Icy Targets in Karajá ATR Harmony as Contrast Preservation

This paper presents a novel application of Contrast Preservation (Lubowicz 2003) to analyze a puzzling pattern of icy targets (Jurgec 2011). Icy targets are segments which harmonize but then block the spread of harmony, and a particularly theoretically challenging type is present in Karajá, in which derived and underlying [+ATR] high vowels behave differently (Ribeiro 2002;2012). We show that this harmony pattern can be successfully analyzed by considering the behaviour of these icy targets as a form of contrast preservation, where high [-ATR] vowels must harmonize when followed by a [+ATR] vowel, but the underlying contrast between [-ATR] and [+ATR] high vowels is preserved on any preceding vowels. The icy target effect thus emerges as a way to compromise between the pressure to harmonize high vowels and the pressure to preserve underlying ATR contrasts in high vowels. In this way, we extend Contrast Preservation Theory to include vowel harmony patterns, opening new opportunities to analyze puzzling patterns as a choice in which contrasts to preserve

A Segment-specific Metric for Quantifying Participation in Harmony

Despite substantial phonological research into segmental co-occurrence patterns, there is currently no systematic way of calculating the gradient degree to which a segment participates in a harmony system, across its co-occurrences with all other segments. In this paper, I adopt the statistical concept of relative risk as a measure of participation in harmony. I compute both O/E values and the relative risk measure for vowels in corpora of three languages with front/back harmony: Chuvash, Tatar, and Mari. I show that relative risk corresponds to the intuitive notion of how much a vowel participates in harmony, viewed based on how regularly it occurs in disharmonic contexts. I then consider the implications of the results, given what is known about categorical trends of participation in front/back harmony systems in other languages. For example, the relative risk values show that [i] generally participates less in the harmony system than most other vowels in all of these languages, and that marked vowels are typically highly harmonic. As such, this measure can illuminate gradient language-internal and cross-linguistic patterns in harmony participation that are not apparent from more categorical descriptions or entirely clear from O/E values

Editors' Note

Editors' Note for the Proceedings of the 2021 Annual Meeting on Phonology (AMP 2021), held at York University in October 2021

Learning phonetically and phonologically natural classes through constraint indexation

Phonological processes tend to be defined over natural classes (Chomsky & Halle 1968), but there are some arbitrary and language-specific aspects to class behaviour (e.g., Mielke 2004). This paper shows that it is possible to implement a procedure of finding language specific natural classes using contrast detection (Dresher 2014, Sanstedt 2018), but in standard OT with domain-general methods. Three toy languages are constructed, based on those in Prickett & Jarosz (2021), in which /e/ raises to [i] in the presence of a high vowel and in which /s/ palatalizes to [ʃ] before [i]. In one language, raising feeds palatalization (transparent); in the second, raising counterfeeds palatalization (opaque); in the third, raising applies transparently, but only in certain morphemes (lexically specific). All three languages are learned with a version of Round’s (2017) learner that learns indexed constraints (Pater 2000) that are attached to specific segments in morphemes rather than entire morphemes (cf. Nazarov 2021). This learner is able to find appropriate natural classes for these data, both phonetic natural classes (=traditional natural classes) and what I call phonologically natural classes (classes defined by having certain phonetic properties and undergoing a range of phonological processes), showing the feasibility of this approach

A target-oriented approach to neutrality in vowel harmony: Evidence from Hungarian

This paper provides a novel perspective on neutrality in vowel harmony, using evidence from Hungarian. Despite the extensive study of Hungarian vowel harmony, the intermediate neutrality of [e:], which can alternate harmonically with [a:], is rarely addressed in existing analyses. While many standard accounts of harmony assume that front unrounded vowels like [e:] are neutral due to the lack of back counterpart, the [a:]~[e:] alternation makes this approach unsupportable. Specifically, since both [a:] and [e:] lack harmonic counterparts, but [a:] participates in harmony by re-pairing to [e:], the theory must explain why [e:] is not consistently harmonic. I argue that this pattern forces a new, target-focused approach, where participation is based on the vowel-specific drive to undergo harmony; neutrality results when this drive is insufficient to force unfaithfulness. This idea is motivated by cross-linguistic and phonetic facts suggesting that vowels that are low and/or rounded are inherently better targets of front/back harmony. I implement this approach formally in Harmonic Grammar; the harmony constraint is scaled by the quality of a vowel as a potential target, parallel to Kimper’s (2011) trigger strength scaling. This account can capture not only the basic Hungarian facts, but also the gradience of neutrality (the height effect) and the variability in Hungarian harmony. Moreover, I argue that this view of harmony is necessary beyond Hungarian and beyond front/back harmony: neutrality is crucially about the quality of a vowel as a potential target of harmony, where target quality is determined in a cross-linguistic, phonetically motivated way

