Phonetics, Phonology, and Morphology

The A-map model: Articulatory reliability in child-specific phonology

Tara McAllister Byun

Sharon Inkelas

Yvan Rose

2016

This article addresses a phenomenon of long-standing interest: the existence of child-specific phonological patterns that are not attested in adult language. We propose a new theoretical approach, termed the A(rticulatory)-map model, to account for the origin and elimination of child-specific phonological patterns. Due to the performance limitations imposed by structural and motor immaturity, children’s outputs differ from adult target forms in both systematic and sporadic ways. The computations of the child’s grammar are influenced by the distributional properties of motor-acoustic traces...

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Plural exponence in the Nez Perce DP: a DM analysis

Amy Rose Deal

2016

This paper analyzes two patterns of number marking in the DP in Nez Perce (Sahaptian) within the framework of Distributed Morphology. The first involves under-realization of plural on nouns. Number has classically been understood as a feature inherent to nouns, rather than to adjectives that modify them. In Nez Perce, however, only a small set of nouns show number morphology, whereas number morphology is highly productive on adjectival modifiers. Adjectives in fact may realize the plural more than once per word—an instance of multiple exponence. I show that the puzzle of under-...