POLLACK, Jay Michael, 1951- LEXICAL FEATURES IN PHONOLOGY. The Ohio State University Ph.D., 1977 Language, linguistics University Microfilms International,Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 © Conyripht "by Jay Michael Pollack 1977 LEXICAL FEATURES IN PHONOLOGY DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of the Ohio State University By Jay Michael Pollack, S.B., M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 1977 Reading Committee: Approved by Professor Arnold M. Zwicky Professor Robert Jeffers Professor Michael Geis Advisor Department of Linguistics ^or my narents, who had confidence in me, even when I didn't ACOIOV7LEDGEMENTS There are many people T would like to thank for this dissertation. My advisor, Arnold M. Zwicky, offered me constant encouragement, extensive comments and much of his valuable time. In addition to being the best advisor I could imagine, he served as an inspiration for me to be more professional and thorough. The other members of my reading committee, Michael Geis, and Robert J. Jeffers, also provided helpful comments in several areas. I give deep thanks to these people, who have helped guide me for the past four years. For useful discussion, I would like to thank David Stampe, Yehiel Hayon, U s e Lehiste, David Dowtv, Catherine Callaghan, Rod Goman (at 3 a.m.), Christopher Farrar, Donald Churma, Kalman Palnicki, Ann D. Zwicky and (not least) Robert Kantor. Hone of these people necessarily agrees with anything I say here. For spiritual guidance and/or moral support this summer, I thank David Oolomb, Filkie Cirker, Bonnie Hilton, Reggie Rinderer, Dennis Garber, Jerry Feiskott, David (Captain) Diemer and the Philadelphia Phillies. I must a.lso tip my hat to Marlene (The Boss) Payha for her unmatched skill and for every little thing she han done for me during my stay at Ohio State. Finally, for days of typing, for copying French and for, well, everything, I cannot even start here to tell my wife Caren how much I am grateful to her. Tf it were not for her, this dissertation would still be in progress. One lobster cannot begin to pay the debt. iii VITA July 1 1 , 1951 Born - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1972 S.B., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1 9 7 k _ i9TT Teaching Associate, Department of Linguistics, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 197^ M.A., The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1977 Research Associate, Department of Linguistics, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio PUBLICATIONS AND PRESENTATIONS "A Re-Analysis of NEG-RAISING in English", Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics 21, 1976, p.189-239 "The Cost of Referring to Semantic Redundancy Rules in the Lexicon", to appear in Michigan State University Working Papers in Linguistics. Read before the summer 1976 meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Oswego, New York "On the Alleged Differences Between Word Formation Rules and Lexical Redundancy Rules", read before the winter 1976 meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania "A Problem for NEG-RAISING", to appear in The CLS Book of Squibs, 1977» Chicago Linguistic Society, Chicago, Illinois "Upside-down Phonology and Natural Processes", to appear in The CL5 Book of Squihs, 1977» Chicago Linguistic Society, Chicago, Illinois FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Linguistics Studies in Syntax: Professors Arnold M. Zwicky, David Dowty and Ray Jackendoff Studies in Phonology: Professors David Stampe and James McCawley Studies in Hebrew: Professors Yehiel Hayon and Dennis Pardee v TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION..................................................... ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................... iii VITA ........................................................... iv INTRODUCTION ................................................... 1 CHAPTER 1 A Survey of Lexical Features 1.0 Introduction......................................... ^ 1.1 7 Features ......................................... k 1.2 Conjugation Class Features ........................... 7 1.3 Inflection Features ................................. 9 l.U Rule F e a t u r e s ....................................... 10 1.5 Diacritic F e a t u r e s ................. 12 1.6 S u m m a r y .......................................... • 15 Footnote to Chapter 1 ................................ 16 CHAPTER 2 Historical Background 2.0 Introduction......................................... 17 2.1 Phonological Distinctive Features .................... 17 2.2 Lexical Features ..................................... 25 2.3 S u m m a r y ............................................. 3^ Footnote to Chapter 2 ................................ 