Contrast and Phonological Activity in the Vowel System of Laurentian French Daniel Currie Hall Saint Mary’S University

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Contrast and phonological activity in the vowel system of Laurentian French Daniel Currie Hall Saint Mary’s University

The strongest version of the Activity Principle (Dresher, 2015, 2016) predicts that redundant features should never be phonologically active. Laurentian French laxing harmony (Poliquin, 2006), which is triggered by an allophonic property of high vowels, presents an apparent challenge to this prediction. This paper addresses that challenge, clarifying some of the theoretical questions raised by the Activity Principle and arguing that it is consistent with an account of the Laurentian French laxing pattern, provided that the binary feature [±tense] is given sufﬁ- ciently wide scope in the contrastive hierarchy. The paper also suggests how the hierarchy proposed here can also contribute to accounting for dental stop assibilation (Burstynsky, 1968) and vowel coalescence (St-Amand, 2012).

1 Introduction: The contrastive hierarchy and the Activity Principle

Dresher (2009, 2015, 2016) identifies two components of a contrast-based approach to phonological feature specifications: the contrastive hierarchy and the Activity Principle. These two aspects of what has come to be known as the Toronto School of Contrast both respond to the fact that it is not always possible to identify a unique set of ‘contrastive’ features given an inventory alone. To take a concrete example, Burstynsky (1968) discusses the three phonemic high vowels of Lauren- tian French: /i/, /y/, and /u/.1 To distinguish three phonemes requires two (binary or monovalent) features, but full specification of all three vowels for both features would be redundant. Organizing features into a contrastive hierarchy makes it possible to say that a particular feature value is predictable given the other features that have already been assigned. In an asymmetrical inventory such as /i y u/, the relative scope of the features in the hierarchy determines which values are contrastive and which are redundant. In the case of /i y u/, if [±round] takes scope over [±back] in the contrastive hierarchy, as in (1a), then /i/ is not specified for [−back], because it is already uniquely identified by [−round]. If the same features are used in the opposite order, as in (1b), then [+round] is not specified on /u/, because it is already uniquely identified by [+back].

∗I am grateful to Ricardo Bermudez-Otero,´ Marc van Oostendorp, Elan Dresher, and Elizabeth Cowper for helpful and insightful discussion of the questions addressed in this paper, to audiences at the Manchester Phonology Meeting and the University of Toronto’s CRC-Sponsored Summer Phonetics/Phonology Workshop for useful comments and questions about earlier versions of parts of the work presented here, and to the the editors of Toronto Working Papers in Linguistics for inviting me to contribute to this issue. All errors are, of course, my own. 1Burstynsky (1968) refers to franc¸ais canadien; I adopt the more geographically speciﬁc name Laurentian here because the dialect discussed here differs in some relevant ways from other varieties of French spoken in Canada, particularly Acadian.

Toronto Working Papers in Linguistics (TWPL), Volume 37 c 2016 Daniel Currie Hall DANIEL CURRIE HALL

(1) Two contrastive hierarchies for French high vowels (adapted from Burstynsky, 1968: 11)2 a.[ ±round] [±back] b.[ ±back] [±round] round back − + − + i back round u − + − + y u i y

Hierarchical organization of features provides the two alternatives in (1); the choice between them is made by the Activity Principle. In order to know what the actual feature speciﬁcations are in any given language, we must observe how the segments in question pattern phonologically. In the case of the Laurentian French high vowels, Burstynsky (1968: 12–13) argues for the speciﬁcations in (1b) on the grounds that they make it possible to identify the high front vowels /i/ and /y/ as the natural class that trigger assibilation of coronal stops, as in (2).

(2) Assibilation of /t/ and /d/ before /i/ and /y/ (Burstynsky, 1968: 13) a. j’ai dit [Zedzi] b. du pain [dzyp˜E] c. petit [p(@)ţi] d. tetuˆ [tEţy]

The Activity Principle states that features should be hierarchically ordered in such a way as to “identify the contrastive features that are relevant to the phonological computation” (Dresher, 2016: 68). This principle assumes that contrastive features have some special status in phonology. As Dresher (2009) notes, phonologists in the mid-twentieth century often used contrastive hierarchies without adopting the Activity Principle; for example, Cherry et al. (1953) proposed a contrastive hierarchy for Russian that was designed primarily to minimize the number of specified values, rather than to capture phonologically relevant classes. In The Sound Pattern of Russian, Halle (1959) assumed that while underlying representations contain only contrastive features, hierarchically assigned, redundant features can be filled in at any point during the derivation; see Hall & Dresher (to appear) for discussion of how Halle’s hierarchy could be revised to ad- here to the Activity Principle. Burstynsky is a rare exception, arguing that “ces deux descriptions ayant et´ e´ nettement formulees,´ il faut choisir entre elles. [. . . ] Si l’on ne fait pas de choix et qu’on donne tous les traites, pourquoi alors introduire la phonologie?” (Burstynsky, 1968: 12).3 The strongest version of the Activity Principle is stated as the Contrastivist Hypothesis by Hall (2007: 20): “The phonological component of a language L operates only on those features which are necessary to distinguish the phonemes of L from one another.” Other, weaker versions also give some special status to contrastive features, but allow redundant features to be phonologically active as well. For example, in Archangeli’s (1988) theory of Radical Underspecification, redundant features are underlyingly absent, but that they are filled in during the course of the derivation, and, once filled in, can be referred to by subsequent rules. Nevins (2005) proposes that rules vary parametrically as to which features they are sensitive to: some rules refer only to contrastive feature values, others only to marked values, and others to all feature values regardless of markedness or contrast.

2Burstynsky uses the acoustic features [±grave] and [±ﬂat] (bemolis´ e´), following Jakobson et al. (1952), but also shows the same hierarchical organizations of the articulatory oppositions front–back (anterieur–post´ erieur´ ) and rounded–spread (arrondi–ecart´ e´). 3‘These two descriptions [viz., the ones in (1)] having been clearly formulated, we must choose between them. If we do not make a choice and instead specify all the features, then why even bring phonology into it?’

