The subsegmental structure of German plural allomorphy

Trommer, Jochen

doi:10.1007/s11049-020-09479-7

Cited by 18 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 78 publications

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“…This group of processes have inspired accounts in which morphology either directly or indirectly governs phonological processes, including Output-Output Correspondence (Benua 1997), Realize Morpheme (Kurisu 2001), Cophonology Theory (Inkelas and Zoll 2007), and lexically indexed constraints (Pater 2009). Zimmermann (2017a) and Trommer (2020), among others, have argued that all of the above mentioned accounts suffer from undergeneration and overgeneration, and that morpheme-specific effects instead follow from the basic tenets of featural affixation (Akinlabi 1996) constrained by Optimality Theory Smolensky 1993/2004). This is exactly the standpoint that I will adopt here with respect to the seemingly opaque reduplication patterns in Lakota.…”

Section: Morpheme-specific Phonologymentioning

confidence: 80%

“…Morphemes that trigger mutation contain a certain marked structure, viz. defective features or subsegments, that interact with underlying phonological material and induce segmental alternations (see Akinlabi 1996;Mc Laughlin 1994;Wolf 2007;Trommer 2020 for a variety of applications). In Lakota, vowel mutation is triggered by affixation of morphemes containing a floating [-l(ow)] feature.…”

Section: Defective Representationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Trigger poverty and reduplicative identity in Lakota

Paschen

2021

Nat Lang Linguist Theory

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This paper offers a phonological account of various ways in which reduplication interacts with independent processes in Lakota: transparent application in the case of cluster simplification, overapplication in the case of palatalization, and underapplication in the case of vowel mutation. I argue that all three patterns follow from phonological optimization rather than morpheme-specific constraints on the reduplicant or on other morphemes, and that the co-existence of divergent patterns is compatible with such a phonological analysis. Local application is the default pattern, while overapplication receives a cyclic explanation. For underapplication, which is the most recalcitrant pattern in Lakota, I offer an account in terms of Trigger Poverty, a concept which denotes an imbalance between the number of triggers and the number of potential targets created by copying. Trigger Poverty is likely to be a more general abstract source of underapplication beyond Lakota. This paper thus contributes to the discussion of modularity in phonology by presenting evidence that identity effects in reduplication can be epiphenomenal.

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Section: Morpheme-specific Phonologymentioning

confidence: 80%

Section: Defective Representationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trigger poverty and reduplicative identity in Lakota

Paschen

2021

Nat Lang Linguist Theory

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“…The analysis of the word-final strong-weak syllable pattern in German nominal plurals as a trochaic foot is not uncontested (see Neef 1998;Trommer 2021). We leave it for future work to investigate how German plurals could be accounted for from a DM-perspective without a foot-template approach.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Relativized Prosodic Domains: A Late-Insertion Account of German Plurals

Schuhmann

Putnam

2021

Languages

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In late-insertion, realizational models of morphology such as Distributed Morphology (DM), the insertion of Vocabulary Items (VIs) is conditioned by cyclic operations in the syntax. This paper explores whether an isomorphic relationship can be established between cyclic operations such as phases and prosodic domains. In the spirit of D’Alessandro and Scheer’s (2015) proposal of a Modular Phase Impenetrability Condition (MPIC), we strive to provide an analysis in which prosodic boundaries in even smaller, word-level-like syntactic structures—the ‘lexical domain’—can be identified solely within the syntax. We propose a DM-account for the distribution of nominal plural exponency in German, which reveals a dominant trend for a trochaic-foot structure for all but -s-plural exponents (Wiese 2001, 2009). Inspired by Gouskova’s (2019) and Svenonius’ (2016) work concerning the prosody–morphology interface, we argue that the index of a Prosodic Word ω in non-s-plurals is associated with a specific feature configuration. We propose that only a n[+pl(ural)] configuration, in which the nominalizing head n hosts the SynSem-feature Num(ber)[+pl(ural)], rather than a general cyclic categorizing phase head such as n, indexes a Prosodic Word ω for nominal plural exponents in (Standard) German. Based on this empirical evidence from German plural exponency, we argue that (i) prosodic boundaries can be established directly by syntactic structures, (ii) these prosodic boundaries condition VI insertion during the initial stages of Spell-Out, and (iii) prosodic domains are based on individual languages’ syntactic structures and feature configurations, and are thus relativized and language-specific in nature.

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“…This model provides a successful and succinct formal model for German noun declension. Other models from this class include GERTWOL which is based on finite-state operations (Haapalainen and Majorin, 1994), as well as the model of Trommer (2021) which draws on Optimality Theory (OT) and likewise requires careful hand-crafting and constraint ranking (but does not currently have a computational implementation). Belth et al (2021) propose a statistical classifier based on recursive partitioning, with as response variable the morphological change required to transform a singular into a plural, and as predictors the final segments of the lexeme, number, and case.…”

Section: Computational Models For German Nounsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modeling Morphology With Linear Discriminative Learning: Considerations and Design Choices

2021

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This study addresses a series of methodological questions that arise when modeling inflectional morphology with Linear Discriminative Learning. Taking the semi-productive German noun system as example, we illustrate how decisions made about the representation of form and meaning influence model performance. We clarify that for modeling frequency effects in learning, it is essential to make use of incremental learning rather than the end-state of learning. We also discuss how the model can be set up to approximate the learning of inflected words in context. In addition, we illustrate how in this approach the wug task can be modeled. The model provides an excellent memory for known words, but appropriately shows more limited performance for unseen data, in line with the semi-productivity of German noun inflection and generalization performance of native German speakers.

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The subsegmental structure of German plural allomorphy

Cited by 18 publications

References 78 publications

Trigger poverty and reduplicative identity in Lakota

Trigger poverty and reduplicative identity in Lakota

Relativized Prosodic Domains: A Late-Insertion Account of German Plurals

Modeling Morphology With Linear Discriminative Learning: Considerations and Design Choices

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