Phonetics, Phonology, and Morphology

Is word-level recursion actually recursion?

Taylor Miller
Hannah Sande
2021

There is a longstanding debate in the literature about if, and where, recursion occurs in prosodic structure. While there are clear cases of genuine recursion at the phrase level and above, there are very few convincing cases of word-level recursion. Most cases are—by definition—not recursive and instead best analyzed as different constituents (e.g., the Composite Group, Prosodic Word Group, etc.). We show that two convincing cases of prosodic word-level recursion can easily be reanalyzed without recursion if phonology and prosody are evaluated cyclically at syntactic phase...

Cophonologies by Ph(r)ase

Hannah Sande
Peter Jenks
Sharon Inkelas
2020

Phonological alternations are often specific to morphosyntactic context. In some cases a phonological process applies only in words of certain lexical categories. Previous theories have stipulated that such morphosyntactically conditioned phonology is word-bounded. In this paper we present a number of long-distance morphologically conditioned phonological effects, cases where phonological processes within one word are conditioned by another word or the presence of a morpheme in another word. We provide a model, Cophonologies by Phase, which extends Cophonology Theory,...

Person-based split ergativity in Nez Perce is syntactic

Amy Rose Deal
2016

Nez Perce is one among many ergative languages that consistently use nominative case, rather than ergative, for 1st and 2nd person transitive subjects. Two major lines of analysis have been proposed for the synchronic grammar of this type of ergative split. Morphological analyses approach the phenomenon as a case of syncretism between ergative and nominative in 1st and 2nd person; all transitive subjects are assigned an identical syntax. Syntactic analyses posit a featural or structural distinction between 3rd person subjects and 1st and 2nd person subjects, or the clauses containing...

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-...

Kavitskaya presents at Edinburgh Symposium on Historical Phonology

November 30, 2021

Darya Kavitskaya will have a co-authored poster at the 5th Edinburgh Symposium on Historical Phonology (on Zoom) on December 6, at 7 am PST. Here is the link to the conference site: http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/symposium-on-historical-phonology/eshp5/, and to the program: http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/symposium-on-historical-phonology/pdf/eshp5-final-prog.pdf

Helms, Licata, and Weiher accepted at Journal of Experimental Phonetics

November 16, 2021

Annie Helms, Gabriella Licata, and Rachel Weiher's article "Influence of orthography in production and perception of /b/ in US Spanish" has been accepted for publication at the Journal of Experimental Phonetics. Congratulations!

Phonology

Florian A. J. Lionnet
Larry M. Hyman
2018

In this extensive article we survey the major recurrent and interesting phonological properties of African languages.

Common Bantoid verb extensions

Larry M. Hyman
2018

In this paper I survey verb extensions within different Bantoid languages and subgroups, comparing them to Cameroonian Bantu zone A. Extending my survey of Niger-Congo extensions (Hyman 2007), I show that there is a band of contiguous languages in the Grassfields area where a number of contrastive verb extensions have relative productivity (cf. the studies in Idiata & Mba 2003). Interestingly, the languages in question belong to several subgroups: Limbum (NE Eastern Grassfields Bantu), Noni (Beboid), Kom and Babanki (Ring Western Grassfields Bantu), Bafut and Mankon (Ngemba...

More reflections on the nasal classes in Bantu

Larry M. Hyman
2019

Although long considered to be a Bantu innovation, Miehe (1991) proposed that the nasal consonants present in Bantu noun classes 1, 3, 4, 6, 9 and 10 should be reconstructed in pre-Proto-Bantu, even possibly at the Proto-Niger-Congo stage. Since there has been no comprehensive response to Miehe, the two of us organized a workshop to look at the question in more detail. In this paper I update the problem from Hyman (1980b) and Miehe (1991), expanding the coverage and considering various scenarios that could have led to innovation (or loss). While there have been three hypothetical...

Lusoga noun phrase tonology

Larry M. Hyman
2019

In this paper I present a detailed analysis of the tonology of nouns and their dependents within the noun phrase in Lusoga, a Bantu language of Uganda. After considering different alternatives, I argue that Lusoga is best analyzed with an underlying privative /L/ which derives from an earlier *H, realized directly in Luganda, the closest related language to Lusoga. To establish the basic system I start with infinitives (which are nouns), then analyze the different tone patterns on nouns of different sizes and shapes, with and without an augment, simple and reduplicated. I then turn...