1.0 Introduction In many languages, laryngeal consonants, and glottal stop in particular, pattern differently from the supralaryngeal consonants. The goal of this dissertation is to provide a unified account of the patterning of glottal stop cross-linguistically. For example, glottal stop regularly patterns as transparent to spreading of vocalic and consonantal features across it, as opposed to the supralaryngeal consonants, which are generally opaque to spreading. This fact is illustrated by the data in (1), which show that in Chemehuevi (Uto-Aztecan), Sundanese (Austronesian) and St’át’imcets (Lillooet; Salish), glottal stop alone is transparent to vocalic spreading, nasal spreading, and faucal harmony, respectively: (1) Chemehuevi a. /nukwijumi/ Æ [nukwijmi] ‘run (pl.)’ b. /vjuni/ Æ [vjuni] / *[vjni] ‘ill/bad’ (Press 1979, Steriade 1987) Sundanese c. /iar/ Æ [iãr] ‘say’ (active) d. /niis/ Æ [niis] ‘relax in a cool place’ (active) e. /atur/ Æ [ãtur] / *[ãtur] ‘arrange’ (active) (Cohn 1993) St’át’imcets w w f. /suq’ m/ Æ [q’ m] ‘to skin an animal’ (Bessell 1998) w w g. /úq a/ Æ [q ] ‘to drink a little bit’ w w h. /súsq’ m/ Æ [súsq’ m] ‘to skin small animals’ w (*[ssq’ m]) (van Eijk 1997) Previous accounts of patterns like those shown in (1) have proposed to explain the distinct patterning of glottal stop in comparison to the supralaryngeal consonants with a representational distinction. One typical approach is to root this distinction in the fact that the laryngeal consonants, unlike other consonants, do not involve contribution from any oral articulator. Within a feature geometric approach, this distinction is exemplified by positing a hierarchical organization among place features such that the SUPRALARYNGEAL node dominates all oral consonantal and vocalic features, but crucially does not dominate the laryngeal features. An example of a feature geometric tree in which glottal stop is shown to lack oral place features is shown in (2), from Sagey 1986 1 and Bessell 1992. Here, place is necessarily a feature only of supralaryngeal consonants, as place is hierarchically dominated by the node SUPRALARYNGEAL and neither the nodes 1 SUPRALARYNGEAL nor PLACE dominate the node LARYNGEAL. (2) ROOT LARYNGEAL [consonantal] [stiff vocal folds] [constricted glottis] [continuant] [spread glottis] [slack vocal folds] SUPRALARYNGEAL SOFT PALATE PLACE [nasal] LABIAL CORONAL DORSAL [round] [anterior] [lateral] [distributed] [low] [high] [back] The placeless account of glottal stop can successfully account for the fact that it patterns as transparent, for example as shown in the data in (1). Under this account, spreading of features dominated by the node SUPRALARYNGEAL (e.g. the vocalic and consonantal PLACE features) onto another element is blocked by the presence of an intervening specification for the same node {SUPRALARYNGEAL}. Blocking results from the prohibition on crossing association lines, as illustrated in (3a), in which the presence of an intervening C PLACE node blocks spreading of VPLACE in VxCVy. In contrast, the fact that glottal stop lacks a C PLACE node will allow spreading across it, resulting in the observed patterns of transparency. 1 Examples of placeless approaches to the patterning of glottal stop include Steriade 1987, Cohn 1990, Bessell and Czaykowska-Higgins 1992, Duanmu 1994, Basri 1999, Sumner 1999, Ola Orie and Bricker 2000, Broselow 2001, and Parker 2001, among others. 2 (3) b. * V t V (e.g. /tu / Æ [tu], *[t]) [+VPlace] [CPlace] [-VPlace] a. V V (e.g. /u / Æ []) [VPlace] [VPlace] The approach sketched above simply restates the generalization that laryngeal consonants pattern distinctly from supralaryngeal consonants because they are not supralaryngeal. A more satisfying analysis of the patterning of laryngeal consonants might give a phonetically grounded explanation of this distinction. Furthermore, while this approach provides an account of the transparency of glottal stop in a number of languages, it is less successful in dealing with patterns of transparency in other languages, as well as a range of other patterns exhibited by glottal stop. In this chapter, I will briefly introduce data from four patterns that distinguish the patterning of glottal stop from the supralaryngeal consonants: (1) translaryngeal harmony and the related pattern of languages that require the vowels flanking laryngeals to be identical; (2) hiatus resolution-like repair of VV; (3) positions on the syllabic position of glottal stop; and (4) the tendency of underlying sequences with glottal stop to surface non-sequentially. For example, consider again the Sundanese and St’át’imcets data in (1c-e) and (1f-h), respectively. In these languages, glottal stop fails to block consonantally conditioned feature spreading. In these data, the impetus to spread lies with the conditioning consonant or the feature that spreads;2 the glottal stop itself is not a participant in the spreading process, and does not cause or