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Contrast and Post-Velar Fronting in Russian Author(S): Jaye Padgett Source: Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, Vol

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Contrast and Post-Velar Fronting in Russian Author(S): Jaye Padgett Source: Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, Vol Contrast and Post-Velar Fronting in Russian Author(s): Jaye Padgett Source: Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, Vol. 21, No. 1 (Feb., 2003), pp. 39-87 Published by: Springer Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4048035 Accessed: 08/11/2008 17:57 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=springer. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Springer is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Natural Language & Linguistic Theory. http://www.jstor.org JAYEPADGETT CONTRASTAND POST-VELARFRONTING IN RUSSIAN* ABSTRACT. There is a well-known rule of Russian whereby lil is said to be realized as [i] after non-palatalizedconsonants. Somewhat less well known is anotherallophonic rule of Russian whereby only [i], and not [i], can follow velars within a morphologicalword. This latterrule came aboutdue to a sound change in East Slavic called post- velar fronting here: ki > k' i (and similarlyfor the othervelars). This paperexamines this sound change in depth, and argues that it can be adequatelyexplained only by appeal to the functionalno- tions of perceptualdistinctiveness of contrastand neutralizationavoidance. Further, these notions crucially requirea systemic approachto phonology, in which the wellformedness of any form must be evaluated with reference to the larger system of contrastsit enters into. These notions are formalizedin a modified version of Dispersion Theory (Flemming 1995a), a systemic theorythat incorporates these functionalnotions into OptimalityTheory (Prince and Smolensky 1993). 1. INTRODUCTION It is well known that Russian consonants contrast in palatalization.Also well known are certain allophonic rules connected to this palatalization contrast.One such rule requiresthat the phoneme lil be realized as high central unrounded[i] after non-palatalizedconsonants, and [i] elsewhere, e.g., bJitJ 'to beat' from /bJitJI versus bit1 'to be' from itJ/. Another concerns velar consonants,which are more limited in their ability to con- trastin palatalization:within words, velarscan be followed only by [i] and not by [i], e.g., xjitri] 'clever' from /xitrij/, cf. *xitri. (In addition, velars before [i] are allophonicallypalatalized, as shown.) This latterrule arose due to a sound change in East Slavic occurringbetween the twelfth and fourteenthcenturies. Before that time just the opposite facts held: velars * I am especially indebted to Luigi Burzio, Eric Holt, Junko Ito, Michael Kenstow- icz, Armin Mester, Maire Nf Chiosain, Nathan Sanders, Jennifer Smith, Caro Struijke, and three NLLT reviewers for comments on this paper at various stages of completion. I would also like to thank participantsat the Symposium on Contrastivenessat UC Berke- ley, December 1999, and at the Workshopon Featuresin Phonology at the University of Konstanz, December 2000; the audiences at talks at UC Santa Cruz, MIT, Johns Hop- kins University and the University of Maryland,College Park;and the participantsin my seminarand Phonology A courses in 2001. i NaturalLanguage & LinguisticTheory 21: 39-87, 2003. 9 2003 KluwerAcademic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. 40 JAYEPADGETT could be followed only by [i] and not by [i]. The vowel [i] then frontedto [i] after velars, a change I will call post-velarfronting, e.g., xitrij > xJitrij. Though these allophonicprocesses are well described,there is a sense in which they remainpoorly understood,and in this they are typicalof allo- phonic processes. Phonologists uncover allophonic rules, infer the notion of a phoneme, and make otherinferences based on allophonedistributions, such as the existence of the syllable based on allophonicrules like English aspiration.Yet why do allophonic rules exist at all? Further,why does a language such as Russian have the particularallophonic rules it has, and not others?In this sense allophonicprocesses, especially non-assimilatory ones, remainlargely mysterious. Thereis an old view that sound changes, and phonologicalpatterns, are at least in partexplained by functionalphonetic considerations.This view was developednotably by Martinet(1952, 