Three-level vowel length and phantom quantity in Shilluk Bert - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Three-level vowel length and phantom quantity in Shilluk Bert Remijsen University of Edinburgh 1

Introduction • Proto West Nilotic had a rich system of morphology, marked by vocalic suffixes (Andersen 1990). *CVC *CVC-V *CVVC *CVVC-V • Several West Nilotic languages went on to lose final vowels. • If nothing else happens, this would result in neutralisation… 2

Introduction • But many things did. • Neutralisation is avoided in morphological paradigms (Blevins & Wedel 2009). • Typologically unusual / phonetically challenging patterns develop more easily if they have the effect of retaining morphological contrast (Blevins 2004). 3

Introduction • In this presentation, I present a descriptive analysis of quantity phenomena which ensued in Shilluk, one of the daughter languages of Proto West Nilotic. • They include: - Three-level vowel length - Overlength in roots - Floating quantity - Morphological shortening 4

Three-level vowel length

Three-level vowel length • Compensatory lengthening in a language with a vowel length contrast yields three-level vowel length (cf. Hayes 1989): *CVC > CVC *CVC-V > CVVC *CVVC > CVVC *CVVC-V > CVVVC 6

Three-level vowel length • Compensatory lengthening in a language with a vowel length contrast yields three-level vowel length (cf. Hayes 1989): *CVC > CVC *CVC-V > CVVC *CVVC > CVVC *CVVC-V > CVVVC • This is the development described for Dinka (Andersen 1987, 1990). 7

Three-level vowel length Table. Morphological vowel length (grade) in Dinka, illustrated by a minimal set example. Morphological length (grade) Short Long ràaan ǎ - lèl ràaan ǎ - lè el el person D E C L . S -isolate:2 S person D E C L . S -isolate:3 S ‘You isolate someone.’ ‘He isolates someone.’ 8

Three-level vowel length Table. Lexical vowel length and morphological vowel length (grade) in Dinka, illustrated by a minimal set example. Morphological length (grade) Short Long Short ràaan ǎ - lèl ràaan ǎ - lèel el person D E C L . S -isolate:2 S person D E C L . S -isolate:3 S Lexical ‘You isolate someone.’ ‘He isolates someone.’ length ràaan ǎ - léel el ràaan ǎ - lèeel eel Long person D E C L . S -provoke:2 S person D E C L . S -provoke:3 S ‘You provoke someone.’ ‘He provokes someone.’ 9

Three-level vowel length Table. Lexical vowel length and morphological vowel length (grade) in Dinka, illustrated by a minimal set example. Morphological length (grade) Short Long Short ràaan ǎ - lèl ràaan ǎ - lèel el person D E C L . S -isolate:2 S person D E C L . S -isolate:3 S Lexical ‘You isolate someone.’ ‘He isolates someone.’ length ràaan ǎ - léel el ràaan ǎ - lèeel eel Long person D E C L . S -provoke:2 S person D E C L . S -provoke:3 S ‘You provoke someone.’ ‘He provokes someone.’ 10

Three-level vowel length • Analysed in Trommer (2014) using moraic affixes, which mirror the diachronic development. 11

Three-level vowel length • Shifting the focus to Shilluk, the outcome of compensatory lengthening is slightly different: *CVC > CVC *CVC-V > CVVVC *CVVC > CVVC *CVVC-V > CVVVC • That is, lengthening of short roots is ‘overlengthening’ in Shilluk. 12

Three-level vowel length • There are three patterns of quantity alternation in the inflectional morphology of verbs: PAST 2 SG PAST á- ŋɔ̂́ l l á- ŋɔ̀ ɔ̀ l Fixed Short ‘cut’ á-c ấ m á-càaam aam Short with Grade ‘eat’ á-k ɛ̂́ɛ l á-k ɛ̀ ɛ̀ɛɛ ɛɛ l Long with Grade ‘stab’ 13

Three-level vowel length • The same patterns of quantity alternation appear in noun morphology. Here with suffixless base forms: DEMONSTR . BASE d ̪ɔ́ ɔ́ k d ̪ɔ́ ɔ́ŋ̀ ŋ̀ Fixed Short ‘mouth’ ká ŋ káaa aa ŋ̀ ŋ̀ Short with Grade ‘trumpet’ g ʌ̀ ʌ̀ʌ t g ʌ̀ ʌ̀ʌʌ ʌʌ n Long with Grade ‘river bank’ 14

Three-level vowel length in Shilluk • … and again with suffixed base forms, albeit in the opposite direction: DEMONSTR . BASE p ɪ̂ ɪ̂ c- ɔ̀ ɔ̀ p ɪ̂ ɪ̂ɲ - ɪ̀ ɪ̀ Fixed Short ‘tethering pole’ pâaal aal- ɔ̀ ɔ̀ pâl- ɪ̀ ɪ̀ Short with Grade ‘knife’ b ɔ̀ ɔ̀ɔɔ ɔɔ t ̪ - ɔ̀ ɔ̀ b ɔ̀ ɔ̀ɔ n ̪ - ɪ̀ ɪ̀ Long with Grade ‘craftsman’ 15

Putting the three-level vowel length analysis to the test (Remijsen, Ayoker & Jørgensen, in press)

