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... The most popular answer to the second question is that there is a OCP-like constraint that bans adjacent identical strings (e.g. Menn & MacWhinney 1984, Golston 1995, Plag 1998, Yip 1998). This view is rejected in this paper. ...
... It was proposed in §2 that any markedness constraint is able to trigger haplology. This proposal is a significant departure from previous work, where it is assumed that there is some OCP-like constraint that specifically bans adjacent identical strings (Menn & MacWhinney 1984, Golston 1995, Plag 1998, Yip 1998). The aim of this section is to examine the virtues of the present proposals, and argue against the alternatives. ...
... The main alternative to the present proposal is to employ a constraint that directly bans adjacent identical strings. This approach has been implemented by a number of authors in various ways (Golston 1995, Russell 1997, Plag 1998, Yip 1998), and is seen as an extension of the OCP (Leben 1973, McCarthy 1986). This constraint will be termed the 'generalised OCP' here to differentiate it from the traditional OCP. ...
1 Introduction When the Arabic feminine singular morpheme ta attaches to the verbal prefix ta, the resulting form is not the expected *tata, but instead ta: (1) ta + ta + kassaru → takassaru it (fem.sg.) breaks, *tatakassaru (Wright 1971: 65) This is a typical example of morphological haplology: while there are two phonologically identical morphemes underlyingly, only one phonological string appears in the surface form (Stemberger 1981, Menn & MacWhinney 1984). 1 There are two fundamental questions about morphological haplology (hereafter 'haplology') that any analysis of the phenomenon must address: • What is the nature of haplology? • What triggers haplology?. 1 Phonological haplology is basically a diachronic process (Hock 1991:109, Grammont 1933), and is the idiosyncratic deletion of similar sequences of morpheme-internal material.
... Subsequent proposals, however, suggest that the OCP could further target prosodic elements, such as syllables (e.g. Plag 1998, Yip 1998, although this proposal has also met with criticism (de Lacy 1999). 2 To underscore the strong parallelism in identity avoidance across language modalitiesspeech and signsin what follows, we will provisionally assume that the OCP may target identical syllables. We further suggest that speakers encode a phonological form of panana in which the final syllables are identical (/pa.na.na/), regardless of the phonetic realization of the vowels. ...
... As noted, the hypothesis that doubling restrictions (both identity avoidance and reduplication) operate on the syllable has been debated (see Plag 1998, Yip 1998vs. de Lacy 1999. ...
Does knowledge of language transfer spontaneously across language modalities? For example, do English speakers, who have had no command of a sign language, spontaneously project grammatical constraints from English to linguistic signs? Here, we address this question by examining the constraints on doubling. We first demonstrate that doubling (e.g. panana ; generally: ABB) is amenable to two conflicting parses (identity vs. reduplication), depending on the level of analysis (phonology vs. morphology). We next show that speakers with no command of a sign language spontaneously project these two parses to novel ABB signs in American Sign Language. Moreover, the chosen parse (for signs) is constrained by the morphology of spoken language. Hebrew speakers can project the morphological parse when doubling indicates diminution, but English speakers only do so when doubling indicates plurality, in line with the distinct morphological properties of their spoken languages. These observations suggest that doubling in speech and signs is constrained by a common set of linguistic principles that are algebraic, amodal and abstract.
... Thus (2) presents a puzzle. I hypothesize that the over-application of -(j)Ib suppletion in examples like (2) is forced by a highly-ranked phonological constraint against forms with adjacent identical morphemes (Stemberger 1981, Menn & MacWhinney 1984, Yip 1998, Plag 1999. That is, -(j)Ib is used outside of its typical licensing context here because, if it did not, an illegal /-mIS-mIS/ string would be generated. ...
... 9) I argue that (9) is outranked by a constraint against strings with adjacent phonologically identical morphemes, stated in (10). This formulation will do the job for this project, but numerous works have explored the ways that requirements of this sort ought to be stated/explained (Stemberger 1981, Menn & MacWhinney 1984, Yip 1998, Plag 1999. ...
This paper focuses on a puzzle about suppletion of the perfect/evidential suffix in north Azeri/Azerbaijani. This morpheme’s default form is -mIʃ, but it can also be realized as -(j)Ib when the subject is 2nd or 3rd person, with one exception: in certain contexts where this suffix is used twice, the first instance is realized as -(j)Ib, even if the subject is not 2nd/3rd person. I hypothesize that this over-application of suppletion is driven by a requirement to avoid strings with adjacent identical morphemes. If this analysis is correct, this phonologically-forced morphological mismatch provides evidence that lexical insertion interacts and competes with phonological constraints (Wolf 2008, 2009, Pertsova 2015, a.o.). I go on to consider some remaining puzzles about the distribution of -(j)Ib.
... De acordo com Alkmim & Gomes (1982), a segunda sílaba do contexto também deve ser fraca, como vimos na regra apresentada em (71) Outros autores que consideram a haplologia como resultado de coalescência são Stemberger (1981), Menn & McWhinney (1984), Plag (1998), Lawrence (1998) e Russel (1999. ...
... Hierarquia prosódica: não afeta a aplicação de queda de sílaba, uma vez que nenhum constituinte bloqueia o processo(Tenani 2002(Tenani , 2003Pavezi 2006a e [The absence of] an affix or clitic (…) when the adjacent part of the stem is homophonoustoit.46 Há outros autores que consideram que a morfologia tem um papel importante na haplologia, em que morfemas homófonos (sufixos, raízes, morfes) se fundem (merge) no output -por isso, o processo é muitas vezes chamado de haplologia morfológica(Russel 1999;Stemberger 1981;Menn & McWhinney 1984;Plag 1998;deLacy1999;Plag1998).Em(116),ossegmentos/iz/e/is/sefundem(nenhumsegmentoéapagado)em/is/, permanecendo propriedades morfológicas no output,de acordo com de Lacy (1999). Este exemplo é um dos casos chamados de identidade parcial, já que o traço [vozeamento] é diferente entre as consoantes. ...
This dissertation deals with syllable drop in Capivari and Campinas’ dialects and the principle aim is to verify whether there is one single phonological rule or two distinct syllable drop rules for both cities.
This work is based on generative phonological theory and variacionist sociolinguistics, hence we analyze both linguistic and social variables. The linguistic factors analyzed were the segments (feature geometry, cf. Clements & Hume 1995), syllable structure (cf. Selkirk 1982), metrical structure (Hayes 1995), prosody (Nespor & Vogel 1986), number of syllables, and usage frequency for the first word in the context. As for the social factors, we analyzed the subjects schooling, gender, age, and city.
At segmental level, we have found that it is not important for the segments to be equal in Capivari, and it is in Campinas instead. As for the consonants, coronals are biased, and nasals disfavor the process, in both cities. On the other hand, there is a great difference in consonantal context concerning to dorsals: syllable drop is favored in Capivari and disfavored in Campinas. Considering the vowels, there are differences between the cities, since sequences of [coronal + coronal] and [dorso-labial + coronal] are unbiased in Capivari and favoring in Campinas.
At the suprasegmental level, both the dialects behave differently as for syllable structure if the first one is CV followed by other types of structures: the process is neutralized in Capivari and there is a favoring effect in Campinas. Regarding number of syllables, the size of the word undergoing the process is important in Capivari (bigger words are slightly biased), and this variable has not been selected in Campinas.
In relation to the lexical level, usage frequency of the first word (subjected to deletion) matters in Campinas (average frequency words slightly favor; high frequency words are unbiased, and low frequency words slightly disfavor). Since this variable was not selected in Capivari, we understand that there is a difference in usage frequency of words between the cities.
Therefore, we can conclude that there are segmental, suprasegmental e lexical differences in Capivari and Campinas. There are equal effects in the variable Oral Cavity of Consonants if [nasal] feature is not taken into account (this variable was never selected in the cities), and equal effects in Prosody variable (the results were very similar: the process is a slightly favored between phonological phrases, it is unbiased between clitic groups and it is slightly disfavored between entonational phrases).
... for overviews Stemberger, 1981;Nevins, 2012) which are often based on surface identity avoidance (e.g. Menn and McWhinney, 1984;Plag, 1998;Yip, 1998). The argument in this paper is rather that unfaithful MR directly falls out from the mechanisms and standard constraints necessary in a phonological account to reduplication. ...
... Crucially, the account is hence not based on a surface-ban on identical material (e.g. Menn and McWhinney, 1984;Plag, 1998;Yip, 1998) but on a ban on applying the operation that creates identical surface material too often. The argument is thus that the mechanisms needed in a phonological account of reduplication anyway, already predict unfaithful MR; it is by no means a general account to haplology. ...
A purely phonological account of reduplication based on the affixation of empty prosodic nodes predicts the attested typology of multiple reduplication. Languages that can combine more than one reduplication-triggering morpheme in a word differ in 1) whether they faithfully show all reduplicants, 2) whether they systematically avoid adjacent multiple reduplicants, or 3) whether one of the reduplicants is smaller than expected if multiple reduplicants are adjacent in a word. Morphological accounts of reduplication not only violate the modularity between phonology and morphology, they also fail to predict this attested typology.
... De acordo com Stemberger (1981), a haplologia provém da morfologia, já que há ocorrência desse processo fonológico se um afixo ou clítico fica ausente quando a parte adjacente do radical (stem) é homófona a ele. Para Plag (1998) ...
... Em 123, há queda da partícula le indicativa de 'mudança de estado', uma vez que está adjacente ao perfectivo (perfective marker) le.As análises apresentadas(Gouskova 2003, Plag 1998, Neeleman & Koot 2001 e Ortmann & Propescu 2000) definem a adjacência de seqüências idênticas como desencadeador de haplologia, decorrente do OCP. Há alguns autores que consideram a haplologia pode ser considerada ainda como um tipo de dissimilação 58 , já que envolve mudanças (o apagamento) de sons adjacentes similares que acabam por se tornar diferentes (Malamud 2005, Mercado 2001 e Plag 1998). ...
Esta dissertação trata da queda de sílaba em limite de palavra no falar da cidade paulista de Capivari, observando-se em quais contextos esse processo fonológico pode ocorrer e em quais nunca ocorre. Para realizar essa análise, são considerados três níveis fonológicos, quais sejam: segmental, prosódico e métrico.A queda de sílaba é tratada como dois tipos distintos de redução fonológica: na redução silábica, há dessemelhança entre as consoantes das sílabas envolvidas; com relação à haplologia, as consoantes das sílabas são iguais ou semelhantes - a diferença entre elas está apenas no traço [sonoridade].Pode-se constatar, pela análise de contextos segmentais, que tanto a redução silábica quanto a haplologia são processos regidos pelas mesmas regras, uma vez que ambos os processos se dão no mesmo ponto de consoante para que possa haver efetiva elisão silábica. E, da mesma forma, esses processos fonológicos podem ocorrer em qualquer nível da hierarquia prosódica. Isso evidencia que a redução silábica e a haplologia são de fato o mesmo processo fonológico.Finalmente, a análise métrica aponta as mesmas propriedades para a redução silábica e para a haplologia no que diz respeito ao uso desses processos para otimizações rítmicas. Dissertação (Mestrado).
... In German, the suffix -er is used to create deverbal nouns that denote agents (Läufer, 'runner') or instruments (Öffner, 'opener') (Plag, 1998). In a few cases, they may also indicate patient nouns (e.g. ...
We present the results of a large-scale corpus-based comparison of two German event nominalization patterns: deverbal nouns in -ung (e.g., die Evaluierung, ‘the evaluation’) and nominal infinitives (e.g., das Evaluieren, ‘the evaluating’). Among the many available event nominalization patterns for German, we selected these two because they are both highly productive and challenging from the semantic point of view. Both patterns are known to keep a tight relation with the event denoted by the base verb, but with different nuances. Our study targets a better understanding of the differences in their semantic import.
The key notion of our comparison is that of semantic transparency, and we propose a usage-based characterization of the relationship between derived nominals and their bases. Using methods from distributional semantics, we bring to bear two concrete measures of transparency which highlight different nuances: the first one, cosine, detects nominalizations which are semantically similar to their bases; the second one, distributional inclusion, detects nominalizations which are used in a subset of the contexts of the base verb. We find that only the inclusion measure helps in characterizing the difference between the two types of nominalizations, in relation with the traditionally considered variable of relative frequency (Hay, 2001). Finally, the distributional analysis allows us to frame our comparison in the broader coordinates of the inflection vs. derivation cline.
... A number of authors have observed that languages exhibit a resistance against accidental repetition of morphemes (Perlmutter 1971, Stemberger 1981, Menn and MacWhinney 1984, Yip 1998, Plag 1998, Nevins 2012, various papers in Van Riemsdijk and Nasukawa 2014, among others). 1 This resistance is reminiscent of the Obligatory Contour Principle in phonology (Leben, 1973, Goldsmith, 1979, and much subsequent work), which requires adjacent phonemes to be contrastive. In this paper we will explore which phenomena at the sentence level can be understood in terms of the avoidance of repeated morphs, an issue first addressed within a generative context by Perlmutter (1971). ...
It has frequently been observed that languages exhibit a resistance against accidental repetition of morphemes, a phenomenon reminiscent of the Obligatory Contour Principle in phonology. While languages vary in the strategies they exhibit in dealing with accidental repetition of free morphemes, these strategies consistently take the form of filters that mention both phonological and syntactic properties of the relevant structure. The minimal phonological condition is adjacency, but often partial or complete identity of form plays a role as well. The minimal syntactic condition specifies the syntactic category of the elements in question, but often shared features are mentioned as well. Given these characteristics, the conclusion seems warranted that avoidance strategies form part of the PF interface. Moreover, this interface must provide a mapping from morphosyntactic to morphophonological representations of the type assumed in realizational models of grammar. For most cases of haplology involving free forms, a purely syntactic analysis is unsatisfactory, primarily because it cannot express the generalizations that seem to underlie the data. For example, it cannot but treat the relevance of adjacency as an epiphenomenon.
... The underlying mechanisms for haplology have not been thoroughly uncovered for more than a century (Plag 1998). It is more so for telescoped compounds in Sinitic languages. ...
Haplology is the operation of omitting one of two adjacent linguistic units. It is typically optional but has a wide range of preferences showing both lexical and regional variations. In addition, haplology may or may not lead to meaning change. Hence it is a challenging lexicographical task to decide on whether to list both haplology and non-haplology forms as separate entries or to list only one form. We propose in this paper a framework for the inclusion of Chinese haplology forms based on a comparative study of Taiwan Mandarin and Hong Kong Cantonese. We found that the three constraints on compound haplology, i.e., frequency, tone sandhi and syllabicity, function differently in the two languages in the way that they have different strength rankings. It is ‘frequency > tone sandhi > syllabicity’ in Taiwan Mandarin, and ‘tone sandhi > frequency > syllabicity’ in Hong Kong Cantonese. We demonstrated that such ranking difference underlies preferences for the haplology or non-haplology forms of various compounds, thus serves as one crucial criterion for the acceptability of haplology forms. We then classified haplology forms by three parameters, i.e., lexicality, denotation and acceptability. For each type of haplology forms, we offered specific guidelines on the inclusion or exclusion of them in dictionaries and related standardisation suggestions. Within our framework, for a haplology form to appear in dictionaries, it must be a lexical item which also has higher acceptability than its full form and/or denotes a different concept from its full form.
... Se nos ocurren dos posibles explicaciones a este hecho. Primero, se trataría de un caso de haplología (ver De Lacy (1999) y Plag (1999)). La otra posibilidad podría ser que en realidad las "representaciones subyacentes /-an/" no contengan una posición vocálica y que ésta es añadida por la gramática por cuestiones de silabificación. ...
