The Twenty-Sixth Manchester Phonology Meeting ABSTRACTS BOOKLET Thursday 24th - Saturday 26th May 2018 Held at Hulme Hall, Manchester Organised by a collaboration of phonologists at the University of Edinburgh, the University of Manchester, and elsewhere. This booklet contains the abstracts for all the papers presented at the twenty-sixth Manchester Phonology Meeting, held at Hulme Hall, Manchester, in May 2018. The abstracts are arranged in alphabetical order by the surname of the (first named) presenter. If any abstracts are missing from this booklet, it is most likely because the authors did not submit a non-anonymous version of their abstract. The abstracts for the oral paper sessions are presented first, followed by the abstracts for the poster paper sessions, and the booklet concludes with abstracts for the special session. The final programme, included in your registration pack and available on the conference website, gives the details of which papers are in which room, and at which times. Oral papers Outward-Looking Phonologically Conditioned Allomorphy in the Koryak Verb Rafael Abramovitz (MIT) - [email protected] One of the most widely-cited predictions stemming from research in realizational theories of morphology is Bobaljik (2000)’s concerning the directionality of allomorphy: outward-looking allomorphy can only be sensitive to the morphosyntactic properties of its trigger, and inward-looking allomorphy can only be sensitive to the morphophonological properties of its trigger. In this paper, I propose a counterexample to this prediction from the verbal complex of Koryak (Chukotko-Kamchatkan, Kamchatka), where, in tran- sitive verbs, the suffixal portion of the present tense circumfix (ku--ŋ) shows allomorphy triggered by the segmental content of the following morpheme in the verb. In particular, if the following morpheme be- gins in a noncoronal consonant, the ŋ deletes, as shown by the contrast between (1) and (2), where the suffixes are coronal-initial and noncoronal-initial, respectively. (1) a. t-ə-ku-nmelew-ŋ-ə-tək ‘I heal you (du)’ (2) a. t-ə-ku-nmelew- -ɣi ‘I heal you’ ∅ b. t-ə-ku-nmelew-ŋ-ə-n ‘I heal him’ b. ne- ku-nmelew- -ɣəm ‘X heals me’ However, the opposite is observed in intransitive verbs: the agreement suffix∅ deletes if it begins in a non- coronal consonant, whereas the ŋ of the tense morpheme remains. This is shown by the contrast between the witnessed past and present forms in the (a) and (b) examples below, where the labial-initial 1NSG agreement suffix is deleted in the present. (3) a. məlaw-tək ‘You (du) danced’ (4) a. mət-ə-mlaw-mək ‘We (du) danced’ b. ko-mlaw-ŋ-ə-tək ‘You (du) dance’ b. mət-ko-mlav-ə-ŋ- ‘We (du) dance’ ∅ Viewed in this light, the facts under discussion constitute a conspiracy: the suffixal portion of the present circumfix may not surface followed by a morpheme that begins in a noncoronal consonant. It is tempting to try to account for this conspiracy purely phonologically, using a markedness constraint that implements the insight above (*ŋC[ cor]), thereby preserving Bobaljik’s generalization about insertion. I will argue that purely phonological− accounts of this phenomenon are impossible in monostratal theories like stan- dard OT (Prince and Smolensky 2004) because epenthesis between the ŋ and a following noncoronal stop does not prevent deletion from being triggered. This requires the constraint to apply to an intermediate representation without epenthetic vowels, which is not possible in a monostratal framework. Stratal OT (Bermúdez-Otero 2008) does not share this problem, but it cannot account nonstipulatively for the fact that the attested solution to the marked structure involves supraminimal faithfulness violations: rather than deleting just enough to satisfy the markedness constraint, the entire suffix deletes (cf. (4b), where deleting the suffix’s first segment would be enough to satisfy the constraint.) Furthermore, licensing ŋ before a consonant only if it is coronal appears to be unattested crosslinguistically (Anderson 2008). This casts doubt on the plausibility of a purely phonological account of these facts, especially since it is not a general fact of Koryak phonology that ŋ cannot precede a noncoronal consonant: the circumfix je- -ŋ ‘want’ does not trigger or undergo deletion preceding ŋ. (5) t-ə-ku-je-ləʔu-ŋ-ŋ-ə-n ‘I want to see him.’ Optimal Interleaving (Wolf 2008) provides a mechanism for constraints referring to segmental features to enforce the non-exponence of nodes, which seems to be the most natural way of accounting for the con- spiracy. In particular, by ranking an indexed version of *ŋC[ cor] over realize morph at a point in the derivation before the normal phonological operations take place,− we can account for the all-or-nothing solution to the problem posed by the marked structure. This alone underdetermines the correct solution, as deleting either the ŋ or the suffix would satisfy this equally well. I will suggest that constraints requiring the realization of particular morphosyntactic features of the arguments coindexed by the agreement mor- phemes are necessary to account for the pattern, further supporting analyzing this phenomenon outside of the normal phonology. Partial vowel reduction in initial syllables in American English Adam Albright, MIT ([email protected]) Vowel reduction is one of the most pervasive phonological processes of English, and many arguments in The Sound Pattern of English (Chomsky and Halle 1968) rested on a simple as- sumption: stressless short vowels reduce. Chomsky and Halle noted that reduction is more limited in certain contexts (especially, prevocalic vowels and final non-low vowels), but the SPE grammar is generally designed to ensure that unreduced short vowels bear some degree of stress, either on the surface or at some earlier derivational stage. In this talk, I demonstrate an additional restriction: vowels in absolute word-initial position show a more limited and complex pattern of reduction, maintaining a two-way height distinction in stressless syllables: ɪ/ɛ vs. ə in light syllables, and ɪ vs. ɛ/æ in heavy syllables. I argue that the occurrence of non-ə vow- els cannot be attributed to stress, but instead requires a grammar that allows for a more limited inventory of short lax vowels in phonetically long stressless syllables. The pattern of reduction for short front vowels is shown in (1). As is well known, reduction depends on speech rate, frequency, foreignness, and morphologically related forms. Control- ling for these, the distribution in (1) holds phrase-initially in careful speech. It is well-known that reduced vowels vary between higher (ɪ-like) and lower (ə-like) vowels. However, there is more to be said: in fact, a limited height contrast is maintained in absolute initial position. The restriction to absolute initial position is important for (1a–d), which show reduction to [ə] word-internally ([ɛ]stónia vs. b[ə]stów) and phrase-internally (an [ə]gregious error). (1) Partial contrasts maintained in absolute-initial position /ɪ/ /ɛ/ /æ/ a. / CV ɪ/i illícit, imáginary ɪ/i elástic, epístle ə allége, aphásia b. / TRV ɪ/i igúana, Iglésias ɪ/i ecláir, Etrúscan ə acquíre, acrópolis c. / STV ɪ Islámic, Iscáriot ɛ/ɪ Estónia ə Astória d. / TCV ɪ igníte, ignóble ɛ/ɪ eccéntric, egrégious æ/ɛ accéntuate, admíre e. / RCV ɪ impárt ɛ Elmíra æ alpáca, ambássador These data are not obscure (the transcriptions follow Kenyon and Knott 1949), but as far as I can tell, the special status of absolute-initial vowels has not received careful analytical atten- tion. Chomsky and Halle (1968:118) posit secondary stresses on initial syllables with clusters (#(C)V̀ CC), covering cases such as [æ]sbéstos. Secondary stress cannot account for the full pat- tern, however, since it predicts full maintenance of the underlying vowel quality. This is indeed found in (1e), where reduction is impossible. However, the SPE rule also predicts secondary stress in (1d), but reduction to [ə] is impossible for /ɪ/ and /ɛ/, and optional for /æ/ ([æ] [ə]dmíre). In other (previously undescribed?) dialects, /æ/ reduces to [ɛ] in this context ([ɛ]dmíre∼ ), yield- ing a pattern of partial reduction that is completely unlike medial stressless syllables. Thus, (1d) cannot be due to secondary stress. Instead, I argue for a more nuanced vowel reduction pro- cess: stressless initial /æ/ reduces to [ə] obligatorily in light syllables, and optionally in heavy syllables (reducting to [ɛ] otherwise, in some dialects). We could easily add stipulations to the SPE Vowel Reduction rule to capture these restric- tions, but the real question is why they hold. In fact, vowel reduction is often blocked in absolute initial position, plausibly due to longer duration in this position (Barnes 2006, Lunden 2013). I argue that the pattern in (1) reflects a set of reduced vowel inventories, depending on vowel du- ration (Herrick 2003, Flemming 2007). In the longest contexts (stressed syllables), all contrasts are maintained, while in the shortest contexts (medial stressless syllables), only [ə] is allowed. In initial position, depending on the VCC interval duration, inventories of two (ɪ vs. ə/ɛ) or three (ɪ, ɛ, ə) front vowels are tolerated. This is analyzed using MinDist constraints (Flemming 2002) and markedness constraints against low vowels in short syllables. Stress position in novel -ory derivatives: Phonology, morphology, and the speaker Sabine Arndt-Lappe and Javier Sanz, University of Trier ([email protected]) Descriptions of English morphophonology and theories of the morphology-phonology interface building on such descriptions traditionally make a distinction between stress-neutral and stress- shifting affixes. Stress position in polymorphemic words with stress-shifting affixes is often assumed to be determined by the same stress rules that also apply to monomorphemic words in the language. Complex words with stress-neutral affixes, by contrast, preserve the stress of their bases.