University of Calgary PRISM: University of Calgary's Digital Repository Graduate Studies The Vault: Electronic Theses and Dissertations 2017 From phonology to syntax — and back again: Hierarchical structure in Irish and Blackfoot Windsor, Joseph W. Windsor, J. W. (2017). From phonology to syntax — and back again: Hierarchical structure in Irish and Blackfoot (Unpublished doctoral thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. doi:10.11575/PRISM/26235 http://hdl.handle.net/11023/4161 doctoral thesis University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission. Downloaded from PRISM: https://prism.ucalgary.ca UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY From phonology to syntax — and back again: Hierarchical structure in Irish and Blackfoot by Joseph W. Windsor A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN LINGUISTICS CALGARY, ALBERTA SEPTEMBER, 2017 © Joseph W. Windsor 2017 Signature page UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES The undersigned certify that they have read, and recommend to the Faculty of Graduate Studies for acceptance, a thesis entitled “From phonology to syntax — and back again: Hierarchical structure in Irish and Blackfoot” submitted by Joseph W. Windsor in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. _____________________________________________ Supervisor, Dr. Darin Flynn, University of Calgary _____________________________________________ Co-Supervisor, Dr. Elizabeth Ritter, University of Calgary _____________________________________________ Dr. Carlos de Cuba, Queens College, New York _____________________________________________ Dr. Mary Grantham O’Brien, University of Calgary _____________________________________________ Dr. Murray McGillivray, University of Calgary _____________________________________________ Dr. Ryan T. Bennett, University of California, Santa Cruz _______________________ Date ii Abstract The interface between phonology and syntax is a tool that can be used to provide additional evidence for study in one grammatical component or the other. Through understanding how these components interact, one can use syntactic constituent structure to control for prosodic confounds in experimentation. Conversely, one can use phonological evidence to decide between competing syntactic analyses. In ideal cases, phonological and syntactic evidence can be used in tandem, allowing converging evidence to reinforce a hypothesis. In this dissertation, I undertake three case studies to highlight: i. how a knowledge of syntactic constituent structure can increase control over prosodic variables and enable more efficient phonological research; ii. how an understanding of prosodic constituent structure can be used to motivate an underlying syntactic structure at spell-out and enable analysis of morphosyntactic features and operations before spell-out; and, iii. how the use of phonological and syntactic study in tandem can help rule out competing analyses. The first case study utilizes an analysis of syntactic constituent structure to control for different levels of prosodic prominence. The analysis of prominence made possible by syntactic assumptions allows the establishment of a hypothesis into the origins of a stress- shift phenomenon in one dialect of Irish. The second case study correlates observable sound alternations to prosodic boundaries and morpho-syntactic categories in Blackfoot. The analysis of prosodic structure facilitates the formation of a hypothesis about suffixation that is suggested to be the result of syntactic agreement, rather than head-movement operations. The third case study uses the phonological and syntactic analyses from both of the preceding studies and applies those findings to analyze the prosodic and syntactic constituency of demonstratives in both Irish and Blackfoot. A hypothesis towards a common structure for nominal expressions in the two languages is suggested, despite obvious surface differences in realization. Finally, predictions based on that hypothesis are made with questions for future cross-linguistic research. Each of the case studies examined herein contribute to the over-arching goal of the dissertation: To understand how cross-component evidence can provide additional insight and research tools towards a specific problem in one grammatical component or the other. ii Preface Portions of this dissertation have been previously published, or accepted for publication. Evidence for the Demonstrative Phrase in Chapter 3 appeared in Windsor, Joseph W. (2016a) “Prosodic evidence for the syntactic constituency of demonstratives in Irish” in the Proceedings of the 2016 Annual Conference of the Canadian Linguistic Association. The hypothesis into the origins of Munster Irish stress shift in Chapter 3 will appear in Windsor, Joseph W., Stephanie Coward, & Darin Flynn (to appear) “Disentangling stress and pitch accent in Munster Irish” in Proceedings of the West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics 35. Portions of Chapter 4 on laryngeal specification in Blackfoot previously appeared in Windsor, Joseph W. (2016b) “Contrast, phonological features, and phonetic implementation,” in Calgary Working Papers in Linguistics 29. The Generalized Linear Model analysis of Blackfoot aspiration and coalescence from Chapter 4, and the Phase Theory analysis of Blackfoot demonstratives in Chapter 5, appeared in Windsor, Joseph W. (2017) “Predicting prosodic structure by morphosyntactic category: A case study of Blackfoot” in Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics 2. Portions of Appendix I on the Universal Spine Hypothesis appeared in Windsor, Joseph W. (2015) “Review of: Martina Wiltschko 2014. The universal structure of categories: Towards a formal typology” on Linguistlist.org (October 30) and will appear in Windsor, Joseph W. (to appear) “Blackfoot demonstratives, referentiality, and association with the syntactic spine” in Proceedings of the Workshop on Structure and Constituency in Languages of the Americas 21. Independent fieldwork data collection was conducted under Ethics Certificate number REB15-0049, issued by the University of Calgary Conjoint Faculties Research Ethics Board for the project “The demonstrative phrase: Prosodic and syntactic evidence from Irish and Blackfoot” on May 11, 2015, and from the University of Ulster Research Governance Filter Committee for the same project, on May 8, 2015. Language consultants for this dissertation were paid $22.50/hour in Canada, and the roughly equivalent €15/hour in Ireland. This research was partially supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and its Michael Smith Foregin Study Supplement. Fin iii Acknowledgments In the acknowledgements to my MA thesis, I remarked about the inside joke within the Linguistics section about the student who specialized in nothing (literally). Now, I have gone on to be the student who studies “this and that” – again, literally. While this became a fun inside joke between members of the Linguistics section that reduced my research to two words, it was precisely funny because of how broad the scope of research around those two words became. My PhD research began with a narrow focus on one element of syntactic structure, demonstratives, but became very broad in the fact that I was trying to balance evidence from multiple grammatical components: the syntax and the phonology, with additional supporting evidence from phonetics, and the interpretation of statistical tests to support that evidence. The final product presented in this dissertation was a careful balance of each of these different ways of looking at linguistic evidence that span multiple sub-disciplines. I know that striking a balance between different literatures so that it was accessible to specialists in each of the various sub-disciplines was difficult, and so I can only imagine how difficult it must have been to supervise. Darin Flynn has been my mentor in linguistics throughout most of my training. His encouragement and enthusiasm has been unwavering from day one – when I first proposed working on Irish lenition. I simply cannot say enough good things about having Darin as a supervisor – from the seven-hour skype sessions to painstakingly go over each of my dissertation revisions to the random Star Trek memes and terrible (read: wonderful) linguistic puns. He has struck an incredible balance as a mentor, a colleague, and a friend who has never kept his enjoyment of my research a secret. Perhaps it was inevitable, but looking at Irish lenition patterns forced me to look at the dreaded area of morphosyntax – an area that I was not at all comfortable in when I started dipping my toes into those waters. My co-supervisor Betsy Ritter came on to my committee in the latter half of my PhD career to add expertise in exactly this area. Betsy was able to identify areas where I was already standing on solid ground, and those where I needed to strengthen my understanding. She worked incredibly hard with both myself and Darin to make sure that the final product showcased my individual strengths as a phonologist, while still tackling the problems I was most interested in at the interface with syntax. Further,