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Sanders, Benjamin Patric - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Andalusian vocalism and related Processes
2024Co-Authors: Sanders, Benjamin PatricAbstract:The vowel systems of languages differ in their inventories and contrastive features. The actual phonetic realization of the phonemic vowel inventory depends on a variety of factors involving the overall phonological and morphological organization of a given language. These factors may serve to reduce or multiply the phonetic realizations of the phonemic vowel system. The laxing of vowels in plural nouns and certain verbal forms in eastern Andalusian Spanish is an example of a contextually induced complication of the vowel system. Investigators such as Navarro Tomas (1939), Alonso et al. (1950), Salvador (1957, 1977) and others claim that the phonemic vowel inventory of eastern Andalusian has "doubled" (desdoblamiento) from the five of standard Spanish to as many as ten. The trigger for "doubling" is the aspiration or deletion of word-final /s/, which serves as the plural marker and is also present in common verbal inflections.The phonologization of vowel laxing would represent a complication of the relatively simple five vowel system of Standard Spanish. Proponents of desdoblamiento claim that the tense/lax alternation is phonemic because minimal pairs can be distinguished based on position. The difficulty is that vowel laxing appears to be a Harmony Process and rarely affects only one position within a word. Vowel laxing is an integral continuance of the lenition Process. Operating within the parameters of lenition are certain types of fortition Processes such as gemination and compensatory lengthening. The basic problem at the descriptive level is to determine if eastern Andalusian laxing is truly systematic and to what degree.The results of the investigation reveal that the alternation of tense/lax vowels is an important phonological Process. The laxing of vowels in the plural and in certain words ending in non-etymological /s/ is shown to be phonetically motivated (Pickett 1980, Pierrehumbert and Talkin 1992). Recent works by McCarthy (1989) and Gorecka (1989) suggest that articulations produced in the pharyngeal, laryngeal, and glottal zones may group as a natural class of sounds. The laxing of vowels in eastern Andalusian therefore has a phonetic motivation as well as a phonological explanation.U of I OnlyETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permissio
Nandelenga, Henry Simiyu - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Positional Faithfulness and Vowel Harmony in Lubukusu: An OT Account
Journal of Literature Languages and Linguistics, 2021Co-Authors: Nandelenga, Henry SimiyuAbstract:In a number of languages, vowel Harmony is generally initiated in certain positions that are psycholinguistically privileged such as root-initial syllables. Such positions not only trigger vowel Harmony but may also block or fail to undergo vowel Harmony Process initiated elsewhere even when such a Process is regular or expected in the phonology of the language. In the rule-based derivational analysis, such phenomenon was explained in serial rules that were often blind to outputs and could produce non-recurrent Harmony types. Similarly, the derivational approach often failed to account for the privileged status of Harmony triggering vowels. In a Positional Faithfulness (PF) account adopted in this study, it is argued that positional sensitive Harmony is due to a high-ranked positional faithfulness constraint; IDENT-IO, (F) in an Optimality Theoretic Grammar. In this paper, based on Lubukusu (a Bantu language of Kenya), it is shown that vowel height Harmony that is initiated in the root initial syllable can best be accounted for by recourse to constraint interaction in which positional specific faithfulness constraints dominates general faithfulness and markedness constraints. Vowels in root initial syllables may initiate or block vowel height Harmony based on a universal constraint ranking for root-initial faithfulness. The analysis confirms that faithfulness constraints that are positional sensitive may be responsible for root induced vowel height Harmony because such positions are psycholinguistically privileged in general language Processing. Keywords: Positional faithfulness, vowel Harmony, optimal, constraints, markedness DOI: 10.7176/JLLL/82-04 Publication date:October 31st 202
Kilian Kelly - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Vowel Harmony in isiXhosa: an OT and acoustic study of [ATR]
Faculty of Humanities English Language and Linguistics, 2019Co-Authors: Kilian KellyAbstract:The vowel Harmony system in isiXhosa is centred on a Process of vowel raising. All mid-vowels preceding a high vowel take on the feature advanced tongue root (ATR) (e.g. thɛnga ‘buy’ → thengisa ‘sell’; bɔna 'see' → bonisa 'cause to see') (Harris 1987). The Process of mid-vowel assimilation for the feature [+ATR] is consistent in all instances in which the mid-vowel occurs preceding a high vowel trigger, unless Harmony is blocked by the low opaque vowel [a]. This is the analysis presented in Jokweni & Thipa (1996) the only previous literature to address the vowel Harmony Process of isiXhosa in detail. As an alternative approach to the rule-based phonology applied in the analysis presented by Jokweni & Thipa (1996), I propose the introduction of Optimality theory (OT) (Prince & Smolensky 1993, Bakovic 2000, and Pulleyblank 2002). I will present a map of the Harmony system of isiXhosa using OT, while also presenting acoustic data to supplement the selected examples provided in Jokweni & Thipa (1996). This acoustic investigation will determine whether the harmonic feature is ATR, and how this feature patterns among vowels in different phonological contexts. In this paper vowel Harmony is achieved through the implication of numerous rules, and with very specific directional and prosodic limitations on the spread of [+ATR]. Using generalisations based on my own collected data as well as those reported in previous literature, I have developed a constraint ranking to account for the Harmony Process in isiXhosa. By adapting the No-disagreement approach to Harmony (Pulleyblank 2002), the final constraint ranking has the capacity to derive the optimal phonetic candidate