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Phonological Domains Within Blackfoot Towards a Family-Wide Comparison
Phonological domains within Blackfoot Towards a family-wide comparison Natalie Weber 52nd algonquian conference yale university October 23, 2020 Outline 1. Background 2. Two phonological domains in Blackfoot verbs 3. Preverbs are not a separate phonological domain 4. Parametric variation 2 / 59 Background 3 / 59 Consonant inventory Labial Coronal Dorsal Glottal Stops p pː t tː k kː ʔ <’> Assibilants ts tːs ks Pre-assibilants ˢt ˢtː Fricatives s sː x <h> Nasals m mː n nː Glides w j <y> (w) Long consonants written with doubled letters. (Derrick and Weber n.d.; Weber 2020) 4 / 59 Predictable mid vowels? (Frantz 2017) Many [ɛː] and [ɔː] arise from coalescence across boundaries ◦ /a+i/ ! [ɛː] ◦ /a+o/ ! [ɔː] Vowel inventory front central back high i iː o oː mid ɛː <ai> ɔː <ao> low a aː (Derrick and Weber n.d.; Weber 2020) 5 / 59 Vowel inventory front central back high i iː o oː mid ɛː <ai> ɔː <ao> low a aː Predictable mid vowels? (Frantz 2017) Many [ɛː] and [ɔː] arise from coalescence across boundaries ◦ /a+i/ ! [ɛː] ◦ ! /a+o/ [ɔː] (Derrick and Weber n.d.; Weber 2020) 5 / 59 Contrastive mid vowels Some [ɛː] and [ɔː] are morpheme-internal, in overlapping environments with other long vowels JɔːníːtK JaːníːtK aoníít aaníít [ao–n/i–i]–t–Ø [aan–ii]–t–Ø [hole–by.needle/ti–ti1]–2sg.imp–imp [say–ai]–2sg.imp–imp ‘pierce it!’ ‘say (s.t.)!’ (Weber 2020) 6 / 59 Syntax within the stem Intransitive (bi-morphemic) vs. syntactically transitive (trimorphemic). Transitive V is object agreement (Quinn 2006; Rhodes 1994) p [ root –v0 –V0 ] Stem type Gloss ikinn –ssi AI ‘he is warm’ ikinn –ii II ‘it is warm’ itap –ip/i –thm TA ‘take him there’ itap –ip/ht –oo TI ‘take it there’ itap –ip/ht –aki AI(+O) ‘take (s.t.) there’ (Déchaine and Weber 2015, 2018; Weber 2020) 7 / 59 Syntax within the verbal complex Template p [ person–(preverb)*– [ –(med)–v–V ] –I0–C0 ] CP vP root vP CP ◦ Minimal verbal complex: stem plus suffixes (I0,C0). -
Prosodic Identity in Copy Epenthesis Evidence for a Correspondence-Based Approach
Nat Lang Linguist Theory DOI 10.1007/s11049-017-9385-9 Prosodic identity in copy epenthesis Evidence for a correspondence-based approach Juliet Stanton1 · Sam Zukoff2 Received: 31 October 2016 / Accepted: 23 June 2017 © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2017 Abstract This paper focuses on languages that exhibit processes of copy epenthe- sis, specifically those where the similarity between a copy vowel and its host ex- tends to prosodic or suprasegmental resemblance. We argue that copy vowels and their hosts strive for identity in all prosodic properties, and show that this drive for prosodic identity can cause misapplication in the assignment of properties such as stress and length. To explain these effects, we argue that any successful analysis of copy epenthesis must involve a correspondence relation (following Kitto and de Lacy 1999). Our proposal successfully predicts the extant typology of prosodic identity ef- fects in copy epenthesis; alternative analyses of copy epenthesis relying solely on fea- tural spreading (e.g. Kawahara 2007) or gestural realignment (e.g. Hall 2003, 2006) do not naturally capture the effects discussed here. Keywords Copy epenthesis · Phonology · Correspondence · Misapplication · Prosody 1 Introduction The term copy epenthesis describes a class of patterns in which the quality of an epenthetic vowel depends on the quality of one of its vocalic neighbors. For exam- ple: in a language where underlying /pri/ is realized as [piri] but /pra/ as [para] (not *[pira]), the vowel that appears in the unexpected position (the copy) is featurally identical to the vowel that appears in the expected position (its host). B J. -
LINGUISTICS 221 Lecture #3 DISTINCTIVE FEATURES Part 1. an Utterance Is Composed of a Sequence of Discrete Segments. Is the Segm
