Two types of parasitic assimilation

This paper describes and analyses the vowel-harmony system of the Kordofanian language Moro. Moro has a cross-height dominant-recessive raising harmony system in which high vowels and a central mid vowel trigger harmony, while peripheral mid vowels and a central low vowel are harmony targets. Schwas can co-occur with any of the vowels, appearing inert to harmony. Yet when schwas occur alone in a morpheme, some trigger harmony and some do not. We suggest that an original ATR-harmony system shifted to a height system via merger and centralisation, producing two distinct central vowels, rather than a single schwa. One vowel patterns with the higher vowels in triggering harmony, and the other patterns with the lower vowels. We also propose that a particle-based representation offers the best characterisation of the groupings of target and trigger vowels in the language.

Section: Possible Analyses Of Short Central /ə/: One Vowel or Two?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Moro vowel harmony: implications for transparency and representations

Ritchart

Rose

2017

“…While this might appear to be a morphological condition, we suggest here that it instead illustrates a positional licensing effect: schwa is possible only in prominent positions, including not only roots (as seen above), but also final syllables. While initial syllables are typically associated with prominence (Beckman 1997, 1998), word-final positions have also been independently argued to be associated with enhanced faithfulness (Barnes 2006, Jurgec 2011). There is independent evidence for this in Slovenian: the contrast between the two low tense vowels [ʌ] and [a] is limited to word-final closed syllables.…”

Section: Multiple Interactions: Slovenianmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This paper focuses on a subset of such morphologically derived environment effects (MDEEs) that present particular challenges for existing accounts of morphophonological interaction because they involve long-distance interactions between affixation and root-internal segments. In Dutch, for example, some speakers produce [ɹ] in recent English loanwords, but the native segment [ʀ] in derived words (Jurgec 2011: §3.4.2, 2014).

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Indexation to stems and words

Jurgec

Bjorkman

2018

Self Cite

This paper presents an extension of indexed constraints, such that they can apply not only to individual morphemes, but also to potentially complex constituents such as the stem. This modification allows us to capture a class of long-distance morphologically derived environment effects (MDEEs) that have been previously unexplained. MDEEs typically involve an exceptional phonological pattern that is lost under affixation. Formally, MDEEs are predicted if complex constituents such as stems are treated as lexically exceptional only when every morpheme contained within them is independently exceptional. This approach further predicts asymmetries between bare roots and affixed words, between roots and affixes, and between inflected and derived words. All other things being equal, the first of each pair is more likely to be exceptional in more contexts.

“…Most analyses of labial harmony have converged on two separate generalisations. First, labial harmony is parasitic, in that its application depends on the agreement of some other feature(s), in many cases, vowel height (Ultan 1973: 55, Steriade 1981, Cole & Trigo 1988, van der Hulst & Smith 1988, Cole & Kisseberth 1994: §5, van der Hulst & van der Weijer 1995: 523, Finley 2008b: §9, Jurgec 2011: ch. 8).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Vowel dispersion and Kazakh labial harmony

McCollum

2018

This paper uses novel data showing gradient labial harmony in Kazakh to compare Kaun's (1995) feature-based analysis with a dispersion-based analysis in a Maximum Entropy Harmonic Grammar. The paper demonstrates that the dispersion-based analysis better fits the Kazakh data than Kaun's analysis, and then extends it to account for four languages with harmony patterns different from that in Kazakh. The paper also argues that the dispersion-based account provides a better analysis of the typology of labial harmony than Kaun's feature-based analysis.