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As argued by Hall (2007), it is methodologically useful to begin with the strongest, most restrictive hypothesis, and to retreat from it only as compelled by the data. In the case of feature speciﬁcations, this means starting with the assumption that redundant values are systematically excluded from the phonological computation, and looking for cases that present what Nevins (2015) calls ‘Oops, I Need That’ (OINT) problems—that is, phenomena that cannot be satisfactorily accounted for without reference to redundant features. The purpose of this paper is to examine a potential OINT problem in Laurentian French, posed by the existence of laxing harmony on high vowels as described by Poliquin (2006). Although the opposition between tense [i y u] and lax [IYU] is allophonic rather than phonemic, allophonic laxing of a high vowel in a ﬁnal closed syllable can trigger regressive harmonic laxing of high vowels in earlier syllables, as in (3).

(3) Laxing harmony (Poliquin, 2006: 7) a. minute [mInYt] b. pourrite [pUKIt] c. stupide [sţYpId]

If [±tense]—or whatever feature distinguishes [i y u] from [IYU]—is redundant on high vowels, then its ability to spread or be copied from one vowel to another is an apparent contradiction of the strongest version of the Activity Principle. I will argue that laxing harmony does not, in fact, require a retreat from this theoretical position, but that it does shed interesting light on the scope of contrasts in the Laurentian French system and on the precise formulation of the Contrastivist Hypothesis. Section 2 clariﬁes the theoretical questions raised by the Activity Principle; §3 summarizes the laxing facts; §4 discusses how they can be accounted for in a theory that adopts the Activity Principle and the contrastive hierarchy; and §5 offers some general conclusions.

2 What it means for redundant features to be phonologically inactive

2.1 Paradigmatically predictable features and prophylaxis In order to understand the predictions of the strongest version of the Activity Principle, it is necessary to say precisely what it means for the phonological computation to operate only on contrastive features. Clearly, this cannot mean only that redundant features are excluded from the input to the phonological computation, because redundant features, by definition, are ones that could be filled in by rules. For example, suppose that the high vowels of Laurentian French are underlyingly specified as in (1a), so that [−round] /i/ has no specification for [±back]. If phonological rules can freely introduce predictable features at any point in the derivation, then it would be possible to fill in redundant [−back] on /i/ with a rule like the one in (4a) in time for it to trigger the assibilation rule in (4b).

(4) Allowing a redundancy rule to feed assibilation −consonantal a. Redundancy rule for [−back]: −round  → [−back] −low −consonantal +coronal b. Assibilation: → [+strident] / +high −sonorant   −back

Permitting sequences of rules like the one in (4) would produce a theory that is less restrictive than full speciﬁcation: both contrastive and redundant features would be capable of being phonologically active, as in

3 DANIEL CURRIE HALL full specification, but redundant features could also be ignored by any rules that apply before they are filled in. Archangeli (1984: 85), pursuing a theory along these lines, restricts the effects of underspecification by positing the Redundancy-Rule Ordering Constraint: “A redundancy rule assigning ‘a’ to F, where ‘a’ is ‘+’ or ‘−’, is automatically ordered prior to the first rule referring to [a F] in structural description.” This reduces the power of the theory, but in a way that makes it less different from full specification. An obvious alternative way of limiting the theory would be to say that redundant features are filled in only at the end of the phonological computation, as part of the transfer from phonology to phonetic implementation. However, Hall (2007, 2008, 2013) notes the existence of cases in which redundant features must be present before the application of phonological rules that would render them unrecoverable. These ‘prophylactic’ feature specifications are not phonologically active themselves, but they passively prevent phonological processes from neutralizing certain distinctions. For example, Yowlumne has four contrasting vowel qualities, /i a o u/, which Hall (2013) analyzes as having the contrastive specifications shown in (5).

(5) Contrastive hierarchy for Yowlumne vowels (Hall, 2013: 7) round − + high high − + − + a i o u

Although the specifications in (5) are effective in contributing to an account of height-dependent vowel harmony, they incorrectly predict that the long-vowel lowering process that turns /uu/ into [oo] will also turn /ii/ into [aa]; instead, lowered /ii/ surfaces as [ee] (or as [e] if it is also subject to shortening). Some additional feature must be present that will distinguish between underlying /a/ and lowered /i/. Hall (2013) proposes that redundant [±back] is filled in after the application of harmony but before lowering. Crucially for the Contrastivist Hypothesis, though, this redundant feature does not need to be phonologically active, in that no phonological rules refer to it. In fact, while it is convenient to identify the additional specification as [±back], it need not be a feature at all, in the sense of being a formal object that the phonological component of the grammar can manipulate—it can simply be a phonetic property with no phonological consequences. No matter how it is represented, though, the difference in place of articulation between /i/ and /a/ must be encoded before lowering applies, even though it has no effect until the point of phonetic implementation. The redundant features discussed in this section so far have been entirely paradigmatically predictable—that is, their values can be determined from the contrastive features specified on the same segment, without reference to the context in which the segment occurs. The tenseness or laxness of Laurentian French high vowels, on the other hand, is syntagmatically predictable: in order to determine whether a given token of a high vowel is [+tense] or [−tense], it is necessary to refer to its environment. The information that determines the value of this feature is to be found not only on the vowel itself, but in the structure of the syllable in which it occurs (and, in harmony contexts, the presence of other such vowels elsewhere in the word; see §3 for details).

