The Interaction of Gradient and Categorical Processes of Long-Distance Vowel-To-Vowel Assimilation in Kazan Tatar Jenna T
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Purdue University Purdue e-Pubs Open Access Theses Theses and Dissertations Spring 2015 The interaction of gradient and categorical processes of long-distance vowel-to-vowel assimilation in Kazan Tatar Jenna T. Conklin Purdue University Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/open_access_theses Part of the Linguistics Commons Recommended Citation Conklin, Jenna T., "The interaction of gradient and categorical processes of long-distance vowel-to-vowel assimilation in Kazan Tatar" (2015). Open Access Theses. 565. https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/open_access_theses/565 This document has been made available through Purdue e-Pubs, a service of the Purdue University Libraries. Please contact [email protected] for additional information. THE INTERACTION OF GRADIENT AND CATEGORICAL PROCESSES OF LONG-DISTANCE VOWEL-TO-VOWEL ASSIMILATION IN KAZAN TATAR A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Purdue University by Jenna T. Conklin In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts May 2015 Purdue University West Lafayette, Indiana ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Above all, I would like to thank Alsu Gilmetdinova for providing data with incredible patience and good will and for sharing her infectious enthusiasm for the Tatar language. This project would not have been possible without you. Every member of my committee – Dr. Mary Niepokuj, Dr. Olga Dmitrieva, and Dr. Elena Benedicto – has also been generous with their time and knowledge throughout the process of developing and completing this project, and deserves many thanks for their support, guidance, and time. Many thanks are also due to Delayne Graham, for her ongoing assistance in navigating the murky waters of institutional logistics, and to my friends and family for their continual support and understanding. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page LIST OF TABLES .............................................................................................................. v LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................... vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ........................................................................................... vii ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................... viii 1. INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................1 2. BACKGROUND INFORMATION .........................................................................4 2.1 The Origins of the Tatar People, Ethnonym, and Language .............................4 2.2 The Use of Tatar in Tatarstan ..........................................................................11 2.3 The Linguistic History of Tatar .......................................................................15 2.4 Tatar Phonetics ................................................................................................16 2.5 Tatar Orthography ...........................................................................................21 2.6 Palatal Vowel Harmony in Tatar .....................................................................25 2.7 General Methodology ......................................................................................26 3. ON VOWEL COARTICULATION AND VOWEL HARMONY ........................29 3.1 Background Information and Literature Review .............................................29 3.2 Hypotheses ......................................................................................................37 3.3 Methods ...........................................................................................................38 3.4 Results .............................................................................................................39 3.5 Discussion .......................................................................................................44 4. ROUNDING HARMONY .....................................................................................53 4.1 Introduction .....................................................................................................53 4.2 Hypothesis .......................................................................................................54 iv Page 4.3 Experiment 1 ...................................................................................................55 4.4 Experiment 2 ...................................................................................................58 5. CONCLUSION .......................................................................................................63 5.1 Future Research ...............................................................................................65 REFERENCES ...............................................................................................................67 APPENDICES Appendix A Prototypical Harmonic Roots and Affixes .......................................... 70 Appendix B Disharmonic Affixation Patterns ....................................................... 71 v LIST OF TABLES Table Page 1 Consonantal Phonemes of Tatar (Native & Loans) ....................................................... 18 2 Vowel Phonemes of Tatar ............................................................................................. 18 3 Cyrillic and Latin Alphabets of Tatar ............................................................................ 22 4 Summary of Comparison Pairs for Coarticulation Analysis .......................................... 39 5 Summary of Coarticulation Results ............................................................................... 43 6 Tatar Mid Vowels .......................................................................................................... 55 7 Mean Formant Values for Tatar Mid Vowels ............................................................... 57 8 Results of Follow-up ANOVAs for Pairwise Comparisons ......................................... 58 Appendix Table A 1 Harmonic Roots and Affixes ..................................................................................... 70 B 1 Disharmonic Roots and Affixes ................................................................................ 71 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1 Map of Tatarstan .............................................................................................................. 5 2 Golden Horde Map ca. 1300 ........................................................................................... 6 3 Turkic Language Family Tree ....................................................................................... 10 4 Vowels of Tatar.............................................................................................................. 20 5 Anticipatory Changes to Mean F1 and F2 by Vowel and Trigger ................................. 41 6 Carryover Changes to Mean F1 and F2 by Vowel and Trigger ..................................... 42 7 Formant Values of Tatar Mid Vowels .......................................................................... 56 vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS NEG - Negative NOM - Nominative POSS - Possessive PRES - Present PST - Past QUOT - Quotative viii ABSTRACT Conklin, Jenna T. M.A., Purdue University, May 2015. The Interaction of Gradient and Categorical Processes of Long-Distance Vowel-to-Vowel Assimilation in Kazan Tatar. Major Professor: Dr. Mary Niepokuj. Vowel harmony and vowel-to-vowel coarticulation are long-distance assimilatory processes wherein certain vowels trigger systematic changes in adjacent vowels; harmony effects phonological change, resulting in phonemic alternation, while coarticulation effects phonetic change. This thesis offers a novel acoustic analysis of the coarticulatory processes present in disharmonic words in Kazan Tatar, a language with left-to-right palatal harmony. While right-to-left palatal coarticulation is found to be widespread, left- to-right palatal coarticulation is virtually nonexistent in Tatar. It is hypothesized that gradient and categorical processes sharing the same triggers, targets, target feature, and direction cannot coexist; the diachronic implication for Tatar is that, once coarticulation was phonologized into harmony, the original coarticulatory process that gave rise to harmony was eradicated. This two-way interaction between gradient and categorical processes argues in favor of the distinctly phonological nature of vowel harmony and against a phonetic account of harmony. In the second part, an acoustic analysis of rounding assimilation in Kazan Tatar is undertaken. The acoustic data suggests that neither rounding harmony nor labial coarticulation are present in Kazan Tatar. 1 1. INTRODUCTION This thesis investigates two processes of assimilation, namely vowel harmony and coarticulation, with regard to the features [back] and [round], using the Kazan Tatar language as a testing ground. It introduces novel acoustic data regarding palatal and labial phonetic coarticulation in Kazan Tatar and considers the implications of this data for the interaction of coarticulation and the previously documented process of vowel harmony. (For more on vowel harmony in Tatar, see Comrie 1997, Berta 1998, and Poppe 1968.) Both palatal (backness) harmony and coarticulation and labial (rounding) harmony and coarticulation are included in this investigation. The phonological process of vowel harmony, found in typologically distinct languages around the world,