Studies in Polish Linguistics vol. 10, 2015, issue 1, pp. 17–55 doi:10.4467/23005920SPL.15.002.3229 www.ejournals.eu/SPL The John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin Sławomir Zdziebko 1 A Generalized Nonlinear Affixation Approach to Polish Palatalizations Abstract The paper offers an autosegmental approach to Polish palatalizations whereby the presence of palatalizing features is the result of the translation of morpho-sy ntactic features into phonological features. In the first part I present an analysis of the structural change of the relevant palatalizations, which boils down to the account of how floating autosegments are integrated into the underlying structures of the stem-fin al segments. The second part is preoccupied with how relevant autosegments are inserted into representation: the palatal- izing floating features are phonological ‘halves’ of vocabulary items matching the feature sets marking inflectional categories in Polish. The paper finishes with the discussion of the distribution of the endings i/y /i~/ and e /E/ as the markers of the Dative and Locative in one of the declension classes in Polish. I show that the approach advocated here fares bet- ter at predicting the distribution of the said endings than the better established approach presented in Gussmann (2007). Keywords morpho-p honology, palatalization, licensing constraints, Distributed Morphology, Ele- ment Theory Streszczenie Artykuł przedstawia analizę zmian palatalizacyjnych w języku polskim, według której pa- latalizacje są wynikiem integracji cech autosegmentalnych ze spółgłoskami kończącymi tematy fleksyjne odpowiednich klas deklinacyjnych. Pierwsza część artykułu jest poświę- cona kwestii przebiegu i efektów samej integracji cech. W części drugiej podejmuję kwestię tego, w jaki sposób dane cechy stają się częścią reprezentacji fonologicznych. Postuluję, iż autosegmenty, o których mowa, są fonologicznymi częściami zasad realizujących kon- kretne kategorie fleksyjne w języku polskim. W ostatniej części artykułu podejmuję kwe- 1 I would like express my gratitude to two anonymous SPL reviewers for their thought -provoking remarks concerning the analysis presented in this paper. I would also like to thank Eugeniusz Cyran, Marcin Fortuna, Krzysztof Jaskuła, Joanna Zaleska, the audiences of GPRT in Budapest 2013, FDSL 10 in Leipzig, the ‘Allomorphy: its logic and limitations’ workshop in Jerusalem, LingBaw 2014 conference in Lublin, OCP 12 in Barcelona as well as the participants of EGG 2014 Summer School in Debrecen for the comments on the previous versions of the analysis put forward below. The only person responsible for potential shortcomings of the ap- proach presented here is myself. 18 Sławomir Zdziebko stie dystrybucji końcówek i/y /i~/ oraz e /E/ realizujących celownik i miejscownik jednej z omawianych klas. Wykazuję przy tym, iż podejście przedstawione w sekcjach 3 i 4 artyku- łu przewiduje dystrybucję wspomnianych końcówek bardziej adekwatnie niż standardowe podejście przedstawione przez Gussmanna (2007). Słowa kluczowe morfofonologia, palatalizacje, morfologia rozproszona, teoria elementów 1.Modern Introduction linguistic thought has generated a range of approaches to consonant alternations in Polish. The Chomsky and Halle (1968)-style linear rule-driven approaches are found e.g. in Laskowski (1975) and Gussmann (1978, 1980). Rubach (1984) and Szpyra (1989) offer the lexical and cyclic phonology analy- ses. The multi-dimensional autosegmental representations were employed in Gussmann (1992) and Szpyra (1995). The affix-specific nature of the palata- lalizations was highlighted in Dressler (1985) and Gussmann (2007): the two approaches which explicitly referred to diacritics as triggers of palatalizations.2 More recently, approaches couched within different versions of Optimality Theory can be found in Rubach (2003) and Łubowicz (2007), among others. Despite some fundamental differences between the above approaches, they share a single important trait: they treat the vast majority of palatalizations as triggered by what they assume to be pieces of phonological vocabulary. To be more precise, the phonological analyses such as Gussmann (1980) or Guss- mann (1992) claim that relevant palatalizations are caused by the mere pres- ence or spreading of feature [–back]. The approaches such as Dressler (1985) and Gussmann (2007) that assume affix-specific diacritics to be the triggers of palatalizations, deny their phonological status. Still, the diacritics responsible for palatalizations are marked on the exponents of appropriate morphemes (stems, affixes or both). In sum, the environment of palatalizations is defined with reference to broadly-understood phonological representations. In this paper I will present an approach by which palatalizations are the effect of the anchoring of pieces of autosegmental representations on relevant stems. The fundamental difference between the current approach and all the approaches enumerated above is that the said autosegments will be shown to be the result of the translation of certain morpho-syntactic features into phonological features. Effectively, palatalizations will be treated as morpho- phonological mutations and analysed according to the framework known as 2 See also Spencer (1985) for the account of Polish palatalizations utilizing morpho-lexical rules, Czaplicki (2013) for an approach utilizing non-g enerative mechanisms such as analogical extension and rich memory representations. 