2.2 Syntagmatically predictable features

There is at least one sense in which features that are syntagmatically predictable must be able to be phonologically active: a feature that is contrastive on one segment can spread to another segment on which it is not contrastive, and then continue to spread from there. For example, Piggott (1992) notes that in Malay, nasality spreads iteratively rightward from nasal stops to [−consonantal] segments (vowels, glides,

4 CONTRASTANDPHONOLOGICALACTIVITYINTHEVOWELSYSTEMOF LAURENTIAN FRENCH and glottals) until it is blocked by a [+consonantal] segment, as illustrated in (6).4 (6) Malay nasal harmony (Piggott, 1992: 41–42; Walker, 1998: 25) a.m a˜˜jaÑ ‘stalk’ b.m a˜Pap˜ ‘pardon’ c.m akan˜ ‘to eat’ d. m˜@laran ‘forbid’ e.p @n˜@Na˜hãn˜ ‘central focus’ f.p @Na˜w˜ asan˜ ‘supervision’ As Piggott (1992) explains, the domain of contrast for [±nasal] in Malay is the set of [+consonantal] segments. If the inventory is specified according to the contrastive hierarchy in (7), then we can say that segments with no contrastive specification for [±nasal] are potential targets of harmony, while segments specified for [±nasal] are potential triggers and blockers. (7) Partial contrastive hierarchy for Malay: [±consonantal] [±nasal] consonantal − + {i e @ a o u j w h P} nasal − + {p b t d ÙÃ k g s l r} {m n ñ N} In a word like (6f), then, [+nasal] spreads from a segment on which it is contrastive, in this case /N/, to one on which it is not, /a/, and continues to spread rightward until it is blocked by a contrastively [−nasal] segment, here /s/: (8) Deriving (6f) by spreading p @N a w a s a n

[−nasal] [+nasal] [−nasal] [+nasal]

The facts of Malay and other languages with similar patterns provide strong empirical evidence that this sort of spreading must be possible, and the Contrastivist Hypothesis was never intended to rule it out. In (8), the feature that is phonologically active is contrastive on the segment on which it is underlyingly specified; there is no reason to posit that it should somehow become phonologically inert upon forming an association with another segment. Indeed, one could say that in (8) the active feature is not spreading from the first /a/ to the /w/ and from the /w/ to the second /a/, but that it is spreading from the /N/ to all three following segments. Furthermore, in the phonological surface form derived in (8), there are no more tokens of the feature [±nasal] than there were in the underlying representation; only association lines have been added. Relying on these considerations, though, would rule out the possibility that [+nasal], having spread to /a/, could continue to be phonologically active even if the /N/ on which it was originally specified were subsequently deleted, and it would also mean that all propagation of features to segments on which they are underlyingly unspecified must be formally implemented as autosegmental spreading rather than as copying.5 Rather than restrict the theory in these ways, I will explicitly adopt the postulates in (9):

4In (6b), there is of course no nasal airﬂow during the glottal stop, but velic opening is presumably maintained throughout the [ma˜Pa]˜ sequence. 5Indeed, Poliquin (2006) argues that the non-locality of Laurentian French laxing harmony motivates an implementation as copying, a` la Nevins (2005); see §3 for further details.

5 DANIEL CURRIE HALL

(9) Propagation of Contrastive Features a. A feature that is contrastively speciﬁed on one segment may propagate to other segments on which it was not underlyingly speciﬁed. b. A feature may be phonologically active on segments to which it has propagated by (9a), regardless of whether it is also still associated with the originating segment.

Although stated here as axioms, the principles in (9) should ideally follow automatically from the basic structural properties of a fully articulated system of phonological representations and operations that incorporates the Activity Principle, without needing to be separately stipulated. I stipulate them here in order to explore the consequences of the Activity Principle independently of other theoretical considerations (particularly the question of exactly what kinds of operations the phonological computation can perform). There are also cases of paradigmatically predictable features that, like [±back] on Yowlumne vowels, appear to need to be ﬁlled in before the end of the phonological computation, but which do not need to be phonologically active once they have been speciﬁed. Canadian Raising (Joos, 1942; Chambers, 1973, 2006) provides a well-known example. In Canadian English, the diphthongs /aI/ and /aU/ raise to [2I] and [2U] before (underlyingly) voiceless consonants. Although there is no underlying contrast between the raised and unraised diphthongs, there is clear evidence that the raising process is phonological rather than phonetic. Not only does it apply regardless of speech rate, it is ordered before the rule that turns foot-medial /t/ and /d/ into the alveolar tap [R], producing counterbleeding opacity in forms where both rules apply.6 As illustrated in (10), this gives rise to a surface pattern in which the voicing contrast on the stops is displaced onto the diphthongs.

(10) Opaque ordering of Canadian Raising and Tapping (adapted from Chambers, 1973: 121) writer rider clouting clouding U.R. /ôaItô//ôaIdô//klaUtIN//klaUdIN/ " " Canadian Raising ô2Itô — kl2UtIN — Tapping ô2IRô" ôaIRô kl2URIN klaURIN " " S.F. [ô2IRô][ôaIRô][kl2URIN][klaURIN] " " There are at least two possible treatments of Canadian Raising that would be consistent with the Contrastivist Hypothesis, depending on how the diphthongs are represented. If the diphthongs are treated as sequences of two vowels (or of a vowel followed by a glide), then raising involves a change in the contrastive feature [±low], or whatever other feature is chosen to mark the phonemic distinction between /A/ and /2/.7 On the other hand, if /aI/ and /aU/ are treated as single units in the phonemic vowel inventory, and no change in a contrastive feature value would have the effect of raising the ﬁrst part of these diphthongs, it would be possible to say that Canadian Raising introduces a non-contrastive feature that, like [±back] in Yowlumne, is not visible to subsequent phonological operations but is interpreted at phonetic implementation. An analysis along these latter lines is not available for laxing of Laurentian French high vowels, because the syntagmatically predictable [−tense] feature does need to be phonologically visible in order to trigger harmony. If the primary intent of the Contrastivist Hypothesis is to exclude paradigmatically predictable features from having phonological effects, it might be possible to stipulate that features introduced by rules that do not specify an environment are phonologically invisible, but that features introduced by rules that make non-vacuous reference to a context can be phonologically active. Such a move, however,

6This is the rule ordering described by Joos (1942) as occurring among speakers in “Group A,” and the only ordering attested in Chambers (1973). 7This analysis implies that it might be possible for sequences /2I/ and /2U/ to occur in underlying representations. If no rule or constraint eliminates such sequences in non-raising contexts, we would expect to ﬁnd a contrast between raised and non-raised diphthongs. Interestingly, Hall (2005) reports that the surface distribution of the diphthongs is less predictable than had previously been supposed.

6 CONTRASTANDPHONOLOGICALACTIVITYINTHEVOWELSYSTEMOF LAURENTIAN FRENCH would weaken the predictions of the Activity Principle, and the necessary stipulation would be difﬁcult to formulate in theory-neutral terms—while it is easy enough to state in a theory that uses rules of the form popularized by Chomsky & Halle (1968), there is no obvious translation into a constraint-based framework, for example. It is therefore preferable to seek an account of laxing that does not rely on such a stipulation.

3 The laxing pattern

This section sets out the basic facts that must be contended with in any account of the distribution and behaviour of tense and lax high vowels in Laurentian French. The data are drawn primarily from Walker’s (1984) general description of Canadian French phonology and Poliquin’s (2006) in-depth study of laxing harmony.

3.1 Closed-syllable laxing In the ﬁnal syllable of the word, the high vowels /i y u/ are consistently realized as lax [IYU] if there is a coda containing a consonant other than the voiced fricatives /v z ZK/.8 The basic pattern is illustrated in (11) and (12) with examples from Poliquin (2006: 6).

(11) Final open syllable (12) Final syllable closed by a C other than /v z ZK/ a. beni´ [beni] a. elite´ [elIt] b. debut´ [deby] b. annule [anYl] c. dego´ utˆ [degu] c. egoutte´ [egUt]

If the coda of the ﬁnal syllable contains only a voiced fricative, then a high vowel in the nucleus will be tense (and long). However, the vowel will be lax (and short) if the coda also contains another consonant that is not a voiced fricative.9 The examples in (13) and (14) are drawn from Walker (1984: 56) and Poliquin (2006: 102).

(13) Final syllable closed by /v z ZK/ only (14) Final syllable closed by /KC/ a. eglise´ [egli:z] a. inﬁrme [˜EfIKm] b. Vesuve´ [vezy:v] b. absurde [apsYKd] c. ecluse´ [ekly:z] c. hurle [YKl] d. sourd [su:K] d. sourde [sUKd]

In non-final syllables, laxing of high vowels optionally applies if the syllable is closed by a consonant other than /v z ZK/. Setting aside the effects of harmony and dissimilation for now, high vowels in open non-final syllables are tense, as are high vowels in non-final syllables closed by a voiced fricative, although lengthening does not apply before voiced fricatives in non-final syllables. These patterns are illustrated in (15)–(17).

8I follow Poliquin (2006) in identifying the relevant natural class as “voiced fricatives,” although /K/ is historically, and to some extent phonotactically, a rhotic that can also be realized as a trilled [ö] or [r]. A more circumspect and verbose description would be “voiced central continuant consonants.” 9The effects of codas containing two voiced fricatives are less clear. Both Gendron (1966: 21) and Walker (1984: 56) report laxing in purge [pYKZ]. Rogers (1991: 115) reports lengthening (and, in the case of high vowels, tenseness) before the speciﬁc sequence /vK/, as in s’ouvre [su:vK], but ﬁnal post-consonantal /K/ is frequently deleted (see, e.g., Cotˆ e,´ 2004), which would yield [su:v] instead.

7 DANIEL CURRIE HALL

(15) Optional laxing in closed non-ﬁnal syllables (Poliquin, 2006: 26) a. mystere` [mIs.tE:K] ∼ [mis.tE:K] b. binerie [bIn.Ki] ∼ [bin.Ki] c. bustier [bYs.ţje] ∼ [bys.ţje] d. soulerieˆ [sUl.Ki] ∼ [sul.Ki] e. mouchete´ [mUS.te] ∼ [muS.te]

(16) No laxing in open non-final syllables (Poliquin, 2006: 7) a. mitaine [mi.tEn] c. jumelles [Zy.mEl] e. bouton [bu.tÕ] b. guidons [gi.dÕ] d. culotte [ky.lOt] f. couterˆ [ku.te]

(17) No laxing in non-ﬁnal syllables closed by voiced fricatives (Poliquin 2006: 177) a. Israel¨ [iz.Ka.El] b. fuselage [fyz.la:Z] c. ouzbeque` [uz.bEk]

3.2 Laxing harmony Harmony optionally causes a high vowel in a non-ﬁnal open syllable, which would otherwise be tense as in (16), to be realized as lax when there is a lax high vowel in the ﬁnal syllable. This basic pattern is illustrated in the words in (3), repeated below in (18) with syllable boundaries marked.

(18) Harmonic laxing in non-ﬁnal open syllables (Poliquin, 2006: 7) a. minute [mI.nYt] b. pourrite [pU.KIt] c. stupide [sţY.pId]

In a non-final syllable closed by a consonant other than a voiced fricative, high vowels can be realized as lax regardless of the quality of the vowel in the final syllable, as illustrated in (15), and so the effects of harmony cannot be independently discerned in this context. High vowels followed by a tautosyllabic voiced fricative are tense even when there is a lax high vowel in the final syllable, as in hirsute [iK.sYt] (Poliquin, 2006: 177); the relevance of syllable structure in this example can be seen by the contrast with (18b). In words with multiple possible targets for harmony, Poliquin (2006) reports an interesting range of attested patterns. For some speakers, harmony targets only the penultimate syllable (i.e., the syllable that is adjacent to the trigger); for others, it targets only the initial syllable. Still other speakers allow harmony to apply iteratively, propagating laxness either leftward from the penult or rightward from the initial syllable to other adjacent syllables with high vowels. There are thus three patterns of harmony observable in trisyllabic words like the ones in (19), plus the possibility of no harmony:

(19) Words with three high vowels (Poliquin, 2006: 58–59) No harmony Penult only Initial only Iterative a. juridique [Zy.Ki.dzIk] [Zy.KI.dzIk] [ZY.Ki.dzIk] [ZY.KI.dzIk] b. limousine [li.mu.zIn] [li.mU.zIn] [lI.mu.zIn] [lI.mU.zIn] c. illumine [i.ly.mIn] [i.lY.mIn] [I.ly.mIn] [I.lY.mIn] d. dissimule [dzi.si.mYl] [dzi.sI.mYl] [dzI.si.mYl] [dzI.sI.mYl]

8 CONTRASTANDPHONOLOGICALACTIVITYINTHEVOWELSYSTEMOF LAURENTIAN FRENCH

In words like those in (19), iterative application of harmony produces the same result regardless of whether the first target is the initial syllable or the penult. However, Poliquin (2006) reports that speakers who produce across-the-board harmony in such words are split with respect to words like inedite´ and illegitime,´ in which the sequence of high vowels is interrupted by a non-high vowel. Some speakers who have iterative harmony in words like (19) say [I.ne.dzIt] and [I.le.Zi.ţIm], indicating that the primary target of their harmony rule is the initial syllable, while others say [i.ne.dzIt] and [i.le.ZI.ţIm], indicating that their harmony process targets the penult first. In both types of iterative harmony, then, propagation of laxness beyond the primary target requires adjacency, and is blocked by an intervening non-high vowel. This is true even if the primary target is the initial syllable, which does not need to be adjacent to the trigger in the final syllable. The four harmony patterns are summarized in Table 1, which shows the pronunciations of juridique and illegitime´ produced by each possible combination of parameters.

Non-iterative Iterative [Zy.KI.dzIk] [ZY.KI.dzIk] Penult [i.le.ZI.ţIm] [i.le.ZI.ţIm] [ZY.Ki.dzIk] [ZY.KI.dzIk] Initial [I.le.Zi.ţIm] [I.le.Zi.ţIm]

Table 1: Cross-classiﬁcation of harmony parameters in juridique and illegitime´ (Poliquin, 2006)

Examining words with four high vowels, Poliquin (2006) ﬁnds no evidence of further parametric variation, as illustrated in (20) by the fact that only four of the eight logically possible realizations of similitude are attested. In particular, there is nothing to suggest that iterative harmony is arbitrarily restricted to spreading to only a single syllable beyond the primary target, as in (20e) and (20f), nor can harmony independently target both the initial syllable and the penult without applying iteratively, as in (20g). Comparing the attested (20c) and unattested (20h) further suggests that “initial syllable,” rather than “antepenult,” is indeed the cor- rect characterization of the primary target for speakers who pronounce juridique as [ZY.Ki.dzIk].

(20) Attested (X) and unattested (*) realizations of similitude (Poliquin, 2006: 74) a. X [si.mi.li.ţYd] (no harmony) e.* [s I.mI.li.ţYd] (initial and second only) b. X [si.mi.lI.ţYd] (penult only) f.* [si.m I.lI.ţYd] (penult and antepenult only) c. X [sI.mi.li.ţYd] (initial only) g.* [s I.mi.lI.ţYd] (initial and penult only) d. X [sI.mI.lI.ţYd] (iterative) h.* [si.m I.li.ţYd] (second/antepenult only)

3.3 Dissimilatory laxing In addition to closed-syllable laxing and the harmony process that it feeds, Poliquin (2006) mentions dissimilation as another source of surface lax high vowels. In disyllabic words with two underlyingly identical high vowels in open syllables, the ﬁrst vowel is optionally lax, as in (21).

(21) Optional dissimilatory laxing (Poliquin, 2006: 97) a. midi [mI.dzi] ∼ [mi.dzi] b. ﬁni [fI.ni] ∼ [fi.ni] c. chimie [SI.mi] ∼ [Si.mi] d. Zoulou [zU.lu] ∼ [zu.lu]

Poliquin’s description of this pattern as dissimilation is motivated by the fact that it does not apply in words with non-identical high vowels, as illustrated in (22).

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(22) No dissimilatory laxing of non-identical vowels (Poliquin, 2006: 131) a. Julie [Zy.li] b. hibou [i.bu] c. cigue¨ [si.gy] d. poulie [pu.li]

3.4 Tensing

Poliquin (2006) argues that tautosyllabic voiced fricatives must actively trigger tensing of high vowels, rather than merely inhibiting or failing to trigger laxing. The evidence for this comes from forms like those in (23), in which a high vowel in a non-ﬁnal open syllable is (for some speakers) realized as lax before a high vowel in a ﬁnal syllable closed by a voiced fricative.

(23) Opaque application of harmony and tensing (Poliquin, 2006: 107–108) a. qui-vive [kI.vi:v] d. humour [Y.mu:K] b. piqureˆ [pI.ky:K] e. poussive [pU.si:v] c. russise [KY.si:z] f. toujours [tU.Zu:K]

Note that the lax vowels in (23) cannot be the result of the dissimilation described in §3.3, because the two syllables do not always have underlyingly identical vowels. Poliquin (2006) analyzes (23) as resulting from an opaque rule ordering in which the vowel in the ﬁnal syllable undergoes closed-syllable laxing, triggers harmonic laxing of the non-ﬁnal vowel, and then is tensed (and lengthened) by the voiced fricative:10

(24) Derivation of russise (adapted from Poliquin, 2006: 109) U.R. /Kysiz/ Syllabiﬁcation Ky.siz Closed-Syllable Laxing Ky.sIz Harmony KY.sIz Tensing KY.siz Lengthening KY.si:z S.F. [KY.si:z]

3.5 Implications

It should be clear even from the relatively brief summaries in this section that the distribution of tense and lax high vowels in Laurentian French is non-contrastive, but also that it is governed by a complex system of interacting phonological processes. If the propagation of laxness through the word were merely a phonetic coarticulatory effect, the possibility of (20c) and impossibility of (20f) would be wholly unexpected, for example. Furthermore, the processes involved clearly require the feature that distinguishes [i y u] from [IYU], which I will refer to as [±tense], to be phonologically active, even though its distribution on high vowels exhibits a combination of contextual predictability and free variation. Poliquin (2006), who does not adopt contrastive speciﬁcation or the Activity Principle, provides a thorough account of the rules involved in laxing. In the following section, I will focus on the representations to which those rules apply, in order to explore how Poliquin’s account could be consistent with some version of the Contrastivist Hypothesis.

10Harmony is more transparent in such words for speakers who realize the lengthened vowels as diphthongs [Ii Yy Uu] containing a lax component; see Poliquin (2006: ch. 3, §2.3) for discussion.

10 CONTRASTANDPHONOLOGICALACTIVITYINTHEVOWELSYSTEMOF LAURENTIAN FRENCH

4 Explaining the pattern

4.1 Laurentian French laxing harmony is not Malay nasal harmony It is clear that the explanation for the laxing facts cannot be based on spreading of feature from a segment on which it is contrastive to one on which it is not, as in the account of Malay nasal harmony sketched in §2.2. For example, it is not possible to account for the pattern by saying that the feature [F] that distinguishes [IYU] from [i y u] is the same feature that distinguishes other consonants from /v z ZK/, so as to generate forms like pourrite [pUKIt] as in (25).

(25) Attempting to derive laxing by spreading p u . K i t

[F] [F]

First, it is not phonetically plausible to say that there is a single feature that is realized on vowels as laxness and on consonants as the property of not being a voiced fricative. Even if we assume that features need not have consistent substantive phonetic content, the data in §3.4 make it clear that laxing is triggered by the presence of any coda, not by a specific subset of consonants: the voiced fricatives do not prevent laxing, but rather undo it. This would mean that the feature representing laxness is present on all consonants, which would in turn imply that its role in the contrastive hierarchy is to distinguish consonants from vowels—and so spreading it to a vowel might be expected to turn the target into a consonant. Even if these difficulties could somehow be overcome (e.g., by specifying some prophylactic feature on high vowels to prevent them from becoming consonants), the dissimilatory laxing pattern in §3.3 would elude explanation. In (21), both the trigger and the target are high vowels. This implies that the feature [±tense] is phonologically active on high vowels, and thus, by the Activity Principle, that it should be contrastively specified on them.

4.2 The status of [±tense] The most straightforward basis for positing contrastive speciﬁcation of [±tense] on high vowels would be evidence of an underlying contrast between tense /i y u/ and lax /IYU/. Walker (1984: 59) reports that there are some English loanwords in which tense high vowels appear in ﬁnal syllables closed by a consonant other than a voiced fricative, with the result that there are minimal and near-minimal pairs such as those in (26). Walker (1984: 60) also mentions quiz [kwIz] as an example of a loanword with a lax high vowel where the native pattern would tense (and lengthen) the vowel before /z/.

(26) Tense high vowels in English loanwords (Walker, 1984: 59) English loanword Native French analogue a. mean [min] mine [mIn] b. boom [bum] boum [bUm] c. boost [bus] pousse [pUs] d. jeans [Ãin] ﬁne [fIn] e. suit [sut] route [KUt]

However, Walker further notes that many English loanwords whose sources have tense high vowels in this context either ﬂuctuate between tense and lax in Laurentian French or are consistently realized with lax vowels. It therefore seems more plausible that the loanwords in (26) are either not treated as French words

11 DANIEL CURRIE HALL at all, or are marked as exceptions to laxing (with quiz being similarly marked as an exception to tensing and lengthening). While it is possible that the continuing influence of English on Laurentian French could eventually give rise to a phonemic tense–lax contrast in the high vowels, it would be premature to assume that such a contrast already exists, and highly implausible to posit that the phonological patterns described in §3—to which the loanwords are exceptions—depend on it. The contrastive hierarchy, however, provides another way for [±tense] to be contrastively specified on the high vowels. In order for a feature [F] to be contrastive on a given phoneme /X/, it is not necessary for there to be another phoneme in the inventory that is identical to /X/ except for having the opposite value of [F]; rather, there merely needs to be some phoneme that has the opposite value for [F] and that has not already been distinguished from /X/ by some other feature higher in the contrastive hierarchy. In other words, if [±tense] potentially distinguishes /i y u/ from some other phoneme(s) of Laurentian French, and if it takes wide enough scope in the contrastive hierarchy, then it will be contrastively specified on the high vowels. French does have a tense–lax contrast in the mid vowels, although this contrast is neutralized in some contexts and has a relatively low functional load (Walker, 1984: §2.1.3; Poliquin, 2006: 4). Front unrounded /e/–/E/ contrast in stressed (i.e., word-final) open syllables, and the rounded pairs /ø/–/œ/ and /o/–/O/ contrast in stressed closed syllables, as illustrated in (27).

(27) Tense–lax contrasts in the mid vowels (Walker, 1984: 23) Tense Lax a. fee´ [fe] fait [fE] b. jeuneˆ [Zøn] seul [sœl] c. roleˆ [Kol] colle [kOl]