La gramática shipiba (Pano) muestra una “ventana fija” de acentuación; es decir, el
acento primario sólo puede aparecer en la primera o en la segunda sílaba de una palabra
y nunca puede ir más lejos. La posibilidad de aparecer en la primera o segunda sílaba
depende de la distinción entre sílabas ligeras y pesadas. Por otro lado, se puede
encontrar una gran cantidad de casos donde el acento primario aparece en posiciones
inesperadas pero siempre dentro de la ventana de acentuación. Estas apariciones son
inesperadas porque parecen no respetar la distinción entre sílabas ligeras y pesadas. La presente investigación se enmarca dentro de la fonología generativa no-lineal
y busca presentar una caracterización formal y descriptivamente adecuada del fenómeno
del acento shipibo.
Palabras Claves: Acento, fonología autosegmental, fonología métrica, grid métrico,
constituyente métrico, jerarquía prosódica, Pie (π), shipibo, teoría de la
subespecificación, teoría de la geometría de rasgos.
... Além disso, versões do OCP-generalizado, como a de Yip (1998) e Plag (1998), que propõem exigência de não-identidade também entre constituintes, o primeiro, entre morfológicos e fonológicos, o segundo, entre fonológicos apenas, torna OCP muito complexo, pois tem que dar conta de casos que não ocorrem entre afixos, mas entre afixo e radical, por exemplo. "Em todo o caso, mesmo que o OCPtradicional seja mantido, haplologia como apagamento só é possível com afixos monosegmentais; em todos os outros casos, deve ser coalescência." ...
Syntactic haplology (SH) is a sandhi rule which eliminates one of two contiguous identicalor partially identical syllables in a sentence (caldo de cana > cal de cana). Interpreting the results ofa variable rule analysis of SH on southern Brazilian Portuguese data according to Optimality Theory(PRINCE and SMOLENSKY, 1993; MCCARTHY and PRINCE, 1993,1995) implied discussing thenature of SH, if coalescence or deletion, and the markedness restriction involved. SH can be interpretedas a deletion process motivated by the requirement of avoiding sequences of identical or partiallyidentical syllabes, which is expressed by OCP.
... For instance, Zeshan (2003) claims that even though Indo-Pakistani Sign Language has a few conventionalized compounds, this process is no longer productive. In spoken language linguistics, the novel compounding approach has been used for decades (e.g., in Downing 1977;Plag 1998;; in sign languages, however, the idea of studying novel compounds is fairly recent (Lepic 2015). Thus, in our investigation into the emergence of structure, we focus here on novel compounds, that is, compounds invented on the spot by signers of the two unrelated young sign languages, ISL and ABSL. ...
This paper investigates how structure emerges in a young language, focusing on compounding in two young sign languages, Israeli Sign Language (ISL) and Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language (ABSL). We focus on novel compounds (tokens invented on the spot) to ensure that we are studying a productive process and to avoid issues contingent with lexicalization. We found that both languages make use both of compounding and size-and-shape classifier constructions (SASS-constructions), but ISL and ABSL have conventionalized different structures and the structures they do use are conventionalized to different degrees. We discuss the similarities and differences of those constructions in ISL and ABSL in the context of structure emergence and language evolution.
... 8 Null exponence is triggered by a process of contextual allomorphy that achieves structural reduction approaching a type of morphological haplology, i.e., deletion of redundant material (i.a. Perlmutter 1971;Stemberger 1981;Menn and MacWhinney 1984;Yip 1998;Plag 1998;Ackema and Neeleman 2003;Neeleman and van de Koot 2006;Nevins 2012;Salzmann 2013;FuB and Grewendorf 2014). The proposal derives the variation in the form of the relative pronoun between standard German and East Franconian by positing different rules of vocabulary insertion in the framework of Distributed Morphology (DM) (Halle and Marantz 1993), which differ according to the size of the matrix argument they target for exponence. ...
The ‘missing-P’ phenomenon (Bresnan and Grimshaw in Linguist Inq 9:331–391, 1978) refers to free relative constructions in which one of two prepositions appears to be missing. This paper provides an account of free relatives in German that straightforwardly extends to this phenomenon, drawing on evidence from standard free relatives as well as from previously undiscussed free relatives in East Franconian, which may be formed with a non-wh relative pronoun. Both types of free relatives are argued to be derived from light-headed relatives—to which they are structurally identical underlyingly—through a haplology-like process grounded in featural redundancy over pairs of adjacent spans (Williams in Representation theory, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2003). Contextual allomorphy in the postsyntactic component of the grammar is argued to trigger the non-pronunciation of a matrix argument in a light-headed relative, resulting in a super light-headed relative. As the conditioning environment for allomorphy occurs over multiple terminal nodes, the proposal offers further evidence that spans are morphological units targetable for vocabulary insertion (Svenonius in Spanning. Manuscript, University of Trømso, 2012; Merchant in Linguist Inq 46(2):273–303, 2015). The analysis improves on previous analyses of free relatives in German by providing a unified account of both nominal and prepositional free relatives, meanwhile providing new insight into feature-triggered allomorphy over adjacent spans as well as a method of accounting for the variation observed in the form of the relative pronoun across two varieties of German.
... That is, whichever phonological constraint biases speakers against -lily words applies most strongly to words in which the two adjacent morphemes have identical forms. This identity hypothesis limits the contribution of the phonological hypothesis to -lily words that have the repeated sequence "-ly" at both phonological and morphological levels (e.g., Plag 1998, Yip 1998 on OCP-type constraints; de Lacy 1999 on markedness constraints; Vosberg 2003, Rohdenburg 2003 on avoidance of horror aequi). Thus, it would predict that STEM and STEMY words would not be as unacceptable as STEMLY words, since neither STEM or STEMY words have multiple adjacent morphemes of identical form. ...
The adverbial suffix -ly₁ and the adjectival suffix -ly₂ typically do not combine (e.g., *ghost+ly₂+ly₁; 'in a ghostlike manner'). However, phonologically similar strings are attested when one /li/ string is part of the word stem (jollily, compared to: ?smellily, *lovelily). Does morphological structure modulate the acceptability of these words independently from the impact of phonological or usage-based constraints? In two experiments, jolly-type stems are rated more acceptable than smell- and love-type stems, which did not significantly differ from each other. A combination of phonological constraints and increased morphological complexity can account for the observed pattern.
... Identity avoidance in morphology has traditionally been given the name of haplology, which is often used to describe omission of a phonologically identical morphological piece(Menn and McWhinney 1984;Stemberger 1981).Plag (1998) andYip (1998) point to the OCP as the underlying principle, making it possible to refer to features as relevant players.18 In this connection, recall also from the discussion at the end of Sect. 3 cases of the PCC phenomena in Romance where the combination of 1st person and 2nd person is allowed.Content courtesy of Springer Nature, term ...
This paper demonstrates that the person-number hierarchy effects in the Agent-Focus construction in Kichean languages of the Mayan family such as Kaqchikel, K’iche’, and Tz’utujil can be attributed to the general mechanism governing morphological realization of person and number features, once an appropriate characterization of relevant agreement markers is given. In other words, this account only relies on the minimal theoretical machinery needed for a description of individual languages, unlike previous analyses. The binary nature of person and number features plays a crucial role in the proposed account. It is also suggested that the impossibility of pairing a non-3rd person subject with a non-3rd person object in the Agent-Focus construction is due to the [+participant]-targeting application of the Obligatory Contour Principle. Furthermore, a novel pan-Mayan characterization of Agent-Focus is proposed to capture variation concerning the alternation between Agent-Focus and the plain transitive marking in the context of the Obligatory Contour Principle violation. The new characterization of AF also enables us to capture the rather exceptional form of the Agent-Focus construction in Yucatec. The overall framework is thus shown to have validity that extends beyond the Kichean group.