condition it. However, patterns exist that show surface similarity to the translaryngeal harmony data, and yet challenge the assumption that the presence of glottal stop is incidental to the harmony process. One such pattern is exhibited by the Yucatec Maya (YM) data in (4). In YM, vowels flanking laryngeal consonants must be identical. This requirement holds underlyingly in monomorphemic 2 For example, it has been proposed that featural alignment constraints motivate spreading; they require a given feature to be aligned to an edge of phonological unit. For example, the constraint ALIGN RT FEATUREα, PROSODIC WORD will force rightward spreading of featureα until the last element in the prosodic word carries this feature. For discussion of the featural alignment approach to feature spreading, see for example, Kirchner 1993, Smolensky 1993, Pulleyblank 1994, Cole and Kisseberth 1995, Walker 1995, 1998, 2003, Padgett 1995, Ní Chiosáin and Padgett 2001. 3 roots, as in (4a). (4b) shows that sequences of underlying non-identical vowels flanking glottal stop will undergo assimilation. For comparison, (4c) shows that no spreading occurs in VCORALV sequences. At first glance, the patterns exhibited by (4a-c) appear to be classic examples of translaryngeal harmony patterns. However, the data in (4d) show that the picture is a bit more complicated. Here, the offending VxVy sequence is not repaired through spreading, but rather through deletion of the laryngeal accompanied by glide insertion. For ease of discussion, I refer to this pattern as ‘required identity – across– glottals.’ (4) Yucatec Maya a. wiit ‘loincloth’ b. /hé im b’ine/ Æ [hí im b’ine’] ‘I will go’ c. kitam ‘peccary’ d. /p’o-eh/ Æ [p’oyeh] ‘wash it!’ (Ola Orie and Bricker’s (2000) (1)-(4)) The data in (4) suggest that translaryngeal spreading in YM occurs independently of an external trigger; it is the VxVy sequence itself that offends. Here, spreading in VxVy occurs because there is an intervocalic glottal stop, not because there is an external impetus to spread. This suggestion is supported by the fact that spreading is not a necessary outcome of a VxVy sequence; (4d) shows that the requirement that all vowels flanking laryngeals be identical can be vacuously satisfied through deletion of the laryngeal. Perhaps the most striking example of a pattern that cannot be explained by the glottal transparency hypothesis involves the occurrence of hiatus resolution processes in VV sequences. This pattern is exhibited by YM data in (4d) (glide insertion is YM’s preferred hiatus resolution strategy), as well as by data from a number of languages in which there is an unexpected interaction of the vowels flanking a laryngeal consonant. These languages exhibit a pattern in which the same hiatus resolution processes occur in VV sequences as occur in VV sequences despite the presence of the glottal stop. For example, consider the data in (5) from Yatzachi Zapotec (YZ) and Yapese. (5) Yatzachi Zapotec a. /zeta + e/ Æ [zete] ‘he stands’ b. /tagna + e/ Æ [tagnee] ‘he marries’ (Butler-Haworth 1980, Borroff 2003,2005) Yapese c. /fai + ng/ Æ [fe:ng] ‘to find something’ d. /ka+a+i mi:l/ Æ [kee mi:l] ‘he ran first’ (Jensen 1977) 4 In YZ, underlying [a-e] sequences undergo assimilation to [e] in both VV and VV (c.f. (5a) vs. (5b)). Finally, in Yapese, feature preserving coalescence occurs in [a-i] sequences when these are strictly adjacent (5c), and when the vowels are separated by a glottal stop (5d). These data are problematic under the traditional assumption that hiatus resolution occurs in response to the need for every syllable to have an onset; in a CVV sequence, the syllable headed by the second vowel will lack an onset. For a VV sequence, in contrast, the glottal stop itself should syllabify as an onset to the following vowel. Thus, the onset approach to hiatus resolution does not shed any light on the patterning of VV in these languages. Furthermore, placeless approaches to the patterning of glottal stop will have some difficulty in handling the full range of data in (5). To illustrate this, let us consider a placeless- analysis of the YM data in (4d) and (5a) presented in Ola Orie and Bricker 2000. Ola Orie and Bricker (2000) propose that the laryngeal deletion and accompanying glide insertion in these examples is the result of a requirement that syllabic onsets be specified for oral place. This account explains why insertion of an oral glide is required in (4d) and (5a). In fact, the markedness of placeless onsets is suggested to be a factor in the distribution of glottal stop in a number of languages. For example, Broselow 2001 presents data from three Makassarese languages that exhibit a [] ~ [k] alternation in which coda glottal stop is realized as [k] when affixation of a vowel initial morpheme would result in the glottal stop’s being prevocalic. Consider the data in (5) from Standard Makassarese to illustrate this pattern:3 (5) Standard Makassarese a.