Rule Interaction Conversion Operations

Different types of interactions between pairs of phonological rules can be converted into one another using three formal operations that we discuss in this article. One of these conversion operations, rule re-ordering (here called swapping), is well-known; another, flipping, is a more recent finding (Hein et al., 2014). We introduce a third conversion operation that we call cropping. Formal relationships among the members of the set of rule interactions, expanded by cropping beyond the classical four (feeding, bleeding, counterfeeding, and counterbleeding) to include four more (mutual bleeding, seeding, counterseeding, and merger), are identified and clarified. We show that these conversion operations exhaustively delimit the set of possible pairwise rule interactions predicted by conjunctive rule ordering (Chomsky & Halle, 1968), and that each interaction is related to each of the others by the application of at most two conversion operations

Towards a typology of stop assibilation

In this article we propose that there are two universal properties for phonological stop assibilations, namely (i) assibilations cannot be triggered by /i/ unless they are also triggered by /j/, and (ii) voiced stops cannot undergo assibilations unless voiceless ones do. The article presents typological evidence from assibilations in 45 languages supporting both (i) and (ii). It is argued that assibilations are to be captured in the Optimality Theoretic framework by ranking markedness constraints grounded in perception which penalize sequences like [ti] ahead of a faith constraint which militates against the change from /t/ to some sibilant sound. The occurring language types predicted by (i) and (ii) will be shown to involve permutations of the rankings between several different markedness constraints and the one faith constraint. The article demonstrates that there exist several logically possible assibilation types which are ruled out because they would involve illicit rankings

‘Pitch accent’ and prosodic structure in Scottish Gaelic: Reassessing the role of contact

This paper considers the origin of ‘pitch accents’ in Scottish Gaelic with a view to evaluating the hypothesis that this feature was borrowed from North Germanic varieties spoken by Norse settlers in medieval Scotland. It is shown that the ‘pitch accent’ system in Gaelic is tightly bound with metrical structure (more precisely syllable count), certainly diachronically, and probably (at least in some varieties) synchronically. Gaelic ‘pitch accent’ is argued to be a plausible internal development, parallel to similar phenomena in other branches of Celtic (specifically in Breton), as well as in Germanic. This conclusion may appear to undermine the contact hypothesis, especially in the absence of reliable written sources; nevertheless, a certain role for Norse-Gaelic contact in the appearance of the pitch accent system cannot be completely exclude

Towards a typology of velar processes

paper accessible at http://seas3.elte.hu/delg/publications/even/2004/04hu.pdfInternational audienceThis paper sets up a typology of velar phenomena. Velars show effects of palatalization by an adjacent segment. Processes where velars show effects of pure vocalization are also attested. A third group of phenomena are reductions to velars. Moreover, there is important communication between velars and labials where labio-velars turn into plain labials or the other way round. Finally, less typical are velar and palatal interactions where a palatal glide /j/ comes to alternate with or turn into a velar stop. These phenomena can be nicely accommodated in a VC framework, which provides a typology of, types of velar processes

Modeling the Acquisition of Phonological Interactions: Biases and Generalization

In this paper we computationally implement four different theories for representing opaque and transparent phonological interactions: Harmonic Serialism, Stratal OT, Two-Level Constraints, and Indexed Constraints. We then show that these theories make unique predictions on two tasks: (1) a learning-bias task, based on previous experimental work with humans and (2) a novel generalization task that no human data exists for. Our results in (1) show that serial models predict that transparent languages should be easier to acquire, while parallel models do not. Furthermore, the results for (2) show that all four of the theories we test make unique predictions for how humans should generalize to novel phonological interaction types