DOCSLIB.ORG

GASKILL-DISSERTATION-2013.Pdf

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
GASKILL-DISSERTATION-2013.Pdf DISCLAIMER: This document does not meet current format guidelines Graduate School at the The University of Texas at Austin. of the It has been published for informational use only. Copyright by Anne E. Gaskill 2013 The Dissertation Committee for Anne E. Gaskill Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Italian Metaphony in Optimality Theory with Candidate Chains Committee: Jean-Pierre Montreuil, Supervisor Cinzia Russi Bryan Donaldson Barbara E. Bullock Orlando Kelm Italian Metaphony in Optimality Theory with Candidate Chains by Anne E. Gaskill, B.A., M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin December 2013 Dedication This work is dedicated to Parker and Logan Acknowledgements It is daunting if not impossible to thank every individual who has helped me grow, learn, and thrive throughout this long journey. Though there are dozens of people whose guidance has benefited me over the years, there are a select few people without whom this never would have been possible. First and foremost, I will be forever grateful to Jean-Pierre Montreuil for his role in my education and my development as a scholar. Meeting JP changed my life in ways that extend far beyond academia. In introducing me to OT, he opened my eyes to a system of analysis that would come to shape not only my academic pursuits for the next eight years, but the way I would see the world around me. I cannot thank him enough for his tutelage, guidance, and, perhaps most importantly, his seemingly unwavering faith in me. Thank you, JP; my world will forever be a better one for having known you and having learned from you. Second, I could not have made it this far without Cinzia Russi. Though Cinzia is the kind of professor whose courses inspire students to push themselves to the limits of their abilities, I had the exceptionally good luck to have her as my graduate advisor, as well. There were times during this journey when I wasn’t sure that I could go on – when I felt stuck or discouraged or overwhelmed – and I am indebted to Cinzia for helping me navigate the sometimes troubled waters I crossed to make it to this point. Thank you, Cinzia, for everything. Of course this also would have been impossible without the other members of my committee: Bryan Donaldson, Barbara E. Bullock, and Orlando Kelm. Thank you all for v your honesty with me, for sharing with me your time and expertise, and for giving me so many interesting perspectives and suggestions to pursue in future research. I consider myself especially blessed to have always had the complete and unwavering support of my family, both in education and in life. I first must thank my mother, Sharon Fowler, who I don’t think has ever doubted me; without her support and that of my stepfather, Mark Fowler, I would not be writing this today. Thank you both for making this all possible. I am grateful to my father, Harold V. Gaskill III, MD, who never let me give up and who is always looking out for me, and to my stepmother, Victoria Mathers, for her support, as well. Thank you both for everything you have done for me. And of course thanks to my baby brother, Harold V. Gaskill IV, for being there for me through the good and the bad. I am proud to call you my brother. Of course, I cannot imagine having made it this far without the support of my friends. I simply cannot even attempt to name everyone who has positively impacted my life over the last eight years. Thank you to each and every one of my classmates, my colleagues, my officemates, and my friends from the Department of French and Italian, The University of Texas, and beyond. Thank you to all of you who shared blood, sweat, tears, and laughter with me on this long and winding road. Thank you most of all, Wapiti, for always, always being there. On a lighter note, I would also like to thank the baristas at Houndstooth, Thunderbird, Caffé Medici, Genuine Joe’s, Bennu, The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, and, yes, even Starbucks. As I sat working for hours at a time in coffee shops all over Austin, I promised myself that I wouldn’t overlook the people who kept me awake and writing, day in and day out, over the last two years. vi And last, but most certainly not least, thank you to my husband, Matt, and to our two beautiful children, Parker and Logan. Thank you for your patience, your kindness, and more than anything, thank you for everything that you sacrificed to see me follow this dream to fruition. Your love and support mean everything to me. vii Italian Metaphony in Optimality Theory with Candidate Chains Anne E. Gaskill, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2013 Supervisor: Jean-Pierre Montreuil The regressive (mor)phonological assimilatory process most commonly referred to as metaphony is one which is quite common in Romance: it is found in the dialects of Portugal, Spain, and Italy, with traces appearing in Rumanian and the Spanish of the Americas, as well. As a result, it has been the subject of a great deal of scholarly research both diachronically, (Hall 1950, Blaylock 1965, Leonard 1978, Papa 1981, Kaze 1989) and synchronically (McCarthy 1984, Calabrese 1985, 1998, 2008, Vago 1988, Hualde 1989, Martínez-Gil 2006, Walker 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010). What has eluded recent researchers, however, is a framework that can successfully address the myriad variations of metaphony found in these regions; there exists to date no comprehensive analysis of metaphony in Romance. This dissertation offers an analysis of Italian Metaphony that is couched in a recent variety of Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 1993, 2004), Optimality Theory with Candidate Chains (McCarthy 2007), a framework