Shift in Harmonic Serialism

Abstract

Harmonic Serialism is a serial version of Optimality Theory in which Gen is restricted to one operation at a time. What constitutes one operation has been a key question in the literature. This paper asks whether shift, in which a feature moves/flops from one segment to another, should be considered an operation. We review three pieces of evidence that suggest so. We show that only the one-step shift analysis can capture the tonal patterns in Kibondei and the segmental patterns in Halkomelem; grammars that rely on spreading or floating features cannot. We complement these findings with a factorial typology in which the one-step shifting grammars predict several attested patterns that the grammars without one-step shift cannot. We conclude that shift must be a single operation in Harmonic Serialism.

Shift is derived

“…The analysis derives progressive high tone shift as linkingþdelinking and regressive high tone shift as delinkingþlinking. It thus invalidates the claims by Gietz et al (2023) that Harmonic Serialism cannot model high tone shift in Kibondei or regressive shift from final to penultimate syllables without modeling shift as a single-step operation. Their latter claim is an artifact of their typology not allowing floating features (see Section 4 for discussion).…”

“…This contradicts the ranking required to prevent the verb-final high tone in [á-fisá h!é:a] from shifting regressively (15b). I do not claim that every analysis of Kibondei that assumes a single-step shift operation fails, but the analysis presented by Gietz et al (2023) does.…”

“…While the present analysis benefits from a more complete data set, the analysis Gietz et al (2023) present cannot even account for the data in the sources they cite, Cassimjee & Kisseberth (1998) and Lee & Lee (2002). Specifically, their analysis incorrectly predicts regressive shift whenever word-final high tones cannot shift into the following word, as in [á-fisá h!é:a] 'CL.1 is hiding money' (10d); this specific example is discussed by Lee & Lee (2002: 346).…”

“…(2) Shift as linkingþdelinking (a) or delinkingþlinking (b) By contrast, Gietz et al (2023) identify shift mappings that they argue cannot be modeled by linkingþdelinking or delinkingþlinking. On that basis, they conclude that HS cannot adequately model shift unless GEN is equipped with a basic operation that implements shift in one step (hereafter, a SINGLE-STEP SHIFT OPERATION).…”

“…While Gietz et al ( 2023) argue for the latter, this paper refutes their arguments and provides evidence supporting a multi-step analysis of shift. Specifically, it demonstrates that shift in Kibondei and Halkomelem, the languages analyzed by Gietz et al (2023), does not require a single-step shift operation and that the analyses they present are empirically inadequate. Typological modeling not only reinforces the result that a single-step shift operation is superfluous but demonstrates that grammars with such an operation undergenerate with respect to the attested typology.…”