... However, which technique is used is not fully predictable, as some bases allow both rhyme or ablaut reduplication (Sillepille, Sillesalle < Sille). To cover the non-identity requirement, I will make use of two constraints (20-a) and (20-b) proposed for the analysis of haplology in German and English (Plag, 1998), and extend their use to the foot level. These two constraints are context-sensitive versions of the more general markedness constraint (20-c). ...
This paper discusses reduplication as a technique of word formation in German. In contrast to
previous approaches, which consider reduplication as extra-grammatical and unproductive, this study
identifies rhyme and ablaut reduplication as truly reduplicative processes in the morphology of German.
A sizeable corpus of these reduplications and an acceptability rating study attest the productivity of this
phenomenon. Other contemplable cases of reduplicative structures are properly treated as either
phonological doubling, lexical sequencing, or (special cases of) compounding. An analysis in terms of
Optimality Theory (OT) is offered which suggests that both rhyme and ablaut reduplication emerge when
a segmentally and prosodically underspecified expressive morpheme is attached to a base – given
that the base strictly obeys certain word prosodic requirements. The present approach considers the
morphophonology to be blind to morphosyntactic structure and consequently eschews constraints
that make explicit reference to base-reduplicant correspondence. The OT grammar successfully
models the emergence of the fixed bipedal structure, the obligatory segmental deviance of the
reduplicant, non-exponence of the expressive morpheme in the case of non-trochaic bases,
the variable linearization of base and reduplicant in ablaut reduplication, and the interaction of reduplication
with segmental alternations. Certain (crosslinguistic) correlations regarding constraints on reduplicative
word formation and poetic devices, such as rhyme and meter, are discussed.
... Other examples for non-local OCP e ects can be found in, for example,Itô and Mester (1986);Plag (1998) orGallagher (2013). ...
If a morpheme surfaces di erently in di erent phonological contexts but no regular phonological operation
of the language derives one surface form from the other, an analysis seems to be required where
two di erent allomorphs are stored seperately, their choice being dependent on the phonological context
(cf., for example, Mascaró, 2007). In this paper, a case study of allomorphy in Yucunany Mixtepec
Mixtec is presented that argues for a di erent perspective on such apparently suppletive patterns of
phonologically conditioned allomorphy: a representation for a morpheme is stored that contains a superset
of the e ects observed in di erent contexts. Parts of this complex morpheme representation
are then predicted to remain unrealized in certain phonological contexts due to general phonological
markedness constraints. The allomorphy pattern in Yucunany Mixtepec Mixtec is particularly interesting
since realization of a morphological tone alternates with realization of a segmental string –
apparently rather di erent types of exponence.
... We believe these problems arise from two sources. First, they involve the repetition of identical phonological/phonetic material across morphological boundaries, which is generally avoided in English (Stemberger 1981, Plag 1998, Raffelsiefen 1999. This avoidance phenomenon is known as morphological haplology. ...
There is a long-standing debate about the principles constraining the combinatorial properties of suffixes. Hay 2002 and Hay & Plag 2004 proposed a model in which suffixes can be ordered along a hierarchy of processing complexity. We show that this model generalizes to a larger set of suffixes, and we provide independent evidence supporting the claim that a higher rank in the ordering correlates with increased productivity. Behavioral data from lexical decision and word naming show, however, that this model has been one-sided in its exclusive focus on the importance of constituent-driven processing, and that it requires supplementation by a second and equally important focus on the role of memory. Finally, using concepts from graph theory, we show that the space of existing suffix combinations can be conceptualized as a directed graph, which, with surprisingly few exceptions, is acyclic. This acyclicity is hypothesized to be functional for lexical processing.
... Accordingly, our treatment generally falls within the purview of dissimilation (Alderete, 2003;Alderete and Frisch, 2007;Bye, 2011;Suzuki, 1998;Walter, 2007 to cite but a few). More specifically, we will claim that this facet of the allomorphy is driven by morphological haplology (Ackema and Neeleman, 2005;de Lacy, 1999;Dressler, 1977;Menn and MacWhinney, 1984;Nevins, 2010;Plag, 1998;Stemberger, 1981;Yip, 1995Yip, , 1998. ...
... Finally, the corpus analysis queried whether any of the demonym suffixes was likely to cause/select for base truncation in stems. Plag (1998) argues that truncation should be considered a phonological rather than a morphological effect, because in suffixation, bases with similar foot structure are truncated predictably. Truncated bases were rarely found with -er and -ite, which may be expected due to the earlier observations that these two demonyms were far less likely to take V-final bases (V-final bases seem to be stronger candidates for truncation here than C-or CC-final bases). ...
This paper uses English demonyms – the name for inhabitants of a particular region, such as Californian or Icelander – to investigate a combination of phonological and non-phonological factors that drive conditioned allomorphy. A corpus study of English demonyms found that hypothesized phonological conditioning factors of demonym allomorphy such as base stress and base syllable count did not fully account for alternation in demonym allomorphy. In a related experiment that tested native English speakers’ preferences for demonym allomorphs among real and fictional place names, additional non-phonological factors such as familiarity and frequency were also considered. The experiment results showed that place names noted as unfamiliar by participants had different conditioning factors than phonologically similar place names from the corpus study. The corpus study and experimental results highlight the need to consider both phonological factors and non-phonological factors in the study of conditioned allomorphy.
... In the framework of lexeme formation, dissimilation constraints are meant to prevent two identical or almost identical phonological sequences from following each other at lexeme constructional boundaries (cf. Corbin & Plénat 1992; Lignon et al. to appear; Plag 1998). This explains why, on the Web, there is no occurrence for YÉMÉNITITÉ ('Yemeniness'), whereas 66 pages ( ...
We examine a case of base variation related to property nouns formation: namely,-ité suffixed French nouns expressing the character proper both to those who belong/are related to a place (town, country...) and/or to the place itself (henceforth Ethnic Property Nouns: EPNs). The study is based upon an important web-extracted corpus and shows that, at large scale, speakers coin EPNs either from toponyms (PORTUGAL > PORTUGALITÉ EPN 'portugal-ness' = 'portugueseness'), from related ethnic adjectives (AFRIQUE 'Africa' > AFRICAIN 'African' > AFRICANITÉ EPN 'africanness') or from both (BELGIQUE 'Belgium' > BELGICITÉ EPN 'Belgium-ness'; BELGE 'Belgian' > BELGITÉ EPN 'Belgianness'). Several examples testify that these base variations are unrelated to meaning but rather correlated with four formal competing constraints: among them, what we call 'lexical pressure' can explain the form of the output. A survey experiment is then described, which corroborates our analysis. Finally, the scope of our conclusions goes beyond French EPNs, as they apply to other word formation rules, in many languages.
... Non-isomorphy between morphological and prosodic constituents (Booij, 1985;Booij & Rubach, 1984;Dixon, 1977;Zuraw, Yu, & Orfitelli, 2014) In the default case, suffix boundaries in English do not coincide with syllable boundaries, but prefix boundaries do coincide with syllable boundaries: bak-er (be:) r (kǝr) r versus un-able (ʌn) r (e:) r (bǝl r ) Different (often morphologically defined) strata of the lexicon or specific sets of complex words may be subject to (partially) different phonological systems (sets of constraints) (Caballero, 2011;Inkelas, 1998Inkelas, , 2014Plag, 1998) In Dutch complex words ending in a non-native suffix, the suffix carries the main stress of the word, whereas native suffixes are stress-neutral and never carry the main stress of the word: absurd-it eit "absurdity" versus abs urd-heid "absurdity" ...
