Temiar Reduplication in One-Level Prosodic Morphology

Temiar reduplication is a difficult piece of prosodic morphology. This paper presents the first computational analysis of Temiar reduplication, using the novel finite-state approach of One-Level Prosodic Morphology originally developed by Walther (1999b, 2000). After reviewing both the data and the basic tenets of One-level Prosodic Morphology, the analysis is laid out in some detail, using the notation of the FSA Utilities finite-state toolkit (van Noord 1997). One important discovery is that in this approach one can easily define a regular expression operator which ambiguously scans a string in the left- or rightward direction for a certain prosodic property. This yields an elegant account of base-length-dependent triggering of reduplication as found in Temiar.Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures. Finite-State Phonology: SIGPHON-2000, Proceedings of the Fifth Workshop of the ACL Special Interest Group in Computational Phonology, pp.13-21. Aug. 6, 2000. Luxembour

Ideophone Integration and Expressiveness in Wao Terero

Ideophones, which “simulate an event, an emotion, a perception through language,” have been claimed to be a universal category (Voeltz & Kilian-Hatz 2001:3); however, they are generally understudied and are often considered marginal to the linguistic system. Focusing on their markedness, studies of ideophones often ignore how ideophones participate in the larger grammar of a language. Recognizing the often marked, expressive nature of ideophones in comparison with other word classes in a language, while also accounting for the fact that they can operate within the larger grammatical structure of that language, Dingemanse’s (2017) integration-expressiveness continuum bridges this gap. This model illuminates the place of ideophones in Wao Terero, a language isolate spoken in the Amazonian region of Ecuador: how the word class is treated, with specific reference to morphosyntactic integration and expressiveness. Wao Terero exhibits ideophones that constitute their own intonation unit, are reduplicated, occur at a clause boundary, modify verbs, co-occur with light verbs such as ‘do’ or ‘say’, co-occur with verbs that are seemingly synonymous with the ideophone creating complex predicates, and take verbal morphology. These different types of constructions in which ideophones can occur show how they participate in the larger grammatical structure of Wao Terero—namely that they can span the integration-expressiveness continuum with instances of ideophones that are syntactically free, highly morphosyntactically integrated, and everywhere in between. While the continuum implies a proportional inverse relationship between integration and expressiveness, the scalar nature of the prosodic features—such as length, pitch, intensity, and voice quality—that contribute to an ideophone’s expressiveness leads to complications in the application of the continuum to all Wao Terero data. Despite the individual examples that challenge its validity, the continuum appears to account for the majority of the Wao Terero data analyzed. Furthermore, beyond explaining the nature of the data synchronically, the continuum is also shown to be useful in terms of diachrony by exploring probable grammaticalization pathways

The Templatic Syllable Patterns of Reduplication and Stem-affixing Inflections in the Classical Arabic Based on Prosodic Morphology Theory

A morpheme, is a set of feature matrices dominated by a single node. Reduplication or gemination is one of the productive morphological processes which have been studied inclusively in different languages and in the frame of different linguistic theories like Generative Grammar, Optimality Theory and Minimalist Program. McCarthy's prosodic theory is justified by an analysis of the formal properties of the system of verbal processes like reduplication are the primary or sole morphological operations. This theory of nonconcatenative morphology recognizing the root as a discontinuous constituent. Under the prosodic model, a morphological category which characteristically reduplicates simply stipulates an output template composed of vowel and consonant. Consonantal roots and vocalic melodies in Arabic, although they contain bundles of the same distinctive features, can nevertheless be represented on separate autosegmental tiers. This ensures that the association conventions for melodies can operate independently on these two tiers. Association of autosegments from different tiers to the same segments will be subject to the natural restriction that no segment receives multiple associations for the same nontonal feature

Taking Primitive Optimality Theory Beyond the Finite State

Primitive Optimality Theory (OTP) (Eisner, 1997a; Albro, 1998), a computational model of Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky, 1993), employs a finite state machine to represent the set of active candidates at each stage of an Optimality Theoretic derivation, as well as weighted finite state machines to represent the constraints themselves. For some purposes, however, it would be convenient if the set of candidates were limited by some set of criteria capable of being described only in a higher-level grammar formalism, such as a Context Free Grammar, a Context Sensitive Grammar, or a Multiple Context Free Grammar (Seki et al., 1991). Examples include reduplication and phrasal stress models. Here we introduce a mechanism for OTP-like Optimality Theory in which the constraints remain weighted finite state machines, but sets of candidates are represented by higher-level grammars. In particular, we use multiple context-free grammars to model reduplication in the manner of Correspondence Theory (McCarthy and Prince, 1995), and develop an extended version of the Earley Algorithm (Earley, 1970) to apply the constraints to a reduplicating candidate set.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures, worksho

Strong Generative Capacity of Morphological Processes

Morphological processes are generally computable with 1-way finite-state transducers. However, we show that 1-way transducers do not capture the strong generative capacity of certain morphological analyses for more complex processes, including mobile affixation, infixation, and partial reduplication. As diagnostics for strong generative capacity, we use origin semantics and order-preservation. These analyze the input-output correspondences generated by finite-state transducers and their corresponding logical transductions. For some linguistic analyses of these complex processes, their strong generative capacity is matched by more expressive grammars, such as non-order-preserving transductions and their corresponding 2-way finite-state transducers