Category‐Specific Effects

Abstract

The lexical categories noun, verb , and adjective are traditionally distinguished by means of distributional (syntactic) and morphological criteria. But in some languages, lexical categories also have distinct phonological behavior. This point has been discussed by Cohen (1964), Postal (1968), Kenstowicz and Kisseberth (1977), Smith (1997, 2001), Myers (2000), and Bobaljik (2008), among others. However, the cross‐linguistic typology of phonological differences among lexical categories has not received much systematic investigation.

Generalization of French and Portuguese plural alternations and initial syllable protection

“…In the study of phonotactics, initial syllables show a wider range of contrasts in a variety of languages (Steriade 1994;Beckman 1997Beckman , 1998, and thus pattern with other strong positions, such as stressed syllables, roots, and nouns (Smith 2002(Smith , 2010. Strong positions are also subject to augmentation effects; this should be observable in initial syllables, and the prediction can be tested in future work.…”

“…In Optimality Theory, faithfulness constraints work towards the preservation of contrasts, especially in positions of prominence (Smith 2002(Smith , 2010. Prominence can be established in several different ways, e.g.…”

Asymmetric Correlations between English Verb Transitivity and Stress

“…However, unlike the prosodic environment account, this approach has no predictive power. There is no limit to the types of phonological behaviour that can be a↵ected by lexical category, despite the fact that most cases of category-specific phenomena involve prosodic and suprasegmental features (Smith 2011). In addition, the direction of the asymmetry cannot be predicted: there is no particular reason for nouns to be more trochaic than verbs, nor for intransitive verbs to be trochaic than their transitive counterparts.…”

“…Among the generalisations Smith observes in her survey of category-specific e↵ects (Smith 2011) is that nouns tend to display more phonological privilege than verbs, in the sense that nouns tend to support more phonological contrasts (F M), while verbs undergo more neutralisation to unmarked structure (M F). Based on this cross-linguistic tendency, Smith (2011) suggests that there is a hierarchy of phonological privilege, Noun>Adjective>Verb.…”

“…Based on this cross-linguistic tendency, Smith (2011) suggests that there is a hierarchy of phonological privilege, Noun>Adjective>Verb.…”