This article presents a systematic exposition of how the basic ideas of Construction Grammar (CxG) (Goldberg, ) and the Parallel Architecture (PA) of grammar (Jackendoff, ) provide the framework for a proper account of morphological phenomena, in particular word formation. This framework is referred to as Construction Morphology (CxM). As to the implications of CxM for the architecture of grammar, the article provides evidence against a split between lexicon and grammar, in line with CxG. In addition, it shows that the PA approach makes it possible to be explicit about what happens on which level of the grammar, and thus to give an insightful account of interface phenomena. These interface phenomena appear to require that various types of information are accessible simultaneously, and it is argued that constructional schemas have the right format for expressing these mutual dependencies between different types of information.
... Bekanntlich können w-FRs sowohl eine spezifische als auch eine nicht-spezifische (in der Regel generische) Lesart erhalten. 14 So kann ein Satz wie (49) Delbrück (1900: 369, 381), Curme (1964Curme ( [1922: 159) sowie Paul (1920: 192 (Perlmutter 1971;Radford 1977Radford , 1979Stemberger 1981;Menn & MacWhinney 1983;Yip 1998;Plag 1998 (vgl. [74c]) legt nahe, dass Nominalellipse nicht vor Haplologie erfolgen kann, da ansonsten genau die Art von linearer Adjazenz erzeugt würde, die die Anwendung der Tilgungsregel ermöglichen sollte. ...
In the present-day Germanic languages, free relatives (FRs) share formal properties with indirect question in that both constructions are introduced
by w-pronouns. However, at least in German (and historical stages of a larger set of languages, including English), there is an additional pattern which involves
the use of d-pronouns such as German der/die/das ‘that.masc./fem./neut.’, which typically introduce headed relative clauses. Focusing on
present-day German, this paper shows that d-FRs are set apart from w-FRs by a number of properties including syntactic distribution in the matrix clause,
behavior with respect to matching effects, inventory of pronominal forms, and semantic interpretation. From these observations, it is concluded that d-FRs
should not be analyzed on a par with w-FRs. More precisely, we argue that d-FRs are in fact regular headed (restrictive) relative clauses where the relative
pronoun has been deleted under identity with a demonstrative antecedent. This apparent instance of syntactic haplology is then analyzed as resulting from
the same mechanism that eliminates copies/traces in movement dependencies.
... some proposals cf.Yip (1998),Plag (1998).35 IDENT becomes relevant in the linked structure proposed here, though not in an underspecified structure. ...
Edges of prosodic and morphological constituents often behave differently from non-edge positions, but it is not always clear how such edge-effects are brought about. This paper is a case study of an edge-phenomenon in different varieties of German. Thus, glottal stop epenthesis is limited to edges of morphemes in Southern German, but not in Standard German and insertion of a dissimilatory feature in /sC/ clusters is limited to root edges in Standard German, though not in some Southern varieties. I argue that an analysis in terms of optimality theory (Prince/Smolensky 1993) based on ranked, violable constraints can best account for these facts: high ranking of a constraint banning domain-internal epenthesis (O-Contiguity) with respect to insertion triggering constraints can explain the restriction to edges, low ranking of the same constraint will result in application of epenthesis or dissimilation also inside the specified domain. Moreover, the implementation of the analysis in terms of optimality theory can shed light on this typical pattern of variation among closely related varieties of the same language: the difference between the variety where a process takes place everywhere and the variety where the same process applies only at edges will be analyzed as a minimal difference in faithfulness of the two grammars involved.
... But in fact, only one -ţi surfaces. If one morpheme specified for [-sg] is assumed, the absence of the second number marker is due to haplology and avoidance of multiple occurrence of the same morpheme in the same suffix string (Menn and McWhinney, 1984;Yip, 1998;Plag, 1998;de Lacy, 1999;Nevins, to appear). Since both instances of -ţi are not expected to occur phonologically adjacent, the alternative analysis with two markers is not as straightforward. ...
In this paper, I analyse the linear order of inflectional suffixes in the Kiranti language Athpare and argue that their order reflects a language-specific hierarchy of morpho-syntactic feature classes (Siewierska, 2004; Ackerman, 2009). I present an analysis for these facts that is couched in Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky, 1993/2002) and based on ALIGNMENT constraints (McCarthy and Prince, 1993; Trommer, 2003c) as well as a markedness constraint that demands an unambiguous marking of the agent argument. This demand refers to the well-known finding that case-marking and (fixed) order of elements interact in a crucial way (Comrie, 1981; Haspelmath, 2000; Müller, 2002). A comparative look at closely related Eastern Kiranti languages provides evidence for my approach: In some of these languages, slightly different patterns can be observed that directly follow from my assumption that linear order is governed by a general hierarchy of morpho-syntactic features and the demand to mark the agent argument prominently. From a typological point of view, this study of affix ordering is interesting since the Eastern Kiranti languages do not obey the typological tendency found in Trommer (2003a,c) that the ordering between person and number agreement generally follows the hierarchy Person Number.
... A possible answer to this question may be that a syntactical or morphological version of the OCP deletes the case marker on Bill after the case realisation rule has applied; 'Bill' is not actually marked for nominative, but is just phonetically case-less. (Note that the OCP was originally conceived as a phonological principle; however, here I am referring to it in its morphological interpretation, cf Perlmutter 1971, Stemberger 1981, Menn & MacWhinney 1983, Yip 1998and Plag 1998. This effect can be explained by the fact that in Indo-Aryan languages accusative case is equal to dative case, which in turn is related to specificity. ...
... In the framework of lexeme formation, dissimilation constraints are meant to prevent two identical or almost identical phonological sequences from following each other at lexeme constructional boundaries (cf. Corbin & Plénat 1992; Lignon et al. to appear; Plag 1998). This explains why, on the Web, there is no occurrence for YÉMÉNITITÉ ('Yemeniness'), whereas 66 pages ( ...
We examine a case of base variation related to property nouns formation: namely, ité suffixed French nouns expressing the character proper both to those who belong/are related to a place (town, country...) and/or to the place itself (henceforth Ethnic Property Nouns: EPNs). The study is based upon an important web-extracted corpus and shows that, at large scale, speakers coin EPNs either from toponyms (PORTUGAL > PORTUGALITÉEPN ‘portugal-ness’ = ‘portugueseness’), from related ethnic adjectives (AFRIQUE ‘Africa’ > AFRICAIN ‘African’ > AFRICANITÉEPN ‘africanness’) or from both (BELGIQUE ‘Belgium’ > BELGICITÉEPN ‘Belgium-ness’; BELGE ‘Belgian’ > BELGITÉEPN ‘Belgianness’). Several examples testify that these base variations are unrelated to meaning but rather correlated with four formal competing constraints: among them, what we call ‘lexical pressure’ can explain the form of the output. A survey experiment is then described, which corroborates our analysis. Finally, the scope of our conclusions goes beyond French EPNs, as they apply to other word formation rules, in many languages.
... We argue here that neither approach is adequate and propose a different approach based on distinctively violating a well-established constraint *ECHO which forbids concatenation of similar groups of sound (Yip 1993(Yip , 1998cf. Dressler 1976;Menn & McWhinney 1984;Stemberger 1981;Golston 1995;Plag 1998). This new approach has parallels both to the standard approach, in placing emphasis squarely on the similarity relation inherent in reduplication and on the direct OT approach, in treating reduplication (and all other types of morpheme) in terms of distinctive constraint violation. ...