A target-oriented approach to neutrality in vowel harmony

This dissertation provides a novel perspective on neutrality in vowel harmony, using evidence from multiple front/back and ATR harmony systems. While many standard accounts of harmony assume an equivalence between vowels that are neutral to harmony and those that lack a counterpart in the harmonic feature (e.g. van der Hulst 2016), this correspondence is demonstrably false in both directions. For example, in Hungarian (Chapter 3), [e:] lacks a harmonic counterpart, but is not consistently neutral to front/back harmony, in that it can alternate harmonically in some suffixes with [a:]. Conversely, in Mayak (Chapter 9), [a] has a contrastive ATR counterpart, yet is nonetheless neutral to ATR harmony. I argue that these types of patterns force a new, target-focused approach, where participation is based on the drive of specific vowel qualities to undergo harmony; neutrality results when this drive is insufficient to force unfaithfulness. This idea is motivated by cross-linguistic and phonetic facts suggesting that vowels that are low and/or rounded are inherently better targets of front/back harmony, while higher vowels are better targets of ATR-dominant harmony. I implement this approach formally in Harmonic Grammar; the harmony constraint is scaled by the quality of a vowel as a potential target, parallel to Kimper’s (2011) trigger strength scaling. This account can capture the complexities in the relationship between contrast and neutrality in a variety of harmony systems, including the gradience of neutrality (the height effect) in Hungarian (Hayes & Londe 2006), and paired neutral vowels in Mayak (Andersen 1999), among other cases. I argue that this view of harmony is necessary: neutrality is crucially about the quality of a vowel as a potential target of harmony, where target quality is determined in a cross-linguistically consistent, phonetically motivated way.Arts, Faculty ofLinguistics, Department ofGraduat

Largonji des Loucherbems: An Optimality-Theoretic Analysis of a 19th Century French Language Game

This is an accepted article published by Cambridge University Press.This paper provides a novel Optimality Theoretic analysis of the 19th century French secret language Largonji. While Largonji is a reversal game, we show that it is a type not previously described, in which the first onset that is not an /l/ reverses, even if it is not at an edge. Thus, traditional approaches to reversal games, such as cross-anchoring, do not work for Largonji. However, our account does not require direct reference to onsets. Instead, it is based on preservation of moraic structure, combined with alignment of a Largonji-specific prefix. Though suprasegmental faithfulness has been noted previously in language games, the present account implements it in Optimality Theory for the first time. Further, in analyzing the Largonji affix as a prefix that is sometimes realized as an infix, we suggest that Largonji provides additional evidence for how language games can reflect cross- linguistic patterns not present in the base language

Ejective harmony in Lezgian

This is an accepted manuscript published by Cambridge University Press.This paper contributes to the typology of laryngeal harmony by analysing an unusual case of long-distance laryngeal co-occurrence restrictions and alternations in Lezgian. This pattern, previously unmentioned in the phonological literature, is the first known case of alternations involving ejective harmony. In Lezgian, local processes mask the interaction of ejectives and plain voiceless stops. This is robustly supported by our dictionary analysis, which reveals a ban on the co-occurrence of ejectives and plain voiceless stops within the foot. Both harmony alternations and static co-occurrence restrictions are sensitive to foot structure, unlike previous cases of consonant harmony. Harmony also interacts opaquely with vowel syncope, and certain co-occurrences of plain and ejective stops are resolved with dissimilation rather than harmony, showing a conspiracy to avoid co-occurrences. We demonstrate an account within the Agreement by Correspondence framework and discuss implications for the typology and analysis of consonant harmony

Descriptive and theoretical approaches to African linguistics: Selected papers from the 49th Annual Conference on African Linguistics

Descriptive and Theoretical Approaches to African Linguistics contains a selection of revised and peer-reviewed papers from the 49th Annual Conference on African Linguistics, held at Michigan State University in 2018. The contributions from both students and more senior scholars, based in North America, Africa and other parts of the world, provide a glimpse of the breadth and quality of current research in African linguistics from both descriptive and theoretical perspectives. Fields of interest range from phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics to sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, discourse analysis, language documentation, computational linguistics and beyond. The articles reflect both the typological and genetic diversity of languages in Africa and the wide range of research areas covered by presenters at ACAL conferences

Descriptive and theoretical approaches to African linguistics: Selected papers from the 49th Annual Conference on African Linguistics

Descriptive and Theoretical Approaches to African Linguistics contains a selection of revised and peer-reviewed papers from the 49th Annual Conference on African Linguistics, held at Michigan State University in 2018. The contributions from both students and more senior scholars, based in North America, Africa and other parts of the world, provide a glimpse of the breadth and quality of current research in African linguistics from both descriptive and theoretical perspectives. Fields of interest range from phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics to sociolinguistics, historical linguistics, discourse analysis, language documentation, computational linguistics and beyond. The articles reflect both the typological and genetic diversity of languages in Africa and the wide range of research areas covered by presenters at ACAL conferences