Li6 Phonology and Morphology Syllables and syllabification

Today’s topics  Evidence for the syllable and its components  How syllable structure is assigned to phonological representations

Syllable structure  Maybe also Appendix (though this probably attaches to the Prosodic Word) σ Rhyme OnsetNucleusCoda

Syllables  Most people have clear intuitions about syllable counts and divisions. sing.er : see.ker at.lan.tic : a.tro.cious  Are they simply counting vowels? No: button Abkhaz mts’k’ ‘type of fly’ (Vaux 1997) Syllable divisions cannot refer simply to vowels  pa.per vs sing.er, distend vs distaste  Vulg. Lat. /ad.ri.pa.re/  ar.ri.va.re ‘arrive’ vs. ca.the.dra ‘chair’ (Steriade 1988)

Evidence for syllables as phonological units  Morphological rules  Language games  Psycholinguistic phenomena  Restrictions on coarticulation  Phonological rules  Poetics  Writing systems

Morphological rules  Armenian plural selection (Vaux 2003) šun-er ‘dogs’ : katu-ner ‘cats’

Language games  French ‘Verlan’ l’envers vérité  térivé, etc. (cf. Plénat 1995)  Fula deftere  teredef, etc. (Bagemihl 1989)  Korean original  san†ok’i †ok’iya ³til¥l kan¥nya?  k’a²…o² k’a²…o² t’wimy³ns³ ³til¥l kan¥nya?  wild rabbit, wild rabbit, where are you going?  running hoppity-hop, where are you going? type 1  k’i†osan yak’i†o l¥lti³ nyan¥ka?  …o²k’a² …o²k’a² s³my³nt’wi l¥lti³ nyan¥ka? type 2  sapa†opok’ipi †opok’ipiyapa ³p³tipil¥p¥ kapan¥p¥nyapa?  k’apa…opo k’apa…opo t’wipimy³p³s³p³ ³p³tipil¥p¥ kapan¥p¥nyapa?

Psycholinguistic phenomena  Response times Mehler, Dommergues, Frauenfelder & Segui 1981  “press the button once you hear [pa]”  subjects detected [pa] faster in pa.lace  subjects detected [pal] faster in pal.mier.  Tip of the tongue phenomena Brown and McNeill 1966  Speech errors Fromkin 1971  Onset metathesis dreater swying  Rhyme metathesis A hunk of jeep Stemberger: more than 90% of ordering speech errors invert O-O, C-C omission of entire syllable  unanímity  unámity, treméndously  trémenly, specifícity  specífity

Restrictions on coarticulation  Phonetic coarticulation effects generally restricted to tautosyllabic contexts e.g. In French, onset but not coda consonants coarticulate with a tautosyllabic vowel, whether or not other consonants intervene  e.g. in oucri [u.k  i], k shows significant effects from the i, despite the intervening liquid (Rialland 1994:144).  English r-coloring

Phonological rules  English aspiration [p h ]it : s[p]it dis[t]end : dis[t h ]aste  Nickname formation Andy, *Andry (Kenstowicz 1994)

Poetics  Many languages employ syllable- counting meters, e.g. Sanskrit anu ʂʈ ubh (4 x 8 σ) Rigveda (Sacrifice of the primeval giant Purusha)  brāhmaņo [a]sya muk h am āsīd, His mouth was the priest,  bāhū rāĵaniah krtah His two arms were made the warrior,  ūrū tad asya yad vayšyah His two thighs were the farmer,  padb h yām šūdro aĵāyata. From his two feet the dog-eater was born.

Writing systems  Some Linear B renditions of Mycenean Greek: U qe [k w e] ‘and’ YcMt qa-si-re-u [g w asileus] ‘king’ yZn ~ yZ wa-na(-ka) [wanaks] ‘king’ q.> a-ko-ro [agros] ‘field’ vs q/> a-ku-ro [arguros] ‘silver’

Evidence for syllabic constituents  Onset vs Rhyme English L-allomorphy Blends (see next slides)  Rhyme common domain of poetic rhyme Syllable weight  Onset Buenos Aires Spanish y  ž: ley ‘law’ vs. ležes ‘laws’ Pig Latin?  Nucleus Japanese -rV- language game?  Coda English glottalization/unrelease (e.g. hat, Atlantic vs. atrocious) German devoicing (Freun[t] ‘friend (m)’ vs. Freun[d]in ‘friend (f)’, glau[p]lich) assuming that disjoint environments aren’t allowed, we need the Coda

