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Grammatical Tone: Typology and Theory Grammatical tone: Typology and theory By Nicholas Revett Rolle A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Larry Hyman, Co-chair Professor Sharon Inkelas, Co-chair Professor Peter Jenks Professor Darya Kavitskaya Summer 2018 Grammatical tone: Typology and theory Copyright 2018 by Nicholas Revett Rolle Abstract Grammatical tone: Typology and theory by Nicholas Revett Rolle Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics University of California, Berkeley Professor Larry Hyman, Co-chair Professor Sharon Inkelas, Co-chair The topic of this study is grammatical tone (GT), which I define as a tonological operation that is not general across the phonological grammar, and is restricted to the context of a specific morpheme or construction, or a natural class of morphemes or constructions. In typologizing grammatical tone, I frame it in terms of dominance effects (Kiparsky & Halle 1977, Kiparsky 1984, Inkelas 1998), and divide GT into two types. Dominant GT systemically deletes the underlying tone of the target (with or without revaluation by a grammatical tune), while non- dominant GT does not systemically delete it. From a cross-linguistic survey of GT, I develop a typological principle called the dominant GT asymmetry, which states that within a multi- morphemic constituent, the dominant trigger is a dependent (e.g. a modifier of affix), and the target is a lexical head or a dependent structurally closer to the lexical head. In this way, dominance is always directed ‘inward’ within morphological hierarchical structure, supporting earlier statements such as Alderete’s (2001a, 2001b) ‘Strict Base Mutation’. For any theoretical model of dominant vs. non-dominant GT, I show there are three problems that must be addressed: the origin problem (where does the grammatical tune come from), the erasure problem (why do the underlying tones of the target go unrealized), and the scope problem (what determines where the grammatical tune docks, i.e. its scope). To this end, I develop a novel model which I call Matrix-Basemap Correspondence (an extension of Output- Output Correspondence - Benua 1997) and combine it with Cophonology Theory (Inkelas & Zoll 2007). Under this theory, the origin problem is attributed to floating tones which are part of the underlying representation of the trigger. A major claim is that there is no representational difference between dominant and non-dominant tone: they both involve floating tonemes undocked to a TBU in the input. I implement my model within Distributed Morphology (Halle & Marantz 1993), whereby triggers of dominant GT are not constructions (as in classic Cophonology Theory – Inkelas 1998), but rather individual vocabulary items (following Sande & Jenks 2017). Dominant triggers have a special cophonology which ranks a constraint enforcing dominance higher than default constraints. This dominant constraint should be understood as a special type of faithfulness: correspondence between a matrix derivation and an abstract basemap consisting of only unvalued tone bearing units, e.g. an input-output basemap ⒽⓁ // + ττ// \\τ́τ̀\\. It is to this basemap output that the matrix output must be faithful in tonal shape, resulting in the target’s underlying tone going unrealized (addressing the erasure problem). The central insight here is that dominant GT should be characterized as a special type 1 of paradigm uniformity effect, a hypothesis referred to as dominance as transparadigmatic uniformity. In this way I derive dominance as faithfulness and not as markedness (Inkelas 1998) or a special construction constraint (McPherson & Heath 2016). Finally, to address the scope problem I develop a theory in which syntactic structure is mapped to a hierarchical morpho-phonological tree via an operation at spell-out called hierarchy exchange. Within instances of dominant GT, a mother node in the morpho-phonological tree consists of the trigger of the grammatical tune (one daughter) and the target (the other daughter). The cophonology of the trigger scopes over the entire sequence, with cophonologies applying cyclically at each node resulting in ‘layers’ of grammatical tone. One advantage of Cophonology Theory is that it is intrinsically cyclic and thus captures the fact that dominance is always inward without stipulation. A major component of this model is that hierarchy exchange preserves the inside-out derivational history of the syntactic module by referencing asymmetrical c-command. In this way, I conclude that syntax/phonology interface models which appeal to c-command are essentially correct, the most relevant being McPherson (2014) and McPherson & Heath (2016) which derive dominant GT scope via c-command. However, the model proposed in this study differs from them by having only indirect reference to c-command, mediated by hierarchy exchange. I conclude that the real legacy of c-command may not be linearization (as in Kayne 1994), but rather is in delimiting the scope of morphologically-triggered phonological operations. In short, I posit a model which includes (i) floating tone representation, (ii) output-output correspondence (with abstract basemap induction), (iii) spell-out operations which apply in parallel, (iv) cyclicity within the morpho-phonological module, (v) indirect reference to syntactic structure and syntactic relations (e.g. c-command), and (vi) cophonologies triggered by DM vocabulary items. By combining disparate models and expanding on others, we arrive at a novel account of grammatical tone with extensive empirical coverage. 