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Welsh Mutation and Strict Modularity © Õìth August Óþõé Florian Breit

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Welsh Mutation and Strict Modularity © Õìth August Óþõé Florian Breit §Z f§u± WELSHMUTATIONANDSTRICTMODULARITY WELSHMUTATION & STRICTMODULARITY Florian Breit esis submitted in partial fullment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics Department of Linguistics University College London Õìth August óþÕÉ Florian Breit: Welsh Mutation and Strict Modularity © Õìth August óþÕÉ Florian Breit £§h£Z «¶£u§ê«§: John Harris «¶f«oZ§í «¶£u§ê«§: Andrew Nevins is document was typeset using the typographical look-and-feel classicthesis Minion Pro (version ¦.ó) for LYX by André Miede. e type faces used are by Robert Slimbach and Euler by Hermann Zapf. For the greater glory of God, and in memory of Uncle Peter, who taught me the importance of love, the meaning of sorrow, and the struggles of happiness. Declaration I, Florian Breit, conrm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I conrm that this has been indicated in the thesis. London, Õìth August óþÕÉ ............................. Florian Breit vii Abstract e generative view of the language faculty is premised on the modularity of mind. In its most restrictive form, strict modularity, this predicts that phonological processes cannot be sensitive to syntactic information and vice versa. Initial Consonant Mutation in languages such as Welsh appear to falsify the strict modularity hypothesis in relation to the morphosyn- tax–phonology interface. is is because mutation involves the triggering of a phonologically regular process in a morphosyntactically determined environment. Consider the Welsh data in (Õ): (Õ) /kaT/ ‘cat’ (a) [i XaT] ‘her cat’ (b) [i kaT] ‘his cat’ e plosive–fricative alternation in (Õ) cannot be purely phonological in nature, because the phonological environment in (Õa) and (Õb) is identical. e only dierentiating factor is the gender of the possessive pronoun. is is problematic because it appears as though the phonology must make reference to information proper to morphosyntax. Virtually all preceding accounts of Welsh mutation violate strict modular- ity. ese accounts employ ad-hoc diacritics to mark mutation environ- ments in the morphosyntax. In most accounts, the diacritics are assumed to persist across the interface into phonology, where they can trigger phonological processes. Alternatively, it has been suggested that the dia- critics trigger some form of suppletion on the mutation target. However, approaches in the latter category also necessarily appeal to phonology in a manner not compatible with strict modularity. In this thesis I propose a new model of Welsh mutation, combining the oating feature approach of Lieber (ÕÉì) with phonologically conditioned allomorphy within a Distributed Morphology framework. I show that Welsh mutation can be accounted for successfully in this way without viol- ating strict modularity. e account is more restrictive and makes better predictions, in particular predicting that variation is trigger-dependent. I develop the rst in-depth analysis of items that are exceptionally immut- able, proposing that they begin with an empty CV-sequence, a structure independently motivated by weight in Welsh and initial sC(C)-sequences in Irish. ix Impact Statement In Initial Consonant Mutation (ICM), the rst consonant of a word changes according to its grammatical context. For example, in Welsh [kaT] ‘cat’ changes to [˚NhaT] following the rst person possessive (e.g. [v@ ˚NhaT] ‘my cat’). Grammatically triggered phonological alternations such as this are challenging for current theories of linguistic knowledge because they are built on the assumption of a modular cognitive system. Modularity implies that phonological alternations cannot be conditioned by non-phonological information, while grammar cannot manipulate phonological forms. Yet, ICM in Welsh appears to involve precisely such a cross-modular inter-dependency. e research presented here shows that ICM in Welsh can be accounted for wholly within a well-behaved modular model of linguistic competence. It shows that ICM can be successfully analysed as a phenomenon where a partial phonological specication, a oating feature, is inserted at the le edge of words that show such alternations. e oating feature is then merged with the initial consonant, giving rise to the alternation. Because the oating feature is the regular realisation of a grammatical object, no violation of modularity is involved. is theory is a clear advance over previous analyses of ICM, which rely on devices that are incompatible with modularity, such as ad-hoc diacritic features or phonological readjustment rules. Until now, ICM has presented one of the most persistent challenges to the view that phonology and syntax are represented by independent modules within a speaker’s mental faculty of language. e analysis pro- posed here puts linguists in a stronger position to present language as