Variation in Finnish Vowel Harmony: An OT Account Author(s): Catherine O. Ringen and Orvokki Heinämäki Source: Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, Vol. 17, No. 2 (May, 1999), pp. 303-337 Published by: Springer Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4047991 Accessed: 18/05/2010 16:12 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=springer. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Springer is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Natural Language & Linguistic Theory. http://www.jstor.org CATHERINE O. RINGEN AND ORVOKKI HEINAMAKI VARIATION IN FINNISH VOWEL HARMONY: AN OT ACCOUNT* This paper presentsdata on vowel harmonywith disharmonicroots in Finnishwhich show that when the last harmonicvowel in a disharmonicroot is back, in almost all cases the only possible harmonicsuffix vowel is back, but when the last harmonic vowel is front, there is usually variation in suffix vowel choice that seems to be influencedby severalfactors, includingsonority and stress. These data, which cannot easily be accountedfor in rule-basedtheories, can be accountedfor in Optimality Theory.A highlyranked alignment constraint accounts for harmonywith native roots and loans in which the last harmonicvowel is back. Unrankedconstraints, which tie suffix vowel choice to stress and sonority, as well as alignment requirements, determinesuffix vowel quality for the remainderof forms. Variationis seen to be a function of the relative frequencywith which a particularsuffix vowel is designated as optimalby the differentpossible rankingsof the unrankedconstraints. 0. INTRODUCTION Finnish vowel harmony has received considerable attention in the literatureof generative phonology because of its relevance for a variety of issues in phonologicaltheory. Different analysesof Finnishvowel har- mony, many of which include discussions of disharmonic roots, are presented in Campbell (1980, 1981), Halle and Vergnaud (1981), Ki- parsky (1973, 1981), Goldsmith (1985), Ringen (1988b), Steriade (1987), Valimaa-Blum(1987), and Vago (1988), among others. This paper reportson the results of our empiricalinvestigation of vowel harmonywith Finnish disharmonicroots.l Our studies were conductedin * Portions of this paper were presented at the 1988 and 1998 LSA meetings, at Nordic ProsodyV, 1989, in Turku,Finland; at the 81st SASS AnnualMeeting, Amherst,Massachu- setts, 1991; at Kielitieteen Paivat 1990 in Helsinki, Finland; at MCWOP 1996 at the Universityof Illinois, Urbana-Champaign,Illinois; at the DepartmentalColloquium, March 1997, Universityof Iowa; and the Universityof Warsaw,University of Stuttgart,University of Salzburg,and Eotvos L6rand University,Budapest, in October 1997. Thanksto Gregg Oden for help with the statisticalanalysis, to RosemaryPlapp for assistancein tabulating the data, and to Arto Anttila, Jill Beckman, Ellen Broselow, Chris Culy, Gary Dell, Gregg Oden, Aimo Hakanen. Bob Harms, Richard Hurtig, Anneli Pajunen, Jon Ringen, Jerzy Rubach, Szilard Szentgyorgyi, Cheryl Zoll, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful commentsand/or discussions.This, of course, does not mean that any of these individuals bears any responsibilityfor any errors or that they necessarilyagree with all of our claims or interpretations. 1 Practicallyall disharmonicroots are loanwords, althoughnot all loanwordsare dishar- monic. The statusof these words as loanwordsper se is not important.Our claimsare about disharmonicroots, regardlessof whether or not they are loanwordsor whether speakers recognizethem as loans. NaturalLanguage and LinguisticTheory 17: 303-337, 1999. (g) 1999 KluwerAcademic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. 