Aspects of Pit River Phonology

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Aspects of Pit River Phonology ASPECTS OF PIT RIVER PHONOLOGY Bruce E. Nevin A DISSERTATION in Linguistics Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 1998 _____________________________ Supervisor of Dissertation _____________________________ Graduate Group Chairperson iii iv To the Pit River people In memory of Yámá·litwí·daá Dísdí sí·sá·dumá má céá suwí tús dit·é·wi, amxágam táxábáà tól·ím dáx cú wíc stíjéuwí?à Qa ßís ßú wóá dis·i ßuwá·géá ß tyánuwí,á toljana winá·ji·wíní. iii iv Abstract Aspects of Pit River Phonology Bruce Nevin Eugene Buckley Until recently, it has seemed that the Pit River language (“Achumawi”) was reasonably well documented by de Angulo & Freeland (1930), Uldall (1933), and Olmsted (1956, 1957, 1959, 1964, 1966). My own fieldwork in 1970-74 disclosed fundamental inadequacies of these publications, as reported in Nevin (1991). We substantiate this finding, investigate its probable bases, and establish why my own data are not subject to the same difficulties. After this cautionary tale about the perils of restating a published grammar, we define a phonemic representation for utterances in the language and introduce Optimality Theory (OT). We then apply OT to a series of problems in the phonological patterning of the language: features of syllable codas, restrictions and alternations involving voiceless release and aspiration, and reduplicative morphology. Appendix A describes the physiology and phonetics of laryngeal phenomena in Pit River, especially epiglottal articulation that has in the past been improperly described as pharyngeal or involving the tongue radix (the feature RTR). Appendix B discusses certain ramifications of aperture features for the sonority hierarchy. v Aspects of Pit River Phonology vi Contents Preface .......................................................................................................................................................... xi 1. The Situation of the Language................................................................................................................. 1 1.1. The people and the territory............................................................................................................ 2 1.2. Speakers.......................................................................................................................................... 7 1.3. Prior research.................................................................................................................................. 8 1.3.1. Before 1900............................................................................................................................. 8 1.3.2. After 1900 ............................................................................................................................... 8 1.3.3. Use of older records ............................................................................................................. 11 1.3.4. Language obsolescence and attrition ................................................................................... 14 1.4. My fieldwork and research ........................................................................................................... 19 1.4.1. My assumptions based on earlier work ................................................................................ 22 1.4.2. Uldall's phonological sketch................................................................................................. 28 1.4.3. Text transcribed by both de Angulo and Uldall.................................................................... 31 1.4.4. Summary and conclusions .................................................................................................... 34 2. Representations and Descriptions ........................................................................................................ 51 2.1. Phonetics and Segmental Orthography .........................................................................................51 2.1.1. Consonants ........................................................................................................................... 52 2.1.2. Vowels................................................................................................................................... 57 2.1.3. Length ................................................................................................................................... 58 2.1.4. Pitch...................................................................................................................................... 60 2.1.5. Clusters................................................................................................................................. 60 2.1.6. Fronting and spirantization.................................................................................................. 62 2.1.7. Orthography ......................................................................................................................... 63 vii Aspects of Pit River Phonology 2.2. Phonological features.................................................................................................................... 63 2.2.1 The feature hierarchy ........................................................................................................... 65 2.2.2 Serial baggage...................................................................................................................... 72 2.2.3. Omissions.............................................................................................................................. 75 2.2.4. A descriptive hierarchy for Pit River.................................................................................... 77 2.2.5. Feature matrices................................................................................................................... 77 3. Optimality Theory .................................................................................................................................. 89 3.1 Principles for determining constraint ranking............................................................................... 91 3.2 Primitive constraints ..................................................................................................................... 92 3.3 Optional onset............................................................................................................................... 94 3.4 Variation ....................................................................................................................................... 94 3.5 Principles for determining underlying forms ................................................................................ 96 3.6 Timeline diagrams ........................................................................................................................ 96 3.7 Selection theory ............................................................................................................................ 98 4. Laryngeal Features in the Coda .......................................................................................................... 103 4.1. Positional prominence................................................................................................................. 103 4.2. Coda devoicing: VdObstr and Ident-Onset................................................................................. 104 4.3. Sonorant devoicing ..................................................................................................................... 105 4.4. NoCoda....................................................................................................................................... 105 4.5. Spread of laryngeal features........................................................................................................ 106 5. Aspiration, Voiceless Release, and Gemination ................................................................................. 111 5.1. Aspirates and clusters ................................................................................................................. 112 5.2. A rearticulated cluster................................................................................................................. 114 5.3. OT analysis ................................................................................................................................. 115 5.4. Lenition of release ...................................................................................................................... 118 viii Contents 5.5. Aspirates in the coda................................................................................................................... 123 6. Reduplication ........................................................................................................................................ 127 Appendix A. Laryngeal Phonetics........................................................................................................... 135 A.1. Anatomy...................................................................................................................................... 135 A.1.1. Voiceless sounds..................................................................................................................... 138 A.1.2. Voiced sounds........................................................................................................................
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