LINGUISTICS 221 Lecture #3 DISTINCTIVE FEATURES Part 1. An utterance is composed of a sequence of discrete segments. Is the segment indivisible? Is the segment the smallest unit of phonological analysis? If it is, segments ought to differ randomly from one another. Yet this is not true: pt k prs What is the relationship between members of the two groups? p t k - the members of this set have an internal relationship: they are all voiceles stops. p r s - no such relationship exists p b d s bilabial bilabial alveolar alveolar stop stop stop fricative voiceless voiced voiced voiceless SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES! Segments may be viewed as composed of sets of properties rather than indivisible entities. We can show the relationship by listing the properties of each segment. DISTINCTIVE FEATURES • enable us to describe the segments in the world’s languages: all segments in any language can be characterized in some unique combination of features • identifies groups of segments → natural segment classes: they play a role in phonological processes and constraints • distinctive features must be referred to in terms of phonetic -- articulatory or acoustic -- characteristics. 1 Requirements on distinctive feature systems (p. 66): • they must be capable of characterizing natural segment classes • they must be capable of describing all segmental contrasts in all languages • they should be definable in phonetic terms The features fulfill three functions: a. They are capable of describing the segment: a phonetic function b. They serve to differentiate lexical items: a phonological function c. They define natural segment classes: i.e. those segments which as a group undergo similar phonological processes. -
Phonological Processes
Phonological Processes Phonological processes are patterns of articulation that are developmentally appropriate in children learning to speak up until the ages listed below. PHONOLOGICAL PROCESS DESCRIPTION AGE ACQUIRED Initial Consonant Deletion Omitting first consonant (hat → at) Consonant Cluster Deletion Omitting both consonants of a consonant cluster (stop → op) 2 yrs. Reduplication Repeating syllables (water → wawa) Final Consonant Deletion Omitting a singleton consonant at the end of a word (nose → no) Unstressed Syllable Deletion Omitting a weak syllable (banana → nana) 3 yrs. Affrication Substituting an affricate for a nonaffricate (sheep → cheep) Stopping /f/ Substituting a stop for /f/ (fish → tish) Assimilation Changing a phoneme so it takes on a characteristic of another sound (bed → beb, yellow → lellow) 3 - 4 yrs. Velar Fronting Substituting a front sound for a back sound (cat → tat, gum → dum) Backing Substituting a back sound for a front sound (tap → cap) 4 - 5 yrs. Deaffrication Substituting an affricate with a continuant or stop (chip → sip) 4 yrs. Consonant Cluster Reduction (without /s/) Omitting one or more consonants in a sequence of consonants (grape → gape) Depalatalization of Final Singles Substituting a nonpalatal for a palatal sound at the end of a word (dish → dit) 4 - 6 yrs. Stopping of /s/ Substituting a stop sound for /s/ (sap → tap) 3 ½ - 5 yrs. Depalatalization of Initial Singles Substituting a nonpalatal for a palatal sound at the beginning of a word (shy → ty) Consonant Cluster Reduction (with /s/) Omitting one or more consonants in a sequence of consonants (step → tep) Alveolarization Substituting an alveolar for a nonalveolar sound (chew → too) 5 yrs. -
UC Berkeley Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society
UC Berkeley Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society Title Perception of Illegal Contrasts: Japanese Adaptations of Korean Coda Obstruents Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6x34v499 Journal Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 36(36) ISSN 2377-1666 Author Whang, James D. Y. Publication Date 2016 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California PROCEEDINGS OF THE THIRTY SIXTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE BERKELEY LINGUISTICS SOCIETY February 6-7, 2010 General Session Special Session Language Isolates and Orphans Parasession Writing Systems and Orthography Editors Nicholas Rolle Jeremy Steffman John Sylak-Glassman Berkeley Linguistics Society Berkeley, CA, USA Berkeley Linguistics Society University of California, Berkeley Department of Linguistics 1203 Dwinelle Hall Berkeley, CA 94720-2650 USA All papers copyright c 2016 by the Berkeley Linguistics Society, Inc. All rights reserved. ISSN: 0363-2946 LCCN: 76-640143 Contents Acknowledgments v Foreword vii Basque Genitive Case and Multiple Checking Xabier Artiagoitia . 