304 CATHERINE 0. RINGEN AND ORVOKKI HEINAMAKI Helsinki with native speakersof Finnishat the Universityof Helsinki. We found that vowel harmony with Finnish disharmonicroots has not been accuratelyportrayed in the literature.2Although suffix vowel choice is categoricallyfront or back with some disharmonicforms, there is variation in suffix vowel choice in other cases. In almost all cases when the last harmonicvowel in a disharmonicroot is back, the only possible harmonic suffixvowel is back. When the last harmonicroot vowel is front, however, most forms exhibit variationthat seems to be influencedby the qualityof the vowel with primary stress, the quality of the vowel with secondary stress, the quality of the most sonorous vowel, as well as the quality of the last vowel in the root. These data, which cannot easily be accounted for in rule-based theories, can be accounted for in Optimality Theory (McCarthyand Prince 1993a, 1995; Prince and Smolensky 1993) if it is assumedthat constraintsare partiallyranked. A highly ranked constraint requiringthat the feature [+back] be aligned with the right edge of the word accounts for harmony with native roots and disharmonicroots in whichthe last harmonicvowel is back. Unrankedconstraints which require that suffix vowels agree with the backness of the vowel which is most sonorous, with the vowel with primarystress, with the vowel with secon- dary stress, and with the last root vowel determinesuffix vowel qualityfor the remainderof forms. For native roots, any rankingof these unranked constraints will give the correct result because all the vowels will be front. For disharmonicroots, however, differentresults are possible. The variation that occurs is seen to be a function of the relative frequency with which a particularsuffix vowel is designatedas optimal by the differ- ent possible rankingsof the unrankedconstraints. 1. FACTS OF VOWEL HARMONY The essential characteristicsof Finnish vowel harmony are well-known and uncontroversial.There are eight surface vowels which are listed in (1): (1) neutral harmonic front front back i [i] y [y] u [u] e [e] o[0] o [o] a[a] a [a] 2 See Kontra and Ringen (1986, 1987) and Ringen and Kontra (1989) for discussionsof empiricalinvestigations of Hungarianvowel harmonywhich show that certainwidely cited data are, in fact, not accurate. VARIATION IN FINNISH VOWEL HARMONY 305 In native Finnish noncompoundwords, front and back harmonicvowels do not co-occur. Neutral or transparentvowels, on the other hand, are found in words with either front vowels (harmonic or neutral) or with back vowels. Some examples are given in (2) :3 (2) a. poiytai 'table' b. pouta 'fine weather' c. hamara 'dusk' d. kasi 'hand' e. koti 'home' f. kesy 'tame' g. veli 'brother' h. vero 'tax' i. tie 'road' Harmonic suffix vowels usually agree in backness with harmonic root vowels, as illustratedin (3): (3) a. poyta-na 'table' essive b. pouta-na 'fine weather' essive c. hamara-na 'dusk' essive d. kade-lla 'hand' adess e. koti-na 'home' essive f. kesy-lla 'tame' adess g. vero-lla 'tax' adess If all root vowels are neutral, harmonicsuffix vowels are (usually) front, as illustratedby the examples in (4): 3 We give here orthographic representations: long vowels and consonants are represented by double letters. Primary and secondary stress are marked throughout. 306 CATHERINE 0. RINGEN AND ORVOKKI HEINAMAKI (4) a. velje-lla 'brother' adess. b. tie-lla 'road' adess. But loanwords often violate harmony restrictions, as illustrated by the disharmonicforms in (5): (5) disharmonicloans a. vuilgaari 'vulgar' b. tyranni 'tyrant' c. afaari 'affair' d. analy'ysi 'analysis' It is sometimes claimed that suffix vowels following such disharmonic roots agree with the last harmonicroot vowel, e.g., Kiparsky(1973). The situation is not this simple, however. While it is generally agreed that a disharmonicroot in which the last harmonicvowel is back requires back harmonicsuffix vowels, there is variationwith disharmonicroots in which the last harmonic vowel is front. Moreover, what the facts are has not been clear. Different Finnish (normative and descriptive) grammarsdo not agree with each other or with generativephonologists who have made claims about which suffix vowels occur with such disharmonicroots. The Language Board of the Finnish LiteratureSociety recommendedin 1945 (Sadeniemi 1946, pp. 79-80) that in additionto i and e, y should also be treated as neutral in loanwords whereas o and a should always be consi- dered harmonic. Saarimaa'snormative grammar (1971, p. 17) presents y as basically neutral, while o and d are said to be harmonic, especially when they are long. Penttila's grammar(1963, p. 17) also considersy to be neutral, but o and d are said to be always harmonic.Ikola (1986, pp. 134-135) considersall the front vowels y, o and d to be basicallyharmonic, but states that y may also be neutral when unstressed.