Phonological alternations are often specific to morphosyntactic context. For example, stress shift in English occurs in the presence of some suffixes, -al, but not others, -ing: "pa.rent, pa."ren.tal, "pa.ren.ting. In some cases a phonological process applies only in words of certain lexical categories. Previous theories have stipulated that such morphosyntactically conditioned phonology is word-bounded. In this paper we present a number of long-distance morphologically conditioned phonological effects, cases where phonological processes within one word are conditioned by another word or the presence of a morpheme in another word. We provide a model, Cophonologies by Phase, which extends Cophonology Theory, intended to capture word-internal and lexically specified phonological alternations, to cyclically generated syntactic constituents. We show that Cophonologies by Phase makes better predictions about the long-distance morphologically conditioned phonological effects we find across languages than previous frameworks. Furthermore, Cophonologies by Phase derives such effects without requiring the phonological component to directly reference syntactic features or structure.
While it lacks a definite article, Mandarin makes a principled distinction between unique and anaphoric definites: unique definites are realized with a bare noun, and anaphoric definites are realized with a demonstrative, except in subject position. The following proposals account for these facts: (a) bare nouns achieve definite interpretations via a last-resort type-shifting operator ι, which has a unique definite meaning; (b) demonstratives can occur as anaphoric definites because they have a semantic argument beyond their nominal restriction that can be filled by an index; and (c) bare nominal subjects are topics. A principle called Index! requires that indexical expressions be used whenever possible. Mandarin is contrasted with Cantonese, which, like English, is shown to have access to an ambiguous definite article.
Object markers alternate between prefix and suffix position in the Thetogovela dialect of Moro, an underdocumented Kordofanian language of Sudan. Although the alternation appears to depend on the morphosyntactic category of verb forms, we show that it actually follows from the tone properties of these verb forms. Verb stems which are usually marked with a default, phonologically predictable leftmost high tone select object marker prefixes. The high-toned object prefix appears inside the stem, and its high tone serves as the default tone of the stem, obviating the need for inserted high tone. Verb stems which impose a particular melodic tone pattern select object marker suffixes. High-toned object markers are incompatible with melodic tone patterns, and cannot surface as prefixes within the stem. The data are analyzed as a case of phonology conditioning prefix placement and overriding standard suffix position. Although such phonologically determined mobile affixes are rare in the world's languages, the Moro case provides a new case of affix mobility based on a novel property, tone, and it underscores the need to incorporate such cases into the architecture of grammatical systems. INTRODUCTION.The position of affixes within a word is correlated with a variety of different factors. On the one hand, morphosyntactic analyses relate affix position with syntactic derivation (Baker 1985), reflected in scope relationships (Rice 2000). On the other hand, in some languages, the positions of affixes are fixed relative to one another, sometimes violating scope relationships (Hyman 2003, Caballero 2010, and motivating the use of templates or fixed order stipulations (Inkelas 1993, Hyman 2003, Good 2007. There are also cases in which phonological factors appear to impact affix or clitic position, often driven by syllable structure
Numeral classifier languages distinguish definite noun phrases licensed by uniqueness from those licensed by familiarity. Unique definites are expressed by bare nouns or null pronouns, while familiar definites are expressed by indexicals such as demonstrative descriptions or overt pronouns. This generalization parallels the observation by Schwarz (2009) that German distinguishes unique versus familiar or anaphoric definiteness in its article system. The difference between the two kinds of definites can be reduced to the presence of a semantic index in the case of familiar definites. As familiar definites occur in most E-type contexts, including donkey anaphora, and uniqueness definites are not possible in these contexts, these facts provide support to dynamic analyses of E-type anaphora and pose problems for uniqueness-based approaches, such as the theory of Elbourne (2013).
This paper presents a description and analysis of the tonal system of Moro, a Kordofanian language of Sudan, showing that the distribution of H(igh) tone is sensitive to a number of morphological and prosodic factors. First, we demonstrate that the distribution of H on nouns is sensitive to the OCP, both within roots and with affixes. Nouns also exhibit lexical distinctions between forms that exhibit unbounded rightward spreading of H and those that show no spreading. We model this distinction using cophonologies. While the distribution of H on Moro verb stems bears someWe are immensely grateful to our Moro speakers, Elyasir Julima and Ikhlas Elahmer, for sharing their language with us. We thank audiences at the 45 th Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, the Annual Conference on African Linguistics 37 and 40, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Florida, the University of California, Santa Barbara and Harvard University for useful feedback and comments. We appreciate in-depth comments and discussion from Eric Baković, Larry Hyman, Victor Manfredi, Andrew Nevins, David Odden, and participants in the San Diego Phonology Interest Group and UCSD Phonetics Laboratory meetings. The members of the Moro Language Project, particularly Farrell Ackerman and George Gibbard, helped in numerous, immeasurable ways in both checking the data and refining the analysis. Finally, two anonymous reviewers and the associate editors, Michael Kenstowicz and Junko Itô, provided us with challenging comments and advice for improving the paper, for which we are grateful. Portions of Sect. 4 of this paper will appear with a slightly different analysis under the title 'Syllable weight and high tone in Moro' in Proceedings from the Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society 45. This material is based upon research supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0745973 'Moro Language Project'. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation (NSF). P. Jenks ( ) Department of Linguistics, Harvard University, 3rd Floor, Boylston Hall, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA e-mail: pjenks@fas.harvard.edu S. Rose Department of Linguistics, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive #108, La Jolla, CA 92093-0108, USA e-mail: rose@ling.ucsd.edu 212 P. Jenks, S. Rose similarities to nouns, crucial differences emerge. Rightward H tone spreading is binary on verbs, and sensitive to the weight of the syllable in terms of both the presence of an onset and a coda. We model this effect as H tone spreading within a binary foot. Furthermore, unlike nouns, underlying representations play little role in the distribution of H on verb roots. H tone is predictably distributed within a morphological category, the derived stem (D-stem), similar to a constituent recognized in Bantu languages (e.g. Downing 2000). Finally, we analyze competition between H associated with ...
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