Three-level vowel length • We selected 8 minimal sets (2 for each of 4 vowels). Short Long Overlong / ɛ / l ɛ́ ɛ́ŋ ‘beat: N O M ’ l ɛ́ ɛ́ɛŋ ɛŋ ‘throw: N O M ’ l ɛ́ ɛ́ɛɛŋ ɛɛŋ ‘throw: N O M : P E R T . P ’ k ɛ́ ɛ́ l k ɛ́ ɛ́ɛ l k ɛ́ ɛ́ɛɛ ɛɛ l ‘peel.w.teeth: N O M ’ ‘separate: N O M ’ ‘separate: N O M : P E R T . P ’ páaal aal / a / pál ‘dodge: N O M ’ páal al ‘surgery.knife’ ‘surgery.knife: P E R T . P ’ lám ‘pray: N O M ’ láam am ‘prayer’ láaam aam ‘pray: N O M : P E R T . P ’ / ɔ / k ɔ́ ɔ́ l ‘take.out: N O M ’ k ɔ́ ɔ́ɔ l ‘herd: N O M ’ k ɔ́ ɔ́ɔɔ ɔɔ l ‘herd: N O M : P E R T . P ’ t ̪ɔ́ ɔ́ l l ‘eat: N O M ’ t ̪ɔ́ ɔ́ɔ l ‘rope’ t ̪ɔ́ ɔ́ɔɔ ɔɔ l l ‘rope: P E R T . P ’ / u / dúp ‘mess.up: N O M ’ dúup up ‘rodent’ dúuup uup ‘rodent: P E R T . P ’ 17 gút ‘stab: N O M ’ gúut ut ‘navel’ gúuut uut ‘navel: P E R T . P ’

Three-level vowel length • Frames: utterance-medial between low tone targets dâa dúp k ɪ̀ ɪ̀ k ɛ̂ ɛ̂ɲ Short EXIST m ess.up: NOM PREP place: DEM ‘There is messing up here.’ dâa dú up up k ɪ̀ ɪ̀ k ɛ̂ ɛ̂ɲ Long EXIST rodent PREP place: DEM ‘There is a rodent here.’ dâa dúuup uup ɟɪ ɟɪ̀ɪ ̀ɪ Overlong EXIST rodent: PERT . P people ‘There is a rodent of people.’ 18

Three-level vowel length • Data recorded with eight native speakers. 19

Three-level vowel length Vowel duration (ms) Figure. Means and standard deviation for vowel duration by Vowel length (V, VV, VVV), based on 8 minimal sets 20 recorded with 8 speakers.

Three-level vowel length • The level of vowel length is largely predictable based on vowel duration: correct classification result of 96% in Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA). Correct classification % (LDA) Figure. Percentage of items correctly classified for Vowel length in LDA on the basis of different measurements. 21

Overlength at the level of lexical roots

Overlength in lexical representations • The great majority of Shilluk content words have a root with a short or a long vowel somewhere in their paradigm. 23

Overlength in lexical representations • But there are some intransitive verbs that have an overlong stem vowel throughout. PAST IMPERF INVERSION á-jûuu uut ̪ ʊ́ ʊ́ -jûuu uut ̪ - ɔ̀ ɔ̀ ju ̂́ uu uut ̪̄ ‘finish’ á-d ʌ̂ ʌ̂ʌʌ ʌʌ r ʊ́ ʊ́ -d ʌ̂ ʌ̂ʌʌ ʌʌ r- ɔ̀ ɔ̀ d ʌ̂́ʌʌ ʌʌ r ̄ ‘become tired’ á-tûuul uul ʊ́ ʊ́ -tûuul uul- ɔ̀ ɔ̀ tu ̂́ uu uul ̄ ‘come up’ • There is no evidence to support anything other than an overlong vowel at the lexical level for these roots. 24

Overlength in lexical representations • Presumably these are historically derived from verbs with a short or a long root vowel. • Synchronically, however, there is no evidence for which. • Interesting departure from Dinka, where all content roots appear either with a short or a long stem vowel, which led Dimmendaal (1995) to postulate binary vowel length in the lexicon. • Crucially, in Shilluk overlength cannot be limited in this way. 25

Floating quantity

Floating quantity / floating tone in Mixtec (McKendry 2013) 27

Floating quantity / floating tone in Mixtec (McKendry 2013) M H n āʔā hand ‘Hand.’ 28

Floating quantity / floating tone in Mixtec (McKendry 2013) M H L H n āʔā jájàn hand coyote ‘Hand of the coyote.’ 29

Floating quantity / floating tone in Mixtec (McKendry 2013) M H L H n āʔā jájàn hand coyote ‘Hand of the coyote.’ 30

Floating quantity / Rise-toned singulars • There are suffixless and suffixed singular paradigms: Inflection Suffixless Suffixed (‘warthog’) (‘neck’) kùl mûn- ɔ̀ ɔ̀ Base kùl mûn- ɪ̀ ɪ̀ Pert., sg. k ǔ l mûn- ɪ́ ɪ́ Pert., pl. kùl mûn- ɪ̀ ɪ̀ Construct state kùl mûn- ɪ̀ ɪ̀ Demonstrative 31

Floating quantity / Rise-toned singulars • Rise-toned suffixless singulars are in between: Inflection Suffixless Suffixed Rise-in-base (‘warthog’) (fishing spear) (‘neck’) kùl mûn- ɔ̀ ɔ̀ b ɛ̌ ɛ̌ t ̪ Base kùl mûn- ɪ̀ ɪ̀ b ɛ̀ ɛ̀ t ̪ - ɪ̀ ɪ̀ Pert., sg. k ǔ l mûn- ɪ́ ɪ́ b ɛ̀ ɛ̀ t ̪ - ɪ́ ɪ́ Pert., pl. kùl mûn- ɪ̀ ɪ̀ b ɛ̀ ɛ̀ n ̪ - ɪ̀ ɪ̀ Construct state kùl mûn- ɪ̀ ɪ̀ b ɛ̀ ɛ̀ n ̪ - ɪ̀ ɪ̀ Demonstrative 32