In the recent OT literature there have been two approaches to reduplication. Within standard OT, reduplication is driven by a set of morpheme-specific constraints that require the base of the reduplicant and the reduplicant itself to sound the same (McCarthy and Prince 1995a); within this approach reduplication is part of the grammar, a set of constraints that regulate how an abstract morpheme (RED) surfaces. Within direct OT (Golston 1996), reduplication is supposed to result from distinctively violating a general constraint FILL which normally functions to prohibit epenthesis (Prince and Smolensky 1993); this approach treats reduplication the same way that it treats other morphemes, as pure markedness in terms of distinctive constraint violations. We argue here that neither approach is adequate and propose a different approach based on distinctively violating a well-established constraint *ECHO which forbids concatenation of similar groups of sound (Yip 1993, 1998; cf. Dressler 1976; Menn & McWhinney 1984; Stemberger 1981; Golston 1995; Plag 1998). This new approach has parallels both to the standard approach, in placing emphasis squarely on the similarity relation inherent in reduplication and on the direct OT approach, in treating reduplication (and all other types of morpheme) in terms of distinctive constraint violation. A similar approach to ours can be found in O Bryan 1999, which we have only recently come in possession of. We draw on two languages with rich reduplicative systems, Bontok and Chumash, to point out the inadequacies of existing approaches and to support our alternative approach. Our central claim is that reduplication is tied to specific morphemes or sets of morphemes and is not to be confused with any part of the grammar.
... Some of the stem-internal cases seem to target identical syllabic sequences when they are already 'weak'; witness for example the case of the ban on adjacent -ers and instances of unaccompanied -s in Section ??. In this vein, Plag (1998), discussing -ize formation with nouns and adjectives that end in C i VC i sequences, contrasts feminine, *femininize, feminize with strychnine, strychninize. The difference is that *fémininíze would have two adjacent identical unstressed VC sequences, while strýchniníze would not. ...
... The shortening within words known as haplology (Stemberger 1981) and illustrated in 22a,b from German and Latin is one instance of such a constraint against repetition, just as the ban against identical adjacent articles in English (22c), and Classical Greek (22d), or the prohibition of identical affixes with the shape /s/ in English (22e). For discussions of these phenomena of identity avoidance within OT, see Golston 1995, Yip 1998, and Plag 1998 The necessary constraint is formulated here, following proposals made by Yip (1998), as a constraint banning the repetition of material that is identical in adjacent prosodic constituents. Deliberately, the definition is kept very general, bearing in mind that different constituents (syllables, words, morphemes, and others) do not allow repetition of the material contained in them. ...
This paper is a study of the morphology and phonology of truncations in German (also known as i-Bildungen) within the framework of Optimality Theory. Truncations are shown to constitute a widespread and productive morphological pattern in Modern Standard German. The morphosyntactic properties of these forms are shown to follow from the assumption of a regular binary word-syntactic structure in which the base functions as the head, and a phonologically empty morpheme adds other, non-head, properties. The specific phonological properties can then be derived from the operation of a set of ranked constraints in the sense of Optimality Theory. The analysis implies a strong correspondence between reduplication and truncation as two related aspects of prosodic morphology. 1
... seen as a set of universal constraints, ranked on a language-specific basis. This poses a problem for a phonological analysis of allomorphy because the equivalent of morphololexical rules in OT-phonology is a morpheme-specific ranking of constraints. Although the possibility of morpheme-specific constraint ranking is accepted by some linguists (cf. Plag 1998, Raffelsiefen 1999), it is quite implausible from the learnability point of view. Therefore, Mester (1994), Kager (1996), and Booij (1998) proposed analyses in which the different allomorphs of a morpheme are lexically listed, and the choice of the correct allomorph follows from the set of ranked output constraints. Let us make the disc ...
This article discusses two kinds of phonological evidence concerning the balance between storage and computation: allomorphy
and phonological change. It is shown that even allomorphs that can be derived by a productive phonological rule are sometimes
stored in lexical memory because these allomorphs are preserved although the relevant phonological process has been lost.
Phonological processes that are subject to lexical diffusion also require lexical storage of the effects of these processes.
This implies that the notions ‘underlying form’ and ‘lexically stored form’ should not be equated: surface forms are stored,
and underlying forms are computed when they are needed for coining new words.
... However, what is to be excluded is the candidate showing the opaque pattern 4 in tableau (16), which violates both con-3 For a different implementation of the OCP in Optimality Theory see Alderete (1997). For a view similar to that adhered to here see Plag (1998). straints. ...
In many of the languages displaying vowel harmony, one or two vowels sys-tematically resist the process, and seem to be skipped by harmony. These vowels have been labelled as transparent or neutral vowels in the literature. Neutral vowels pose a severe threat either to the widespread assumption that phonological feature interaction generally applies locally with regard to some level of representation or to the Optimality Theoretic assumption of parallelism. In this paper, I argue that these vowels are anything but neutral. They are particularly active in that they impose severe restrictions on their environment. This analysis saves the locality theorem as well as parallelism in Optimality Theory. The language under investigation is Finnish.
... (cf. among others McCarthy 1995, Alderete 1996, Kager forthcoming, Alber 1998, Plag 1998 ...
One of the central problems in creole studies is the nature of the processes that are involved in creolization. This paper investigates this issue with regard to the restructuring of the syllable in the genesis of one English-based creole, Sranan.In the emergence of Sranan, as in that of many other creoles, we can observe the restructuring of syllables through epenthesis and deletion of segments. These processes are, however, not uniform. For example, in some environments (e.g. certain kinds of complex onsets) deletion is preferred (cf. story > tori), whereas in others epenthesis is preferred (in word-final position, as in walk > waka). The paper presents a systematic analysis of the two interrelated processes in optimality theoretic terms, showing that the observed phenomena can be accounted for in a unitary fashion by the complex interaction of violable ranked constraints.Based on this analysis, we address the question which principles govern the development of syllable structure in creolization: universal preference laws, transfer from the substrate languages or superstratal influence? We argue that all three elements are important in the creation of the creole, but each of them in a different and very specific way. The superstrate provides the segmental material which the emerging creole tries to preserve faithfully, but universal preference laws disturb faithful copying of the superstrate system. This is possible because the substrate exerts its influence imposing a particular grammar — high ranked structural constraints and low ranked faithfulness constraints — on the creole.
... Alderete (1997), Myers (1997), Myers & Carleton (1997) and Suzuki (1998, among others, have proposed analogous phonological OCP constraints in OT. OCP constraints have also been used in OT accounts of morphological haplology (Plag 1998, Yip 1998). The OCP may be circumscribed to hold in certain domains. ...
The proper understanding of infixation continues to be a matter of debate among linguists. The data presented in this paper show that infixation in Austronesian languages is not exclusively due to Prosodic Morphology, but instead is significantly influenced by the segmental phonology as well. Specifically, infixation may be blocked if it would create dissimilation environments in the first bimoraic foot of the morphological base. To capture this asymmetric effect, it is proposed that OCP-type markedness constraints may be sensitive to positional domains. The analysis also accounts for the alternatives to infixation that individual languages employ. Blocking creates a morphological gap in Tagalog. In contrast, infixation in Chamorro competes with prefixation plus metathesis, whereas prefixation with assimilation is observed in Toba Batak. The investigation of Chamorro also uncovers the phonological conspiracy that infixation and metathesis are both driven by the prosodic requirement that syllables must have onsets.
... Phonologists attribute such restrictions to the Obligatory Contour Principle (OCP), a family of constraints militating against identical phonological material (Leben, 1978). One specific instance of this family relates to place of articulation: OCP-PLACE rules out sequences of dorsal consonants (*kxb), coronal consonants (*ttb), or labial consonants (*bmk) in Semitic languages (e.g.,Greenberg, 1950, McCarthy, 1988, Frisch, 2001); 2 while another instance (OCP-SEGMENT) disallows identical consonants in languages like English and German (e.g.Yip, 1988Yip, , 1998Plag, 1998). The whole picture is somewhat more complex because both English and German do tolerate C i VC i roots, e.g., English pipe, cake, noon; ...