19 A Generalized Nonlinear Affixation Approach to Polish Palatalizations the Generalized Nonlinear Affixation (Trommer 2011; Bermúdez-Otero 2012), which treats apparent cases of non-concatenative morphology as the anchor- ing of defective, i.e. not independently realizable, autosegmental features. The important consequence of the approach by which palatalizing agents are the result of the translation of morpho-syntactic information is that the generalizations about palatalizations must be compatible with the generaliza- tions about exponence. In particular, under the assumption that in the course of vocabulary insertion, morpho-syntactic features are re written as phonologi- cal features (see Bobaljik 2000), the inflectional nodes in the environment of which one observes palatalizations should be realized by default exponents. I will show that this prediction is borne out and that the approach postulated in this paper is empirically more adequate in accounting for the peculiarities of the exponence of certain Polish inflectional categories than the approaches assuming that palatalizations are triggered by inflectional endings. The outline of the paper is as follows: in section 2 I will discuss the de- tails of the palatalizations that will be analysed in this paper and argue for the opaque nature of Polish palatalizations with respect to their environment. I will start section 3 with a brief introduction of the main assumptions of Gen- eralized Nonlinear Affixation. Section 3.1 will be devoted to the discussion of the representations of Polish consonantal system in Element Theory (Harris 1994; Backley 2011). Section 3.2 will focus on the principles regulating the anchoring or integration of the palatalizing autosegmental features into the representations of the affected stems: the principle of Element Status Switch- ing Enforcement, the Structure Preservation Principle and the Minimal Repair Principle. Section 3.3 will discuss the relevant anchoring processes in detail and will show how the principles mentioned above derive the attested outputs of palatalizations. Section 4.1 contains the short introduction of some facets of the theory of Distributed Morphology. In section 4.2 I focus on the morpho- logical operations of Fusion and Impoverishment, which are relevant for the account of the morpho-phonology of Polish virile declensions. I also discuss the morphological structure of Polish nominals. Section 4.3 will present and discuss the sets of morpho-syntactic features that will be utilized in the analy- sis. The said analysis will be contained in section 4.4. Section 5 is devoted to the discussion of the exponence of the Dative and Locative of Class VI of Pol- ish nouns. I will show the inadequacy of the approach put forward by Guss- mann (2007) whereby the selection of the appropriate exponent is regulated by the phonological representation of the stem-final consonant. I will also show that the current approach predicts the correct distribution of the competing exponents. Section 6 contains the concluding remarks. 20 Sławomir Zdziebko 2.The The following opaque table summarizesnature of the Polish relevant palatalizations facts concerning the palataliza- tion changes that I will focus on. (1) Palatalizations attested in Polish3 Palatalization type Exemplary contexts Examples a. I -Anterior Palatalization: – Locative masc./neu./ – pira/t/ – pira/t/ e /t,d//t,d/ fem. sg. e /E/; – ska/w/ a – ska/l/ e /p,b,f,v,m//pʲ,bʲ,fʲ,vʲ,mʲ/ – Vocative masc. sg. e /E/; – premie/r/ – premie/Z/ y /s,z//,/ – Dative fem. sg. e /E/; – cho/r/ y – cho/Z/ y /n/ /­/ – Nominative/Vocative /r//Z/ virile pl. i/y /i~/ (nouns /w//l/ and adjectives) b. J-Palatalization: – deverbal nominaliza- – wier/t/ ł o – wier/ts/eni e /t// ts/ tion in e- ni , /E-/ – wier/ts/ on y /d//dz/ – passive participles in o n – o gła/d/ a – gła/dz/ ę /t//tS/ only after /s/ /O-n/ – pu/st/ k a – o pu/StS/ a m /d//dZ/ only after /z/ – 1st person singular and – ja/zd/ a – je/ZdZ/ ę /s//S/ 3rd person plural pres- – do no/s/ – no/S/ e ni e – /z//Z/ ent tense of verbs in i no/S/ on y and e – wó/z/ – wo/Z/ ą c. 2nd Velar Palatalization: – Nominative/Vocative – Pol a/k/ – Pol a/ts/ y /k//ts/ virile pl. i/y /i~/ (nouns – szpie /g/ – szpie/dz/ y /g//dz/ and adjectives); – mu /x/ a – mu/S/ e /x//S/ – Dative/Locative fem. – su /x/ y – su// i sg. e /E/ /suS//sui/ d. 1st Velar Palatalization: – demonyms in an /an/ – Sano/k/ – sano/tS/a n in /k//tS/ – zero-derived de-nomi- – Bó/g/ – bo/Z/ y /g//Z/ nal adjectives – mni/x/ – mni/S/ ek /g/\dZ/ only after /z/ – diminutives in (e)k / – mó/zg/ – mó/ZdZ/ek /x//S/ (E)k/ 3 Glosses to examples (‘non-palatalized’ – ‘palatalized form(s)’): ‘pirate, nom. sg.’ – ‘loc/voc.