Vowel Harmony Published by LOT phone: +31 30 253 6006 Janskerkhof 13 fax: +31 30 253 6406 3512 BL Utrecht e-mail: [email protected] The Netherlands http://wwwlot.let.uu.nl/ ISBN-10: 90-78328-14-2 ISBN-13: 978-90-78328-14-8 NUR 632 Copyright © 2006: Krisztina Polgárdi. All rights reserved. Vowel Harmony An Account in Terms of Government and Optimality Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van Doctor aan de Rijksuniversiteit te Leiden, op gezag van de Rector Magnificus Dr. W.A. Wagenaar, hoogleraar in de faculteit der Sociale Wetenschappen, volgens besluit van het College voor Promoties te verdedigen op dinsdag 12 mei 1998 te klokke 16.15 uur door KRISZTINA POLGÁRDI geboren te Győr (Hongarije) in 1968 Promotiecommissie promotor: Prof. dr. J.G. Kooij co-promotor: Dr. H.G. van der Hulst referent: Prof. dr J. Lowenstamm, Université Paris 7 overige leden: Prof. dr. C.J. Ewen Dr. J. Harris, University College London For Jeroen Table of Contents Acknowledgements............................................................................xi 1. Introduction...................................................................................... 1 1.1. Government Phonology...................................................... 4 1.1.1. The notion of government ..................................... 4 1.1.2. A special form of government: proper government ............................................................. 7 1.1.3. Element theory........................................................ 9 1.1.4. Analytic vs. synthetic morphology..................... 10 1.2. Optimality Theory ............................................................. 11 1.3. Monotonicity...................................................................... 15 1.4. Preview ............................................................................... 16 Part I. The framework....................................................................... 19 2. A combined theory of Government Phonology and Optimality Theory ......................................................................... 21 2.1. Government Licensing...................................................... 22 2.1.1. Charette (1990, 1991, 1992)................................... 22 2.1.2. Tangale and the Projection Principle .................. 25 2.1.3. French vs. Polish and Optimality Theory .......... 29 2.1.4. Domain-final consonant clusters......................... 33 2.2. Domain-final empty nuclei............................................... 35 2.3. Domain-final consonant clusters continued ................... 43 2.4. Predictions and summary................................................. 45 3. The phonology-morphology interface ....................................... 49 3.1. Analytic vs. synthetic morphology.................................. 50 3.2. Typology of phonological rules ....................................... 57 3.3. Derived environment effects ............................................ 61 3.3.1. Kiparsky (1973a) ................................................... 61 3.3.2. The RAC at work: neutralising vs. viii allophonic vowel harmony.................................. 63 3.3.3. Derived environment effects and Optimality Theory................................................ 67 3.3.4. Word level rules.................................................... 70 3.3.5. DEC and Faithfulness........................................... 75 3.3.6. Phonologically derived environments ............... 77 3.4. Summary ............................................................................ 78 Part II. Vowel harmony .................................................................... 81 4. Harmonic features ......................................................................... 83 4.1. Element theory................................................................... 83 4.2. Types of vowel harmony .................................................. 87 4.2.1. I-harmony .............................................................. 87 4.2.2. U-harmony ............................................................ 90 4.2.3. A-harmony ............................................................ 93 4.2.4. ATR-harmony ....................................................... 95 4.3. The problem of Pasiego: raising harmony ...................... 98 4.3.1. The data ................................................................. 99 4.3.2. Raising as reduction harmony........................... 101 4.3.3. Both raising and lowering.................................. 104 4.3.4. A combined GP-OT account............................. 105 4.4. Summary .......................................................................... 111 5. The harmonic domain: an account of disharmony ................. 113 5.1. Turkish vowel harmony.................................................. 114 5.2. Analysis of harmony ....................................................... 117 5.3. Analysis of disharmony .................................................. 119 5.3.1. Disharmonic roots .............................................. 119 5.3.2. Disharmonic suffixes.......................................... 125 5.4. Conclusion........................................................................ 129 6. Neutral vowels ............................................................................. 131 6.1. Van der Hulst & Smith (1986) ........................................ 133 6.2. Testing the theory............................................................ 137 6.2.1. ATR-harmony ..................................................... 137 6.2.2. A-harmony .......................................................... 140 6.2.3. I- and U-harmony ............................................... 146 6.3. Vowel inventories and vowel harmony ........................ 150 6.3.1. The representation of vowel inventories.......... 150 6.3.2. How the inventory determines harmony......... 154 6.3.3. A and headedness, or the behaviour of /a/ in ATR-harmony ......................................... 160 6.4. Conclusion........................................................................ 166 7. Summary....................................................................................... 169 ix References......................................................................................... 173 Samenvatting (Summary in Dutch).............................................. 181 Összefoglalás (Summary in Hungarian)...................................... 187 Summary in English........................................................................ 193 Curriculum Vitae............................................................................. 199 Stellingen.......................................................................................... 201 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS If I had not been allowed to talk to anyone in the past five years, this thesis would probably not exist. I take great pleasure in being able to thank all those people who have been involved in the process of writing in one way or another. The biggest influence surely came from my supervisor, Harry van der Hulst. I have enjoyed greatly to work with Harry ever since I came to Holland. He has an important part in creating the “healthy atmosphere of intellectual freedom” that makes the Leiden department such a livable place to be at. I don’t know whether I have ever met anyone who is more open, but at the same time as critical as Harry is. And he is one of the few people with whom I can laugh so much just talking about phonology. I suppose sometimes one just has to get lucky. And this time I did. My life as a linguist, however, has not started in Holland. I would like to thank all those people in Budapest who gave me the background which I never had to feel ashamed about. I would like to single out Ádám Nádasdy who first showed me that linguistics is much more fun than I had ever thought, and László Kálmán from whom I learned the principles according to which I am still trying to live my linguistic life. Special thanks go to my friends Trond Kirkeby-Garstad and Péter Rebrus for all the fun we have had together when working on our joint papers. I hope to do it again in the future. I would also like to thank the members of my reading committee, Colin Ewen, John Harris, Jan Kooij and Jean Lowenstamm, and the others who have read the whole manuscript and gave useful comments, Marc van Oostendorp, Norval Smith and Ruben van de Vijver. If this thesis is readable now, it is largely due to their efforts. Of course, I had a lot of invaluable discussions with many other linguists over the years, of whom I would like to mention Clemens Bennink, Geert Booij, Wiebke Brockhaus, Monik Charette, Margaret Cobb, João Costa, Jenny Doetjes, Sharon Peperkamp, Glyne Piggott, Grażyna Rowicka, Angélica Sampaio, Mark Steedman, Péter Szigetvári, Miklós Törkenczy, and Jeroen van de Weijer. Writing a thesis is a nice challenge, but life sometimes comes up with other, not so pleasant, challenges on the way. For me this came last autumn in the form of a letter from the Alien Police of Amsterdam refusing to renew my residence permit. I would like to express my gratitude to those who stood beside me unconditionally in those months: Ana Arregui, Jenny Doetjes, xii Nataša Rakić, Grażyna Rowicka and especially Jeroen Groenendijk. Without them it would have been very difficult to keep sane, let alone go on writing the thesis. I am also grateful to Sjef Barbiers for pushing me to go and talk to NWO, when everything else has failed;