Derived environment effects and logarithmic perception

Abstract

Phonologically-derived environment effects (henceforth, PDEEs) describe patterns where a phonological process P applies only if accompanied by another phonological process P’. This paper proposed that PDEEs follow from the hypothesis that the input-output distance is perceived logarithmically: this predicts that a feature change may be less salient perceptually and therefore represent a smaller violation of faithfulness if accompanied by another feature change. This theory has two desirable consequences: (i) it reconciles the analysis of PDEEs with the hypothesis of a preference for minimal input-output changes in phonological grammar and (ii) it derives a number of constraints on the features that can interact in PDEEs, therefore providing a restrictive account of the typology.

The phonetics and phonology of lenition: A Campidanese Sardinian case study

“…These results bear on one of the overarching theoretical questions discussed in Section 1.3: To what extent can the effects of lenition on consonant manner be reduced to effects on duration? The question is important for Campidanese because describing lenition as changes in consonant manner has been problematic for virtually all phonological theories and requires special theoretical mechanisms (Bolognesi, 1998;Lubowicz, 2002;Hayes & White, 2015;Storme, 2018). The results presented here justify cautious optimism that most of the changes in manner associated with Campidanese lenition at the phrasal and utterance levels (though not post-pausally) causally reduce to changes in duration.…”

“…Our data reveal several ambiguous or overlapping contrasts, such as the distinction between word-initial /T/ and /D/ series: Both are often realized as approximants phrase medially, and in post-pausal positions there are only probabilistic differences in voicing and fricated release. Further investigation of these and other contrasts could plausibly help settle questions about their precise featural specifications, which have generated a fair bit of disagreement and theoretical difficulties in the phonological literature (Virdis, 1978;Bolognesi, 1998;Lubowicz, 2002;Hayes & White, 2015;Storme, 2018).…”

Intervocalic lenition is not phonological: evidence from Campidanese Sardinian

“…This, in a nutshell, is the saltation problem: lenition constraints must be ranked high enough to compel changes to voiceless stops, while somehow failing to compel the same changes to voiced stops. The pattern has been used to argue for a variety of wholesale changes to 655 Intervocalic lenition is not phonological the OT constraint set and/or evaluation procedure, including constraints on systemic contrast (Bolognesi 1998, Tessier 2004, local conjunction of markedness and faithfulness (Łubowicz 2002), faithfulness targeting correspondence between natural classes (Hayes & White 2015) and perceptual 'warping' of faithfulness scales (Storme 2018). This study will argue that none of these phonological theories is necessary or sufficient to describe the full system of Campidanese lenition and fortition.…”

“…Bolognesi (1998) gives the most detailed English-language description of the Campidanese phonological system, along with an optimality-theoretic analysis, and that description has figured prominently in subsequent phonological work (e.g. Łubowicz 2002, Tessier 2004, Hayes & White 2015, Storme 2018, Katz & Pitzanti 2019. The patterns Bolognesi describes are particularly problematic for output-oriented phonology, because of what Hayes & White (2015) refer to as the 'saltatory' property: one set of consonants undergo changes to a number of features, while a similar set of consonants in the same phonological environment fail to undergo changes to just a subset of those features.…”

Contrast preservation and other segmental effects in the formation of Xochistlahuaca Amuzgo plurals

“…An anonymous reviewer remarks that the saltation described here is surprising because it occurs along two phonetic dimensions -manner and place Storme (2018). proposes that such cases of saltation can benefit from a perceptual effect, whereby a change along one dimension seems smaller when accompanied by a change along another dimension, roughly because it is only part of the entire change, as opposed to all of it.…”