Elsewhere, the distribution of tense and lax mid vowels is largely governed by the “loi de position,” such that lax vowels occur almost exclusively in closed syllables and tense vowels almost exclusively in open ones.11 Walker (1984: 22–23) notes that there are some surface exceptions in morphologically derived words, such as the minimal pair beaute´ [bote] (< beau [bo]) versus botte´ [bOte] (< botte [bOt]). Theoretical treatments of this marginal contrast differ. Burstynsky (1968) sets it aside altogether, and proposes that the allophonic patterning of tense and lax high vowels represents an extension (and formal simpliﬁcation) of the loi de position: Laurentian French, in Burstynsky’s analysis, differs from Standard European French in that its version of the loi de position makes no reference to the height feature [−diffuse]. Jakobson & Lotz (1949), on the other hand, treat the tense–lax distinction as pervasive in the phonological system of Standard French. Somewhat confusingly to readers more familiar with the way the terms have been employed in subsequent decades, they refer to the more open vowels /E œ O/ as tense and to the closer vowels /e ø o/ as lax—tension, for them, denotes stiffening of the muscles of the cheeks and lips. In Jakobson & Lotz’s system, the opposition between /E œ O/ and /e ø o/ is identiﬁed with the opposition between voiceless (fortis) and voiced (lenis) consonants, to the opposition between high vowels /i y u/ and glides /j 4 w/, and to the opposition between the low vowels /A/ and /a/. Jakobson & Lotz (1949: 157) diagram the contrasts in the vowel system as shown in Figure 1. Solid lines represent the three-way height contrast (saturated–joint–diluted, or low–mid–high); dashed lines represent the three-way place and rounding contrast (acute–joint–grave, or front unrounded–front rounded–back rounded); dashed-dotted lines represent the tense–lax contrast; and dotted lines represent the oral–nasal contrast. (In addition to using IPA symbols, I have shifted the nasal vowels to the right of their positions in Jakobson & Lotz’s original diagram in the hope of improving legibility.) The tense–lax contrast does not

11See also Lamontagne (2014) for a recent variationist study on the effects of the loi de position and other factors on the realization of the contrast between /e/ and /E/.

12 CONTRASTANDPHONOLOGICALACTIVITYINTHEVOWELSYSTEMOF LAURENTIAN FRENCH exist among the nasal vowels /˜A E˜ œ˜ O ˜/, so each nasal vowel is shown as standing in opposition to a tense–lax pair rather than to a single oral vowel (e.g., /˜A/ is opposed to the pair /A a/).

A˜ a

E˜ œ˜ O˜ e ø o

E œ O

j 4 w

i y u

Figure 1: Contrasts in the French vowel system, adapted from Jakobson & Lotz (1949: 157)

Treating the contrast between /i y u/ and /j 4 w/ as a tense–lax opposition would certainly make [±tense] contrastive on the high vowels, but it would not be useful in accounting for laxing and harmony in Laurentian French; the vowels do not alternate with glides in these processes. The idea that the tense–lax contrast cuts across height categories, though, warrants further exploration. Jakobson & Lotz (1949) do not give any phonological rationale for characterizing the opposition between the low vowels /A/ and /a/ as a tense–lax contrast rather than a place (or grave–acute) contrast analogous to the opposition between /o/ and /ø/. However, Walker (1984: §3.6) notes that the /A/–/a/ contrast, though more robust in Laurentian French than in Standard European French, is subject to partial neutralization based on syllable structure, much like the tense–lax contrasts in the mid vowels. In the examples in (28), a contrast between /A/ and /a/ in closed or non-ﬁnal syllables is neutralized to [A] in open ﬁnal syllables.

(28) Neutralization of the /A/–/a/ contrast in open final syllables (Walker, 1984: 78) Closed final Open final a. grasse [gKAs] gras [gKA] b. chatte [Sat] chat [SA] c. plate [plat] plat [plA] Open non-final Open final d. entasser [Ã.tA.se] tas [tA] e. senateur´ [se.na.tœ:K] senat´ [se.nA] f. tabagie [ta.ba.Zi] tabac [ta.bA]

13 DANIEL CURRIE HALL

Analyzing the contrast between the low oral vowels as a tense–lax opposition permits the pattern in (28) to be treated as analogous to, if not fully uniﬁed with, the loi de position and the laxing of high vowels. In any case, the existence of a tense–lax contrast in either the mid vowels or the low vowels means that the feature [±tense] is potentially active in the phonological system.

4.3 A possible hierarchy If the feature [±tense] marks a phonemic contrast somewhere in the Laurentian French vowel system, then it will be possible for it to be speciﬁed on the high vowels if it takes scope over [±high] in the contrastive hierarchy. Suppose, for example, that the features are organized into the contrastive hierarchy in (29).12 Some of the feature orderings in (29) have been motivated already: in addition to the wide scope assigned to [±tense] in order to account for the activity of this feature on high vowels, [±back] is given scope over [±round] in accordance with Burstynsky’s (1968) reasoning about assibilation, as discussed in §1. Others are speculative, but adopted for the sake of concreteness.

(29) Contrastive hierarchy with [±nasal] [±tense] [±low] [±high] [±back] [±round] nasal − + tense low − + + − low low A˜ back + − + − − + a back A high round O˜ − + − + − + round O back back E˜ œ˜ − + − + − + E œ round o round u − + − + e ø i y

Given the hierarchy in (29), the high vowels /i y u/ are contrastively speciﬁed with both [−tense] and [+high]. These speciﬁcations make the following possible:

• A rule of closed-syllable laxing can change [+high] vowels from [+tense] to [−tense].

• A rule of dissimilatory laxing can change a [+high] vowel from [+tense] to [−tense] if it is followed by an identical vowel in the next syllable.

• Laxing harmony can copy [−tense] from one [+high] vowel to another.

• Making a [+high] vowel [−tense] does not cause it to become featurally identical to any of the [−tense] vowels in the underlying inventory, none of which are [+high].

This account of the laxing patterns depends on two assumptions. First, it presupposes that features are binary (or at least that [±tense]) is. An account based on privative features would be much harder to

12I omit the length contrast between /E/ and /E:/ here (on which see Walker, 1984: §3.1), on the assumption that length is represented suprasegmentally rather than featurally. Also set aside here is the question of whether schwa should be regarded as a separate phoneme, rather than being identiﬁed with /œ/ or represented as a melodically empty vowel slot.

