Morphological Complexity and Prosodic Minimality

It is widely attested, cross-linguistically, for both words and prosodic morphemes to be required to be minimally bimoraic or disyllabic. Work since McCarthy and Prince (1986) argues that these minimality effects fall out from the Prosodic Hierarchy. Requiring the relevant morpheme to be a Prosodic Word and dominate a stress Foot automatically also imposes a two mora or two syllable minimality requirement. In this paper I show, based on a reanalysis of reduplication in Axininca Campa, that this Prosodic Hierarchy-based theory of minimality is inadequate. I argue instead that morphological minimality conditions are better explained as a form of Head-Dependent Asymmetry (Dresher and van der Hulst 1998). Head morphemes are enhanced by requiring more complex prosodic structure, mirroring their more complex morphological structure. This alternative approach not only provides a uniform account of minimality effects holding for Axininca Campa reduplication, it also solves the problems raised by McCarthy and Prince's (1993, 1995) analysis of the data

Satisfying minimality in Ndebele

In this paper, I discuss four different verb forms in Ndebele (a Nguni Bantu language spoken mainly in Zimbabwe) - the imperative, reduplicated, future and participial. I show that while all four are subject to minimality restrictions, minimality is satisfied differently in each of these morphological contexts. To account for this, I argue that in Ndebele (as in other Bantu languages) Word and RED are not the only constituents which must satisfy minimality: the Stem is also subject to minimality conditions in some morphological contexts. This paper, then, provides additional arguments for the proposal that Phonological Word is not the only sub-lexical morpho-prosodic constituent. Further, I argue that, although Word, RED and Stern are all subject to the same minimality constraint – they must all be minimally bisyllabic - this does not follow from a single 'generalized' constraint. Instead, I argue, contra recent work within Generalized Template Theory (see, e.g., McCarthy & Prince 1994, 1995a, 1999; Urbanezyk 1995, 1996; and Walker 2000; etc.) that a distinct minimality constraint must be formalized for each of these morpho-prosodic constituents

Jita Glide Epenthesis and the Maximality Principle

Proceedings of the Seventeenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: Special Session on African Language Structures (1991), pp. 74-8

Morphological Correspondence in Kinande Reduplication

Proceedings of the Twenty-Third Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: General Session and Parasession on Pragmatics and Grammatical Structure (1997

The phonetics of NCh in Tumbuka and its implications for diachronic change

The phonetic motivation for the synchronic and diachronic development of post-nasal voicing (*NT > ND) is well understood. Less well understood is the phonetic motivation for other common synchronic and diachronic developments from *NT, widely attested in Bantu languages, such as aspiration of the voiceless plosive and subsequent loss of either the nasal or the plosive portion of the sequence: *NT > NTh > Th, Nh. In this paper we first review the existing (scarce) phonetic literature on these developments. Then we present the results of a phonetic study of NC sequences in Tumbuka, a Bantu language where NT > NTh, as a way of exploring how the acoustic and perceptual properties of NTh sequences could motivate the development, found in other Bantu languages, of Th or Nɦ from NTh. We conclude by proposing that a perceptual cue approach, rather than a gestural or other articulatory approach, provides the most persuasive phonetic account, not only of the motivation for post-nasal aspiration of voiceless stops, but also for the instability of nasals and of voiceless stops in the NTh context which leads to other sound changes

Quantification of HIV-1 RNA Among Men Who Have Sex With Men Using an At-Home Self-Collected Dried Blood Spot Specimen: Feasibility Study

Background: Suboptimal antiretroviral therapy (ART) adherence and disengagement in care present significant public health challenges because of the increased probability of HIV transmission. In the United States, men who have sex with men (MSM) continue to be disproportionately affected by HIV, highlighting a critical need to engage high-risk MSM living with HIV who are not engaged or retained in care. Objective: The aim of the study was to assess the feasibility of at-home blood self-collection and laboratory quantification of HIV-1 RNA viral load (VL) to report laboratory-based VL outcomes and compare self-reported and laboratory-reported VL Methods: Between 2016 and 2017, 766 US HIV-positive MSM enrolled in a Web-based behavioral intervention were invited to participate in an at-home dried blood spot (DBS) collection study using HemaSpot-HF kits (Spot On Sciences, Inc, Austin, TX) for laboratory-quantified VL. Results: Of those invited to participate, 72.3% (554/766) enrolled in the DBS study. Most (79.2%, 439/554) men enrolled reported attempting to collect their blood, 75.5% (418/554) of participants mailed a DBS specimen to the research laboratory, and 60.8% (337/554) had an adequate blood sample for VL testing. Of the 337 specimens tested for VL by the laboratory, 52.5% (177/337) had detectable VL (median: 3508 copies/mL; range: 851-1,202,265 copies/mL). Most men (83.9%, 135/161) who returned a DBS specimen with laboratory-quantified detectable VL self-reported an undetectable VL during their last clinical visit. Conclusions: Home collection of DBS samples from HIV-positive MSM is feasible and has the potential to support clinical VL monitoring. Discrepant laboratory HIV-1 RNA values and self-reported VL indicate a need to address perceived VL status, especially in the era of treatment as prevention. Most participants were willing to use an at-home DBS kit in the future, signaling an opportunity to engage high-risk MSM in long-term HIV care activities

Diachrony of differential argument marking

While there are languages that code a particular grammatical role (e.g. subject or direct object) in one and the same way across the board, many more languages code the same grammatical roles differentially. The variables which condition the differential argument marking (or DAM) pertain to various properties of the NP (such as animacy or definiteness) or to event semantics or various properties of the clause. While the main line of current research on DAM is mainly synchronic the volume tackles the diachronic perspective. The tenet is that the emergence and the development of differential marking systems provide a different kind of evidence for the understanding of the phenomenon. The present volume consists of 18 chapters and primarily brings together diachronic case studies on particular languages or language groups including e.g. Finno-Ugric, Sino-Tibetan and Japonic languages. The volume also includes a position paper, which provides an overview of the typology of different subtypes of DAM systems, a chapter on computer simulation of the emergence of DAM and a chapter devoted to the cross-linguistic effects of referential hierarchies on DAM

Diachrony of differential argument marking

While there are languages that code a particular grammatical role (e.g. subject or direct object) in one and the same way across the board, many more languages code the same grammatical roles differentially. The variables which condition the differential argument marking (or DAM) pertain to various properties of the NP (such as animacy or definiteness) or to event semantics or various properties of the clause. While the main line of current research on DAM is mainly synchronic the volume tackles the diachronic perspective. The tenet is that the emergence and the development of differential marking systems provide a different kind of evidence for the understanding of the phenomenon. The present volume consists of 18 chapters and primarily brings together diachronic case studies on particular languages or language groups including e.g. Finno-Ugric, Sino-Tibetan and Japonic languages. The volume also includes a position paper, which provides an overview of the typology of different subtypes of DAM systems, a chapter on computer simulation of the emergence of DAM and a chapter devoted to the cross-linguistic effects of referential hierarchies on DAM