Class 4: Faithfulness and alternations (part 1) Adam Albright (albright@mit.edu) LSA 2017 Phonology University of Kentucky
Announcements ▶ Assignment 1 due today for Option 1 (by Canvas, if you haven’t already turned it in) ▶ Assignment 2 posted, with some preliminary discussion to set it up at the end of class today ▶ Last week: markedness asymmetries ▶ Why are contrasts disfavored for some segment types, or in some contexts, more than others? ▶ Licensing by cue hypothesis: contrasts disfavored when lacking cues ▶ Goal today: move on to discussion of faithfulness asymmetries Morphological privilege Positional privilege Perceptual privilege References 1/34
Where we are ▶ The function of phonology: concentrate probability on particular phonological outputs ▶ Unconditioned (marginalized over inputs): what strings are grammatical in the language ▶ Conditioned on inputs: how should specific morphemes be produced? ▶ Concentrating probability = eliminating outputs ▶ Markedness: eliminate outputs containing particular substrings ▶ Faithfulness: eliminate outputs deviating the input in particular ways ▶ Markedness ▶ Usually: penalize feature values ▶ Alternative: penalize perceptually difficult contrasts Morphological privilege Positional privilege Perceptual privilege References 2/34
T wo things left over from last time ▶ Further evidence for diverse “small place inventories” ▶ Small inventories in epenthetic consonants: why consistent places? (ʔ, h, j, w) These illustrate, in different ways, motivations for a more articulated theory of Faithfulness constraints Morphological privilege Positional privilege Perceptual privilege References 3/34
Sources of evidence for markedness Reminder: last time we asked: where should we look to discover what markedness constraints on place contrasts penalize? ▶ Languages with limited sets of place contrasts ▶ English contrasts p,t,k (*ʔ) ▶ Seneca contrasts t,k (*p, *ʔ) ▶ Hawaiian has only k,ʔ (*p, *t) ▶ Within a language, place contrasts may be restricted in specific contexts ▶ Phonological: Navajo lacks *p, *k in final position ▶ Phonological: epenthesis ▶ Morphological: restrictions in affixes, etc. We already saw by comparing Seneca and Hawaiian that there is no universal fixed hierarchy of preferred places. The next example underscores that conclusion, using evidence from morphologically restricted place contrasts. Morphological privilege Positional privilege Perceptual privilege References 4/34
Morphologically restricted contrast: Lakhota consonants Three-way laryngeal contrast, four-way place contrast ▶ Stops and affricates: three-way contrast Voiceless unasp. p, t, t͡ʃ, k ka ‘there’ ʃʼaka ‘strong’ Aspirated pʰ, tʰ, t͡ʃʰ, kʰ kʰa ‘to mean’ mãkʰa ‘earth’ Ejective pʼ, tʼ, t͡ʃʼ, kʼ k’a ‘to dig’ t͡ʃikʼala ‘small’ ▶ Fricatives: similar three-way contrast Voiceless s, ʃ, x, h xã ‘scab’ ixa ‘to laugh’ Voiced z, ʒ, ɣ ɣã ‘messy hair’ hoɣã ‘fish’ Ejective/glottalized sʼ, ʃʼ, xʼ xʼã ‘to do’ ptuxʼa ‘to crumble’ ▶ Sonorants: m, n, l, w, j Morphological privilege Positional privilege Perceptual privilege References 5/34
Morphologically restricted contrast: Lakhota consonants Prefixes ▶ Subject, object marking: wa-, ja-, ũ(k)-, mã-, nĩ-, tʃi- ▶ Argument structure: wa-, ki-, ki-, kʰi- ▶ Locatives: a-, o-, i- ▶ Instrumental: ja-, wa-, wo-, ju-, pa-, ka-, na-, na-, (pu-) Systematically missing: ▶ Aspirated and ejective stops ▶ Coronal stops Morphological privilege Positional privilege Perceptual privilege References 6/34
Positional faithfulness ▶ ‘Privileged positions’ associated with special faithfulness constraints ▶ Structural privilege: strong positions ▶ Morphological category ▶ Phonological position ▶ Or perceptual privilege: better acoustic cues ▶ Adjacent to V (transitions) > not adjacent to V ▶ Before V (C release) > after V Morphological privilege Positional privilege Perceptual privilege References 7/34
1pl Background fact: *VV Languages frequently ban VV (vowel hiatus) (Casali, 1997) ▶ Sometimes satisfied by epenthesizing a consonant: VʔV, VjV, etc. ▶ Sometimes satisfied by combining features of the two vowels (coalescence) ▶ Attic Greek /zdɛː -omen/ → [zdɔːmen] live → ‘live- 1pl.pres.subj ’ /tiːma-omen/ → [tiːmɔːmen] honor 1pl → ‘honor- 1pl.pres.ind ’ ▶ More often: keep V 2 ▶ Lakhota /wa- ijukpã/ → [wijukpã] indef.obj grinder → ‘coffee mill’ /tʰa + isto/ → [tʰisto] ruminant arm → ‘foreleg of ruminant’ Morphological privilege Positional privilege Perceptual privilege References 8/34
Elision of V 1 Diola Fogny (Sapir, 1965, p. 13) (a.k.a. Jóola-Fóoñi, Kujamaat Jóola; Northern Atlantic, Senegal) /si + əw/ [səw] ‘house flies’ /si + uːk/ [suːk] ‘knuckles’ /bu + it/ [bit] ‘rice field’ /fu + ɛ/ [fɛ] ‘egg’ /mu + ɔf/ [mɔf] ‘earth’ /ka + et/ [ket] ‘palm leaf’ /ka + unɡund/ [kunɡund] ‘yam’ Morphological privilege Positional privilege Perceptual privilege References 9/34
Affix/root asymmetries T urkish possessives (data from Hankamer 2010) at atɨm ‘horse’ karpuz karpuzum ‘watermelon’ kemik kemi(ɣ)im ‘bone’ gøl gølym ‘lake’ baba babam ‘father’ tʃene tʃenem ‘chin’ ketʃi ketʃim ‘goat’ byro byrom ‘office’ ▶ 1sg possessive suffix is -im/-ɨm/-ym/-um ▶ Vowel agrees in backness and rounding with preceding (vowel harmony) ▶ V1 retained, contrary to general cross-linguistic tendency ▶ Morphological privilege: V1 is a root vowel Morphological privilege Positional privilege Perceptual privilege References 10/34
Morphological or phonological position? ▶ Examples of V 1 deletion in Diola above are ambiguous! ▶ E.g., /ka + et/ → [ket] ‘palm leaf’ ▶ V 2 is in second position, but also a root vowel ▶ At root + suffix boundaries, coalescence preserves some features of the root (Sapir, 1965, p. 15) /sibe + as/ [sibəs] ‘the cows’ /eturu + ɛj/ [eturəj] ‘the grass’ ▶ e,u are ‘tense’; a,ɛ are ‘lax’ ▶ Coalescence preserves tenseness of root vowel ▶ However, the fact that the root vowel isn’t simply preserved faithfully (all features of root) shows the importance of V 2 ▶ Or, a prefix/suffix asymmetry, as in Lakhota? Morphological privilege Positional privilege Perceptual privilege References 11/34
Affix/root asymmetries Morphological privilege: roots vs. affixes ▶ Ident (place)/root ▶ Hypothesis: no corresponding Ident (place)/affix ▶ Predicts asymmetry: contrast in affixes implies contrast in roots ▶ Mostly correct, though there are interesting exceptions ▶ Lakhota ranking ▶ Ident (place)/root ≫ *[ + coronal] ≫ Ident (place) ≫ *other ▶ Coronal more marked than other places? (Featural markedness) ▶ Or: coronal/X contrast more marked (Dispersion) ▶ Consequence: place contrasts are restricted outside the root ▶ A wrinkle not covered by this: suffixes show more contrasts than prefixes in Lakhota (though still restricted) ▶ Though some items called ‘suffixes’ may be independent roots… Morphological privilege Positional privilege Perceptual privilege References 12/34
Affix/root asymmetries Other examples of roots vs. affix asymmetries ▶ Jakobson (1949): Czech inflectional suffixes are restricted to a set of 8 (out of about two dozen) consonants ▶ Arabic: affixes do not contain pharyngeal consonants (McCarthy and Prince, 1995, 365) ▶ Yiddish: inflectional suffixes do not contain non-coronal consonants ▶ See Beckman (1998, chap. 4) for many more examples Morphological privilege Positional privilege Perceptual privilege References 13/34
Part of speech Spanish ▶ Position of stress is contrastive in nouns, within certain limits (three-syllable window at right edge of the word, weight effects) sáβana ‘sheet’ saβána ‘savannah’ káskaɾa ‘husk’ kaskáða ‘waterfall’ tóɾtola ‘dove’ toɾtúɣa ‘turtle’ bíspeɾa ‘eve’ espéɾa ‘wait’ ▶ Position of stress is predictable in verbs ▶ Penultimate or final, depending on tense Morphological privilege Positional privilege Perceptual privilege References 14/34
Part of speech T okyo Japanese ▶ Nouns and verbs/adjectives may be accented or unaccented ▶ Location of accent in accented nouns can vary, within limits (much like Spanish stress) ▶ Location of accent in accented verbs is predictable Morphological privilege Positional privilege Perceptual privilege References 15/34
Morphologically privileged contexts Shona, Kinande, and many other Bantu languages ▶ Nouns and verbs may both be toned or toneless ▶ T oned nouns bear wide range of tonal melodies ▶ T oned verbs have predictable melody, in a fixed position See Smith (2011) for more examples, and discussion. ▶ Smith’s suggestion: Faith /Noun ≫ Faith Morphological privilege Positional privilege Perceptual privilege References 16/34
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