1964, 1974), workingespecially on problems of historical sound change. Martinet took the sometimes conflicting needs of articulatoryeconomy and perceptualdistinctiveness to play an importantrole in explaining sound change and the resultant synchronic phonological systems. More recently, Liljencrantsand Lind- blom (1972), and Lindblom (1986, 1990), have applied these functional ideas in more explicit formulationsin order to derive broad typological generalizationsabout phoneme inventories.Other work on the functional underpinningsof phonology includes Ohala (1983, 1990), Kohler(1990), and Kingstonand Diehl (1994), among many others. The main goal of this paper is to argue that such functional notions, especially the idea that phonological contrasts should be maintainedand should be perceptually distinct, can be crucial to an understandingof allophonic processes, and to the sound changes that produce them. In particular,the choice of allophone can depend on the need to maintain or improveupon contrastsamong phonemes.1This idea will be appliedto the sound change of post-velarfronting outlined above, and the allophonic distributionresulting from it. The possibility that at least some allophonic processes have their origins in the needs of contrast maintenanceis in- teresting, since allophones of a phoneme are of course defined by their inabilityto contrastamong themselves. The results here suggest that,even if allophones do not contrast(by definition),they can have a greatdeal to do with contrast.One can make the same argumentbased on the variation between [i] and [i] in Russian (Padgett2001, to appear). A second goal of this paperis to demonstrateand motivate one means of appealing to contrast,and the perceptualgoodness of contrast,within 1 Comparethe notion of 'enhancement'of Stevens et al. (1986), Stevens and Keyser (1989). CONTRASTAND POST-VELAR FRONTING IN RUSSIAN 41 a model of phonology. The model employed is a modified version of Dispersion Theory (Flemming 1995a), itself a developmentof functional ideas such as those of Martinet and Lindblom, cast within Optimality Theory (Princeand Smolensky 1993).2 Dispersion theory is crucially dis- tinguishedby its assumptionthat wellformednessmust be evaluatedwith direct reference to the system of contrastsa form enters into. Inputs and candidate outputs consist not of single forms but sets of forms assumed to be in contrast.This assumptionallows for a simple and direct means of formalizing the notion of neutralizationavoidance. It also allows for regulationof the perceptualdistinctiveness of contrastby means of con- straintson the output.It will be arguedhere that both of these notions are indispensablefor an explanationof the Russian facts. Dispersion Theory has been taken by some to be a theory of phoneme inventories alone (Boersma 1998, for example), rather than a theory of phonology, that is, a way of deriving phonologicalforms. Here I show that this is not the case, once the model is fleshed out with the neces- sary assumptions.Putting these particularpoints aboutDispersion Theory aside, however,the ideas here are influencedby those of Steriade(1997), Hayes (1999), Kirchner(1997), Boersma (1998), and others who attempt to incorporatefunctional explanations into phonology by exploiting the central tenet of OptimalityTheory that phonologies result from the rank- ing and interactionof simple (and in these works phonetically-grounded) constraints. Section 2 presents the facts of Russian to be accountedfor. In section 3 the basic assumptionsof the model are laid out. The Russian facts are analyzed within that model in section 4. This is the heart of the paper, presentingan analysisof soundchanges affectingCommon Slavic and East Slavic; it is from this analysis that most of the argumentsproceed. Section 5 takes up these argumentsand addresseslarger questions arising from the analysis. Section 6 is the conclusion. 2. THE RUSSIAN FACTS 2. 1. Background Russianhas the five vowel phonemes Ii, e, a, o, u/. Its consonantinventory is shown below. 2 I will takethe term 'Dispersion Theory' to implythe properties described just below. However,the reader should bear in mindthat the model developed here differs in important respectsfrom that of Flemming(1995a). See section5.2. 42 JAYEPADGETT (1) Labial Dental Post- Palatal Velar alveolar Stop p p t tJ k kJ b b d di g gJ Fricative f P s sJI f x Xi v vi z zj 3 Affricate ts tp Nasal m mi n nJ Lateral
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