which exploits the rarely used serial capacity of OT. In exploring the myriad varieties of metaphony found in the Italian dialects, this dissertation tests the capabilities and limitations of both Traditional Optimality Theory and Optimality Theory with Candidate Chains; this exploration viii culminates with the analysis of a problematic variety of OT that currently lacks an acceptable solution in OT-CC. To address this shortcoming, this dissertation introduces a new constraint to the established constraint hierarchy of OT-CC: Subsequence. Subsequence builds on the theoretical premises established in McCarthy (2007) with the introduction of Precedence, which evaluated not a single output candidate but rather the order of the constraint violations found within an individual candidate chain. The resulting analyses create a unified account of Italian metaphony that demonstrates the usefulness not only of OT-CC for addressing different types of opacity, but also the need for an enhancement such as subsequence to account for types of variation that are currently impossible to address in OT-CC. ix Table of Contents 1 Introduction .....................................................................................................1 1.1 Idiolects or polylect? The nature of dialectal variation .........................2 1.2 Organization of the dissertation .............................................................6 PART ONE: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 8 2 Theoretical Background: Optimality Theory and Opacity .............................9 2.1 Optimality Theory ..................................................................................9 2.1.1 Parallel analysis in Traditional OT: The problem with opacity ..12 2.2 Opacity in Optimality Theory ..............................................................17 2.3 Optimality Theory: a brief history .......................................................18 2.4 In defense of serial analysis .................................................................26 2.5 Recapitulation ......................................................................................28 3 Serial Optimality and Optimality Theory with Candidate Chains ................30 3.1 Serial harmony in Optimality Theory ..................................................30 3.1.1 Early serial frameworks in OT ....................................................31 3.1.1.1 Stratal OT .....................................................................31 3.1.1.2 LPM OT .......................................................................34 Derivational OT .................................................................40 3.1.1.3..........................................................................................40 3.1.2 Recent innovations in serial OT ..................................................46 3.1.2.1 Harmonic Serialism and Parallelism (McCarthy 2000)47 3.1.2.2 Optimal Interleaving ....................................................50 3.1.3 Optimality Theory with Candidate Chains .................................53 3.2 Why OT-CC? .......................................................................................61 3.3 Recapitulation ......................................................................................63 4 Metaphony ....................................................................................................65 4.1 Metaphony versus vowel harmony ......................................................65 x 4.1.1 Chain shifts in Mantuan ..............................................................67 4.2 Targets and triggers: What causes metaphony and where does it happen? ..............................................................................................................68
Load more

Recommended publications
  • An Examination of Oral Articulation of Vowel Nasality in the Light of the Independent Effects of Nasalization on Vowel Quality
    DOI: 10.17469/O2104AISV000002 CHRISTOPHER CARIGNAN An examination of oral articulation of vowel nasality in the light of the independent effects of nasalization on vowel quality In this paper, a summary is given of an experimental technique to address a known issue in research on the independent effects of nasalization on vowel acoustics: given that the separate transfer functions associated with the oral and nasal cavities are merged in the acoustic signal, the task of teasing apart the respective effects of the two cavities seems to be an intractable problem. The results obtained from the method reveal that the independent effects of nasal- ization on the acoustic vowel space are: F1-raising for high vowels, F1-lowering for non-high vowels, and F2-lowering for non-front vowels. The results from previous articulatory research performed by the author on the production of vowel nasality in French, Hindi, and English are discussed in the light of these independent effects of nasalization on vowel quality. Keywords: vowel nasality, vowel quality, articulation, acoustics, sound change. 1. Introduction A traditional characterization of vowel nasality adopts a seemingly binary classification of vowel sounds based on the relative height of the velum: nasal vowels are produced with a low velum position (and, thus, air radiation from both the oral and nasal cavities), where- as oral vowels are produced with a high velum position (and, thus, air radiation from the oral cavity alone). While it is unquestionably true that nasal vowels are produced with a lowered velum, this traditional characterization carries an implicit assumption about the state of the oral cavity for the production of a nasal vowel, i.e., that the nasal vowel maintains the same articulatory characteristics as its non-nasal counterpart in all aspects except for the height of the velum.