1 Language Isolates and Their History, or, What's Weird, Anyway? Lyle Campbell . 16 Putting and Taking Events in Mandarin Chinese Jidong Chen . 32 Orthography Shapes Semantic and Phonological Activation in Reading Hui-Wen Cheng and Catherine L. Caldwell-Harris . 46 Writing in the World and Linguistics Peter T. Daniels . 61 When is Orthography Not Just Orthography? The Case of the Novgorod Birchbark Letters Andrew Dombrowski . 91 Gesture-to-Speech Mismatch in the Construction of Problem Solving Insight J.T.E. Elms . 101 Semantically-Oriented Vowel Reduction in an Amazonian Language Caleb Everett . 116 Universals in the Visual-Kinesthetic Modality: Politeness Marking Features in Japanese Sign Language (JSL) Johnny George . -
Arxiv:2106.08037V1 [Cs.CL] 15 Jun 2021 Alternative Ways the World Could Be
The Possible, the Plausible, and the Desirable: Event-Based Modality Detection for Language Processing Valentina Pyatkin∗ Shoval Sadde∗ Aynat Rubinstein Bar Ilan University Bar Ilan University Hebrew University of Jerusalem [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Paul Portner Reut Tsarfaty Georgetown University Bar Ilan University [email protected] [email protected] Abstract (1) a. We presented a paper at ACL’19. Modality is the linguistic ability to describe b. We did not present a paper at ACL’20. events with added information such as how de- sirable, plausible, or feasible they are. Modal- The propositional content p =“present a paper at ity is important for many NLP downstream ACL’X” can be easily verified for sentences (1a)- tasks such as the detection of hedging, uncer- (1b) by looking up the proceedings of the confer- tainty, speculation, and more. Previous studies ence to (dis)prove the existence of the relevant pub- that address modality detection in NLP often p restrict modal expressions to a closed syntac- lication. The same proposition is still referred to tic class, and the modal sense labels are vastly in sentences (2a)–(2d), but now in each one, p is different across different studies, lacking an ac- described from a different perspective: cepted standard. Furthermore, these senses are often analyzed independently of the events that (2) a. We aim to present a paper at ACL’21. they modify. This work builds on the theoreti- b. We want to present a paper at ACL’21. cal foundations of the Georgetown Gradable Modal Expressions (GME) work by Rubin- c. -
Lecture 5 Sound Change
An articulatory theory of sound change An articulatory theory of sound change Hypothesis: Most common initial motivation for sound change is the automation of production. Tokens reduced online, are perceived as reduced and represented in the exemplar cluster as reduced. Therefore we expect sound changes to reflect a decrease in gestural magnitude and an increase in gestural overlap. What are some ways to test the articulatory model? The theory makes predictions about what is a possible sound change. These predictions could be tested on a cross-linguistic database. Sound changes that take place in the languages of the world are very similar (Blevins 2004, Bateman 2000, Hajek 1997, Greenberg et al. 1978). We should consider both common and rare changes and try to explain both. Common and rare changes might have different characteristics. Among the properties we could look for are types of phonetic motivation, types of lexical diffusion, gradualness, conditioning environment and resulting segments. Common vs. rare sound change? We need a database that allows us to test hypotheses concerning what types of changes are common and what types are not. A database of sound changes? Most sound changes have occurred in undocumented periods so that we have no record of them. Even in cases with written records, the phonetic interpretation may be unclear. Only a small number of languages have historic records. So any sample of known sound changes would be biased towards those languages. A database of sound changes? Sound changes are known only for some languages of the world: Languages with written histories. Sound changes can be reconstructed by comparing related languages. -
Serial Verb Constructions Revisited: a Case Study from Koro
