Li6 Phonology and Morphology

1. Li6 Phonology and Morphology Syllables and syllabification

2. Today’s topics • Evidence for the syllable and its components • How syllable structure is assigned to phonological representations

3. Syllable structure σ Rhyme Onset Nucleus Coda • Maybe also Appendix (though this probably attaches to the Prosodic Word)

4. Syllables • Most people have clear intuitions about syllable counts and divisions. • sing.er : see.ker • at.lan.tic : a.tro.cious • Are they simply counting vowels? No: • button • Abkhaz mts’k’ ‘type of fly’ (Vaux 1997) • Syllable divisions cannot refer simply to vowels • pa.per vs sing.er, distend vs distaste • Vulg. Lat. /ad.ri.pa.re/ ar.ri.va.re ‘arrive’ vs. ca.the.dra ‘chair’ (Steriade 1988)

5. Evidence for syllables as phonological units • Morphological rules • Language games • Psycholinguistic phenomena • Restrictions on coarticulation • Phonological rules • Poetics • Writing systems

6. Morphological rules • Armenian plural selection (Vaux 2003) • šun-er ‘dogs’ : katu-ner ‘cats’

7. Language games • French ‘Verlan’ • l’envers • véritétérivé, etc. (cf. Plénat 1995) • Fula • deftereteredef, etc. (Bagemihl 1989) • Korean • original • san†ok’i †ok’iya ³til¥l kan¥nya? • k’a²…o² k’a²…o² t’wimy³ns³ ³til¥l kan¥nya? • wild rabbit, wild rabbit, where are you going? • running hoppity-hop, where are you going? • type 1 • k’i†osan yak’i†o l¥lti³ nyan¥ka? • …o²k’a² …o²k’a² s³my³nt’wi l¥lti³ nyan¥ka? • type 2 • sapa†opok’ipi †opok’ipiyapa ³p³tipil¥p¥ kapan¥p¥nyapa? • k’apa…opo k’apa…opo t’wipimy³p³s³p³ ³p³tipil¥p¥ kapan¥p¥nyapa?

8. Psycholinguistic phenomena • Response times • Mehler, Dommergues, Frauenfelder & Segui 1981 • “press the button once you hear [pa]” • subjects detected [pa] faster in pa.lace • subjects detected [pal] faster in pal.mier. • Tip of the tongue phenomena • Brown and McNeill 1966 • Speech errors • Fromkin 1971 • Onset metathesis • dreater swying • Rhyme metathesis • A hunk of jeep • Stemberger: more than 90% of ordering speech errors invert O-O, C-C • omission of entire syllable • unanímity  unámity, treméndously  trémenly, specifícity  specífity

9. Restrictions on coarticulation • Phonetic coarticulation effects generally restricted to tautosyllabic contexts • e.g. In French, onset but not coda consonants coarticulate with a tautosyllabic vowel, whether or not other consonants intervene • e.g. in oucri [u.ki], k shows significant effects from the i, despite the intervening liquid (Rialland 1994:144). • English r-coloring

10. Phonological rules • English aspiration • [ph]it : s[p]it • dis[t]end : dis[th]aste • Nickname formation • Andy, *Andry (Kenstowicz 1994)

11. Poetics • Many languages employ syllable-counting meters, e.g. Sanskrit anuʂʈubh (4 x 8 σ) • Rigveda 10.90.12 (Sacrifice of the primeval giant Purusha) • brāhmaņo [a]sya mukham āsīd, • His mouth was the priest, • bāhū rāĵaniah krtah • His two arms were made the warrior, • ūrū tad asya yad vayšyah • His two thighs were the farmer, • padbhyām šūdro aĵāyata. • From his two feet the dog-eater was born.

12. Writing systems • Some Linear B renditions of Mycenean Greek: • U qe [kwe] ‘and’ • YcMt qa-si-re-u [gwasileus] ‘king’ • yZn ~ yZ wa-na(-ka) [wanaks] ‘king’ • q.> a-ko-ro [agros] ‘field’ vs q/> a-ku-ro [arguros] ‘silver’

13. Evidence for syllabic constituents • Onset vs Rhyme • English L-allomorphy • Blends (see next slides) • Rhyme • common domain of poetic rhyme • Syllable weight • Onset • Buenos Aires Spanish y ž: ley ‘law’ vs. ležes ‘laws’ • Pig Latin? • Nucleus • Japanese -rV- language game? • Coda • English glottalization/unrelease (e.g. hat, Atlantic vs. atrocious) • German devoicing (Freun[t] ‘friend (m)’ vs. Freun[d]in ‘friend (f)’, glau[p]lich) • assuming that disjoint environments aren’t allowed, we need the Coda