    [Show full text]
  • On the Anatomy of a Chain Shift1 DANIEL A
    J. Linguistics, Page 1 of 25. f Cambridge University Press 2010 doi:10.1017/S0022226710000368 On the anatomy of a chain shift1 DANIEL A. DINNSEN, CHRISTOPHER R. GREEN, JUDITH A. GIERUT & MICHELE L. MORRISETTE Indiana University (Received 4 September 2009; revised 28 April 2010) Phonological chain shifts have been the focus of many theoretical, developmental, and clinical concerns. This paper considers an overlooked property of the problem by focusing on the typological properties of the widely attested ‘s>h>f’ chain shift involving the processes of Labialization and Dentalization in early phonological development. Findings are reported from a cross-sectional study of 234 children (ages 3 years; 0 months–7;9) with functional (nonorganic) phonological delays. The results reveal some unexpected gaps in the predicted interactions of these processes and are brought to bear on the evaluation of recent optimality theoretic proposals for the characterization of phonological interactions. A developmental modification to the theory is proposed that has the desired effect of precluding certain early-stage grammars. The proposal is further evaluated against the facts of another widely cited developmental chain shift known as the ‘puzzle>puddle>pickle’ problem (Smith 1973). 1. I NTRODUCTION A common phenomenon in both first- and second-language acquisition and in fully-developed languages is for phonological processes to participate in a chain shift (e.g. Moreton & Smolensky 2002, Jesney 2005, Dinnsen 2008b). Chain shifts typically involve two phonological processes that interact in such a way that they result in an opaque generalization (i.e. one that is not surface-true). This phenomenon has generated much discussion and contro- versy in the theoretical, developmental, and clinical literature over the years and has raised questions about the very nature of chain shifts.
