it a coincidence that only t, ʔ are tolerated? ▶ Cue-based constraints? ▶ Favor places with longer/more robust place cues, such as dorsals? ▶ Favor contrasts that are more distinct from each other, such as dorsal vs. labial? ▶ Potential sources of evidence for asymmetries ▶ Language-internal asymmetries ▶ Cross-linguistic asymmetries 2 Or, sometimes assumed to yield default coronal… References 15/29
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