Replacive Grammatical Tone in the Dogon Languages
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University of California Los Angeles Replacive grammatical tone in the Dogon languages A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics by Laura Elizabeth McPherson 2014 c Copyright by Laura Elizabeth McPherson 2014 Abstract of the Dissertation Replacive grammatical tone in the Dogon languages by Laura Elizabeth McPherson Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics University of California, Los Angeles, 2014 Professor Russell Schuh, Co-chair Professor Bruce Hayes, Co-chair This dissertation focuses on replacive grammatical tone in the Dogon languages of Mali, where a word’s lexical tone is replaced with a tonal overlay in specific morphosyntactic contexts. Unlike more typologically common systems of replacive tone, where overlays are triggered by morphemes or morphological features and are confined to a single word, Dogon overlays in the DP may span multiple words and are triggered by other words in the phrase. DP elements are divided into two categories: controllers (those elements that trigger tonal overlays) and non-controllers (those elements that impose no tonal demands on surrounding words). I show that controller status and the phonological content of the associated tonal overlay is dependent on syntactic category. Further, I show that a controller can only impose its overlay on words that it c-commands, or itself. I argue that the sensitivity to specific details of syntactic category and structure indicate that Dogon replacive tone is not synchronically a phonological system, though its origins almost certainly lie in regular phrasal phonology. Drawing on inspiration from Construction Morphology, I develop a morphological framework in which morphology is defined as the id- iosyncratic mapping of phonological, syntactic, and semantic information, explicitly learned by speakers in the form of a construction. The same constructional format can be used for both word-level and phrase-level phenomena. Under this view, Dogon replacive tone is ii idiosyncratic phonology (tonal overlays) associated with syntactic structure (category and c-command). A key feature of the Dogon system of grammatical tone is that when two or more con- trollers target the same word(s), conflicts can arise, with each constructional schema demand- ing different output forms. I argue that morphological constructions act as constraints on output form, and cases of competition are resolved through constraint interaction. I further show that the cyclic spell-out of syntactic structure can block the application of overlays, but that this blocking is a language-specific parameter, suggesting violable constraints protect- ing the morphophonological form of phases. In most cases, strict ranking (as in Optimality Theory) is sufficient to account for the data, but in two languages, Tommo So and Nanga, even nonstochastic patterns require constraint ganging, indicating the need for weighted con- straints. I couch the analyses of Tommo So and nine other Dogon languages in Maximum Entropy Grammar, a stochastic version of Harmonic Grammar that can account for both constraint ganging and for surface variation. I show that the same constraint set, suitably weighted, is able to capture eight of the ten languages. The other two languages, Tiranige and Togo Kan, have followed different diachronic paths and require different constraints but still fit into the constructional framework. The framework developed in this dissertation seeks to explain how restructured phrasal phonological systems are learned and implemented. I show how predictions of the model regarding the nature of the trigger, target domain, and resolution of conflicts are upheld by other phenomena outside of the Dogon language family. iii The dissertation of Laura Elizabeth McPherson is approved. Larry Hyman Anoop Mahajan Kie Zuraw Bruce Hayes, Committee Co-chair Russell Schuh, Committee Co-chair University of California, Los Angeles 2014 iv For Jeffrey Heath v Table of Contents 1 Introduction ...................................... 1 1.1 Theproblem.................................... 1 1.1.1 Morphophonological alternations specific to syntactic context . 1 1.1.2 Dogonreplacivetone ........................... 4 1.1.3 How Dogon tonosyntax differs from similar tonal phenomena..... 9 1.1.4 Morphology without morphosyntactic features . ....... 24 1.2 Theframework .................................. 25 1.2.1 ConstructionMorphology . 25 1.2.2 Aconstraint-basedapproach . .. 30 1.3 Past approaches to context-specific alternations . ........... 32 1.3.1 Phonologicalaccounts . 33 1.3.2 Syntacticaccounts ............................ 43 1.3.3 Morphological and lexical accounts . .... 47 1.4 Outlineofthestudy ............................... 