In defence of underlying representations: Latin rhotacism, French liaison, Romanian palatalization

Abstract

The surface realization of a linguistic expression can often be predicted from the form of paradigmatically related items that are not contained within it: in Latin, the nominative singular of a noun can often be inferred from the genitive; in French, the final consonant of a prenominal masculine adjective in liaison can typically be predicted from the feminine; in Romanian, the plural form of a noun determines whether its stem will exhibit palatalization before the derivational suffix /-ist/. Such instances of phonological paradigmatic dependence without containment have been claimed to challenge cyclic models of the morphosyntax-phonology interface. In this article, however, they are shown to be established indirectly through the acquisition of underlying representations. This approach correctly predicts that phonological paradigmatic dependencies are never systematically extended to new items if they involve suppletive allomorphy rather than regular alternation, whilst those surface phonological properties of derivatives that are under strict phonotactic control evade paradigmatic dependence on the inflectional forms of their bases. Theories relying on surface-to-surface computation fail to recover these empirical predictions because they are inherently nonmodular, positing generalizations that promiscuously mix phonological, morphosyntactic, and lexical information. Underlying representations, therefore, remain indispensable as a means of establishing a necessary modular demarcation between regular phonology and suppletive allomorphy.

Outward-sensitive phonologically-conditioned suppletive allomorphy vs. first-last tone harmony in Cilungu

“…In this section, we provided evidence in favor of a morphological account for the Cilungu allomorphy patterns over a phonological account. The morphological account entails that the Cilungu patterns constitute suppletion, whereby one allomorph cannot be derived from the other and both need to be stored in the lexicon (Embick, 2010:43;Paster, 2016;Bermúdez-Otero, 2018). The Cilungu patterns meet the threshold for suppletion assessed against three commonly used criteria for suppletion found in the literature.…”

The stratal structure of Kuria morphological tone

“…It is important to note that Floating Persistence is not tied specifically to Coloured Containment. It also represents the standard approach in versions of Stratal OT based on Correspondence Theory (see, e.g., Bermúdez-Otero 2018a; Gjersøe 2019; Jaker & Kiparsky 2020) going back at least to the foundational work on tone in Lexical Phonology by Pulleyblank (1986). 2 In Pulleyblank’s classic analysis of Tiv, verbal L prefixes marking tense remain floating up to the point of phonetic interpretation.…”

“…Arguments to the same effect for Bantu verbal tone are found in Hyman & Ngunga (1994) for Yao and Odden (1996) for Kimatuumbi. More recent applications in a cyclic/stratal architecture employing OT are found (in tonal and segmental phonology) in Bermúdez-Otero (2018a), Rolle (2018) on Kunama, Paschen (2018) on Fox and Seereer Sin, Jaker & Kiparsky (2020) on Tetsǫ´t’ıné and Dolatian (2022) on Armenian.…”

Exceptional prosodification effects revisited in Gradient Harmonic Grammar

“…Furthermore, the liaison forms of these prenominal adjectives frequently resemble their feminine allomorphs ( -enne , -aine , - eine [εn]), suggesting an analysis of these forms in terms of gender suppletion (Tranel 1981, 1992, Steriade 1999, but cf. Bermúdez-Otero 2018). Nonetheless, many prenominal adjectives that end in [ε̃] in isolation and have a feminine allomorph ending in [εn] either do not trigger liaison for most speakers (Encrevé 1986, Sampson 2001), e.g.…”