Unbounded circumambient patterns in segmental phonology

Abstract

We present an empirical challenge to Jardine's (2016) assertion that only tonal spreading patterns can be unbounded circumambient, meaning that the determination of a phonological value may depend on information that is an unbounded distance away on both sides. We focus on a demonstration that the ATR harmony pattern found in Tutrugbu is unbounded circumambient, and we also cite several other segmental spreading processes with the same general character. We discuss implications for the complexity of phonology and for the relationship between the explanation of typology and the evaluation of phonological theories.

Transparency, locality, and contrast in Uyghur backness harmony

“…The vowels [ɛ] and [ɔ] in Tutrugbu illustrate this sort of relationship. The front vowel [ɛ] is the surface output of both /ɪ/ and /ɛ/, while [ɔ] is the surface output of /ʊ/ and /ɔ/ (McCollum & Essegbey, 2020;McCollum, Baković, Mai, & Meinhardt, 2020). Despite the surface neutralization of these contrasts, these sounds in Tutrugbu still maintain their abstract structural contrast for [high] for both rounding and ATR harmony.…”

A restrictive, parsimonious theory of footing in directional Harmonic Serialism

“…Incorporating these pressures into formal models is an obvious direction to take this research in. Furthermore, evaluating any theory empirically requires caveats about sampling bias (McCollum et al 2020) and the evidentiary strength of descriptions (de Lacy 2014).…”

Foot structure enables strict locality in phonological processes

“…Thus, subsequential functions are more expressive than ISL or OSL functions, as the requirement to adhere to input (or output) locality no longer applies. Subsequential functions represent a important divide in the space of possible functions that includes many phonological patterns and excludes many non-phonological ones (Heinz & Lai, 2013;Chandlee, 2014;Jardine, 2016;Payne, 2017;Luo, 2017;McCollum et al, 2020;Hao & Anderson, 2019;Koser & Jardine, 2020).…”

“…It should also be noted that 'subsequential' is not synonymous with 'long-distance'. Not all long-distance processes are subsequential (Jardine, 2016;McCollum et al, 2020). There are also long-distance processes that are formally less complex than subsequential, such as those belonging to the strictly piecewise class (Rogers et al, 2010;Burness & McMullin, 2020).…”