an example of a cognitive system that is organised in a fully modular fashion. xi Acknowledgments First and foremost I must express my deepest gratitude to John Harris. Not “Omnia tempus habent et suis spatiis transeunt universa sub only has John been an absolutely fantastic supervisor, but as I learned aer caelo.” getting run over on the rst day of my PhD, he also has an excellent bedside —Eccls ì:Õ manner. Given all the trials and tribulations along the way, I couldn’t imagine having seen this through without the great commitment and care John has shown me. His help, guidance, comments, and especially his oen innocuous-seeming questions, have been instrumental not only in keeping me going but in getting me to continously rene my thinking and my writing. e latter, especially, has frequently been a rather unpleasant sight. As oreau put it on the inside cover of his Õ¢¦ journal: My faults are:— Paradoxes,—saying just the opposite,—a style which may be imitated. Ingenious. Playing with words,—getting the laugh,—not always simple, strong and broad. Using current phrases and maxims, when I should speak for myself. Not always earnest. “In short,” “in fact,” “alas!,” &c. Want of conciseness. I am condent though that it would be much worse without your patience and persistence. ank you John. Andrew Nevins has been the ideal supervisory complement to John. It has been great fun to bounce my sometimes rather odd and naive ideas o of Andrew and discursively work out the story I was trying to tell and the context that it t in. Andrew has also been of great help in learning to appreciate the insights of dierent theoretical approaches to various issues and so helped me become a bit more open minded and to think about the bigger picture in addition to my pre-existing obsession with theoretical detail.Ö Not insignicantly, Andrew has motivated me to get through the writing process by promising to brew me some gluten free beer when I’m done. anks Andrew, and I’m looking forward to that. Õ Dirk Bury also deserves some credit in this regard, having taught me early on that there’s always something to be learned from other approaches, no matter how much they might dier from our personal outlook. xiii I am further indebted to Jamie White for extended discussion and extensive comments on much of what is now Chs.¦ andä. He has helped signicantly improve the exposition and clarity of the material contained there. anks also for putting up with what could at times have been described as a theoretical attitude problem on my part. Half way through my second year, I got to go to the Welsh Summer School in Bangor and Pwllheli. It was really great to reconnect with many of my former Welsh teachers there, and I am grateful to them all for helping me both with the myriad strange questions I asked of them and with nding participants to take part in various recording sessions. In conjunction with this visit, I got to spend two wonderful months at the School of Linguistics & English Language at Bangor University. Not only did they let me use their library, desks and recording booth, but they also provided me with a plentitude of great discussions and ideas; Eirini even dragged me along to choir practice a few times to ensure I kept a healthy work–life balance while I was there.ô Diolch i chi i gyd, a diolch yn arbennig i Eirini Sanoudaki, Marco Tamburelli, Peredur Webb-Davies, Sarah Cooper, Christopher Shank ac Elwyn Hughes. I also had a great time at the rst Crete Summer School in Linguist- ics, where I met a bunch of really lovely people (Jorgos, Alex, Rodanthi, Matthew, Lis, Niralee). In Crete, Eulàlia Bonet gave me a lot of her time to talk about my work, agreement and all sorts of little morphological things, Joan Mascaró gave me a lot of interfacy things to think about, and Rajesh Bhatt managed to convince me that semantics can actually be fun too. ank you to everyone who gave their time to make this such a fun and useful experience. Much of the work in this thesis has been presented at the óìrd and ó¢th mfm, the óþÕ¢ Annual Meeting of the LAGB, the óþÕä and óþÕß UCL Linguistics PhD Day, the UConn LingLunch seminar, and at the Õþth North American Phonology Conference. I am thankful for the many insightful discussions and comments I got from the various audiences at these venues, especially Pavel Iosad, Markus Pöchtrager, Sławomir Zdziebko, Diana Passino, Aditi Lahiri, Bert Botma, Andrea Calabrese, and Neil Smith. Particular thanks to Christos Christopoulos (and Roberto, Ivana, Chantale, Dabney, and Brendan) for a fantastic week in Connecticut that provided reinvigoration and some much needed relief from a phase of acute academic slump. I couldn’t have got through this whole thing without a whole bunch of lovely people here at UCL and across the street at SOAS. ey have readily furnished me with many extended discussions, all sorts of advice both academic and civic, about as much distraction as I wanted (perhaps ó A lesson I should remember more oen, perhaps.
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