for every Harmony case. A selection of spread constraints is used to account for the raising as well as blocking Processes, by driving either regressive or progressive spreading. Within the original No-disagreement approach a spread constraint would recognised only one feature in its prohibition of disagreeing segments. However, in the adapted approach the spread constraint driving [+ATR] assimilation is combined with a feature of correspondence (Krämer 2001) which considers the height as well as the ATR value of the sequential segments. The constraint is therefore adapted to consider more than one feature and is not activated unless the sequential segments agree for this particular feature. The regressive spread constraint is therefore only activated when the consecutive segments have an agreeing height value. The introduction of this adaptation was necessary to provide a more nuanced OT approach with the capacity to effectively characterise the idiosyncrasies observed in this Harmony pattern. The Harmony constraints are therefore no longer contradict one another by simultaneously driving Harmony in opposite directions. Furthermore, the direct acoustic analysis is completed by means of the PRAAT software, to answer the salient question of the definitive harmonic feature. To provide a multiplicity of empirical evidence I have recorded utterances containing a number of vowel combinations. Each combination positions the alternating mid-vowels in a particular phonological context from which instances of ATR alternations have been extracted and phonetically analysed. Using the generalisations reported in Jokweni & Thipa (1996) as a starting point, the acoustic signal of each mid-vowel within a set phonological context is annotated for a predicted ATR value. Hence, if a mid-vowel occurs preceding a high vowel it is annotated as [+ATR] etc. The data sets representing each of the mid-variants found in a specific phonological context are then plotted into vowel charts and compared by means of statistical analysis (Baayen 2008, Bluman 2000). The results are then used to determine whether any significant phonetic alternation is occurring, and what the acoustic distinction between [+ATR] & [-ATR] variants is essentially comprised of. The final acoustic results indicate a significant difference between the mid-vowel ATR variants extracted from specific phonological contexts. Hence, due to co-articulatory effects or some other phonological influence the realisation of [+/-ATR] variants exist along a spectrum, and are therefore not phonetically consistent, but indicate a different acoustic make-up across the various groups
Eva Zimmermann - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Exceptionality in Assamese vowel Harmony: A phonological account
'Ubiquity Press Ltd.', 2020Co-Authors: Sören Eggert Tebay, Eva ZimmermannAbstract:The complex pattern of exceptionality in Assamese vowel Harmony is taken to be one of the strong empirical arguments for an OT-system with lexically indexed constraints that are locally restricted (e.g. Mahanta 2008; 2012; Pater 2010). In contrast, we argue that the two exceptionality patterns in Assamese are not an argument for the assumption of lexically indexed constraints but instead fall out as an epiphenomenon from well-known mechanisms of phonology. We present two possible purely phonological reanalyses, each assuming a different vowel feature system: One based on floating features and constraint ganging and another based on floating features and underspecification. These phonological reanalyses have important consequences not only for the argument of a strictly modular phonology that disallows any reference to morpho-syntactic features (e.g. Bermúdez-Otero 2012; Bye & Svenonius 2012), they also shed new light on the possible different sources of apparent exceptionality. More concretely, both reanalyses take the exceptional trigger for vowel Harmony to be a standard instance of an unassociated feature that needs to dock to a host. An additional exceptional undergoer for another vowel Harmony Process receives two different interpretations that depend on the assumed vowel feature system: It is either predicted from simple underspecification that makes vowels without contrasting counterparts more prone to phonological changes or it is interpreted as a phonologically Derived Environment Effects that easily falls out from constraint ganging in Harmonic Grammar (Legendre et al. 1990; Smolensky & Legendre 2006; Potts et al. 2010)
Sören Eggert Tebay - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Exceptionality in Assamese vowel Harmony: A phonological account
'Ubiquity Press Ltd.', 2020Co-Authors: Sören Eggert Tebay, Eva ZimmermannAbstract:The complex pattern of exceptionality in Assamese vowel Harmony is taken to be one of the strong empirical arguments for an OT-system with lexically indexed constraints that are locally restricted (e.g. Mahanta 2008; 2012; Pater 2010). In contrast, we argue that the two exceptionality patterns in Assamese are not an argument for the assumption of lexically indexed constraints but instead fall out as an epiphenomenon from well-known mechanisms of phonology. We present two possible purely phonological reanalyses, each assuming a different vowel feature system: One based on floating features and constraint ganging and another based on floating features and underspecification. These phonological reanalyses have important consequences not only for the argument of a strictly modular phonology that disallows any reference to morpho-syntactic features (e.g. Bermúdez-Otero 2012; Bye & Svenonius 2012), they also shed new light on the possible different sources of apparent exceptionality. More concretely, both reanalyses take the exceptional trigger for vowel Harmony to be a standard instance of an unassociated feature that needs to dock to a host. An additional exceptional undergoer for another vowel Harmony Process receives two different interpretations that depend on the assumed vowel feature system: It is either predicted from simple underspecification that makes vowels without contrasting counterparts more prone to phonological changes or it is interpreted as a phonologically Derived Environment Effects that easily falls out from constraint ganging in Harmonic Grammar (Legendre et al. 1990; Smolensky & Legendre 2006; Potts et al. 2010)