Blends  Experiment 1 Question  Do Onsets and Rimes exist (as suggested by e.g. brunch vs. *blunch)? Method  Train subjects to combine pairs of well-formed English nonce monosyllables (such as krint and glupth) into a new monosyllable that contains parts of both. Results  responses like krupth (Onset kr- of the first syllable and Rime -upth of the second) were produced far more often than any other possible combination. Conclusion  The natural break within English syllables is immediately before the vowel (i.e. Onset vs. Rime). σ σ O R O R N C N C k r i n t g l u p th Experiments from Treiman 1983

Blends  Experiment 2 Hypothesis  If a syllable is composed of Onset + Rime, then artificial games that keep these units intact should be easier to learn than games that break up the syllables in a different way. Method  Subjects taught 2 types of word games: 1. Blend the Onset of a nonce CCVCC syllable with the Rime of another  e.g. fl-irz + gr-uns  fl-uns 2. Combine non-constituents (f-runs, flins, flir-s). Results  Game 1 was learned with fewer errors than was Games 2. Conclusion  Speakers have access to the constituents O and R. Experiments from Treiman 1983

Syllabification  Q: Are syllables part of the lexical entries of words?  A: Since syllable structure appears to be predictable, we want to say that it is assigned by rule.  Q: What rules do we need to assign syllabic structures? Kahn 1976 et seq.:  attach nuclei  attach onsets  attach codas  cope with whatever’s left over ordering onset attachment before coda attachment derives onset maximisationonset maximisation

The basic procedure

Harari (K and K 1977) URSRgloss t-s ʌ brtis ʌ bri‘break’, 2masc imf. t-s ʌ br-itis ʌ bri2f y-s ʌ bryis ʌ bri3m t-s ʌ brtis ʌ bri3f n-s ʌ brnis ʌ bri1pl t-s ʌ br-utis ʌ bru2pl y-s ʌ br-uyis ʌ bru3pl z ʌ -t-sb ʌ rz ʌ tsib ʌ r2m neg imf z ʌ -t-sb ʌ r-iz ʌ tsib ʌ ri2f neg imf z ʌ -y-sb ʌ rz ʌ ysib ʌ r3m neg imf z ʌ -t-sb ʌ rz ʌ tsib ʌ r3f neg imf z ʌ -n-sb ʌ rz ʌ nsib ʌ r1pl neg imf z ʌ -t-sb ʌ r-uz ʌ tsib ʌ ru2pl neg imf z ʌ -y-sb ʌ r-uz ʌ ysib ʌ ru3pl neg imf

Vowel hiatus  Generally interpreted as subcase of requirement that all syllables must have an onset Glottal stop insertion: [ /A  / t  ] ‘art’, etc.  Article allomorphy  Glide insertion and r-insertion?

Conclusions  There is extensive evidence for the abstract prosodic elements σ, O, N, C, R.  Syllable structure is normally predictable, and can be derived by a relatively simple set of rules. The ordering of these rules can generate effects such as Onset Maximisation and location of epenthetic vowels.

References Bagemihl, Bruce The crossing constraint and ‘backwards languages’. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 7.4: Brown, Roger & David McNeill The “tip-of-the-tongue” phenomenon. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 5: Fromkin, Victoria The non-anomalous nature of anomalous utterances. Language 47: Kahn, Daniel Syllable-based generalizations in English phonology. Doctoral dissertation, MIT. [Published 1980 New York: Garland Press.] Kenstowicz, Michael and Charles Kisseberth Generative phonology. New York: Academic Press. Mehler, J., J. Dommergues, Uli Frauenfelder, and J. Segui The syllable’s role in speech segmentation. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 20: Plénat, Marc Une approche prosodique de la morphologie du verlan. Lingua 95: Rialland, Annie The phonology and phonetics of extrasyllabicity in French. In Patricia A. Keating, ed., Phonological Structure and Phonetic Form. Papers in Laboratory Phonology 3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp Stemberger, Joseph Speech errors and theoretical phonology: a review. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Linguistics Club. Steriade, Donca Gemination and the Proto-Romance Syllable Schift. Advances in Romance Linguistics, edited by David Birdsong & Jean-Pierre Montreuil, Dordrecht: Foris. Treiman, Rebecca The structure of spoken syllables: Evidence from novel word games. Cognition 15: Vaux, Bert The Cwyzhy Dialect of Abkhaz. Harvard Working Papers in Linguistics 6, Susumu Kuno, Bert Vaux, and Steve Peter, eds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Linguistics Department. Vaux, Bert Syllabification in Armenian, Universal Grammar, and the lexicon. Linguistic Inquiry 34.1:

Intervocalic C sequences  A priori, it’s not obvious how to syllabify intervocalic Cs Oft-invoked principle: Onset Maximisation Problems:  stress  vowel quality  morpheme boundaries  phonotactics  ambisyllabicity merry, happy…