Modelling phonologization: vowel reduction and epenthesis in Lunigiana dialects

Within a linguistic continuum, the further from the irradiation centre, the later a language is affected by a change; the later a language is reached by a change, the milder the outcomes. Building upon these wave-theoretic assumptions, this dissertation provides a formal description of the relationship between diatopic/diachronic micro-variation and phonologization. In particular, an analysis is performed of the phonetic/phonological properties of unstressed vowel reduction and vowel insertion in two Northern Italian dialects: Carrarese and Pontremolese. These dialects are argued to represent two frozen stages of these processes’ diffusion, Carrarese representing the diachronic stage Pontremolese has already gone through. Indeed, Pontremolese displays non-etymological vocoids that show the phonetic and phonological characteristics of epenthetic vowels and that, crucially, can be considered the phonologized correlates of Carrarese’s intrusive vocoids. These, in turn, should be rather considered articulatory/perceptually driven vowel-like releases. A formal account of this diatopic, diachronic and grammatical relationship is given that supports a modular grammar architecture, in which phonetics and phonology constitute, hence, two autonomous modules. Within such an architecture, the lateral forces (government and licensing) developed by standard Government Phonology are translated into violable constraints and inserted in a BiPhon grammar. In this optimality-theoretic grammar, the phonetics-phonology interface is managed by a set of cue constraints that map acoustic dimensions (formant structures) onto phonological primitives (elements). Furthermore, to integrate morphological information in the phonological forms, the Coloured Containment Theory is resorted to. This dissertation is of relevance to anyone interested in diatopic/diachronic micro-variation, phonologization, phonological theory and Italian dialectology

Il vincolo nella fonologia generativa

Il presente lavoro ha l'obiettivo di ripercorrere l'evoluzione della fonologia generativa al fine di rintracciare le attestazioni del dispositivo teorico affermatosi definitivamente negli anni '90 con il nome di "vincolo". Sono state analizzate le cornici teoriche e le pubblicazioni più significative nella storia della fonologia generativa: partendo da un articolo pubblicato da Wells nel '49 (prima quindi dell'affermazione della teoria generativa chomskiana), sono stati presi in esame il lavoro di Halle sulla fonologia del russo (Halle, 1959),quello sulle regole di ridondanza di Stanley (Stanley, 1967), l'imprescindibile "The Sound Pattern of English" (Chomsky, 1968), il problema delle "cospirazioni" denunciato da Kisseberth, le proposte avanzate dalla Fonologia Generativa Naturale e dalla Fonologia Autosegmentale, ed infine la teoria che ha posto il dispositivo in questione in una posizione di assoluto rilievo: Optimality Theory. Prestando particolare attenzione ai contesti e alle motivazioni che hanno determinato l'utilizzo di questo dispositivo teorico, e a come tali elementi ne abbiano condizionato la formalizzazione, questo lavoro ha permesso di tracciare un percorso in cui il dispositivo conosciuto come vincolo è passato da elemento marginale a cardine della teoria fonologica

A typological study of vowel interactions in Basque

The aim of this paper is to check the factorial typology for a set of phonological constraints on vowel interactions in Basque against corpus data (Hualde and Gaminde 1998, Euskararen Herri Hizkeren Atlasa, ‘The Basque Dialectological Atlas’) with the help of OT-Help 2.0 (Staubs et al. 2010), a specialized software that calculates factorial typologies. The formal analysis developed to account for different patterns of vowel interactions in Basque, including those patterns displaying phonological opacity, implements Element Theory (Backley 2011) in Turbidity Theory (Goldrick 2001, Van Oostendorp 2008). The proposed analysis has the virtue of predicting all attested patterns of a specific type of vowel interactions in Basque and excluding the unattested patterns

The Distribution of Gender and Number in Lunigiana Nominal Expressions

status: publishe

Empty morphemes in Dutch dialect atlases: Reducing morphosyntactic variation by refining emptiness typology

Contains fulltext : 206001.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)22 p

A theory of the theory of vowels

status: Published onlin

A typological study of vowel interactions in Basque

The aim of this paper is to check the factorial typology for a set of phonological constraints on vowel interactions in Basque against corpus data (Hualde and Gaminde 1998, Euskararen Herri Hizkeren Atlasa, 'The Basque Dialectological Atlas') with the help of OT-Help 2.0 (Staubs et al. 2010), a specialized software that calculates factorial typologies. The formal analysis developed to account for different patterns of vowel interactions in Basque, including those patterns displaying phonological opacity, implements Element Theory (Backley 2011) in Turbidity Theory (Goldrick 2001, Van Oostendorp 2008). The proposed analysis has the virtue of predicting all attested patterns of a specific type of vowel interactions in Basque and excluding the unattested patterns

The Expanding Universe of the Study of Sound Change

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