14. σσ O R O R N C N C k r i n t g l u p th Blends • Experiment 1 • Question • Do Onsets and Rimes exist (as suggested by e.g. brunch vs. *blunch)? • Method • Train subjects to combine pairs of well-formed English nonce monosyllables (such as krint and glupth) into a new monosyllable that contains parts of both. • Results • responses like krupth (Onset kr- of the first syllable and Rime -upth of the second) were produced far more often than any other possible combination. • Conclusion • The natural break within English syllables is immediately before the vowel (i.e. Onset vs. Rime). Experiments from Treiman 1983

15. Blends • Experiment 2 • Hypothesis • If a syllable is composed of Onset + Rime, then artificial games that keep these units intact should be easier to learn than games that break up the syllables in a different way. • Method • Subjects taught 2 types of word games: • Blend the Onset of a nonce CCVCC syllable with the Rime of another • e.g. fl-irz + gr-uns fl-uns • Combine non-constituents (f-runs, flins, flir-s). • Results • Game 1 was learned with fewer errors than was Games 2. • Conclusion • Speakers have access to the constituents O and R. Experiments from Treiman 1983

16. Syllabification • Q: Are syllables part of the lexical entries of words? • A: Since syllable structure appears to be predictable, we want to say that it is assigned by rule. • Q: What rules do we need to assign syllabic structures? • Kahn 1976 et seq.: • attach nuclei • attach onsets • attach codas • cope with whatever’s left over • ordering onset attachment before coda attachment derives onset maximisation

17. The basic procedure

18. UR SR gloss t-sʌbr tisʌbri ‘break’, 2masc imf. t-sʌbr-i tisʌbri 2f y-sʌbr yisʌbri 3m t-sʌbr tisʌbri 3f n-sʌbr nisʌbri 1pl t-sʌbr-u tisʌbru 2pl y-sʌbr-u yisʌbru 3pl zʌ-t-sbʌr zʌtsibʌr 2m neg imf zʌ-t-sbʌr-i zʌtsibʌri 2f neg imf zʌ-y-sbʌr zʌysibʌr 3m neg imf zʌ-t-sbʌr zʌtsibʌr 3f neg imf zʌ-n-sbʌr zʌnsibʌr 1pl neg imf zʌ-t-sbʌr-u zʌtsibʌru 2pl neg imf zʌ-y-sbʌr-u zʌysibʌru 3pl neg imf Harari (K and K 1977) <härär bira>

19. Vowel hiatus • Generally interpreted as subcase of requirement that all syllables must have an onset • Glottal stop insertion: [/A/t] ‘art’, etc. • Article allomorphy • Glide insertion and r-insertion?

20. Conclusions • There is extensive evidence for the abstract prosodic elements σ, O, N, C, R. • Syllable structure is normally predictable, and can be derived by a relatively simple set of rules. • The ordering of these rules can generate effects such as Onset Maximisation and location of epenthetic vowels.

21. References Bagemihl, Bruce. 1989. The crossing constraint and ‘backwards languages’. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 7.4:481-549. Brown, Roger & David McNeill. 1966. The “tip-of-the-tongue” phenomenon. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 5:325-337. Fromkin, Victoria. 1971. The non-anomalous nature of anomalous utterances. Language 47:27-52. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tip_of_the_tongue http://www.smithsrisca.demon.co.uk/speech-errors.html Kahn, Daniel. 1976. Syllable-based generalizations in English phonology. Doctoral dissertation, MIT. [Published 1980 New York: Garland Press.] Kenstowicz, Michael and Charles Kisseberth. 1977. Generative phonology. New York: Academic Press. Mehler, J., J. Dommergues, Uli Frauenfelder, and J. Segui. 1981. The syllable’s role in speech segmentation. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 20:298-305. Plénat, Marc. 1995. Une approche prosodique de la morphologie du verlan. Lingua 95:97-129. Rialland, Annie. 1994. The phonology and phonetics of extrasyllabicity in French. In Patricia A. Keating, ed., Phonological Structure and Phonetic Form. Papers in Laboratory Phonology 3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 136-159. Stemberger, Joseph. 1983. Speech errors and theoretical phonology: a review. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Linguistics Club. Steriade, Donca 1988. Gemination and the Proto-Romance Syllable Schift. Advances in Romance Linguistics, edited by David Birdsong & Jean-Pierre Montreuil, 371-409. Dordrecht: Foris. Treiman, Rebecca. 1983. The structure of spoken syllables: Evidence from novel word games. Cognition 15:49-74. Vaux, Bert. 1997. The Cwyzhy Dialect of Abkhaz. Harvard Working Papers in Linguistics 6, Susumu Kuno, Bert Vaux, and Steve Peter, eds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Linguistics Department. Vaux, Bert. 2003. Syllabification in Armenian, Universal Grammar, and the lexicon. Linguistic Inquiry 34.1:91-125.

22. Intervocalic C sequences • A priori, it’s not obvious how to syllabify intervocalic Cs • Oft-invoked principle: Onset Maximisation • Problems: • stress • vowel quality • morpheme boundaries • phonotactics • ambisyllabicity • merry, happy…