ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I doubt I can properly express my gratitude to my committee. I owe so much to them. John McCarthy has been an incredible source of inspiration and encouragement. His help and patience have been greatly appreciated and will not be forgotten. Lisa Selkirk’s refrain “you must see the forest through the trees” has not only made this a better dissertation but it has also made me a better linguist. John Kingston provided insightful comments that have given me a different perspective to a number of parts in the dissertation and have led to some major revisions. Jim Cathey has also provided numerous helpful comments and suggestions. I thank them all so much for everything they have done. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank all the professors, especially Roger Higgins, who have made studying at U. Mass. a great experience. Many people have helped in different ways. I would like to thank François Dell and John Lynch for responding to my questions and I would like to thank Judith Broadbent for suggestions, comments, and a careful reading of the final version. I also cannot forget Kathy Adamczyk and Lynne Ballard for administrative help. Lastly, this dissertation was supported by doctoral fellowships (#452-90-0223 and #752-91-1569) from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. I also thank the following phonologists who have listened to various ideas of mine of the years: Jill Beckman, Juli Carter, Elaine Dunlap, Amalia Gnanadesikan, Greg Lamontagne, Linda Lombardi, Joyce McDonough, Maire Ni Chiosain, Jaye Padgett, Tim Sherer, Alison Taub, Suzanne Urbanczyk, Laura Walsh, and with special thanks to Henrietta Hung and Beth Hume. It seems like eons ago since I first met my classmates Rejean Canac-Marquis, Veena Dwivedi, Kai von Fintel, Bill Philip, Bernhard Rohrbacher, and Hotze Rullmann. I thank them for many memories that I hope will keep all of us laughing for years to come. Life in graduate school would have been impossible without special friends like Rejean, Veena, and Juli Carter. I thank them for many long conversations that had nothing to do with linguistics. Most of all, I wish to thank Judy Perkins who swam with me in the “waves of joy” and the “pools of sorrow” that came with writing a dissertation. I also wish to thank my brother Gary, my sister Wendy and her husband Gerry for their support and encouragement over the years. Their free (but not always requested) advice made the rocky road of graduate school alot smoother. Finally, I wish to thank my parents Leonard and Devorah. I find it ironic that after five years of studying linguistics – breaking sentences, words, and sounds into their fundamental units so that we can understand the nature of language– I cannot find a way to express my love and gratitude to them. I hope by dedicating this dissertation to them I sufficiently express these feelings because I can’t seem to find the words. v ABSTRACT VOWEL/GLIDE ALTERNATION IN A THEORY OF CONSTRAINT INTERACTION SEPTEMBER 1994 SAMUEL ROSENTHALL, B.A., MCGILL UNIVERSITY M.A., MCGILL UNIVERSITY Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor John J. McCarthy This dissertation examines the distribution of high vowels and glides using Prince and Smolensky’s Optimality Theory, which proposes that phonological constraints are violable and hierarchically ranked. The distribution of high vowels and glides is shown to be a consequence of simultaneously comparing moraic and nonmoraic syllabifications of high vowels for satisfaction of phonological constraints. In brief, a high vowel surfaces when the moraic parse best satisfies the constraints and a glide surfaces when the nonmoraic parse best satisfies the constraints. This dissertation investigates three main phenomena associated with the distribution of high vowels and glides. First, it treats the syllabification of vowel sequences in a number of languages with only surface monophthongal vowels. In Etsako, Luganda, Kimatuumbi, and Ilokano, high vocoids are syllabified as vowels when followed by a consonant, but there are syllabified as their nonmoraic counterparts when followed by another vowel. Furthermore, the syllabification of nonhigh vowels varies across these languages. The syllabification of vowel sequences is shown to follow from the interaction of syllable structure constraints that ensure the surface vowel is a monophthong. The interlinguistic variation in syllabification is shown to follow from different rankings of the same set of syllable structure constraints. Second, stress can influence the distribution of high vowels. In Lenakel and Spanish, the generalization is that a high vocoid adjacent to a nonhigh vowel is a vowel when stressed otherwise it is a glide. This generalization implies that stress placement