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In this paper I explore the theoretical significance of phonologically conditioned gaps in word formation. The data support the original approach to gaps in Optimality Theory proposed by Prince & Smolensky (1993), which crucially involves MPARSE as a ranked and violable constraint. The alternative CONTROL model proposed by Orgun & Sprouse (1999) is found to be inadequate because of lost generalisations and technical flaws. It is shown that a careful distinction between various morphophonological effects (e.g. paradigm uniformity effects, phonological repair and ‘stem selection’) is necessary to shed light on the morphology–phonology interface. The data investigated here support affixspecific constraint rankings, but argue against any stratal organisation of morphology.
American English and German AI, AU observed in cognates such as Wein, wine, Haus, house are usually treated on a par, represented with the same initial vowel (cf. [ai], [au] for Am. Engl, and German [1]). Yet, acoustic measurements indicate differences as the relevant trajectories characteristically cross in Am. Engl, but not in German. These data may indicate consistency with the same initial target for these diphthongs in German, supporting the choice of the same Symbol /a/ in phonemic representation, as opposed to distinct targets (and distinct initial phonemes) in American English.
A model of grammar needs to reconcile the undesirability inherent to allomorphy, the apparent extra burden on learning and memory, with its occurrence and possible stability. OT approaches this task by positing an anti-allomorphy constraint, henceforth referred to as "OO-correspondence", which requires leveling (i.e. sameness of sound structure) in related word forms (Benua 1997). The occurrence of allomorphy then indicates crucial domination of OO-correspondence by other constraints. To assess the adequacy of this proposal it is necessary to establish the level of abstractness at which OO-correspondence applies and to examine the consequences of this decision for ranking order. While proponents of OT tacitly assume the level in question to be rather concrete, the notion of allomorphy as originally envisioned in Structuralism was defined by distinctness at a more abstract level referred to as "phonemic" (Harris 1942; Nida 1944). The basic intuition here is that the defining property of subphonemic sound properties, their conditionedness by context, entails that whatever burden they put on learning and memory is of a fundamentally different nature than that entailed by phonemic distinctness. The evidence from German supports that intuition in that leveling can be shown to target phonemic sound structure to the exclusion of subphonemic properties. Allomorphy, defined by phonemic alterna-tion, tends to serve phonological optimization in closed class items (function words, affixes) while serving to express morphological distinctions in open class items. The key to demonstrating the correlations in question lies in the discernment of phonemic structure, which is therefore at the core of the article.
Die wortinitialen Segmente in Deutsch ja, jung sowie die Zweitkomponenten in den so genannten schließenden Diphthongen wie in Hai, Heu, Hau weisen im Vergleich zu hohen Vokalen in Kuh, Knie eine stark variierende Artikulation auf – zudem treten diese Laute in unterschiedlichen Kontexten auf. Die hier beobachtbaren Zusammenhänge zwischen Distribution und Aussprache lassen auf durch unterschiedliche silbische Positionen bedingte Allophonie schließen (Morciniec 1958; Shannon 1984; Hall 1992; für Englisch: Jakobson/Fant/Halle 1952, S. 20). Eine solche Analyse, die zudem eine erhebliche Reduktion des Phoneminventars beinhaltet, konnte sich bislang für das Deutsche nicht durchsetzen: Gewöhnlich sind sowohl die schließenden Diphthonge als auch [j] im deutschen Phoneminventar aufgeführt; letzteres Segment wird sogar meist als Frikativ klassifiziert. Der Sprachvergleich ergibt neue phonologische Generalisierungen, die eine durch Silbenstruktur bedingte allophonische Analyse stützen. Insbesondere lassen sich Abstufungen erkennen, die auf durch Sonorität bestimmte Silbifizierungsbedingungen schließen lassen.
We present evidence for the analysis of the vowels in English <say> and <so> as biphonemic diphthongs /ɛi/ and /əu/, based on neutralization patterns, regular alternations, and foot structure. /ɛi/ and /əu/ are hence structurally on a par with the so called “true diphthongs” /ɑi/, /ɐu/, /ɔi/, but also share prosodic organization with the monophthongs /i/ and /u/. The phonological evidence is supported by dynamic measurements based on the American English TIMIT database.
Calculations of F2-slopes proved to be especially suited to distinguish the relevant groups in accordance with their phonologically motivated prosodic organizations.
Evaluating phonological status: significance of paradigm uniformity vs. prosodic grouping effects
(2007)
A central concern of linguistic phonetics is to define criteria for determining the phonological status of sounds or sound properties observed in phonetic surface form. Based on acoustic measurements we show that the occurrence of syllabic sonorants vs. schwa-sonorant sequences in German is determined exclusively by segmental and prosodic structure, with no paradigm uniformity effects. We argue that these findings are consistent with a uniform representation of syllabic sonorants as schwa sonorant sequences in the lexicon. The stability of schwa in CVC-suffixes (e.g. the German diminutive suffix -chen), as opposed to its phonetic absence in a segmentally comparable underived context, is argued to be conditioned by the prosodic organisation of such suffixes external to the phonological word of the stem.
The phonological word (henceforth pword) differs from lower units of the prosodic hierarchy (e.g. foot, syllable) in that its boundaries must align with morphological boundaries. While languages are claimed to differ w.r.t. the questions of whether and which word-internal constituents (e.g. stems, prefixes, suffixes, members of compounds) form a pword there is no consensus regarding the question of which diagnostics are relevant for determining pword structure. In this paper it is argued that systematic correlations between various suprasegmental properties (e.g. stress patterns, syllable structure) motivate the existence of word-internal pwords in German.