No initial empty CV in clusterless languages

From the inception of strict CV in Lowenstamm (1996) the question of how surface clusters are licensed in Government Phonology has been a contentious one. If constituent structure consists of a series of strictly alternating C and V positions, and empty positions are licensed by proper government, then all cluster types should be available to languages that license clusters. The initial empty CV, which though originally proposed to account for certain word-initial clitic alternations in Lowenstamm (1999), emerges as a possible solution to categorizing blatant distributional facts about clusters. Viewed as a morphological (boundary) marker imported from morphology to phonology, its presence accords with languages that show restrictions on cluster type in initial position, while its absence is consistent with languages that show free variation of clusters in initial position. In the midst of this, clusterless languages are assumed to pattern with the former group in requiring the highest restriction on clusters i.e. none at all. This paper argues that there is little ground for such an assumption and that in fact, clusterless languages have no initial empty CV, a fact that is shown to follow from the general ban on proper government in this language type. The paper proceeds as follows; �2 presents the motivations for an initial empty CV; �3 presents arguments for a parametric treatment of proper-government; �4 presents empirical evidence for the absence of an initial empty CV in clusterless languages; and �5 offers some concluding remarks

The conjoint/disjoint alternation and phonological phrasing in Bemba

1. Introduction Bemba is renowned as an example of a language with an extensive conjoint-disjoint alternation following earlier work in Sharman and Meeussen (1955) and Sharman (1956). The alternation is understood as the expression of complementary pairs of verb forms in particular tenses, differentiated by their distributional properties. Thus conjoint and disjoint forms are morphologically marked to distinguish their context of occurrence. Disjoint forms are generally able to occur finally in a main clause while conjoint forms are not. Associated with these distributional properties are interpretational properties revealing information structure although, as van der Wal (this volume) points out, these are properties that vary across different Bantu languages. The goal of this paper is to present the conjoint-disjoint alternation (henceforth CJ-DJ alternation) as it manifests itself in Bemba (Northern and Copperbelt dialects) and to specifically evaluate whether the alternation is encoded by tone in Bemba. Apart from segmental morphological marking of the CJ-DJ alternation in particular tenses a significant number of other tenses show tone marking that distinguishes the context of occurrence of a verb form in the same way that the CJ-DJ alternation does. This raises the question whether such tone marking should be treated as encoding the alternation and if it is not why it's distributional properties are so similar to the CJ-DJ alternation. The paper thus elaborates on the interplay between the CJ-DJ alternation, on the one hand, and prosodic marking, on the other. It will be shown that prosodic marking differs from the CJ-DJ alternation on only a limited number of properties but which, it will be argued, are significant enough to tip the balance towards segmental marking as the central way in which the CJ-DJ alternation is encoded in Bemba. The paper is organised as follows: Section 2 provides background on Bemba tonology which is relevant for the ensuing discussion; section 3 presents the morphological segmental CJ-DJ alternation markers; section 4 looks at prosodic marking with the goal of evaluating whether tone-marking independently encodes the CJ-DJ alternation; section 5 looks at the interpretational properties of the CJ-DJ alternation and also to what extent these also coincide with prosodic marking; section 6 gives the final evaluation of prosodic marking of the CJ-DJ alternation in Bemba; section 7 offers a short discussion of phrasal phonology in nominal forms; and section 8 ends the paper with some concluding remarks

