Stricture and Nasal Place Assimilation. Jaye Padgett

Transcription

1 Stricture and Nasal Place Assimilation Jaye Padgett

2 Stricture Stricture features determine the degree of constriction in the vocal tract; [son], [ cons], [cont] [-cont]: Verschluss im mediosagittalen Bereich

3 Standard Theory (McCarthy 1988)

4 Articulator Group

5 Argument for [cont] being independent of place of articulation Sagey 1986 In some languages, nasal consonants assimilate in place, but not stricture, to a following consonant Kpelle: /N + fela/ -> [mvela]

6 Stop-Fricative Asymmetry Nasals typically assimilate to stops Before fricatives, they most commonly don t assimiliate, receiving a default place delete assimilate, but simultaneously harden the fricative to a stop or an affricate When fricatives do assimilate to nasals in a language, they assimilate to stops also (does not obtain in reverse)

7 Explanation by articulator group Place assimilation derives *[+nas, +cons, +cont] ->nasal place assimilation to a fricative creates a nasalized fricative

8 Assimilation to stops works, however

9 Fallbeispiel: Englisch

10 Fallbeispiel: Englisch Assumption: Nasal is placeless underlyingly and receives coronal place by default rule

11 Fallbeispiel: Englisch Standard theory: [-cont] trigger would derive the same result

12 Fallbeispiel: Englisch But: would require the same stipulation for similar rules in many languages, without acknowledging the generalization across languages Simpler rules denote more natural processes -> predicts wrongly that the rule without the stipulation should be more common

13 Fallbeispiel: Englisch 2

14 Fallbeispiel: Englisch 2

15 Marking Condition Underspecification: Universal Redundancy Rule [+nas, +cons] -> [-cont] Nasal/Continuant Marking Condition: If [+nas, +cons], then [-cont] prohibits the assignment of only a [+cont] value -> allows the assimilation to an affricate (assumed to have a [-cont] and [+cont] specification) -> Nasal acquires both [cont] values

16 Assimilation to Affricates

17 No assimilation, default place assignment: Polish Default place assignment nasal consonant must bear its own place specification Polish: Place assimilation occurs before stops and affricates, nasal gliding occurs before fricatives and word-finally

18 No assimilation, default place assignment: Polish Nasal vowels a [o ] and e sequence of mid vowel and consonant, realizes as a sequence of oral vowel and nasal segment The nasal portion of a and e is realized as a place assimilated nasal stop before stops and affricates

19 No assimilation, default place assignment: Polish

20 No assimilation, default place assignment: Polish Before fricatives, the nasal segment surfaces as the nasalized glide w

21 No assimilation, default place assignment: Polish n undergoes a similar assimilation pattern, but also postlexically (domain of application across words) -> marking condition is in effect throughout the phonology of polish

22 No assimilation, default place assignment: Polish

23 No assimilation, default place assignment: Polish Gliding of m in casual speech only before a labial fricative

24 No assimilation, default place assignment: Polish OCP-related rule deletes the first two adjacent labial specifications The nasal cannot assimilate to a following labial fricative, and so it receives a place specification by default

25 No assimilation, deletion of the nasal: Zoque Pronominal prefix N assimilates in place to the following stop or affricate

26 No assimilation, deletion of the nasal: Zoque Before continuants, the nasal deletes (l here treated as [+cont])

27 No assimilation, deletion of the nasal: Zoque Nasals within stems do not undergo place assimilation

28 No assimilation, deletion of the nasal: Zoque Why does the nasal delete, instead of receiving a default place? Constraint prevents default place assignment

29 No assimilation, deletion of the nasal: Zoque Double-linked place node does not match the structural description of the constraint

30 No assimilation, deletion of the nasal: Zoque Alternative account: licensing condition Syllable can license exactly one onset place node N can exist by linking to an independently licensed place

31 Summary

32 Alternative Geometries α-node ( Oral Cavity node (Clements), Supralaryngeal node (Davis)) Allows for Place spread without [cont] spread

33 Alternative Geometries Separate placement of [cont] and the articulator

34 Alternative Geometries The two articulations of a complex segment may differ in stricture, which can easily be represented by geometry a

35 Alternative Principles A sequential constraint rather than a segmentinternal featural constraint? In some languages, nasals undergoing place assimilation do not appear before voiceless segments [voice] not grouped under place features Can stop/fricative asymmetry be explained similarly?

36 Alternative Principles Nasals may trigger voicing to a following consonant even without being place assimilated No definitive cases of post-nasal hardening without place assimilation No nasal deletion without place assimilation

37 Alternative Principles Sequential constraints are typically asymmetric Stop-fricative asymmetry also in progressive nasal place assimilation, since the relevant effect is segment-internal and should not be directional

38 Other Place Assimilations Place assimilation involving non-nasal consonants As expected by the articulator group, some evince stricture and place assimilation together A few seem, however, not to

39 Other Place Assimilations Sanskrit: word-final s assimilates in place to a following consonant Lardil: epenthetic consonants share place of articulation with a preceding (son.) consonant

40 Other Place Assimilations Sanskrit: Place assimilation is optional Where it does not occur, s in invariably reduced to placeless [h ] (the Visarga Rule ) Explanation: the only phonological rule is Visarga; [Фp] and [xk] are alternate realizations of effectively preaspirated [h p] and [hḳ], perhaps due to some overlap of aspiration and the oral closure gesture

41 Other Place Assimilations Lardil: how can [rṭ] be place-linked? ([l] is a stop in some languages) Two series of liquids: alveolar [l] and [r], apicodomal (retroflex) [r ] Epenthesis of a homorganic stop occurs following [l] and [r ], and fails after [r]

42 Other Place Assimilations Hales suggestion: epenthesis occurs, and [t] is then deleted by a late rule Articulator group explanation: epenthesis fails because [r] is [+cont] Suppose epenthesis involves the insertion of a [-son] (Root) node, with place features supplied by spreading from the sonorant

43 Other Place Assimilations -> Spreading from [r] is blocked because Lardil has no [+cont] obstruent (fricatives) [r ] has [l ] as an allophone If we have in fact phonological [l ], then there is no obvious problem involved with place-linking

44 Summary Interaction of place features and [cont] appears in a range of phonological phenomena. The articulator group geometry assumes that [cont] is placed under the place node, and research to the question of other oral stricture features ([cons], [appr]) is suggested.

45 Literature Hall, Alan T. Phonologie Eine Einführung. Berlin, New York: De Gruyter, Padgett, Jaye. Stricture and Nasal Place Assimilation. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 12, 1994: