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CONFLUENCE in PHONOLOGY: EVIDENCE from MICRONESIAN REDUPLICATION by Robert Kennedy

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CONFLUENCE in PHONOLOGY: EVIDENCE from MICRONESIAN REDUPLICATION by Robert Kennedy CONFLUENCE IN PHONOLOGY: EVIDENCE FROM MICRONESIAN REDUPLICATION by Robert Kennedy _______________________ Copyright © Robert Kennedy 2003 A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTICS In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 2 0 0 3 ii This document is a condensed version of my dissertation, Confluence in phonology: evidence from Micronesian reduplication, as submitted to the Graduate College of the University of Arizona. It has been re-formatted to reduce the amount of paper needed for printing; as a result, page numbers in this document do not match those of the submitted version. All other content remains unchanged. iii STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for and advanced degree at The University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgment of source is made. Request for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the copyright holder. SIGNED: _________________________ iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Writing these opening words is difficult as they are actually the last words I am adding to this volume. It has been two years since I started this enterprise and many more before that led to me pursuing it. Many people along the way deserve credit of some form or other for their role in shaping this work and my plans to extend it. My advisor, Diana Archangeli, has been pivotal in her insightful guidance and support. Without her this project would either have remained unfinished or uninteresting; as her student I have been encouraged, engaged, challenged, and privileged. The other members of my dissertation committee, Mike Hammond and Adam Ussishkin, have been equally valuable for their input and support of this work. There are other professors and scholars who deserve as many thanks: this work grew out of my written preliminary exam, and Norma Mendoza-Denton, Diane Ohala, and Heidi Harley were instrumental in helping shape those young, green ideas I had. As a member of an academic community, I am grateful to the instructors who I’ve been able to work alongside, Dick Demers and Cecile McKee, as well as Mike Hammond and Heidi Harley. I have learned that part of being a good scholar is being a good teacher, and that being a good teacher makes a scholar better able to discuss his or her own research both with students and with colleagues. And without Helen Goodluck, John Jensen, and Paul Hirschbühler, all of Ottawa, I would not be in Arizona right now. I have learned much from attending conferences big and small. Much of this work is stronger because of the attention and scrutiny of audiences at such venues: SWOT conferences at UC-San Diego, USC, Texas, and Arizona, WCCFL 21 at Santa Cruz, HILP 5 in Potsdam, GLOW 25 in Amsterdam, LSA conferences in San Francisco (2002) and Atlanta (2003), the CLA in Toronto (2002), and AFLA 10 in Hawai’i. I also owe a special debt to the many authors and informants who, through various language maintenance initiatives, created such excellent resources for teachers and linguists. Ken Rehg, Shelly Harrison, Ho-Minh Sohn, Kee-dong Lee, Byron Bender, Ward Goodenough, among many others, have left a huge impact on the field of phonology, and this work should testify to that. My friends and peers in the department and in Tucson have made my time here much more bearable. I have flourished in their company and benefited from discourse, debate, and hilarity, academic and otherwise: Cathy Hicks, Luis Barragán, Tania Zamuner, Rachel Hayes, Meg O’Donnell, Sonya Bird, Jason Haugen, and Peter Norquest, among many others. Rosemary Emery deserves special recognition—she is our fairy godmother. Also, the former and current members of the PSHL will always have my thanks for helping provide an outlet, a means of maintaining fitness, and an excellent motto: Summer Sucks, Winter Rules. v I cannot leave out Robin, whose heart is close to my own and who, like me, knows what it is like to pursue a rather large question. I am extremely fortunate and lovingly grateful to have had her close to me throughout the writing of this dissertation. My family, Barb, Al, Brenda, Alex, Bev, and Andrew have all been a source of encouragement form the start. I also owe a special thanks to my friends and colleagues from the Heart & Crown, which has proven to be a source of rich memories and excellent friendships, but also a good reminder for me not to return to my first career. Writing this dissertation has been like building a railway: a risky venture, but a proud accomplishment with unforeseen dividends. After all the tracks and bridges built, I can finally say my railroad is done. vi For my parents, Allan and Barbara, who never doubted. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT………………..……………………………………………………………xiii CHAPTER 1 CONFLUENCE …………………………………………………………1 1.1. Introduction…………………………………….…………………………………1 1.1.1 Phonology, tendency, and the Permutation problem…….……………………2 1.1.2 Overview of the dissertation………………………………………………….4 1.2 A model of phonological confluence ………….…………………………………5 1.2.1 The Confluence hypothesis ….…..…………………………………………6 1.2.2 The Confluence mechanism …………………………………………………7 1.2.2.1 A formal learning algorithm ……………………………………………8 1.2.2.2 Formal properties of the learning algorithm ……………………………8 1.2.3 Noise in the mechanism………………………………………………………9 1.2.3.1 Noise in articulation……………………………………………………10 1.2.3.2 Noise in perception ……………………………………………………11 1.2.2.3 Other loci of noise………………………………………………………11 1.2.3.4 An example ……………………………………………………………12 1.2.2.5 Noise and Salience………………………………………………………13 1.2.2.6 Noise and Markedness…………………………………………………13 1.2.4 Testing for Confluence………………………………………………………15 1.3 Optimality Theory and typology……….…………………………………………17 1.3.1 The Boggle model ……….…………………………………………………17 1.3.2 Near-gaps……….……………………………………………………………18 1.4 Language, typology, and the evolutionary analogy .……………………………19 1.5 An example………………………………………………………………………22 1.6 Summary…………………………………………………………………………23 CHAPTER 2 AN OVERVIEW OF MICRONESIAN LANGUAGES .………………25 2.1 Introduction………………………………………………………………………25 2.2 The languages of Micronesia……………………………………………………25 2.2.1 The Micronesian family within Oceanic languages…………………………26 2.2.1.1 Phonological evidence for Proto-Micronesian…………………………27 2.2.1.2 Grammatical evidence for Proto-Micronesian…………………………27 2.2.1.3 Lexical Evidence for Proto-Micronesian………………………………27 2.2.2 Relationships within the Micronesian family………………………………28 2.2.2.1 Evidence for a Central Micronesian group ……………………………28 2.2.2.2 Evidence for a Western Micronesian group……………………………29 2.2.2.3 Problems with the family tree model……………………………………29 2.3 Other characteristics of Micronesian languages…………………………………30 2.3.1 Micronesian phonolog…y ……………………………………………………30 2.3.1.1 Stem-final lenition………………………………………………………30 viii TABLE OF CONTENTS – continued 2.3.1.2 Stress……………………………………………………………………35 2.3.1.3 Coda consonants and geminates ………………………………………36 2.3.2 Micronesian grammar………………………………………………………39 2.3.2.1 The plasticity of syntactic categories……………………………………39 2.3.2.2 Transitivity………………………………………………………………41 2.3.2.3 The role of reduplication………………………………………………42 2.4 The role of reduplication ……..…………………………………………………44 CHAPTER 3 THEORIES, MODELS, AND REPRESENTATIONS…………………46 3.1 Introduction………………………………………………………………………46 3.2 Reduplication as morphology……………………………………………………46 3.3 Optimality Theory………………………………………………………………47 3.3.1 Markedness…………………………………………………………………49 3.3.1.1 Constraints on structure…………………………………………………49 3.3.1.2 Constraints on Associatio…n ……………………………………………50 3.3.1.3 Constraints on Adjacency………………………………………………50 3.3.2 Alignmen…t …………………………………………………………………51 3.3.3 Correspondence: a formal theory of structure preservation…………………54 3.4 Basic OT reduplication …………………………………………………………55 3.4.1 Reduplication and correspondence…………………………………………55 3.4.1.1 Advanced correspondence ……………………………………………57 3.4.1.2 Anchoring………………………………………………………………58 3.4.1.3 Some consequences of formal correspondence ………………………59 3.4.2 Size requirements……………………………………………………………61 3.4.3 Issues ………………………………………………………………………62 3.4.5.1 Templates and the Kager-Hamilton Conundrum………………………62 3.4.5.2 Other issues ……………………………………………………………63 3.5 Prosody and representation………………………………………………………63 3.5.1 Moras and representation……………………………………………………64 3.5.2 Moras and feet………………………………………………………………65 3.5.2 Moras and syllables…………………………………………………………66 3.5.4 Moras and morpheme boundaries……………………………………………69 3.6. The generalized prosody-morphology interface…………………………………70 3.6.1 Generalized templates………………………………………………………71 CHAPTER 4 A STRESS-BASED APPROACH TO POHNPEIAN REDUPLICATION…………………………………73 4.1 Introduction………………………………………………………………………73 4.2 Pohnpeian phonology …………………………………………………………74 4.2.1 The durative: descriptive summary…………………………………………77 ix TABLE OF CONTENTS – continued 4.3 A stress-driven OT account………………………………………………………81 4.3.1 Stems with odd numbers of moras …………………………………………82 4.3.2 Stems with even numbers of moras…………………………………………85 4.3.3 Stems with internal hiatus …………………………………………………91 4.3.4 Vowel initial forms…………………………………………………………93 4.3.5 Stems with initial syllabic nasals……………………………………………98 4.4. The durative: an interim summar…y ……………………………………………100 4.5 The Pohnpeian denotative
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