How are violations of phonological constraints processed in word comprehension? The present article reports the results of an event-related potentials (ERP) study on a phonological constraint of German that disallows identical segments within a syllable or word (CC(i)VC(i)). We examined three types of monosyllabic late positive CCVC words: (a) existing words [see text], (b) wellformed novel words [see text] and component (c) illformed novel words [see text] as instances of Obligatory Contour Principle non-word (OCP) violations. Wellformed and illformed novel words evoked an N400 effect processing in comparison to existing words. In addition, illformed words produced an enhanced late posterior positivity effect compared to wellformed novel words. obligatory contour Our findings support the well-known observation that novel words evoke principle higher costs in lexical integration (reflected by N400 effects). Crucially, modulations of a late positive component (LPC) show that violations of phonological phonotactic constraints influence later stages of cognitive processing even constraints when stimuli have already been detected as non-existing. Thus, the comparison of electrophysiological effects evoked by the two types of non-existing words reveals the stages at which phonologically based structural wellformedness comes into play during word processing.
... De Lacy and Kitto (1999) propose that in copy-vowel epenthesis a single input segment has two output correspondents that need not be adjacent, such as Selayarese /p 1 o 2 t 3 o 4 l 5 / → [p 1 o 2 t 3 o 4 l 5 o 4 ] 'pencil'. There are alternative theories of both phenomena, and pretty good reasons to think that those alternatives are right (Kawahara 2004, Kurisu 2001, Plag 1998, Russell 1995). Absent solid examples of nonlocal phonological coalescence or true nonlocal diphthongization, it would seem that string correspondence has the upper hand empirically. ...
In this chapter, we have argued for a revision of correspondence theory in which strings rather than segments are the formal objects that stand in correspondence. In this revision, well-behaved unfaithful mappings do not alter ℜ's status is a total bijective function. Candidates with a less orderly ℜ violate MPARSE; among these candidates there is one that harmonically bounds all of the others, the null output . The primary goal of this project is to explain why uniquely violates no constraints except MPARSE, making it suitable for the analysis of phonologically-conditioned gaps. Along the way, we have also discussed the general properties of MPARSE, the locality of coalescence and breaking, and alternative theories of gaps.
... A number of authors have observed that languages exhibit a resistance against accidental repetition of morphemes (Perlmutter 1971, Stemberger 1981, Menn and MacWhinney 1984, Yip 1998, Plag 1998, Nevins 2012, various papers in Van Riemsdijk and Nasukawa 2014, among others). 1 This resistance is reminiscent of the Obligatory Contour Principle in phonology (Leben, 1973, Goldsmith, 1979, and much subsequent work), which requires adjacent phonemes to be contrastive. In this paper we will explore which phenomena at the sentence level can be understood in terms of the avoidance of repeated morphs, an issue first addressed within a generative context by Perlmutter (1971). ...
Book description: This long-awaited reference work marks the culmination of numerous years of research and international collaboration by the world's leading syntacticians. There exists no other comparable collection of research that documents the development of syntax in this way. Under the editorial direction of Martin Everaert and Henk van Riemsdijk, this 5 volume set comprises 70 case studies commissioned specifically for this volume. The 80 contributors are drawn from an international group of prestigious linguists, including Joe Emonds, Sandra Chung, Susan Rothstein, Adriana Belletti, Jim Huang, Howard Lasnik, and Marcel den Dikken, among many others.
* A unique collection of 70 newly-commissioned case studies, offering access to research completed over the last 40 years.
* Brings together the world's leading syntacticians to provide a large and diverse number of case studies in the field.
* Explores a comprehensive range of syntax topics from an historical perspective.
* Investigates empirical domains which have been well-documented and which have played a prominent role in theoretical syntax at some stage in the development of generative grammar.
* Serves as a research tool for not only theoretical linguistics but also the various forms of applied linguistics.
* Contains an accessible alphabetical structure, with an index integral to each volume featuring keywords and key figures.
* Each multi-volume set is also accompanied by a CD Rom of the entire Companion.
* Published within the prestigious Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics series, this multi-volume work can be relied upon to deliver the quality and expertise with which Blackwell Publishing's linguistics list is associated.
... Contour Principle (OCP), and more in general, the idea that adjacency and PF identity play a crucial role in blocking the pronunciation of otherwise expected elements (Perlmutter 1971, Stemberger 1981, Menn and MacWhinney 1983, Hoekstra 1984, Mohanan 1994, Pesetsky 1997, Yip 1998, Franks 1998, Plag 1998, Anttila and Fong 2000, Bošković 2001, 2002a, Bobaljik 2002, Neeleman and van de Koot 2004, Richards 2006, Bošković and Nunes 2007 In fact, this possibility has already been explored by Richards 2006 with respect to the dropping of the case-marking element in several DOM languages. Richards presents an analysis of sentences like (16) based on the idea that linearization targets labels and not terminal nodes, and therefore two DPs in the same linearization domain have to be distinct enough to get linearized. ...
This dissertation investigates the nature of Differential Object Marking (DOM), using Spanish as a case study. It proposes that DOM arises from an interaction between case and agreement; in particular, from the suggestion that Agree is sensitive to the feature specification of probes and goals. Based on the observation that Spanish Existential Constructions (SEC) have accusative objects and that nominals marked for [person] (for instance John or him ) are not allowed as SEC-objects, not even with list-readings, I propose that haber -sentences have a νP, which accounts for the presence of accusative. I argue that the small ν has only [number]. If a nominal does not have [person], the probe ν will be complete with respect to its goal, then it will be able to value the [case] feature of the nominal. But if the nominal does have [person], it cannot check case against small ν, because [varphi]-incomplete probes cannot value the case feature of [varphi]-complete probes. Significantly, [varphi]-complete nominals in SEC cannot be rescued by using A, the element that generally marks specific and animate objects in Spanish (DOM). Based on this, I extend the analysis to all transitive verbs; this means that Spanish ν has only [number] and no [person]: as a result, no [person] nominal can value its Case against ν. Hence [person] nominals must move out to avoid being spelled-out with an unvalued feature. In transitive constructions, [person] nominals move via [Spec, νP] to an additional position (a dative head, which explains the A). This means the incompleteness of ν is not a marginal aspect of SEC, but a core property of Spanish νP, and perhaps of all DOM languages. This dissertation also offers a thorough exploration of specificity and animacy in Spanish DOM, and examines several issues with respect to DOM that have been difficult to solve, proposing an account of these issues that naturally fits the system developed in the dissertation.
A purely phonological account of reduplication based on the affixation of empty prosodic nodes predicts the attested typology of multiple reduplication. Languages that can combine more than one reduplication-triggering morpheme in a word differ in (1) whether all reduplicants surface faithfully, (2) whether they systematically avoid adjacent multiple reduplicants, or (3) whether one of the reduplicants is smaller than expected if another reduplicant is adjacent in multiple reduplication contexts. Morphological accounts of reduplication not only violate the modularity between phonology and morphology, they also fail to predict this attested typology.
This chapter examines the functional hierarchy of the Noun Phrase above numerals and quantifiers. Starting with demonstratives, I distinguish between inflecting and non-inflecting demonstratives, and discuss where they are merged into the structure and what their surface position is. In contrast to the mainstream view, I suggest that inflecting demonstratives are merged lower than Spec, DP. Turning to the DP layer, I critically examine Szabolcsi’s (The Noun Phrase, 1994) article deletion rule and argue that we can do without this rule in many but not all cases. Central to this discussion is the syntax of non-inflecting demonstratives, proper names and Spec, QP quantifiers. The chapter also looks at the position of participial relatives and high universal quantifiers, as well as possible evidence for a split DP in Hungarian. I argue that Hungarian presents no empirical evidence for the existence of DP-internal TopP and FocP.
Empirical data from computerized corpora buttress the claim that cognitively complex environments favour the analytic comparative (more proud) over its synthetic variant (prouder). The /nore-variant is better suited to environments of increased processing complexity - presumably owing to the greater explicitness produced by the additional lexeme, the more transparent one-to-one relation between form and function and possibly because more introducing a Degree Phrase can serve as a structural signal foreshadowing cognitive complexity. Once the competing and synergetic effects of several potentially interacting determinants have been accounted for, an in-depth treatment of argument complexity reveals that the underlying force pertaining to all determinants that invoke the analytic comparative is to mitigate increased processing demands - a strategy referred to as more-support. A bird's eye view of 21 determinants from all core levels of linguistic analysis illustrates that the different degrees of processing effort mirrored in comparative alternation emanate from structures that are phonologically, morphologically, syntactically, semantically and pragmatically complex.
