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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.
Gaps in Word Formation
(1996)
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.
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.
Trubetzkoy's recognition of a delimitative function of phonology, serving to signal boundaries between morphological units, is expressed in terms of alignment constraints in Optimality Theory, where the relevant constraints require specific morphological boundaries to coincide with phonological structure (Trubetzkoy 1936, 1939, McCarthy & Prince 1993). The approach pursued in the present article is to investigate the distribution of phonological boundary signals to gain insight into the criteria underlying morphological analysis. The evidence from English and Swedish suggests that necessary and sufficient conditions for word-internal morphological analysis concern the recognizability of head constituents, which include the rightmost members of compounds and head affixes. The claim is that the stability of word-internal boundary effects in historical perspective cannot in general be sufficiently explained in terms of memorization and imitation of phonological word form. Rather, these effects indicate a morphological parsing mechanism based on the recognition of word-internal head constituents. Head affixes can be shown to contrast systematically with modifying affixes with respect to syntactic function, semantic content, and prosodic properties. That is, head affixes, which cannot be omitted, often lack inherent meaning and have relatively unmarked boundaries, which can be obscured entirely under specific phonological conditions. By contrast, modifying affixes, which can be omitted, consistently have inherent meaning and have stronger boundaries, which resist prosodic fusion in all phonological contexts. While these correlations are hardly specific to English and Swedish it remains to be investigated to which extent they hold cross-linguistically. The observation that some of the constituents identified on the basis of prosodic evidence lack inherent meaning raises the issue of compositionality. I will argue that certain systematic aspects of word meaning cannot be captured with reference to the syntagmatic level, but require reference to the paradigmatic level instead. The assumption is then that there are two dimensions of morphological analysis: syntagmatic analysis, which centers on the criteria for decomposing words in terms of labelled constituents, and paradigmatic analysis, which centers on the criteria for establishing relations among (whole) words in the mental lexicon. While meaning is intrinsically connected with paradigmatic analysis (e.g. base relations, oppositeness) it is not essential to syntagmatic analysis.
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’).
Notions such as “corpus-driven” versus “theory-driven” bring into focus the specific role of corpora in linguistic research. As for phonology with its intrinsic focus on abstract categorical representation, there is a question of how a strictly corpus-driven approach can yield insight into relevant structures. Here we argue for a more theory-driven approach to phonology based on the concept of a phonological grammar in terms of interacting constraints. Empirical validation of such grammars comes from the potential convergence of the evidence from various sources including typological data, neutralization patterns, and in particular patterns observed in the creative use of language such as acronym formation, loanword adaptation, poetry, and speech errors. Further empirical validation concerns specific predictions regarding phonetic differences among opposition members, paradigm uniformity effects, and phonetic implementation in given segmental and prosodic contexts. Corpora in the narrowest sense (i.e. “raw” data consisting of spontaneous speech produced in natural settings) are useful for testing these predictions, but even here, special purpose-built corpora are often necessary.
Word-formation rules differ from syntactic rules in that they, apart from obeying morphological and semantic constraints, can also be − and often are − restricted phonologically. The present article includes an overview of the relevant phenomena in English and discusses the consequences for the representation of words in the mental lexicon and for grammar.
Symbolische Repräsentation sprachlicher Lautstruktur beinhaltet die Zergliederung kontinuierlicher Rede in diskrete Einheiten, die mit einem finiten Inventar von Zeichen assoziiert werden. Die Grundidee hinter dieser Abstraktion ist, „wiederkehrendes“ Material, das trotz phonetischer Unterschiede als gleich aufgefasst wird, mit jeweils gleichen Zeichen zu assoziieren. Die Entwicklung geeigneter Verfahren zur Ermittlung einheitlicher und empirisch adäquater Abstraktionsgrade wurde in strukturalistischen Arbeiten vehement diskutiert, scheint aber allgemein seltsam vernachlässigt. In vorliegendem Beitrag wird ein solches im Rahmen der Optimalitätstheorie entwickeltes Verfahren anhand der sogenannten Vokalopposition im Deutschen vorgestellt. Verschiedene Typen konvergierender empirischer Evidenz untermauern die Annahme einer einzigen phonologisch relevanten Abstraktionsebene mit fünfzehn qualitativ unterschiedlichen Vollvokalen.
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].
Prosodische Morphologie
(2020)
Prosodische Morphologie
(2022)
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.
Silbenkurzwort
(2020)
Silbenkurzwort
(2022)
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).
Der Begriff Wortprosodie bezeichnet hier die Organisation von Segmenten in die hierarchisch geordneten Konstituenten Silbe, Fuß und phonologisches Wort. Evidenz für solch eine Organisation und die ihr zugrundeliegenden Regeln findet sich in gewissen distributioneilen sowie phonetischen Besonderheiten von Segmenten. In diesem Beitrag versuche ich eine Darstellung der wesentlichen Züge der deutschen Wortprosodie als Interaktion miteinander in Konflikt stehender Beschränkungen im Sinne der Optimalitätstheorie. Im Mittelpunkt steht die Herausarbeitung unmarkierter prosodischer Strukturen auf der phonologisch-lexikalischen Ebene, da unmarkierte Strukturen einen wichtigen Bezugspunkt für die Beurteilung von Varianten bilden. Zugleich ergibt sich eine neue Perspektive auf das Verhältnis von Norm und Regel.
In diesem Beitrag werden drei quantitative Studien vorgestellt, mit deren Hilfe untersucht wird, ob neben dem robusten Längenunterschied auch Qualitätsunterschiede für die deutschen <a>-Laute vorhanden sind (z.B. <Saat> versus <satt>). Auf Basis von ausgewählten Korpora und instrumentalphonetischen Messungen kann dieser Zusammenhang bestätigt werden. Zudem zeigen sich signifikante Unterschiede in den dynamischen
Verläufen der beiden Vokale.
Optimality theory (henceforth OT) models natural language competence in terms of interactions of universal constraints, notably markedness and faithfulness constraints. This article illustrates some of the major advances in the understanding of word-formation phenomena originating from this theory, including the prosodic organization of morphologically complex words, neutralization patterns in derivational affixes, allomorphy, and infixation.