    [Show full text]
  • Chain Shifts in First Language Acquisition
    CHAIN SHIFTS IN FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION MASTER’S THESIS BY FRANSIEN WALTON MASTER’S PROGRAMME TAAL, MENS EN MAATSCHAPPIJ TAALWETENSCHAP UNIVERSITY OF UTRECHT STUDENT NUMBER 0419273 SUPERVISOR PROF. DR. RENÉ KAGER SECOND READER PROF. DR. WIM ZONNEVELD 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE PREFACE 5 1. INTRODUCTION 7 2. PREVIOUS RESEARCH 14 2.1 EARLY GENERATIVE GRAMMAR 15 2.1.1 SMITH (1973) 17 2.1.2 MACKEN (1980) 19 2.2 OPTIMALITY THEORY 21 2.2.1 INTRODUCTION TO OPTIMALITY THEORY 21 2.2.2 CHAIN SHIFTS IN OPTIMALITY THEORY 26 2.2.3 LOCAL CONSTRAINT CONJUNCTION 28 2.2.4 FAITHFULNESS TO INPUT PROMINENCE 39 2.2.5 OPTIMALITY THEORY WITH CANDIDATE CHAINS 52 2.2.6 UNDERSPECIFIED UNDERLYING REPRESENTATIONS 58 2.3 CONCLUSION 62 3. A NEW PROPOSAL 65 3.1 INDEPENDENT PROCESSES 68 3.2 ARTICULATORY DIFFICULTIES 70 3.3 UNDERLYING REPRESENTATIONS 74 3.4 MISPERCEPTION 79 3.5 PREDICTIONS REVISITED 83 3.6 CONCLUSION 86 4. DISCUSSION 88 5. CONCLUSION 103 REFERENCES 105 3 4 PREFACE The idea for this thesis originated in the course Phonological Acquisition taught by René Kager. I read the article On the characterization of a chain shift in normal and delayed phonological acquisition by Daniel Dinnsen and Jessica Barlow (1998) and was intrigued by the phenomenon. After I started reading more on the subject, I became increasingly unhappy with the proposed analyses in the literature and decided to dive deeper into the matter. The result is this thesis. I would like to thank René for his useful comments, critical questions and positive feedback.
    [Show full text]
  • Toward a Unified Theory of Chain Shifting
    OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRST-PROOF, 04/29/12, NEWGEN !"#$%&' () TOWARD A UNIFIED THEORY OF CHAIN SHIFTING *#'+, -. ./,0/, !. I"#$%&'(#)%" Chain shifts play a major role in understanding the phonological history of English—from the prehistoric chain shift of Grimm’s Law that separates the Germanic languages from the rest of Indo-European, to the Great Vowel Shift that is often taken to define the boundary between Middle English and Early Modern English, to the ongoing chain shifts in Present-Day English that are used to estab- lish the geographical boundaries between dialect regions. A chain shift may be defined as a set of phonetic changes affecting a group of phonemes so that as one phoneme moves in phonetic space, another phoneme moves toward the phonetic position the first is abandoning; a third may move toward the original position of the second, and (perhaps) so on. Martinet (12(3) introduced the argument that chain shifts are caused by a need for phonemes to maintain margins of security between each other—so if a phoneme has more phonetic space on one side of it than on others, random phonetic variation will cause it to move toward the free space but not back toward the margins of security of phonemes on the other side. Labov (3414: chapter 5) gives a lucid exposition of the cognitive and phonetic argu- ments underlying this account of chain shifting. Despite their value as a descriptive device for the history of English, however, the ontological status of chain shifts themselves is a matter of some doubt. Is a 559_Nevalainen_Ch58.indd9_Nevalainen_Ch58.indd
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction: Constraints in Phonological Acquisition
    1 Introduction: constraints in phonological acquisition René Kager, Joe Paten and Wim Zonneveld This volume presents ten studies in phonological first languageacquisition, an area of research that has become one of fast-growing importance in recent years. The reason for this is not just the fruitfulness and linguistic interest of this type of study per se: it is also thecase that the more we come to know about phonological development, by the analysis of growingnumbers of data collections and increasingly sophisticated experiments, themore the field has complied with the notion that acquisition research liesat the heart of the modern study of language. One of the aims of this introductionis to illustrate and discuss these developments. In line with them, thepast decade in phonology in particular has witnessed an upswell of productiveinteraction between empirical acquisition research and theory development. With thearrival and rise of constraint-based models, in particular Prince and Smolensky's(1993) Optimality Theory, phonological theory now providesa framework that meets the desiderata expressed more than two decadesago by Lise Menn (1980: 35-36), who is also a contributor to this volume: () ... The child'slonguetiedness',that overwhelming reality which Stampe and Jakobson both tried to capture with their respective formal structures, could be handled more felicitously if one represented the heavy articulatory limitations of the child by the formal device of output constraints I...1The child's gradual mastery of articulation then is formalized as a relaxation of those constraints. The rapid emergence of acquisition studies within OptimalityTheory reflects the general suitability of constraints for the formalisation ofdevelopmental limitations, as well as the usefulness of constraint ranking for expressingthe relaxation of these limitations.