Licensing saturation: co-occurrence restrictions in structure

Phonological co-occurrence restrictions as seen in Bantu Meinhof?s Law raise interesting questions for the nature of phonological domains and in particular, what restrictions apply in the definition of such phonological domains. Government Phonology is one framework that has gone some way in defining the boundaries of phonological domains by utilising the notion of licensing. A phonological domain thus has the formal definition under the licensing principle of Kaye [29] given in (1). (1) Licensing Principle: all positions within a phonological domain are licensed save one, the head. This paper will focus on Meinhof?s Law (ML) which has been described both as a voicing dissimilation (Meinhof [40]) and (nasal) assimilation (Herbert [21], Katamba and Hyman [28]) process. It is akin in nature to Japanese Rendaku (It� and Mester [25]) where the initial consonant in the second element of a compound is voiced, but this voicing is barred if another voiced segment is already present in the phonological domain. Whereas there is no restriction on the adjacency of the segments involved in Rendaku some notion of adjacency is called for in ML where only obstruents in a sequence of nasal+consonant clusters (henceforth NC?s or NC clusters) are affected by the rule. In its most general form, ML can be characterised as a process that disallows a sequence of two voiced obstruents within NC clusters, i.e. *NCvNC where both C?s are voiced. The goal of looking at ML in this paper is to more generally gain insights into the nature of phonological domains and to investigate whether, under the auspices of Government Phonology, we can relate the failure to sustain two voiced segments in ML, to a failure of licensing in a general way. For this purpose I will first present a characterisation of ML in Bantu and thereafter see what these data demand of the principle in (1), and the ramifications this has for licensing as a principle defining phonological domains in Government Phonology

On derived environments in GP

This paper takes up the currently topical issue of derived environment effects (DEE) that is mainly to be found in the Optimality Theory (OT) literature (It� & Mester 1996, Burzio 1998, ?ubowicz 2002, McCarthy 2003) but see also Kiparsky (1993) and Inkelas (1998). The discussion involves revisiting an old problem highlighted in Kiparsky 1973?s definition of opacity given in (1). (1) Opacity (Kiparsky 1973:79) A rule (A -> B / C__D) is opaque to the extent that there are surafce representations of the form: (i) A in the environment C__D (apparent underapplication, counterfeeding opacity) (ii) B in the environment other that C__D (apparent overapplication, counterbleeding opacity) Thus in 1(i) a rule fails to occur despite its conditions being met and in 1(ii) the effects of a rule are seen in environments where its conditions are not met. DEE are in this sense a case of 1(i), particularly; restricting phonological rules to applying only in derived environments while non-derived environments display the effects of 1(i). Morphologically derived environmnets involve phonological rules applying at morphological junctures or boundaries, while phonologically derived environments revolve around a segment that is in no such morphological environment. Such apparent mismatches were easily accounted for in earlier phonological approaches that took recourse to rule ordering by, for example, utilising the Strict Cycle Condition as in Kiparsky (1982). Unfortunately, since the advent of OT, all derivational approaches have been branded as endorsing rule ordering, (irrespective of the last couple of decades of research) and therefore as able to handle DEE. This paper aims to show that DEE are a problem for all phonological approaches that do not employ rule ordering whether they are derivational or not, and proposes a possible way of tackling DEE in Government Phonology, a derivational non-rule ordering framework. The paper presents in section 2 the gist of the proposal that is then applied to phonologically derived environmnets in section 3. Morphologically derived environments (section 4) are seen to, on the one hand, utilise the basic principle that phonologically DEE do, but to also, on the other hand, require a solution that is sensitive to their morphologically complex nature. I offer some concluding remarks in Section 5

Syntactic and phonological phrasing in Bemba relatives

Tone as a distinctive feature used to differentiate not only words but also clause types, is a characteristic feature of Bantu languages. In this paper we show that Bemba relatives can be marked with a low tone in place of a segmental relative marker. This low tone strategy of relativization, which imposes a restrictive reading of relatives, manifests a specific phonological phrasing that can be differentiated from that of non-restrictives. The paper shows that the resultant phonological phrasing favours a head-raising analysis of relativization. In this sense, phonology can be shown to inform syntactic analyses

Ternary spreading and the ocp in copperbelt bemba

Bemba tonology has been described with respect to two prominent claims: H tone local spreading is binary, and is blocked by the OCP. These claims are based on Bemba, as spoken in Northern Zambia. This paper examines these two claims with respect to contemporary Bemba as it is spoken today in the Copperbelt province of Zambia. This paper shows that in Copperbelt Bemba (CB), these two aspects of H tone spreading are markedly different. In CB, local spreading is ternary, not binary, and a H will undergo binary spreading even if it causes an OCP violation. Ternary spread will be shown to follow from two rules: High Tone Doubling and Secondary High Doubling motivated by different constraints within CB tonology. In addition to documenting and describing the behavior of high tone in CB, a comparison to other cases of ternary spreading is also made