Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T12:44:19.221Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Featural affixation1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Akinbiyi Akinlabi
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, Rutgers University

Extract

Underlying free (floating) features occur crosslinguistically. These features sometime function as morphemes. Such features, like segmental morphemes, often refer to specific edges of the stem, hence they are ‘featural affixes’. They get associated with the base to be prosodically licensed. We propose to account for the association of such features through a family of alignment constraints called ‘featural alignment’ which is a featural version of McCarthy & Prince's Align (MCat, MCat). Under featural alignment, an edge is defined for a feature based on a possible licensor, which may be a root node or a mora. We argue that misalignment takes place under pressure from feature co-occurrence constraints. Thus a featural suffix may get realized elsewhere in the stem, surfacing as a featural infix or even as a featural prefix. This constraints based approach is preferred to rule-based approaches since it does not require a variety of additional assumptions needed within rule-based approaches to account for the same phenomenon. These include structure preservation, prespecification, extrationality and filters.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Akinlabi, A. (1994). Alignment constraints in ATR harmony. Studies in the Linguistic Sciences. 24.2. 118.Google Scholar
Akinlabi, A. (to appear). Kalabari vowel harmony. The Linguistic Review 14.1.Google Scholar
Akinlabi, A. & Liberman, M. (1995). On the phonetic interpretation of the Yoruba tonal system. Proceedings of the International Congress of Phonetic Sciences 1995. Stockholm, Sweden. 4245.Google Scholar
Akinlabi, A., Bamba, M. & Liberman, M. (in progress). Structures and constraints in tonal phonology.Google Scholar
Amayo, M. A. (1976). A generative phonology of Edo (Bini). Ph.D. dissertation, University of Ibadan.Google Scholar
Anderson, S. C. (ed.) (1991). Tone in five languages of Cameroon. Summer Institute of Linguistics and the University of Texas at Arlington.Google Scholar
Archangeli, D. & Pulleyblank, D. (1994). Grounded phonology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Arnott, D. W. (1970). The nominal and verbal system of Fula. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bendor-Samuel, J. T. (1960). Some problems of segmentation in the phonological analysis of Terena. Word 16. 348355.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clements, G. N. & Goldsmith, J. (eds.) (1984). Autosegmental studies in Bantu tone. Dordrecht: Foris.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohn, A. (1990). Phonetic and phonological rules of nasalization. Ph.D. dissertation, UCLA.Google Scholar
Cole, J. S. & Kisseberth, Ch. W. (1994). An optimal domains theory of harmony. Studies in the Linguistic Sciences 24. 101114.Google Scholar
Crazzolara, J. (1933). Outlines of a Nuer grammar. Vienna: Verlag der Internationalen Zeitschrift ‘Anthropos’.Google Scholar
Dell, F. (1980). Generative phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Donwa, S. O. (1982). The sound system of Isoko. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Ibadan.Google Scholar
Egbokhare, F. (1990). A phonology of Emai. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Ibadan.Google Scholar
Elugbe, B. (1989). Comparative Edoid: phonology and lexicon. Port Harcourt: University of Port Harcourt Press.Google Scholar
Elimelech, B. (1976). A tonal grammar of Etsako. Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Firth, J. R. (1948). Sounds and prosodies. Transactions of the Philological Society 1948. 127152. (Reprinted in Palmer, F. R. (ed.) (1970). Prosodic analysis. London: Oxford University Press. 126.)Google Scholar
Gerfen, C. (1993). Trigger conditions and nasal harmony in Terena. Proceedings of the 19th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society. 159170.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldsmith, J. (1976). Autosegmental phonology. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT. (Published in 1979, New York: Garland.)Google Scholar
Hamano, S. (1986). The sound-symbolic system of Japanese. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Florida at Gainesville.Google Scholar
