Markedness conflation in Optimality Theory

Abstract

Markedness distinctions can be ignored. For example, in some languages stress avoids central vowels, and falls on high peripheral vowels, yet in the Uralic language Nganasan central and high peripheral vowels are treated in the same way: stress avoids both types equally. Such ' conflation ' of markedness categories is not only language-specific, but also phenomenon-specific. In contrast, dominance relations in markedness hierarchies are universal ; e.g. stress never seeks out a central vowel when a high peripheral vowel is available. This article argues that both language-specific conflation and universal markedness relations can be expressed in Optimality Theory. Constraints that refer to a markedness hierarchy must be freely rankable and mention a contiguous range of the hierarchy, including the most marked element. The empirical focus is sonority-driven stress in Nganasan and Kiriwina. In addition, Prince & Smolensky's (1993) fixed ranking theory of markedness hierarchies is shown to be unable to produce the full range of attested conflations.

Sonority-Driven Stress does not Exist

“…For descriptions that report sonority influence, the default position of stress is uniformly reported to fall on the penult in disyllabic words (Cardona 1965, de Lacy 2002, Mistry 1997, Cardona & Suthar 2003, Doctor 2004, Schiering & van der Hulst 2010. There is disagreement about stress position in trisyllabic words.…”

“…The central vowel [ə] is realized as [ʌ] when it is stressed (Patel & Mody 1960, Lambert 1971, Nair 1979. Allophonic alternations between high peripheral and non-peripheral vowels [í ú]~[ɪ ʊ] are also reported to be conditioned by stress (Cardona 1965, de Lacy 2002: the non-peripheral allophones appear in non-final open syllables, except when they are stressed. Therefore, allophony provides extremely important evidence for the location of metrical heads.…”

“…Cardona 1965, Adenwala 1968, Mistry 1997, de Lacy 2002, Cardona & Suthar 2003, Doctor 2004, Schiering & van der Hulst 2010, Modi 2013). I will show that stress in Gujarati is not sensitive to vowel sonority, based on acoustic evidence.…”

“…There are several theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical implications of this finding (see §6 for discussion). Most importantly, it casts doubt on the existence of sonority-driven stress because Gujarati is the most extensively described case (de Lacy 2002(de Lacy , 2006(de Lacy , 2007.…”

“…A 'sonority-driven' stress system is one where the relative sonority of syllabic nuclei helps determines the optimal stress-bearing unit; the universal sonority hierarchy is given in (1) (Kenstowicz 1997, de Lacy 2002, 2007.…”