Serial Verb Constructions Revisited: A Case Study from Koro By Jessica Cleary-Kemp A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Associate Professor Lev D. Michael, Chair Assistant Professor Peter S. Jenks Professor William F. Hanks Summer 2015 © Copyright by Jessica Cleary-Kemp All Rights Reserved Abstract Serial Verb Constructions Revisited: A Case Study from Koro by Jessica Cleary-Kemp Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics University of California, Berkeley Associate Professor Lev D. Michael, Chair In this dissertation a methodology for identifying and analyzing serial verb constructions (SVCs) is developed, and its application is exemplified through an analysis of SVCs in Koro, an Oceanic language of Papua New Guinea. SVCs involve two main verbs that form a single predicate and share at least one of their arguments. In addition, they have shared values for tense, aspect, and mood, and they denote a single event. The unique syntactic and semantic properties of SVCs present a number of theoretical challenges, and thus they have invited great interest from syntacticians and typologists alike. But characterizing the nature of SVCs and making generalizations about the typology of serializing languages has proven difficult. There is still debate about both the surface properties of SVCs and their underlying syntactic structure. The current work addresses some of these issues by approaching serialization from two angles: the typological and the language-specific. On the typological front, it refines the definition of ‘SVC’ and develops a principled set of cross-linguistically applicable diagnostics. -
Is Phonological Consonant Epenthesis Possible? a Series of Artificial Grammar Learning Experiments
Is Phonological Consonant Epenthesis Possible? A Series of Artificial Grammar Learning Experiments Rebecca L. Morley Abstract Consonant epenthesis is typically assumed to be part of the basic repertoire of phonological gram- mars. This implies that there exists some set of linguistic data that entails epenthesis as the best analy- sis. However, a series of artificial grammar learning experiments found no evidence that learners ever selected an epenthesis analysis. Instead, phonetic and morphological biases were revealed, along with individual variation in how learners generalized and regularized their input. These results, in combi- nation with previous work, suggest that synchronic consonant epenthesis may only emerge very rarely, from a gradual accumulation of changes over time. It is argued that the theoretical status of epenthesis must be reconsidered in light of these results, and that investigation of the sufficient learning conditions, and the diachronic developments necessary to produce those conditions, are of central importance to synchronic theory generally. 1 Introduction Epenthesis is defined as insertion of a segment that has no correspondent in the relevant lexical, or un- derlying, form. There are various types of epenthesis that can be defined in terms of either the insertion environment, the features of the epenthesized segment, or both. The focus of this paper is on consonant epenthesis and, more specifically, default consonant epenthesis that results in markedness reduction (e.g. Prince and Smolensky (1993/2004)). Consonant -
The Syntax of Answers to Negative Yes/No-Questions in English Anders Holmberg Newcastle University
The syntax of answers to negative yes/no-questions in English Anders Holmberg Newcastle University 1. Introduction This paper will argue that answers to polar questions or yes/no-questions (YNQs) in English are elliptical expressions with basically the structure (1), where IP is identical to the LF of the IP of the question, containing a polarity variable with two possible values, affirmative or negative, which is assigned a value by the focused polarity expression. (1) yes/no Foc [IP ...x... ] The crucial data come from answers to negative questions. English turns out to have a fairly complicated system, with variation depending on which negation is used. The meaning of the answer yes in (2) is straightforward, affirming that John is coming. (2) Q(uestion): Isn’t John coming, too? A(nswer): Yes. (‘John is coming.’) In (3) (for speakers who accept this question as well formed), 1 the meaning of yes alone is indeterminate, and it is therefore not a felicitous answer in this context. The longer version is fine, affirming that John is coming. (3) Q: Isn’t John coming, either? A: a. #Yes. b. Yes, he is. In (4), there is variation regarding the interpretation of yes. Depending on the context it can be a confirmation of the negation in the question, meaning ‘John is not coming’. In other contexts it will be an infelicitous answer, as in (3). (4) Q: Is John not coming? A: a. Yes. (‘John is not coming.’) b. #Yes. In all three cases the (bare) answer no is unambiguous, meaning that John is not coming. -