    [Show full text]
  • Complete Paper
    The Scope of Stop Weakening in Argentine Spanish Laura Colantoni and Irina Marinescu University of Toronto 1. Approaches to weakening or lenition Recent experimental studies have documented the weakening of both voiceless (e.g. Lewis, 2000: 2001) and voiced Spanish stops in intervocalic position (e.g. Cole, Hualde & Iskarous, 1999; Ortega- Llebaria, 2004). In addition, synchronic and diachronic studies have repeatedly proposed the existence of a correlation between weakening of voiced and voiceless stops (e.g. Lloyd, 1993). However, very few studies have systematically analyzed both weakening processes in the same variety (Lavoie, 2001), and even fewer have presented experimental evidence demonstrating the existence of such a correlation. In this paper, we analyze the status of both processes in Argentine Spanish in order to motivate hypotheses that would account for diachronic changes in Spanish as well as in other Romance languages. In particular, we evaluate three competing approaches to lenition. The first approach, henceforth Hypothesis A, predicts a positive correlation between an increasing rate of approximantization and deletion of voiced stops and increasing voicing of voiceless stops across places of articulation (e.g. Martinet, 1952; Lloyd, 1993; Wireback, 1997). This approach, which is basically diachronic in nature, sees lenition as a stage towards deletion. The second approach, or the effort-based hypothesis – Hypothesis B -, (Kirchner, 2004; Blevins, 2004) analyzes lenition as effort reduction. As such lenition involves a decrease in the degree of constriction of a given gesture as well as a decrease in duration. Thus, this approach predicts that more effortful gestures should lenite more than less effortful ones, and that the degree of lenition should be affected by the vocalic context.
    [Show full text]
  • Tonal Chain-Shifts As Anti-Neutralization-Induced Tone Sandhi
    University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics Volume 11 Issue 1 Article 9 2005 Tonal chain-shifts as anti-neutralization-induced tone sandhi FENG-FAN HSIEH Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl Recommended Citation HSIEH, FENG-FAN (2005) "Tonal chain-shifts as anti-neutralization-induced tone sandhi," University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics: Vol. 11 : Iss. 1 , Article 9. Available at: https://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/vol11/iss1/9 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/vol11/iss1/9 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Tonal chain-shifts as anti-neutralization-induced tone sandhi This working paper is available in University of Pennsylvania Working Papers in Linguistics: https://repository.upenn.edu/pwpl/vol11/iss1/9 Tonal Chain-Shifts as Anti-Neutralization-Induced Tone Sandhi Feng-fan Hsieh* 1 Introduction This paper proposes that certain attested instances of tone sandhi arc not driven by well-formedness conditions, e.g. tonal chain-shifts found in Southern Min (SM), a language group in the Min branch of Stnitic languages, in particular, Coastal Taiwanese (CT) and Mainstream Taiwanese (MT; the famous "tone circle"). As extensively discussed in the literature, SM tonal chain-shifts arc notorious in that (i) the alternations often have no phonotac- tic motivations, (ii) the alternations are not always predictable, and (iii) the chain-shifts may be circular, e.g. A —♦ B —• A. Circular chain shifts cannot be handled in Classical OT, as Morcton (1999) has convincingly argued. Therefore, there is a general consensus that SM tone sandhi rules are arbi trary and idiosyncratic.