54 2 Tommo So tonosyntax ............................... 56 2.1 Introduction.................................... 56 2.2 Dogonlanguages ................................. 56 2.3 A brief sketch of the Tommo So data patterns . ..... 59 2.3.1 Controllersandnon-controllers . .... 59 2.4 Keygeneralizations .............................. .. 64 2.4.1 Tonosyntax is category-sensitive . ..... 64 vi 2.4.2 Tonal domains are determined by syntactic structure . ........ 67 2.4.3 Tonosyntactic conflicts are resolved by constraint interaction . 73 2.5 Analysis ...................................... 75 2.5.1 Constructions ............................... 75 2.5.2 Constructionconstraints . .. 77 2.5.3 On the implementation of construction constraints . ......... 80 2.5.4 Faithfulnessandphases. 84 2.5.5 Locality, *SelfControl,andcumulativity. 89 2.6 Thefullanalysis................................. 96 2.6.1 Constraintsandweights . 96 2.6.2 Onecontroller............................... 98 2.6.3 Twocontrollers .............................. 103 2.6.4 Threecontrollers ............................. 109 2.7 Thedevelopmentoftonosyntax . 110 2.7.1 Reference restriction: a semantic explanation . ......... 111 2.7.2 Phrasalphonology,restructured . .... 119 2.8 Remainingissues ................................. 121 2.8.1 Dataissues ................................ 121 2.8.2 Modelingissues .............................. 126 2.9 Summary ..................................... 129 3 Tonosyntax across the Dogon languages .................... 131 3.1 Introduction.................................... 131 3.2 Overviewofnovelpatterns . 133 3.2.1 Additionalcontrollers. 133 vii 3.2.2 Contingentcontrollers . 134 3.2.3 Linearordervs.c-command . 135 3.2.4 Interaction between phonology and morphology . ...... 136 3.2.5 Syntactic structure of possessives . ..... 136 3.2.6 Factors influencing the possessive overlay . ....... 137 3.2.7 Floatingtones............................... 139 3.3 Theotherninelanguages. 140 3.3.1 BenTey .................................. 142 3.3.2 Jamsay................................... 153 3.3.3 Najamba.................................. 161 3.3.4 Nanga ................................... 163 3.3.5 ToroTegu ................................. 169 3.3.6 YandaDom ................................ 174 3.3.7 YornoSo.................................. 182 3.3.8 Tiranige .................................. 188 3.3.9 TogoKan ................................. 204 3.4 Factorialtypology............................... 218 4 Relative clauses ................................... 221 4.1 Introduction.................................... 221 4.2 Basic structure of relative clauses . ....... 222 4.2.1 Linearorder................................ 222 4.2.2 Theverbalcomplex............................ 225 4.2.3 Relativemarkers ............................. 229 4.3 Thetonosyntaxofrelativeclauses . ...... 230 viii 4.4 ThesyntaxofDogonrelativeclauses . ..... 236 4.4.1 Previousproposals ............................ 237 4.4.2 Twocopiesofthehead .......................... 240 4.4.3 Matching and morphophonological inheritance . ....... 243 4.4.4 Relative particles and phase boundaries . ...... 247 4.5 XL Rel anditsrelationtootherconstraints . 251 4.5.1 Relative clause schemas and XL Rel .................. 251 4.5.2 XL Rel intheTommoSoconstraintset . 253 4.5.3 Revisitingvariation. 258 4.5.4 The interaction between XL Rel and XL Dem ............. 261 4.5.5 Phase-based faithfulness for relative clauses vs. possessors . 263 4.6 Remainingissues ................................. 265 4.6.1 ConjoinedDPhead............................ 265 4.6.2 Jamsayrepeatedhead . .. .. .. 268 4.6.3 Further evidence for cyclic spell-out . ...... 269 5 Predictions of the framework ........................... 272 5.1 Introduction.................................... 272 5.2 Triggersarelexicalorsyntactic . ...... 273 5.2.1 Lexicaltriggers .............................. 273 5.2.2 Syntactictriggers . .. .. .. 280 5.2.3 Localsummary .............................. 287 5.3 Linearadjacencyandc-command . 287 5.3.1 Linearadjacency ............................. 287 5.3.2 C-command ................................ 289 ix 5.3.3 Otherpossibilities. 291 5.4 Competitions ................................... 291 5.5 Theroleofphases................................. 296 5.6 Phonology and phonological subcategorization . .......... 298 5.7 Futurework.................................... 304 6 Conclusion ....................................... 305 A Maxent output tableaux for Tommo So .................... 310 B T-order for Tommo So constraint set ...................... 322 Bibliography ....................................... 344 x Acknowledgments The support of innumerable people helped make this dissertation a reality. First and fore- most,