Epenthesis in Jerash Fallaahi Dialect: an Autosegmental Analysis
International Journal of Liberal Arts and Social Science Vol. 7 No. 9 October 2019 Epenthesis in Jerash Fallaahi Dialect: An Autosegmental Analysis Dr. Muneera Mohammad Jaradat Jordan University of Science and Technology, Department of English Language and Linguistics Email: [email protected] Published: 26 October 2019 Copyright © Jaradat. Abstract: The study aims to investigate the phonological epenthesis processes which are manifested in Jerash Falla:ħi Dialect (JFD), a rural Jordanian dialect spoken in the north of Jordan by almost 130,000 people and has never been investigated before. The study uses a non-linear approach, namely, the autosegemental approach to analyze the phonological epenthesis processes. The data are collected by recording spontaneous conversations of twenty participants of Jerash Falla:ħi people who are native speakers of this dialect. The analysis shows that JFD displays two types of epenthesis, namely, vowel epenthesis and consonant epenthesis. Vowel epenthesis involves the insertion of the high short vowel /i/, or the high back vowel /u/, or the short low central vowel /a/ in certain cases within the word boundary or within an adjacent utterance; word-finally and word- medially. The second type is consonant epenthesis, which involves the insertion of the glottal stop /? / within the word boundary. In this type, the glottal stop can only occur word initially. Keywords: Jerash Fallahi Dialect, phonological processes, autosegmental analysis, vowel epenthesis, consonant epenthesis Cite this article: Jaradat, M.M. (2019). Epenthesis in Jerash Fallaahi Dialect: An Autosegmental Analysis. International Journal of Liberal Arts and Social Science, 7(9), 43-59. 43 International Journal of Liberal Arts and Social Science ISSN: 2307-924X www.ijlass.org 1. -
Staged Approach for Grammatical Gender Identification of Nouns Using Association Rule
Staged Approach for Grammatical Gender Identification of Nouns using Association Rule Mining and Classification Shilpa Desai1, Jyoti Pawar1, and Pushpak Bhattacharyya2 1 Department of Computer Science and Technology Goa University, Goa - India [email protected], [email protected] 2 Department of Computer Science and Engineering IIT-Bombay, Mumbai - India [email protected] Abstract. In some languages, gender is a grammatical property of the noun. Grammatical gender identification enhances machine translation of such languages. This paper reports a three staged approach for gram- matical gender identification that makes use of word and morphological features only. A Morphological Analyzer is used to extract the morpho- logical features. In stage one, association rule mining is used to obtain grammatical gender identification rules. Classification is used at the sec- ond stage to identify grammatical gender for nouns that are not covered by grammatical gender identification rules obtained in stage one. The third stage combines the results of the two stages to identify the gender. The staged approach has a better precision, recall and F-score compared to machine learning classifiers used on complete data set. The approach was tested on Konkani nouns extracted from the Konkani WordNet and an F-Score 0.84 was obtained. 1 Introduction Gender is a grammatical property of nouns in many languages3 including Indian language such as Sanskrit, Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi and Konkani. In such lan- guages adjectives and verbs in a sentence agree with the gender of the noun. For example translation of \He is a good boy" and \She is a good girl" in Hindi is \vaha eka achchhaa laDakaa haai 4" and "vaha eka achchhii laDakii haai", respectively.