    [Show full text]
  • Trask's Historical Linguistics
    Trask’s Historical Linguistics Trask’s Historical Linguistics, Third Edition, is an accessible introduction to historical linguistics – the study of language change over time. This engaging book is illustrated with language examples from all six continents, and covers the fundamental concepts of language change, methods for historical linguistics, linguistic reconstruction, sociolinguistic aspects of language change, language contact, the birth and death of languages, language and prehistory and the issue of very remote relations. This third edition of the renowned Trask’s Historical Linguistics is fully revised and updated and covers the most recent developments in historical linguistics, including: ᭹ more detail on morphological change including cutting-edge discussions of iconization ᭹ coverage of recent developments in sociolinguistic explanations of variation and change ᭹ new case studies focusing on Germanic languages and American and New Zealand English, and updated exercises covering each of the topics within the book ᭹ a brand new companion website featuring material for both professors and students, including discussion questions and exercises as well as discussions of the exercises within the book. Trask’s Historical Linguistics is essential reading for all students of language, linguistics and related disciplines. The accompanying website can be found at www.routledge.com/cw/trask Robert McColl Millar is Professor in Linguistics and Scottish Language at the University of Aberdeen. His most recent books include English Historical Sociolinguistics (2012) and (with William Barras and Lisa Marie Bonnici) Lexical Variation and Attrition in the Scottish Fishing Communities (2014). Larry Trask was Professor of Linguistics at the University of Sussex and an authority on Basque language and historical linguistics.
    [Show full text]
  • Lecture 20 Historical Linguistics: Sound Change
    16 April 2013 Aaron J. Dinkin Linguistics 1 [email protected] Lecture 20 Historical linguistics: sound change Sound change— i.e., change in phonetic and phonological systems— is the most useful tool for establishing how languages are related. Why? Sound change is almost completely regular and exceptionless. I.e., how a phoneme changes depends only on its phonetic environment, not on what word it appears in. E.g., Latin capra ‘goat’, with /k/, becomes French chèvre, with /∫/; but the sound change of /k/ becoming /∫/ is not specific to that word! The same change is exhibited in several more Latin > French words: carus > cher ‘dear’ caput > chef ‘head’ canis > chien ‘dog’ cantare > chanter ‘sing’ Carolus > Charles ‘Charles’ So there is a regular patten by which Latin /k/ becomes French /∫/; the same sound changes happen in all eligible words. Now compare some Latin words in which /k/ didn’t become /∫/ in French: corpus > corps ‘body’; crux > croix ‘cross’; cor > cœur ‘heart’. Why does the change from /k/ to /∫/ take place in capra but not corpus? Because it is conditioned by phonetic environment: k > ∫ / __a (We use a greater-than sign to indicate regular sound change.) This has the form of a phonological (i.e., allophonic) rule: we can consider this change to be adding an allophonic rule to the grammar. A sound change like this one originates as an allophonic rule (though due to later changes /k/ and /∫/ are separate phonemes nowadays). Sound changes typically fall into the same categories as phonological rules— assimilation, weakening, epenthesis, etc. The above is an example of conditioned sound change: the change only takes place in a certain environment.
    [Show full text]
  • Linguistics 407 Lecture
    LINGUISTICS 407 Historical Linguistics LECTURE #13 UNANSWERED QUESTIONS Both the American structuralists and the Neogrammarians failed to pose one crucial question: Why do only certain sound changes occur to the exclusion of others, and why at one time rather than at any other? Prague School of structuralists: EVERYTHING CONCERNING LANGUAGE MUST BE CONSIDERED FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF FUNCTION. The question they asked: What is the function of linguistic change? For conditioned sound change, Paul’s “ease of articulation” had become the widely accepted answer to that question. However, no answer has been given as explanation of unconditioned sound change. The Prague School of structuralists -- above all, André Martinet, attempted to give an answer to this question. He coined the terms drag chain and push chain. CHAIN SHIFT: DRAG CHAINS OR PUSH CHAINS? Consider three well-known cases: 1. Grimm’s Law (First Consonant Shift: Lecture #4) 500 AD : High German or Second Consonant Shift [p] [t] [k] -- first changes around 500 AD [d] changed in the 7th century, filling the empty space left by [t]; then, [†] moved to the space left by [d]. 1 [†] > [d] [d] > [t] [p] > [píf] [t] > [tís] [k] > [kíx] (See the Handout) 2. Great Vowel Shift (English) It started around the 15th century; all the long vowels changed places – uncertain, however, which vowel started the shift. (See the Handout) 3. Yiddish dialect in Poland (See the Handout) [u…] > [i…], followed by [o…] > [u…] Drag chain: one sound moves from its original place, and leaves a gap which an existing sound will fill, whose place in turn filled by another, and so on.
