On silent markedness

Abstract

Empty categories – positions in phonological representations that have no direct phonetic counterpart – are (still) controversial in phonological theory. In this paper we give the main arguments for assuming such positions and we furthermore establish a markedness hierarchy for empty positions: some of them are stronger (‘more marked’) than others, and we can derive this from a combination of Element Theory and Turbidity Theory. We illustrate our point with Italian and Dutch dialects, and point out that the phonological hierarchy of empty positions may correspond to a hierarchy of syntactic positions.

Empty morphemes in Dutch dialect atlases: Reducing morphosyntactic variation by refining emptiness typology

“…Even if there is no trace of the marker itself in the acoustic signal, the phonological behavior of adjacent segments suggests that this inflectional marker is actually equipped with some phonological content. This is supported by the observation that the 1sg inflectional marker can prevent word-final devoicing to apply: whereas word-final devoicing applies systematically throughout the whole Dutch speaking area, if we focus on prs.1sg forms and their diatopic distribution in the SAND, MAND and GTRP atlases, many exceptions can be found (van Marle & Zonneveld 1980;Zonneveld 1982;Goeman 1999;van Oostendorp 2005;Cavirani & Van Oostendorp 2017). An example of this exceptional behaviour is represented by the dialect of Tilligte, in which word-final fricatives resist devoicing only when (following long vowels and) occurring root-finally in prs.1sg verbs.…”

“…Furthermore, syncretic patterns can result from the partial deletion of a marker, rather than of the entire marker (in this case, it would be impossible to talk about zero morpheme). 2 See Leu (2008) for a list of empty elements in syntax, Trommer (2012) for morphology, and Bendjaballah & Heiden (2008) and Cavirani & van Oostendorp (2017) for phonology. 3 Considering the enrichment of the morphosyntactic representation of the word proposed by Distributed Morphology (Halle & Marantz 1993), the understanding of the role silence plays in morphosyntax is essential.…”

Representing the moraic nasal in Japanese: evidence from Tōkyō, Ōsaka and Kagoshima

“…This is not the only work to use emptiness in some form; seeHarris & Gussmann (1998, 2002 andJohn (2014) for discussion of emptiness in various frameworks and seePolgárdi (2015),Cavirani & van Oostendorp (2017) & Zimmermann (2017 for three recent approaches to using emptiness in OT.36 A reviewer questions how antepenultimate accent is derived. FollowingYoshida Y.…”