Palatalization and “strong i” across Inuit dialects

Compton, Richard; Dresher, B. Elan

doi:10.1353/cjl.2011.0020

Cited by 15 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…8 In cases of absolute neutralization, two phonemes that appear identical on the surface may need to be distinguished underlyingly because they exhibit different phonological patterning. For instance, 'strong i' and 'weak i' in some Inuit dialects are both realized phonetically as [i], but one triggers palatalization and the other does not (Archangeli & Pulleyblank 1994;Compton & Dresher 2011).…”

Section: What Counts As Contrastive and Wherementioning

confidence: 99%

Marginal contrasts and the Contrastivist Hypothesis

Hall

2016

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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The Contrastivist Hypothesis (CH;Hall 2007;Dresher 2009) holds that the only features that can be phonologically active in any language are those that serve to distinguish phonemes, which presupposes that phonemic status is categorical. Many researchers, however, demonstrate the existence of gradient relations. For instance, Hall (2009) quantifies these using the informationtheoretic measure of entropy (unpredictability of distribution) and shows that a pair of sounds may have an entropy between 0 (totally predictable) and 1 (totally unpredictable).We argue that the existence of such intermediate degrees of contrastiveness does not make the CH untenable, but rather offers insight into contrastive hierarchies. The existence of a continuum does not preclude categorical distinctions: a categorical line can be drawn between zero entropy (entirely predictable, and thus by the CH phonologically inactive) and non-zero entropy (at least partially contrastive, and thus potentially phonologically active). But this does not mean that intermediate degrees of surface contrastiveness are entirely irrelevant to the CH; rather, we argue, they can shed light on how deeply ingrained a phonemic distinction is in the phonological system. As an example, we provide a case study from Pulaar [ATR] harmony, which has previously been claimed to be problematic for the CH.

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Section: What Counts As Contrastive and Wherementioning

confidence: 99%

Marginal contrasts and the Contrastivist Hypothesis

Hall

2016

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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“…Similarly, a learner acquiring Northern Alaskan Iñupiaq must discover that there is a 'strong' [i] that palatalizes following consonants, as in (22a), and a 'weak ' [i] that (like the [u] in (22c)) does not, as in (22b) (Kaplan 1981, Compton andDresher 2011 [i] and the presence or absence of palatalization, in the same Saussurean sense in which it is arbitrary that 'house' ends in [u]. The learner must assign some feature to the phonological representations of words such as 'wound' and 'place' that will yield the correct palatalization effects; in Compton and Dresher's analysis, this means positing two distinct underlying phonemes, /i/ and /@/, distinguished by the presence or absence of the privative feature CORONAL.…”

Section: Monovalent Modifier Featuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reductio ad discrimen: Where features come from

Cowper

Hall²

2015

NLY

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This paper addresses two fundamental questions about the nature of formal features in phonology and morphosyntax: what is their expressive power, and where do they come from? To answer these questions, we begin with the most restrictive possible hypothesis (all features are privative, and are wholly dictated by Universal Grammar, with no room for cross-linguistic variation), and examine the extent to which empirical evidence from a variety of languages compels a retreat from this position. We argue that there is little to be gained by positing a universal set of specific features, and propose instead that the crucial contribution of UG is the language learner's ability to construct features by identifying correlations between contrasts at different levels of linguistic structure. This view resonates with current research on how the interaction between UG and external 'third factors' shapes the structure of language, while at the same time harking back to the Saussurean notion that contrast is the central function of linguistic representations.

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“…In certain cases, languages that undergo such a neutralization continue to exhibit phonological alternations that appear to be sensitive to the original contrast, even though it is no longer manifested in surface forms. Compton & Dresher (2011) describe one such case, where a distinction between historical */i/ and */@/ in Proto-Eskimo has been neutralized to surface [i] in many dialects of modern Inuit. In a subset of these dialects, however, instances of surface [i] that correspond to historical */i/ trigger palatalization of following consonants, while instances of [i] that correspond to historical */@/ do not.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Are neutral roots in Uyghur really neutral? Evaluating a covert phonemic contrast

Mayer

Major²,

Yakup³

2022

AMP

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This paper looks at the case of so-called neutral roots in Uyghur (Turkic: China), whose idiosyncratic behavior with respect to the backness harmony system has been analyzed as stemming from a covert vowel contrast. Based on considerations of the structural properties of the language and the results of an experimental study, we suggest that an analysis based on lexical exceptionality is more parsimonious than the traditional analysis, unifying the treatment of neutral roots with other cases of exceptionality in the harmony system and accounting for a relationship between the patterning of roots and their frequency. We close by discussing implications for covert contrast analyses in general.

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Palatalization and “strong i” across Inuit dialects

Cited by 15 publications

References 30 publications

Marginal contrasts and the Contrastivist Hypothesis

Marginal contrasts and the Contrastivist Hypothesis

Reductio ad discrimen: Where features come from

Are neutral roots in Uyghur really neutral? Evaluating a covert phonemic contrast

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