Variation and Exceptionality in Modern Hebrew Spirantization (Dissertation) Michal Temkin Martinez Boise State University SOURCES of NON-CONFORMITY in PHONOLOGY
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Boise State University ScholarWorks Mary Ellen Ryder Linguistics Lab Department of English 5-1-2010 Sources of Non-conformity in Phonology: Variation and Exceptionality in Modern Hebrew Spirantization (Dissertation) Michal Temkin Martinez Boise State University SOURCES OF NON-CONFORMITY IN PHONOLOGY: VARIATION AND EXCEPTIONALITY IN MODERN HEBREW SPIRANTIZATION by Michal Temkin Martínez A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (LINGUISTICS) May 2010 Copyright 2010 Michal Temkin Martínez Dedication To my grandparents for instilling in me a love for language ii Acknowledgements Although I realize that writing a dissertation and earning a Ph.D. are not as monumental as, say, winning a Nobel Prize, this is my biggest accomplishment in life thus far, and there are many people without whom it would have been impossible. Therefore, I feel it is only right to take the time now to thank them for their support. My advisor and dissertation chair, Rachel Walker, has been an amazing mentor and role model. Rachel embodies the well-balanced academic, her teaching and advising styles are enviable, and as I now realize more than ever before, her seemingly effortless manner stems from constant dedication and preparation. I am extremely grateful for her support in all aspects of my education, including the many service projects I found myself involved in. I could not have asked for a more understanding and compassionate advisor. My committee members – Louis Goldstein, Elsi Kaiser, Anna Lubowicz, and Mario Saltarelli – have all contributed to my work in many ways. Elsi and Louis were especially instrumental in experiment design and statistics. I thank Anna for being there for me, even when it meant teleconferencing while on leave. Mario was a member on each of the four committees I had during my graduate studies. I thank him for his support and cheer and for his long-term dedication to my work. Several other linguists helped me with the work that went into this dissertation. I would first like to acknowledge Roy Becker-Kristal for his help selecting and recording stimuli. Roy was extremely collegial and cooperative, and I am grateful to him for the many hours of work that he put into assisting me. Shmuel Bolozky was also very iii generous with his time and resources. I thank him for that and for sharing his verb- frequency list with me. During my visit to Israel, I met with several linguists. I would like to thank Outi Bat-El for taking the time to meet with me, Shlomo Izre’el for sharing some recordings from the Corpus of Spoken Israeli Hebrew (which I hope to use for future research), and Ram Frost for his tremendous help in recruiting participants. Ed Holsinger wrote the script for the online rating tasks described in the dissertation. I thank him for his resourcefulness, time, and patience as he painstakingly explained how each stage of the experiment would work. I had my first experience with linguistics as an undergraduate at California State University, Northridge. I am grateful to all of the many teachers I had there, but especially to my first linguistics professor, Marina McIntyre, and my phonology professor, Tineke Scholten, who also mentored me in my first linguistics teaching experience. I am eternally indebted to my undergraduate advisor (and academic mother) Sharon Klein for all her patience, as well as her continued support and mentorship. My decision to go into teaching was largely inspired by my ESL teachers – Rachel Cohen and Sandra Paolone – and my high school physiology teacher, Donnamae Huberman, whose passion for teaching and life-long learning is admirable and contagious. Many of my professors at USC inspired me to work toward becoming a better scholar. I would like to thank Elaine Anderson, Hagit Borer, Dani Byrd, Sandy Disner, Ed Finegan, Carmen Silva-Corvalán, and Roumyana Pancheva for their guidance. I am especially grateful to Dani Byrd for her mentorship while chairing my phonetics paper, as well as during her supervision of one of my TAships in Linguistics. I am also grateful to iv Ed Finegan for many thought-provoking conversations about linguistics, academic life, and life in general. My first year in graduate school would have been impossible if not for the support of my cohort. Hyuna Byun, Candice Cheung, Susie Choi, Emi Mukai, Andrea McColl, SoYoung Park, Nick White, and especially Alvaro Cerron-Palomino made the transition into graduate school better, easier, and more fun than it would have been otherwise. My fellow phonology students at USC were also instrumental in providing a collegial and supportive environment. Bella Feng, Carolina González, Cristian Iscrulescu, Rebeka Campos-Astorkiza, Daylen