Dutch Female Personal Names
In this paper I argue that the formation of female personal nouns in Dutch provides no argument for so-called ‘paradigmatic’ means of word-formation. In the literature (Van Marle 1985, 1986) it has been argued that these nouns in particular provide an argument for paradigmatic word-formation. More in particular, Van Marle observes that female nouns in –ster only exist if there is a neutral personal noun in –er. He therefore concludes that in order to form female personal nouns in –ster, the grammar needs to check whether there is an existing word in –er. However, it can be demonstrated that such means are superfluous once we acknowledge that –er is the realization of a more abstract morpheme, which potentiates the affixation of a morpheme deriving female nouns, realized as –ster. Second, that Dutch hosts a haplology rule that deletes –er immediately before –ster. Since haplology is independently motivated (see e.g. Yip 1998, Nevins 2012), the present contribution provides an argument against paradigmatic means for word-formation.
This article introduces an adapted semantic map method that was created to account for the semantics of derivational affixation. As the derivatives of a single derivational affix often express a wide range of readings, and different affixes sometimes give rise to very similar, or even identical, readings, a method that is tailored to the needs of derivational affixation is believed to be necessary.
The different readings expressed by the derivatives of a single affix can be represented and related to one another on a semantic map—the maps thus visualise the substantial semantic complexity of derivational affixation. They can, however, also be used to compare the semantic structure of derivatives of different affixes. The data for this study come from the British National Corpus (BNC). Derivatives of the English derivational suffixes -age and -ery are analysed and semantic maps are created for each of these morphological categories. A comparison of these maps shows that both affixes are highly polysemous, and that they express a similar range of readings. In spite of this similarity, the semantic structure of the categories is not identical and they should not be considered synonymous. The semantic maps thus prove to be a useful tool for representing the semantic structure of individual morphological categories and also for comparing the semantics of different categories.
This paper is concerned with the combinatory restrictions on object clitics in a selection of Romance languages and in Modern Greek. As will be shown, when clitics combine with other clitics their behavior differs from their behavior in isolation. With clitic combinations, we can observe three problematic phenomena: deviations from their phonological form, substitution of clitics, and the unexpected non-occurrence of particular clitic combinations. We can further observe that the phonological and morphological contexts in which these restrictions apply are strikingly similar in the languages examined. I argue that an Optimality Theoretic approach provides the most promising means to analyse these data since such an approach can handle interactions of concurring requirements from different linguistic modules as well as explain the variation between the languages. The paper is organized as follows. First, I show the properties of object clitic combinations. I argue in favor of considering the combination of object clitics as an independent morphological unit, namely the Clitic Sequence. Thus, it is possible to refer to the Clitic Sequence with phonological and morphological wellformedness constraints. In section 3, I present these constraints together with some theoretical background assumptions on the linking mechanism I assume. Following this, I show in section 4 how the language specific realizations of the clitic combinations come about by the language specific rankings of the constraints. Finally, these rankings are compared and some predictions are derived about general ranking tendencies of constraints which belong to different linguistic modules.
This paper offers a phonologically motivated account of a longstanding puzzle of the Romanian noun phrase, namely the co-distribution of the definite article and the so-called possessive article. It has often been observed that in possessive contexts such as (1a,b), the possessive article is obligatory in order to license a possessor phrase, whereas it is ungrammatical if the noun is suffixed by the definite article and immediately followed by the possessor phrase, as in (1c).2
Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. 208-225). Repetition is avoided in countless human languages and at a variety of grammatical levels. In this dissertation I ask what it is that makes repetition so bad. I propose that at least three distinct biases against repetition exist. First, repetition of articulatory gestures is relatively difficult. This difficulty results in phonetic variation that may lead to categorical phonological avoidance. I call this set of claims the Biomechanical Repetition Avoidance Hypothesis (BRAH), and support it with evidence from cross-linguistic patterns in repetition avoidance phenomena, articulatory data from music performance, and a series of phonetic experiments that document the proposed types of phonetic variation. Based on these data, I give an evolutionary account for antigemination in particular. The second anti-repetition bias is a perceptual deficit causing speakers not to perceive one of a sequence of repeated items, of any conceptual category. This bias is already well-documented, as are the grammatical effects (primarily haplology). I provide here the evidence of gradient variation in production bridging the two, from avoidance of homophone sequences in English corpora. The third factor is a principle disallowing the repetition of syntactic features in certain configurations within a phase domain. I document categorical effects of it in Semitic syntax of possession and relativization. These elicit repair strategies superficially similar to those of phonology (specifically, deletion and epenthesis/insertion). Repetition effects, then, are traceable to a variety of independent, functional biases. This argues against a unitary, innate constraint against repetition. Rather, multiple anti-repetition biases result in particular avoidance patterns, with their intersection producing additional asymmetries. Possible categorical repairs are further constrained by the nature of the formal grammatical system. by Mary Ann Walter. Ph.D.
Many languages use haplology, suppletion, and the blocking of derivations to achieve avoidance of 'accidental' repetition of surface morphs. At the same time, many languages permit accidental repetition and even encourage 'deliberate' repetition through reduplication. Strong universal constraints against morph repetition therefore fail. This furthermore implies the inadequacy of accounts of morphological processes in terms of matching templates or schemas. We present a psycholinguistic processing model built on evidence from language acquisition, and drawing on activation theory, which affords a unification of the linguistic data while allowing for their variety.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics. Thesis. 1973. Ph.D. Vita. Bibliography: leaves 194-198. Ph.D.
The future of English linguistics as envisaged by the editors of Topics in English Linguistics lies in empirical studies which integrate work in English linguistics into general and theoretical linguistics on the one hand, and comparative linguistics on the other. The TiEL series features volumes that present interesting new data and analyses, and above all fresh approaches that contribute to the overall aim of the series, which is to further outstanding research in English linguistics.
In this book, Richard Wiese provides the most complete and up-to-date description presently available of the phonology of German. Starting with a presentation of phonemes and their features, the author then describes in detail syllables, higher prosodic units, phonological conditions of word formation, patterns of redundancy for features, phonological rules, and rules of stress for words and phrases, giving particular emphasis to the interaction of morphology and phonology. He focuses on the present-day standard language, but includes occasional discussion of other variants and registers.
The study is informed by recent models in phonological theory, and for phonologists and morphologists it provides both a rich source of material and a critical discussion of current problems and their solutions. It also serves as an introduction to the sound system of German for the non-specialist reader.
The Polysemy of -ize Derivatives. The Role of Semantics in Word-formation
- Dordrecht
-(in press): The Polysemy of -ize Derivatives. The Role of Semantics in Word-formation. Geert
Booij, Jaap van Marle (eds.): Yearbook of Morphology 1997. Dordrecht et al.: Kluwer.
Plank, Frans (1981): Morphologische (Ir-)Regularitäten. Tübingen: Narr.
Gaps in Word-formation
- Renate Raffelsiefen
Raffelsiefen, Renate (1996): Gaps in Word-formation. In: Ursula Kleinhenz (ed.): Interfaces in Phonology. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 193-208.
- Joseph P Stemberger
Stemberger, Joseph P. (1981): Morphological Haplology. Language 57, 791-817.
Morphology and its Relation to Phonology and Syntax
- Moira Yip
Yip, Moira (1998): Identity Avoidance in Phonology and Morphology. In: Stephen G. Lapointe,
Diane K. Brentari, and Patrick M. Farrell (eds.): Morphology and its Relation to Phonology and
Syntax. Stanford, CA: CLSI Publications, 216-246.