36 CHAPTER 3 Theoretical Framework 3.Q Introduction......................................... 37 3.1 Natural Phonology ................................... 38 3.2 Upside-down Phonology ........ ll 3.3 Morphological Redundancy Rules ........................ ^3 3.U Discussion......... ^6 3.5 S u m m a r y .............. 5U Footnotes to Chapter 3 - • 56 CHAPTER U Analysis of Biblical Hebrew 1+.0 Introduction......................................... 57 U.l Outline of Biblical Hebrew Structure ... 57 h.2 Organization of the Verb Patterns ..................... 62 U.3 The S e g o l a t e s ....................................... 78 h.U Reduced Vowels and Lengthened Vo w e l s ............ 100 1+.5 IIitpa"el M e t a t h e s i s .................................... 107 U .6 Object Suffixes on the 2fsg Pe r f e c t ..................... 110 It.7 Construct S t a t e ........................................ 11^- 1.8 Discussion.............................................. 119 Footnotes to Chapter 1 . .............................. 131 CHAPTER 5 Other Parts of the Grammar 0 Introduction............................................ 133 5.1 The Phonological C y c l e .................................. 133 5.2 External. S a n d h i ..................................... 118 5.3 The Organization of the Gr a m m a r ......................... 162 Footnote to Chapter 5 .................................. 168 vi CHAPTER 6 Uses of the Features 6.0 Introduction....................................... 169 6.1 Rule F e a t u r e s ......................................... 169 6.2 X Features . 172 6.3 ConjuGation Class Features ..... .............. .. 179 6.k Diacritic Features ................................... l8l 6.5 Inflection Features ................................. 192 6.6 Discussion...................................... 19^ Footnote to Chapter 6 ..... 202 BIBLIOGRAPHY..................................................... 203 LANGUAGE INDEX ............................................... - - 210 vii INTRODUCTION Recent phonological analyses have operated under the assumption that the best, most efficient means of describing a system of sounds and their modifications is by using phonological features (called ’phonological distinctive features'). Each individual sound consists of a set of values, one for each of the relevant features for the lan­ guage. Rules are formulated in terms of features, where sounds or groups of sounds can be referred to as those which have a specific value for a certain feature, or as those which form the intersection of the classes which have the specified values for two or more features. As an example, consider the following rule in English: (1) -CONTINUANT [+ASPIRATED] / H -VOICED The feature value [-CONTINUANT] refers to the following sounds:. p b t d k g. The feature value [-VOICED] indicates the sounds: pf+sskch. The intersection of the two sets is: p t k. By referring to these three sounds this way, we are claiming that it is not a coincidence that p becomes ph at the beginning of a word, t becomes + h at the beginning of a word and k becomes kh at the beginning of a word, but rather that these sounds are behaving as a class in undergoing this change. The features are an advantage because with them we can state as one rule what would otherwise be three not necessarily related rules. These phonological features are usually based on phonetic charac­ teristics of the sounds. Similar features can also be defined for su- prasegmental phonetic characteristics. But there are sometimes claimed to be other characteristics which rules refer to which are not phonetic. For instance, some rules are claimed to apply (or not to apply) only to loanwords. Some rules are claimed to apply only to words of specific lexical category, like noun or verb. Similarly to the previous example, we can refer to a specific class of lexical forms by means of a feature (or more than one) which refers to the particular quality we are inter­ ested in. Therefore, the notion of features has been extended to these kind of characteristics, with a few differences to be noted. First of all, these features are not based on phonetic considera­ tions. Sometimes they are based on etymological factors, sometimes on morphosyntactic characteristics and sometimes a class of items has nothing more in common than a particular rule that members under­ go (or fail to undergo). Second, whereas phonetic features are characteristics of individual segments, these lexical features are properties of an entire word (or morpheme). Usually, by convention, the values of the lexical feature are assigned to each individual segment of the form. It is generally the case for modern theories of grammar that they are much too powerful — that is, they permit the construction within them of many individual grammars