Riggs, Henry Nandalenga, Laura Tejada, and Erika Varis were always there to provide feedback and encouragement. To others in the program – Janet Anderson, Mary Byram, Mónica Cabrera, Shadi Ganjavi, Xiao He, Roberto Hernández Mayoral, Ed Holsinger, Canan Ipec, Lucy Kim, Jelena Krivokapi, David Li, Dongsik Lim, Emily Nava, Ana Sánchez-Muñoz, Ben Parrell, Magdalena Pire Schmidt, Ann Sawyer, Meghan Sensenbach, Hector Velásquez, and Fuyun Wu – I am grateful for their support and companionship during the last six years. Michael and Erin Rushforth have been great friends whose advice has always been spot on, often because of their amazing skills as listeners and their insight and compassion. Michael has also been very resourceful and helpful with many of my technology-related issues, and I thank him for always taking the time to help. Katy McKinney-Bock has been a great source of support and grounding. I thank her for her sound and thoughtful advice, which I’ve often felt was well beyond her years. To Sarah Ouwayda, I am grateful for reminding me what Middle Eastern hospitality is all about, v for her constant cheerful encouragement, and for always lending an ear. My greatest friend in graduate school (and my academic brother), Michael Shepherd, has been my lifeline throughout. I thank him for being a great train buddy, a wonderfully organized co-president, an outstanding listener, a responsive sounding board for many of my not- quite-there-yet ideas, and for giving me the sense that I could always rely on him for his help. This involved many long chats, in person and online, in which he helped me unscramble my thoughts, come up with new ideas, even format this document. These few sentences about Michael are probably the only ones in the entire dissertation that he did not proofread. I thank him for his friendship… and the many unpaid hours that this task took. Other friends have also supported me throughout this journey. Cynthia Kilpatrick has been a tremendously helpful colleague and friend whose support during our last year as grad students was invaluable. Joyce Perez provided me with academic, emotional, and psychological support during my time at USC. I am grateful for her continuing friendship and support and for keeping her promise not to leave before I graduated. I am also thankful for my friends in Camarillo, who made my 65-mile commute to campus well worthwhile. I am grateful to Laura, Sonia, Carol, Julia, Brooke, and Matt for their friendship and support and for bringing constant cheer to my home life. To my pre-grad- school friends – Bari Amos, Gina Boulanger, Sunny Cho, Rochelle Connelly, Pamela Dean, Jill Garelick, Laura Gomez, Diane Labazio, Melissa Schwartz, and Brian Sonderling – I am grateful for their not giving up on me while I disappeared behind piles of paper for months at a time. vi Over the past six months, my colleagues and students at Boise State University have been a constant reminder of why I chose to go into academia. I am eternally grateful for their support and encouragement and for making me feel so welcome in their community so quickly. My parents have always been supportive and proud of me no matter how small the accomplishment, and I am grateful for their unconditional love and support. My mother was also tremendously helpful in the pilot study that led to this dissertation – from helping me come up with tokens, to recording the stimuli, to recruiting subjects in Israel – the pilot would not have existed without her. My father’s fascination with language has been one of my main motivations for going into linguistics. I always look forward to our random phone conversations about linguistics-related topics! I am grateful to my brother Lior and his wife Michal, who have always been supportive of my crazy ideas and adventures (even if the way they demonstrated it was through mocking my nerdiness, which I know they secretly admire). My cousins Gali, Tami, and Maya have always shown such care and concern for my work and well-being. I am grateful for their friendship and love and for their actively helping me recruit subjects for my study in Israel. To my in-laws, Susana, Hugo, Gastón, Matias, and Laura, I am grateful for their welcoming me into their family with such love. I am also thankful for their constant support and willingness to being subjected to many pilot studies for my work on Rioplatense Spanish during our brief annual visits with them. I am grateful to the Tzalkas for being such an active part of my extended family and for being a constant source of support in all that I do. vii Last, but most importantly, I want to thank my husband Ezequiel. I don’t know that I would have been able to get through graduate school without his constant love and support. I thank him for accompanying me, along with Mafi and Tapi, every step of the way, and for taking care of so many things I should have been taking care of.