Phonotactic probability and the Māori passive

Abstract

Two analyses of Māori passives and gerunds have been debated in the literature. Both assume that the thematic consonants in these forms are unpredictable. This paper reports on three computational experiments designed to test whether this assumption is sound. The results suggest that thematic consonants are predictable from the phonotactic probabilities of their active counterparts. This study has potential implications for allomorphy in other Polynesian languages. It also exemplifies the benefits of using computational methods in linguistic analyses.

Probabilistic phonology

“…Contingency tables documenting consonant co-occurrence and vowel co-occurrence in roots have supported a host of theoretical pursuits in harmony and disharmony phenomena (Mester 1986;Yip 1989;Harlow 1991;Padgett 1995;Alderete & Finley 2016). Finally, a number of studies have focused on how stem phonotactics guides morphological operations (Zuraw 2000;Ernestus & Baayen 2003;Jones 2008).…”

Untitled

“…In phonology, phonotactics has been used as a basis of classifying unusual segments (Francois 2010), proposing new theories of dissimilation and root co-occurrence restrictions (Berg 1989, Coetzee & Pater 2008, Harlow 1991, Mester 1986, Uhlenbeck 1950, and documenting language-internal pressures that motivate phonological processes (Blust 2007). Recent work on Austronesian languages has even shown how phonotactics impacts morphology, as in how exceptions to the well-known phonotactic pattern of nasal substitution in Tagalog guides novel word productions (Zuraw 2000), or how the phonotactic probabilities of stem-final consonants can be used as a basis for predicting morphologically derived forms in Maori (Jones 2008).…”