14 CONTRASTANDPHONOLOGICALACTIVITYINTHEVOWELSYSTEMOF LAURENTIAN FRENCH formulate, even if the feature representing the tense–lax distinction is given wide scope. If the relevant feature were privative TENSE, then closed-syllable laxing would consist of delinking that feature, which would mean that harmony would have to copy the absence of a feature from one high vowel to another.13 On the other hand, if the marked feature were LAX, then it would be (contrastively) absent on high vowels underlyingly. This would make it hard to motivate dissimilatory laxing, and it would also mean that closed-syllable laxing would involve the insertion of an underlyingly absent feature that would then be phonologically active in triggering harmony. In order to maintain the strongest version of the Activity Principle, in which syntagmatically predictable features cannot be phonologically active, it would be necessary to distinguish between adding a feature that was contrastively absent (like LAX on high vowels) and adding a feature that was absent because it was predictable. Assuming binary [±tense] makes it possible to say that the laxing of high vowels does not introduce any new features into the phonological representation, but only changes the value of a feature that is already present underlyingly. The second assumption is that laxing is not structure-preserving, in the sense of Kiparsky (1985). Changing a high vowel from [+tense] to [−tense] does not map it to its closest analogue on the [−tense] branch of the tree in (29), which would be /E/, /œ/, or /O/; instead, it leaves all other features of the affected vowel unchanged, producing a combination of features that is not present in the underlying inventory. Al- though this appears to be an empirically necessary property of laxing, it is worth noting that other processes work differently. For example, making a high vowel [+nasal] does not produce a high nasal vowel such as *[˜ı] or *[y],˜ but instead yields one of the vowels underlyingly present on the [+nasal] branch of the tree in (29), as in the alternations between une [Yn] and un [œ]˜ or fine [fIn] and fin [f˜E]. This suggests that it is possible for potentially non–structure-preserving rules to differ parametrically as to whether they are actu- ally non–structure-preserving, either as a property of the rules themselves or as a consequence of whether there are redundancy rules that clean up after them—for example, there may be a late rule that deletes all specifications for [±high] from [+nasal] vowels, but no such rule for [−tense] vowels. Is there independent motivation for giving [±tense] scope over [±high] in Laurentian French? St- Amand (2012: 77), who uses a contrastive hierarchy with privative features to account for hiatus resolution, proposes the ordering ATR HIGH LOW ROUND BACK NASAL. This hierarchy assigns both ATR and HIGH to the high vowels. As discussed above, adopting privative features poses serious difficulties for the account of laxing harmony. On the other hand, St-Amand’s use of privative features is also empirically motivated. In her account, hiatus resolution by coalescence produces a single vowel whose features are a subset of the union of the features of the two underlying vowels. Coalescence of /a/ and /e/ results in /E/. St-Amand (2012: §3.1.6.3) argues that under either hierarchical ordering of binary [±low] and [±ATR], /E/ has a feature that cannot be found on either /a/ or /e/. She shows the partial contrastive hierarchies in (30), together with the specifications they produce for the relevant vowels.

(30) Ordering binary [±low] and [±ATR] (St-Amand, 2012: 69)

a.[ ±low] [±ATR] low ATR low /a/ + + − /e/ − + {a a˜ A} ATR /E/ − − + − {i y e ø o u} {E E˜ œ œ˜ O O˜}

13Gauthier’s (2013) Government Phonology analysis does something similar to this, treating laxing as the deletion of an element I+; however, Gauthier does not deal with the full range of non-local harmony effects discussed by Poliquin (2006).

15 DANIEL CURRIE HALL

b.[ ±ATR] [±low] low ATR ATR /a/ + − + − /e/ + {i y e ø o u} low /E/ − − + − {a a˜ A} {E E˜ œ œ˜ O O˜}

Given the hierarchy in (30a), coalescence of /a/ and /e/ provides no source for the [−ATR] on the resulting /E/: /e/ is [+ATR], and /a/ has no value for this feature. On the other hand, the hierarchy in (30b) offers no source for [−low]: /a/ is [+low], and /e/ is unspecified. Accordingly, St-Amand adopts privative features instead. However, the hierarchies in (30) are predicated on the assumption that the contrast between /a/ and /A/ is a place contrast and not a tense–lax contrast. The hierarchy in (29), which treats /a/ as lax and /A/ as its tense counterpart, following Jakobson & Lotz (1949), makes it possible to say that the coalescence of /a/ and /e/ produces /E/ through deletion of conflicting feature specifications and retention of non-conflicting ones:14 (31) Coalescence of /a/ and /e/ with specifications as in (29) /a/ + /e/ = /E/ −nasal −nasal −nasal −tense +tense −tense +low −low −low −high (−high) −back −back −round −round While a complete reanalysis of the extensive coalescence data treated by St-Amand (2012) is beyond the scope of this paper, the result in (31) suggests that it should be possible to retain her essential insights with a contrastive hierarchy that, like hers, gives wide scope to the tense–lax contrast, but which also uses binary features, as appears to be necessary to account for the laxing patterns.

5 Conclusions and remaining questions

The preceding sections have outlined some of the theoretical questions raised by the Activity Prin- ciple, and demonstrated that the Laurentian French laxing facts are consistent with a strong version of this principle. The account of laxing outlined here depends on the use of binary features, and requires [±tense] to take scope over [±high] in the contrastive hierarchy of features assigned to Laurentian French vowels. Though it remains to be seen whether a comprehensive treatment of the phonological system of the language is possible on these terms, the speciﬁc hierarchy proposed in (29) is compatible with the assibilation facts discussed by Burstynsky (1968), and it shows promise in dealing with the coalescence patterns analyzed by St-Amand (2012). The Laurentian French laxing facts having so far failed to disconﬁrm the Activity Princi- ple, it remains to be seen whether other apparent OINT problems are also susceptible to analysis within the framework adopted here. The apparent necessity of binary features in this account also raises the question of whether features are binary universally, or whether there is parametric variation in feature valency; see Cowper & Hall (2014) for discussion of this theoretical point.

14Retaining the [−high] speciﬁcation from /e/ would give /E/ arising from coalescence a feature value that is not present on underlying /E/, but which is also entirely consistent with its normal realization. It therefore makes no difference whether [−high] is retained or deleted in (31).

16 CONTRASTANDPHONOLOGICALACTIVITYINTHEVOWELSYSTEMOF LAURENTIAN FRENCH

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