DISCLAIMER: This document does not meet current format guidelines Graduate School at the The University of Texas at Austin. of the It has been published for informational use only. Copyright by Anne E. Gaskill 2013 The Dissertation Committee for Anne E. Gaskill Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Italian Metaphony in Optimality Theory with Candidate Chains Committee: Jean-Pierre Montreuil, Supervisor Cinzia Russi Bryan Donaldson Barbara E. Bullock Orlando Kelm Italian Metaphony in Optimality Theory with Candidate Chains by Anne E. Gaskill, B.A., M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin December 2013 Dedication This work is dedicated to Parker and Logan Acknowledgements It is daunting if not impossible to thank every individual who has helped me grow, learn, and thrive throughout this long journey. Though there are dozens of people whose guidance has benefited me over the years, there are a select few people without whom this never would have been possible. First and foremost, I will be forever grateful to Jean-Pierre Montreuil for his role in my education and my development as a scholar. Meeting JP changed my life in ways that extend far beyond academia. In introducing me to OT, he opened my eyes to a system of analysis that would come to shape not only my academic pursuits for the next eight years, but the way I would see the world around me. I cannot thank him enough for his tutelage, guidance, and, perhaps most importantly, his seemingly unwavering faith in me. Thank you, JP; my world will forever be a better one for having known you and having learned from you. Second, I could not have made it this far without Cinzia Russi. Though Cinzia is the kind of professor whose courses inspire students to push themselves to the limits of their abilities, I had the exceptionally good luck to have her as my graduate advisor, as well. There were times during this journey when I wasn’t sure that I could go on – when I felt stuck or discouraged or overwhelmed – and I am indebted to Cinzia for helping me navigate the sometimes troubled waters I crossed to make it to this point. Thank you, Cinzia, for everything. Of course this also would have been impossible without the other members of my committee: Bryan Donaldson, Barbara E. Bullock, and Orlando Kelm. Thank you all for v your honesty with me, for sharing with me your time and expertise, and for giving me so many interesting perspectives and suggestions to pursue in future research. I consider myself especially blessed to have always had the complete and unwavering support of my family, both in education and in life. I first must thank my mother, Sharon Fowler, who I don’t think has ever doubted me; without her support and that of my stepfather, Mark Fowler, I would not be writing this today. Thank you both for making this all possible. I am grateful to my father, Harold V. Gaskill III, MD, who never let me give up and who is always looking out for me, and to my stepmother, Victoria Mathers, for her support, as well. Thank you both for everything you have done for me. And of course thanks to my baby brother, Harold V. Gaskill IV, for being there for me through the good and the bad. I am proud to call you my brother. Of course, I cannot imagine having made it this far without the support of my friends. I simply cannot even attempt to name everyone who has positively impacted my life over the last eight years. Thank you to each and every one of my classmates, my colleagues, my officemates, and my friends from the Department of French and Italian, The University of Texas, and beyond. Thank you to all of you who shared blood, sweat, tears, and laughter with me on this long and winding road. Thank you most of all, Wapiti, for always, always being there. On a lighter note, I would also like to thank the baristas at Houndstooth, Thunderbird, Caffé Medici, Genuine Joe’s, Bennu, The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, and, yes, even Starbucks. As I sat working for hours at a time in coffee shops all over Austin, I promised myself that I wouldn’t overlook the people who kept me awake and writing, day in and day out, over the last two years. vi And last, but most certainly not least, thank you to my husband, Matt, and to our two beautiful children, Parker and Logan. Thank you for your patience, your kindness, and more than anything, thank you for everything that you sacrificed to see me follow this dream to fruition. Your love and support mean everything to me. vii Italian Metaphony in Optimality Theory with Candidate Chains Anne E. Gaskill, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2013 Supervisor: Jean-Pierre Montreuil The regressive (mor)phonological assimilatory process most commonly referred to as metaphony is one which is quite common in Romance: it is found in the dialects of Portugal, Spain, and Italy, with traces appearing in Rumanian and the Spanish of the Americas, as well. As a result, it has been the subject of a great deal of scholarly research both diachronically, (Hall 1950, Blaylock 1965, Leonard 1978, Papa 1981, Kaze 1989) and synchronically (McCarthy 1984, Calabrese 1985, 1998, 2008, Vago 1988, Hualde 1989, Martínez-Gil 2006, Walker 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010). What has eluded recent researchers, however, is a framework that can successfully address the myriad variations of metaphony found in these regions; there exists to date no comprehensive analysis of metaphony in Romance. This dissertation offers an analysis of Italian Metaphony that is couched in a recent variety of Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 1993, 2004), Optimality Theory with Candidate Chains (McCarthy 2007), a framework which exploits the rarely used serial capacity of OT. In exploring the myriad varieties of metaphony found in the Italian dialects, this dissertation tests the capabilities and limitations of both Traditional Optimality Theory and Optimality Theory with Candidate Chains; this exploration viii culminates with the analysis of a problematic variety of OT that currently lacks an acceptable solution in OT-CC. To address this shortcoming, this dissertation introduces a new constraint to the established constraint hierarchy of OT-CC: Subsequence. Subsequence builds on the theoretical premises established in McCarthy (2007) with the introduction of Precedence, which evaluated not a single output candidate but rather the order of the constraint violations found within an individual candidate chain. The resulting analyses create a unified account of Italian metaphony that demonstrates the usefulness not only of OT-CC for addressing different types of opacity, but also the need for an enhancement such as subsequence to account for types of variation that are currently impossible to address in OT-CC. ix Table of Contents 1 Introduction .....................................................................................................1 1.1 Idiolects or polylect? The nature of dialectal variation .........................2 1.2 Organization of the dissertation .............................................................6 PART ONE: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 8 2 Theoretical Background: Optimality Theory and Opacity .............................9 2.1 Optimality Theory ..................................................................................9 2.1.1 Parallel analysis in Traditional OT: The problem with opacity ..12 2.2 Opacity in Optimality Theory ..............................................................17 2.3 Optimality Theory: a brief history .......................................................18 2.4 In defense of serial analysis .................................................................26 2.5 Recapitulation ......................................................................................28 3 Serial Optimality and Optimality Theory with Candidate Chains ................30 3.1 Serial harmony in Optimality Theory ..................................................30 3.1.1 Early serial frameworks in OT ....................................................31 3.1.1.1 Stratal OT .....................................................................31 3.1.1.2 LPM OT .......................................................................34 Derivational OT .................................................................40 3.1.1.3..........................................................................................40 3.1.2 Recent innovations in serial OT ..................................................46 3.1.2.1 Harmonic Serialism and Parallelism (McCarthy 2000)47 3.1.2.2 Optimal Interleaving ....................................................50 3.1.3 Optimality Theory with Candidate Chains .................................53 3.2 Why OT-CC? .......................................................................................61 3.3 Recapitulation ......................................................................................63 4 Metaphony ....................................................................................................65 4.1 Metaphony versus vowel harmony ......................................................65 x 4.1.1 Chain shifts in Mantuan ..............................................................67 4.2 Targets and triggers: What causes metaphony and where does it happen? ..............................................................................................................68