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

Prosodic Morphology of Verb and Adjective Syllables in Yi

Prosodic morphology is an important research object of prosodic typology, and also one of the important elements of prosody and morphology. This paper briefly discusses the prosodic form of the Yi language in terms of the number of syllables in verbs and adjectives. Pure verbs in Yi language usually appear in the form of single syllables. When restricted in grammatical activities, they are always flexibly used by adding the number of syllables, the most obvious one being nominalization. There are two types of adjectives in the Yi language, namely property adjective and state adjective. They can be mainly differentiated in terms of the syllable numbers of a word: the property adjectives are often monosyllabic, while the state adjectives are polysyllabic. The category of level is also expressed by adjusting the number of syllables. The more syllables, the greater the category of level change

A finite-state approach to arabic broken noun morphology

In this paper, a finite-state computational approach to Arabic broken plural noun morphology is introduced. The paper considers the derivational aspect of the approach, and how generalizations about dependencies in the broken plural noun derivational system of Arabic are captured and handled computationally in this finite-state approach. The approach will be implemented using Xerox finite-state tool

Exploring the focus-morphology interface: morpho-syntactic aspects of non prosodic focus : Selected Proceedings of the 2007 Mid American Linguistics Conference

This paper claims that a constraint-based theory (i.e, OT) can best account for the many manifestations of Focus in typologically diverse languages. We propose an interaction between Discourse Representation Theory (hereafter DRT) (Kamp, 1981; Kamp and Reyle, 1993) and Optimality Theory (OT) (Prince and Smolensky, 1993/2004) to best account for these facts, maintaining that constraint-ranking is the best way to achieve a descriptive and explanatorily adequate analysis of natural data. In particular, we provide a novel sketch of a theoretical account of natural languages that mark Focus morphologically but not prosodicall

Morphological word structure in English and Swedish : the evidence from prosody

Trubetzkoy's recognition of a delimitative function of phonology, serving to signal boundaries between morphological units, is expressed in terms of alignment constraints in Optimality Theory, where the relevant constraints require specific morphological boundaries to coincide with phonological structure (Trubetzkoy 1936, 1939, McCarthy & Prince 1993). The approach pursued in the present article is to investigate the distribution of phonological boundary signals to gain insight into the criteria underlying morphological analysis. The evidence from English and Swedish suggests that necessary and sufficient conditions for word-internal morphological analysis concern the recognizability of head constituents, which include the rightmost members of compounds and head affixes. The claim is that the stability of word-internal boundary effects in historical perspective cannot in general be sufficiently explained in terms of memorization and imitation of phonological word form. Rather, these effects indicate a morphological parsing mechanism based on the recognition of word-internal head constituents. Head affixes can be shown to contrast systematically with modifying affixes with respect to syntactic function, semantic content, and prosodic properties. That is, head affixes, which cannot be omitted, often lack inherent meaning and have relatively unmarked boundaries, which can be obscured entirely under specific phonological conditions. By contrast, modifying affixes, which can be omitted, consistently have inherent meaning and have stronger boundaries, which resist prosodic fusion in all phonological contexts. While these correlations are hardly specific to English and Swedish it remains to be investigated to which extent they hold cross-linguistically. The observation that some of the constituents identified on the basis of prosodic evidence lack inherent meaning raises the issue of compositionality. I will argue that certain systematic aspects of word meaning cannot be captured with reference to the syntagmatic level, but require reference to the paradigmatic level instead. The assumption is then that there are two dimensions of morphological analysis: syntagmatic analysis, which centers on the criteria for decomposing words in terms of labelled constituents, and paradigmatic analysis, which centers on the criteria for establishing relations among (whole) words in the mental lexicon. While meaning is intrinsically connected with paradigmatic analysis (e.g. base relations, oppositeness) it is not essential to syntagmatic analysis

On the way from morphology to phonology : German linking elements and the role of the phonological word

German linking elements are sometimes classified as inflectional affixes, sometimes as derivational affixes, and in any case as morphological units with at least seven realisations (e.g. -s-, -es-, -(e)n-, -e-). This article seeks to show that linking elements are hybrid elements situated between morphology and phonology. On the one hand, they have a clear morphological status since they occur only within compounds (and before a very small set of suffixes) and support the listener in decoding them. On the other hand, they also have to be analysed on the phonological level, as will be shown in this article. Thus, they are marginal morphological units on the pathway to phonology (including prosodics). Although some alloforms can sometimes be considered former inflectional endings and in some cases even continue to demonstrate some inflectional behaviour (such as relatedness to gender and inflection class), they are on their way to becoming markers of ill-formed phonological words. In fact, linking elements, above all the linking -s-, which is extremely productive, help the listener decode compounds containing a bad phonological word as their first constituent, such as Geburt+s+tag ‘birthday’ or Religion+s+unterricht ‘religious education’. By marking the end of a first constituent that differs from an unmarked monopedal phonological word, the linking element aids the listener in correctly decoding and analysing the compound. German compounds are known for their length and complexity, both of which have increased over time—along with the occurrence of linking elements, especially -s-. Thus, a profound instance of language change can be observed in contemporary German, one indicating its typological shift from syllable language to word language