must be known prior to syllabification, which is problematic in procedural approaches to constituent construction, where syllabification must precede metrification. In the Optimality-Theoretic approach, the distribution of high vowels is determined by simultaneously best satisfying the metrical and the syllable structure constraints. Third, the distribution of high vowels and glides cannot always be attributed to an alternation between underlying vowels and glides. In a language like Berber, glides must be present underlyingly, and these underlying glides can alternate with high vowels. This is often called glide vocalization. The alternation between underlying glides and high vowels in Berber is also shown to be the result of constraint interaction. In this case, moraic and nonmoraic syllabifications of the underlying glide are compared for constraint satisfaction. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ………………………………………………………….....v ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………… vi Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………….. 1 1.1 Overview……………………………………………………………….. 1 1.2 The Vowel/Glide Alternation …………………………………………. 2 1.3 Optimality Theory ……………………………………………………. 8 1.4 Syllable Structure Constraints…………………………………………. 13 1.5 Underlying Representations…………………………………………… 24 2. SURFACE PATTERNS OF UNDERLYING VOWEL SEQUENCES……… 31 2.1 Introduction…………………………………………………………… 31 2.2 Etsako………………………………………………………………… 32 2.2.1 The Distribution of Nonmoraic Vocoids…………………….. 33 2.2.2 Vowel Elision……………………………………………….. 41 2.3 Yoruba………………………………………………………………… 49 2.3.1 /i/ and Elision………………………………………………...51 2.4 Luganda……………………………………………………………….. 54 2.4.1 Luganda Syllable Structure………………………………….. 55 2.4.2 Vowel Elision……………………………………………….. 56 2.4.3 High Vocoids and Vowel Length……………………………. 63 2.4.4 High Vocoids and Short Vowels……………………………. 65 2.4.5 Vowel Length and Prenasalization……………………………70 2.4.6 Previous Analyses of Luganda…………………………….. 78 2.5 Kimatuumbi………………………………………………………….. 83 2.5.1 Sequences with a Nonhigh Vowel…………………………. 83 2.5.2 The Distribution of Nonmoraic Vocoids…………………… 85 2.5.3 Glides as Onsets…………………………………………… 89 2.6 Ilokano………………………………………………………………. 93 2.6.1 Ilokano Syllable Structure………………………………….. 93 2.6.2 Vowel Sequences in Ilokano……………………………….. 94 2.6.3 Nonmoraic Vocoids and Geminates……………………….. 97 2.7 Conclusion…………………………………………………………… 104 3. METRICAL INFLUENCES ON SYLLABIFICATION…………………….. 108 3.1 Introduction………………………………………………………….. 108 3.2 Lenakel………………………………………………………………. 109 3.2.1 Lenakel Syllable Structure…………………………………..110 3.2.2 Lenakel Stress……………………………………………… 115 3.2.3 Metrification and Syllabification…………………………….117 3.2.4 Postvocalic High Vocoids…………………………………..122 3.2.5 Underlying Glides…………………………………………. 129 3.2.5.1. The Phoneme /v/…………………………………..131 3.2.6 Previous Work On Lenakel………………………………... 132 vii 3.3 Spanish………………………………………………………………. 133 3.3.1 Spanish Syllable Structure…………………………………. 135 3.3.2 Spanish Metrical Structure…………………………………. 144 3.3.2.1. Previous Analyses of Spanish Stress……………..150 3.3.3 Stress and Syllabification…………………………………...151 3.3.3.1 The Penultimate Position………………………….152 3.3.3.1.1 Postvocalic High Vocoids……………. 152 3.3.3.1.2 Prevocalic High Vocoids…………….. 155 3.3.3.2 The Final Position…………………………………161 3.3.3.2.1 Prevocalic Vocoids…………………… 161 3.3.3.2.2 Postvocalic Vocoids…………………..164 3.3.3.3 The Antepenultimate Position……………………. 166 3.4 Intervocalic Glides…………………………………………………… 171 3.5 Evidence for Phonemic Glides………………………………………..173 3.6 Conclusion…………………………………………………………… 176 4. OTHER SOURCES OF GLIDES……………………………………………. 178 4.1 Introduction………………………………………………………….. 178 4.2 Homorganic Glides and Epenthetic Consonants…………………….. 178 4.2.1 Other Examples of Homorganic Glide Distribution………… 190 4.3 Consonantal Glides……………………………………………………203 4.3.1 Ilokano Diphthongs………………………………………… 204 4.3.2 Ponapean Reduplication…………………………………… 207 4.4 Glide Vocalization……………………………………………………. 211 4.4.1 Vocoid Distribution in Ait Segrouchen Berber………………212 4.4.2 Vocalized Glides and Epenthesis in Kabyle and Ath-Sidhar Rifian………………………..219 4.4.3 Vocalized Glides and Vocalized Consonants in Imdlawn Tashlhiyt……………………………………233 4.5 Conclusion…………………………………………………………… 236 4.6 Concluding Remarks………………………………………………… 237 REFERENCES……………………………………………………………………… 238 viii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Overview The alternation between high vowels and glides is shown here to follow from the interaction of phonological constraints as defined by Prince and Smolensky’s (1993) Optimality Theory. The alternation stems from simultaneously comparing moraic and nonmoraic parses of high vocoids for constraint satisfaction. A glide surfaces when the nonmoraic parse best satisfies the constraints. The approach to the vowel/glide