Amphichronic Explanation and the Life Cycle of Phonological Processes

Bermúdez-Otero, Ricardo

doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199232819.013.014

Cited by 70 publications

(57 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…Levantine vowel epenthesis, by contrast, shows few if any restrictions on its application; it seems to be a process at a relatively early stage of its life-cycle, in the sense of Bermúdez-Otero (2014). It applies to new loanwords ([filim] 'film'), and between words in novel phrases (/dist ӡdiːd/ → [distiӡdiːd] 'new cauldron').…”

Section: Closed Syllable Shortening Vs Vowel Epenthesismentioning

confidence: 99%

Phonetic neutralization in Palestinian Arabic vowel shortening, with implications for lexical organization

Hall

2017

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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This study acoustically compares lexically short vowels in Palestinian Arabic to vowels that are underlyingly long, but have undergone closed syllable shortening, a phonological process affecting certain CV:CC sequences (as in /faːq-ʃ/ → faqʃ 'woke-negative'; /ӡaːb-l-ak/ → ӡablak 'brought to you'). In a study of word pairs produced by 74 speakers, the two vowel types were found to be indistinguishable in duration. Speakers differ as to the contexts in which they apply shortening: some shorten before the negative suffix /-ʃ/, but not the dative suffix /-l/, likely due to paradigm leveling. The results are compared to earlier studies finding incomplete neutralization in Arabic vowel epenthesis, to identify factors that affect completeness of neutralization. It appears that orthography is not an important factor, but that morphologized or lexicalized processes produce more complete neutralization. It is proposed that allomorphs produced by more fossilized processes are more weakly linked in the mental lexicon, and that incomplete neutralization of vowel quantity in particular would require linkage through the abstract CV word pattern.

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Section: Closed Syllable Shortening Vs Vowel Epenthesismentioning

confidence: 99%

Phonetic neutralization in Palestinian Arabic vowel shortening, with implications for lexical organization

Hall

2017

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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“…Bermúdez--Otero 2015) provides an account of how a sound change might develop over the history of a language, from its beginnings in the pressures of speaking and hearing, through its progress to a cognitively--controlled process and maturation into a categorical phenomenon, to its final resting--place as a static lexical or morphological pattern. It has been the subject of increased research in recent times, particularly in the work of Bermúdez--Otero under the rubric of Stratal Optimality Theory (OT); this theory of phonology relates synchronic grammar (phonology and morphology) to diachronic development, in a way that has proven fruitful for accounting for synchronic opacity, one of the major challenges to traditional OT.…”

Section: The Life--cycle Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…"Advanced" in this sense may refer to several phenomena: the two aspects relevant to the LCM are rule generalization, and domain narrowing in the life cycle. Language families stemming from a common origin can provide a valuable source of longitudinal evidence, spanning centuries, for testing the LCM's prediction that a change may be seen to progress along the life cycle at different rates in different varieties, as demonstrated by Ramsammy (2015) and Bermúdez--Otero (2015).…”

Section: Dialect Continuamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Bermúdez--Otero 2015) provides an account of how a sound change might develop over the history of a language, from its beginnings in the pressures of speaking and hearing, through its progress to a cognitively--controlled process and maturation into a categorical phenomenon, to its final resting--place as a lexical or morphological pattern. It has been the subject of increased research in recent times, but has faced strikingly few challenges to its diachronic aspects, notably its predictions of unidirectionality and cycle--based dialectal splits.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Examining the life cycle of phonological processes: considerations for historical research

Sen

2016

Papers in Historical Phonology

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The life cycle of phonological processes (e.g. Bermúdez--Otero 2015) provides an account of how a sound change might develop over the history of a language, from its beginnings in the pressures of speaking and hearing, through its progress to a cognitively--controlled process and maturation into a categorical phenomenon, to its final resting--place as a lexical or morphological pattern. It has been the subject of increased research in recent times, but has faced strikingly few challenges to its diachronic aspects, notably its predictions of unidirectionality and cycle--based dialectal splits. Furthermore, the cognitive mechanisms rooted in morpheme--based learning which are required to predict domain narrowing (phrase > word > stem) rather than broadening need to be tested through child (and adult) acquisition studies. This paper examines how a historical phonologist might go about interrogating the life--cycle model using extensive historical data spanning several centuries, and methodically ascertaining what the model predicts in order to know what to look for. The paper concludes by briefly addressing some of the many other questions raised by the model which have faced comparatively little investigation given the purported pervasiveness of the life cycle. The life--cycle modelThe life cycle of phonological processes (e.g. Bermúdez--Otero 2015) provides an account of how a sound change might develop over the history of a language, from its beginnings in the pressures of speaking and hearing, through its progress to a cognitively--controlled process and maturation into a categorical phenomenon, to its final resting--place as a static lexical or morphological pattern. It has been the subject of increased research in recent times, particularly in the work of Bermúdez--Otero under the rubric of Stratal Optimality Theory (OT); this theory of phonology relates synchronic grammar (phonology and morphology) to diachronic development, in a way that has proven

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“…This is an important point, which deserves more detailed consideration than we are able to give within the confines of this paper. For a discussion on how the life cycle relates to the issue of modularity in grammar, the reader is referred to Chapter 2 in Strycharczuk (2012) and to Bermú dez-Otero (2013 …”

Section: O N C L U S I O Nmentioning

confidence: 99%

Phonetic evidence on phonology–morphosyntax interactions: Sibilant voicing in Quito Spanish

et al. 2013

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This paper presents new experimental data on Quito Spanish /s/-voicing, which has attracted considerable interest from theoretical phonologists owing to the overapplication of voicing to word-final pre-vocalic /s/. Bermúdez-Otero (2011) singles out Quito /s/-voicing as an important test case for discriminating between two competing theories of phonology–morphosyntax interactions: Output–output correspondence and cyclicity. Overapplication in /s/-voicing cannot be captured using correspondence relationship to a base form, which challenges Output–output correspondence as a theory of opacity. However, the argument only holds insofar as word-final pre-vocalic /s/-voicing is considered phonological, as Output–output correspondence can account for /s/-voicing assuming that it only applies in the phonetics (Colina 2009). We discuss the diverging empirical predictions concerning categoricity and gradience in the surface realisation of voicing processes. We further test these predictions based on acoustic data from seven speakers of Quito Spanish. Evidence from speech rate manipulations shows that some speakers produce more voicing during frication at normal speech rate, compared to fast, maintaining a stable voicing ratio across different speech rates. We argue that for these speakers, /s/-voicing is optional but categorical, and so it ought to be analysed as phonological. This result presents a challenge to the Output–output correspondence approach, but can be accommodated within cyclicity.

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Amphichronic Explanation and the Life Cycle of Phonological Processes

Cited by 70 publications

References 28 publications

Phonetic neutralization in Palestinian Arabic vowel shortening, with implications for lexical organization

Phonetic neutralization in Palestinian Arabic vowel shortening, with implications for lexical organization

Examining the life cycle of phonological processes: considerations for historical research

Phonetic evidence on phonology–morphosyntax interactions: Sibilant voicing in Quito Spanish

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