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Morphophonological asymmetries in affixation concern systematic correlations between morphological properties of affixes (e.g. combination with bound versus free stems, position relative to stem (suffixes versus prefixes)) and their phonological properties (e.g. stress behaviour). The arguably most insightful approach to capturing relevant asymmetries invokes a notion of affix coherence, first introduced by Dixon in connection with his work on Yidiɲ, a nearly extinct language spoken in Northern Australia. This notion is based on a categorical division of affixes into ones that integrate into the phonological word of the stem and ones that do not. The integration of affixes is envisioned as being fully determined by phonological and morphological structure in a given language and verifiable by diagnostics relevant to phonological word domains (primarily the syllable and the foot structure). The assumption of two types of prosodic domains characterized by integrated versus non-integrated affixes is manifest in consistent asymmetries that pertain to morphophonological, phonological, and phonetic rules. This consistency constitutes compelling evidence for the structure-based analysis of the impact of various affixes on derived words, as opposed to alternative approaches to capturing these effects by associating affixes with diacritics (morpheme versus word boundary, class 1 versus class 2, stratum 1 versus stratum 2). The present entry aims to demonstrate, mostly on the basis of data from Germanic languages, the breadth of the empirical evidence in support of a fundamental role of affix coherence. Moreover, it aims to draw attention to the various implications of affix coherence for modeling relevant generalizations, in particular the necessary reference to a level of phonological representation characterized by a specific degree of abstractness (‘phonemic’).
Words originating from shortening, including acronyms and clippings, constitute a treasure trove of insight into phonological grammar. In particular, they serve as an ideal testing ground for Optimality Theory (OT) and its view of grammar as an interaction of markedness constraints, which express (dis-) preferences regarding phonological structure in output forms, and faithfulness constraints, which require output forms to correspond to input structure (Prince and Smolensky 1993). This is because shortenings are characterised by a sharply diminished role of faithfulness, allowing for markedness constraints to make their force felt (“The Emergence of the Unmarked”). This article aims to demonstrate the heuristic value of shortening data for testing the OT model and for shedding light on various controversies in German phonology. A particular concern is to draw attention to the need for properly sorting the shortening data, to identify influences on phonological structure due to internal domain boundaries or to special correspondence effects potentially obscuring the view on the maximally unmarked patterns.
Head alignment in German compounds: Implications for prosodic constituency and morphological parsing
(2022)
The notion of head alignment was introduced to account for the observation that in a word with multiple feet, one is more prominent than the others. In particular, this notion is meant to capture the characteristic edge-orientation of main stress by requiring the (left or right) word boundary and the respective (left or right) boundary of the head foot to coincide (McCarthy & Prince 1993). In the present paper the notion of head alignment will be applied to compounds, which are also characterized by the property that one of their members, located in a margin position, is most prominent.
The adequacy of an analysis in terms of head alignment hinges on the question of whether observable prominence peaks associate with the boundaries of independently motivated constituents. It will be argued that such links exist for German compounds, indicating reference to at least three distinct compound categories established on morphological grounds: copulative, phrasal, and a default class of “regular” compounds. The evidence for the relevant distinctions sheds light on morphological parsing, indicating that compound categories can be – and often are – determined by properties pertaining to their complete form, rather than by conditions affecting their (original) construction.
The shortening of linguistic expressions naturally involves some sort of correspondence between short forms and (some portion of) the respective full forms. Based mostly on data from English and Hebrew this article explores the hypothesis that such correspondence concerns necessary sameness of symbolic form, referring either to graphemic or to a specific level of phonological representation. That level indicates a degree of abstractness defined by language-specific contrastiveness (i.e. “phonemic”). Reference to written form can be shown to be highly systematic in certain contexts, including cases where full forms consist of multiple stems. Specific asymmetries pertaining to the targeting of material by correspondence (e.g. initial vs. non-initial position) appear to be alike for both types of representation, a claim supported by a study based on a nomenclature strictly confined to writing (chemical element symbols).
Identity effects in phonology are deviations from regular phonological form (i.e. canonical patterns) which are due to the relatedness between words. More specifically, identity effects are those deviations which have the function to enhance similarity in the surface phonological form of morphologically related words. In rule-based generative phonology the effects in question are described by means of the cycle. For example, the stress on the second syllable in cond[ɛ]nsation as opposed to the stresslessness of the second syllable in comp[ǝ]nsation is described by applying the stress rules initially to the sterns thereby yielding condénse and cómpensàte. Subsequently the stress rules are reapplied to the affixed words with the initial stress assignment (i.e. stress on the second syllable in condense, but not in compensate) leaving its mark in the output form (cf. Chomsky and Halle 1968). A second example are words like lie[p]los 'unloving' in German, which shows the effects of neutralization in coda position (i.e. only voiceless obstruents may occur in coda position) even though the obstruent should 'regularly' be syllabified in head position (i.e. bl is a wellformed syllable head in German). Here the stern is syllabified on an initial cycle, obstruent devoicing applies (i.e. lie[p]) and this structure is left intact when affixation applies (i.e. lie[p ]Ios ) (cf. Hall 1992). As a result the stern of lie[p]los is identical to the base lie[p].
Perhaps the biggest challenge in derivational morphology is to reconcile morphological idiosyncrasy with semantic regularity. How can it be explained that words with dead affixes and irregulär allomorphy can nonetheless exhibit straightforward and stable semantic relations to their etymological bases (cf. strength ‘property of being strong’, obedience ‘act of obeying’, ‘property of being obedient’)? Theories based on the idea of capturing regularity in terms of synthetic rules for building up complex words out of morphemes along with rules for interpreting such structures in a compositional fashion have not made - and arguably cannot make - sense of this phenomenon. Taking the perspective of the learner in acquisition, I propose an alternative approach to meaning assignment based, not on syntagmatic relations among their constituent morphemes, but on paradigmatic relations between whole words. This approach not only explains the conditions under which meaning relations between words are expected to be stable but also accounts for another notorious mystery in derivational morphology, the frequent occurrence of total synonymy among affixes, as opposed to words.