2 To Keren Rice i Cobb: You create the world of the dream, you bring the subject into that dream, and they fill it with their subconscious. Ariadne: How could I ever acquire enough detail to make them think that its reality? Cobb: Well dreams, they feel real while we're in them, right? It's only when we wake up that we realize how things are actually strange. Let me ask you a question, you, you never really remember the beginning of a dream do you? You always wind up right in the middle of what's going on. Ariadne: I guess, yeah. Cobb: So how did we end up here? Ariadne: Well we just came from the a... Cobb: Think about it Ariadne, how did you get here? Where are you right now? Ariadne: We're dreaming? Cobb: You're actually in the middle of the workshop right now, sleeping. This is your first lesson in shared dreaming. Stay calm. Inception (Christopher Nolan 2010) ii List of symbols Symbol Meaning ► Dominant over (U+25BA) ᴝ Non-dominant with respect to (U+1D1D) Has cophonology scope over (U+222E) T Toneme H∮ High tone M Mid tone L Low tone Ⓣ Floating tone Ⓗ Floating H tone Ⓜ Floating M tone Ⓛ Floating L tone Ⓗ Docked floating H tone Ⓜ Docked floating M tone Ⓛ Docked floating L tone Ø Unvalued ꜜ Downstep τ Tone bearing unit (TBU) * Ungrammatical x Unattested / / Input (or underlying representation) \ \ Output // // Base input \\ \\ Base output [ ] Surface structure » Constraint ranked above S Syntactic image at spell-out (input of Ƨ) Ƨ Phonological image (output of S) (U+01A8) ɸ Prosodic structure μ Mora σ Syllable ɷ Phonological word φ Phonological phrase m Morpheme C Construction √ Lexical root {X} Vocabulary item label M Morphosyntactic content within a vocabulary item (VI) F Featural content within a vocabulary item (VI) P Prosodic content within a vocabulary item (VI) R Cophonology constraint ranking within a vocabulary item (VI) iii List of abbreviations [+F] Bears a feature F A/ADJ Adjective ABC Agreement by Correspondence ABP Agreement by Projection BM Basemap input-output mapping BMMX-C Basemap-Matrix Correspondence CoP-scope Cophonology-scope Corr Correspondence CPT Cophonology Theory D/DOM Dominant DEM Demonstrative DM Distributed Morphology G Grammar GT Grammatical tone H Unvalued host H́ Valued host I Input LF Logical Form LPM Lexical Phonology and Morphology MPH Morphology-in-parallel hypothesis MX Matrix input-output mapping MXBM-C Matrix-Basemap Correspondence n/a (data) not available N/NEUT Neutral O Output OCP Obligatory Contour Principle OO-Corr Output-Output Correspondence OT Optimality Theory PF Phonological Form R/REC Recessive ROTB Richness of the Base TBU Tone bearing unit TCT Transderivational Correspondence Theory TETU The emerged of the unmarked Tr-OO-C Transparadigmatic Output-Output Correspondence VI Vocabulary item iv Acknowledgments At my time at Berkeley, I have sought to wear many hats, and if this has been even slightly successful it is due to the dedication of the many-hat-wearing faculty. Larry Hyman and Sharon Inkelas were co-chairs directing this dissertation, and they made a formidable and complementary team. Larry [I’ve never ]M[et a tone I didn’t like] Hyman: your dedication to our field, phonology, and African linguistics is beyond inspiring, and it has been an absolute honor to work with one of the greatest experts on linguistic tone. In The Wire, they said some people were “natural police”. Larry: there has never been a more natural linguist than yourself. Sharon: I learned such an incredible amount from you over the years, in your open approach to ideas and data, in your contributions to morpho-phonological theory, and in how you handle the many facets of academia with such intelligence and diplomacy. And of course, thank you for indulging me in one meeting when I said that ‘basemaps’ were the lucid dreams of outputs. Other faculty played crucial roles in maturing my ideas and seeing projects through. Peter Jenks was a reader of this dissertation, and was integral in my “swimming upstream” from phonology to syntax, making my interface predictions sharper. Two connections in particular which Peter emphasized to me as relevant for this study were Nichols’ (1986) head-dependent distinction and Kayne’s (1994) Linear Correspondence Axiom. Peter: you are an interface-ist’s role model. Dasha was the outside committee member, and I thank her for discussions we’ve had such as how this work connects to other avenues of phonological inquiry.
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