    [Show full text]
  • DRESS-Lowering and /L/ Allophony in a Scottish Dialect Running Title
    1 1 Title: 2 Dressing down up north: DRESS-lowering and /l/ allophony in a Scottish dialect 3 4 Running title: 5 Dressing down up north 6 7 Authors: 8 Sophie Holmes-Elliott 9 Jennifer Smith* 10 11 Lead author contact: 12 [email protected] 13 +44 2380 593 981 14 15 Affiliation: 16 Department of Modern Languages & Linguistics, University of Southampton, Avenue 17 Campus, Southampton, SO17 1BF 18 19 *English Language & Linguistics, University of Glasgow, 12 University Avenue, 20 Glasgow, G12 8QQ DRESSING DOWN UP NORTH 2 21 Dressing down up north: DRESS-lowering and /l/ allophony in a Scottish dialect 22 ABSTRACT 23 This study reports on a sociophonetic investigation of DRESS-lowering in a rural dialect in 24 northeast Scotland. Previous analyses have indicated that this change is ongoing in a number 25 of varieties worldwide, propelled by a combination of linguistic constraints and favorable 26 associations with Anglo Urban Californian varieties. In this paper we examine if and how 27 these influences play out in a relic dialect previously resistant to more supralocal changes. 28 Through an analysis of a range of acoustic correlates, we track the progress of this change 29 across three generations of speakers. Analysis of the constraints suggests that in this variety 30 the change is driven by internal pressures, where it is significantly constrained by phonetic 31 environment, specifically, following laterals. Further analysis of this environment reveals 32 increasing distinction on the F2-F1 spectrum, where /l/s have become lighter in onsets and 33 darker in codas.
    [Show full text]
  • The Emergence of Contrastive Palatalization in Russian
    JAYE PADGETT THE EMERGENCE OF CONTRASTIVE PALATALIZATION IN RUSSIAN Abstract. The well-known contrast in Russian between palatalized and non-palatalized consonants originated roughly one thousand years ago. At that time consonants were allophonically palatalized before front vowels, as in danjw ‘tribute’. When the ‘jer’ (high, lax) vowels disappeared in certain positions, the palatalization formerly triggered by the front jer remained, leading to a palatalization contrast across most consonant types, e.g., danj ‘tribute’ vs. dan ‘given’ (< dan). At the same time or soon thereafter, a rule is said to have been established by which /i/ surfaced as [v] after non-palatalized consonants, e.g., ot vmjenji ‘on behalf of’ (< ot imjenji). This paper analyzes these two sound changes within a version of Dispersion Theory (DT, Flemming 1995a) elaborated by Ní Chiosáin & Padgett (2001) and Padgett (1997, to appear). DT differs from other current models of phonology in its fundamentally systemic orientation: constraints evaluate not only isolated forms as is usual, but sets of forms in contrast. References to these systems of contrast is key to the statement of constraints governing the perceptual distinctiveness of contrasts on the one hand, and constraints directly penalizing merger (neutralization) on the other. The analysis of the Russian facts here illustrates how this theory works, and provides an explanation for the otherwise mysterious allophonic /i/ 6 [v] rule, and for the historical emergence of this rule as a consequence of the loss of the jers. Keywords: Russian, Old Russian, Old East Slavic, palatalization, velarization, jer, contrast, perceptual distinctiveness, merger, neutralization. 0. INTRODUCTION1 Russian consonants famously contrast in secondary palatalization, as in nos ‘nose’ vs.
    [Show full text]