Hendricks, P. (1989). Palatalization and labialization as morphemes in Chaha. Ms., Yale University.Google Scholar
Hoskison, J. (1974). Prosodies and verb stems in Gude. Linguistics 141. 1726.Google Scholar
Hulst, van der H. & Snider, K. (eds.) (1993). The phonology of tone. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Ito, J. (1989). A prosodic theory of epenthesis. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 7. 217259.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ito, J. & Mester, A. (1992). Weak layering and word binarity. Ms., University of California, Santa Cruz.Google Scholar
Ito, J. & Mester, A. (1993). Licensed segments and safe paths. Canadian Journal of Linguistics 38. 197214.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ito, J., Mester, A. & Padgett, J. (1993). NC. Paper presented at Rutgers Optimality Workshop 1, Rutgers University.Google Scholar
Johnson, C. D. (1975). Phonological channels in Chaha. Afroasiatic Linguistics 2.2. 112.Google Scholar
Jouannet, F. (1982). L'accompli et l'inaccompli en Kanembu. In Jungraithmayr, H. (ed.) The Chad languages in the Hamitosemitic-Nigritic border area. (Marburger Studien zur Afrika und Asienkunde, Serie A: Afrika, Band 27.) Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag.Google Scholar
Jungraithmayr, H. (1990). Lexique mokilko. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer.Google Scholar
Kiparsky, P. (1981). Vowel harmony. Ms., MIT.Google Scholar
Kirchner, R. (1993). Turkish vowel disharmony in Optimality theory. Paper presented at Rutgers Optimality Workshop 1, Rutgers University.Google Scholar
Kosseke, D. & Sitamon, J. (1993). Aka field notes. Ms., Summer Institute of Linguistics, Bangui.Google Scholar
Leben, W. (1973). Suprasegmental phonology. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT. (Published in 1980, New York: Garland).Google Scholar
Lieber, R. (1984). Consonant gradation in Fula: an autosegmental approach. In Aronoff, M. & Oehrle, R. (eds.) Language sound structure. Cambridge: MIT Press. 329345.Google Scholar
Lieber, R. (1987). An integrated theory of autosegmental processes. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
McCarthy, J. (1983). Consonantal morphology in the Chaha verb. Proceedings of WCCFL 2. 176188.Google Scholar
McCarthy, J. (1986). OCP effects: germination and antigemination. Linguistic Inquiry 17. 207263.Google Scholar
McCarthy, J. (1988). Feature geometry and dependency: a review. Phonetica 43. 84108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCarthy, J. & Prince, A. (1990). Foot and word in Prosodic morphology the Arabic Broken Plural. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 8. 209284.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCarthy, J. & Prince, A. (1993a). Prosodic morphology I: constraint interaction and satisfaction. Ms., University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Rutgers University. (To be published by Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996).Google Scholar
McCarthy, J. & Prince, A. (1993b). Generalized alignment. Yearbook of Morphology 1993. 79154.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCarthy, J. & Prince, A. (1994). The emergence of the unmarked: optimality in prosodic morphology. Proceedings of NELS 24. 333379.Google Scholar
McCarthy, J. & Prince, A. (1995). Faithfulness and reduplicative identity. Ms., University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Rutgers University.Google Scholar
Mester, R. A. & Ito, J. (1989). Feature predictability and underspecification: palatal prosody in Japanese mimetics. Language 65. 258293.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nespor, M. & Vogel, I. (1986). Prosodic phonology. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Padgett, J. (1994). Stricture and nasal place assimilation. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 12. 465513.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Piggott, G. L. (1992). Variability in feature dependency: the case of nasality. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 10. 3377.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poser, W. (1980). Two cases of morphologically induced nasal harmony. Ms., MIT.Google Scholar
Prince, A. & Smolensky, P. (1991). Notes on connectionism and harmony theory in linguistics. (Technical Report CU-CS 533–91.) Department of Computer Science, University of Colorado, Boulder.Google Scholar
Prince, A. & Smolensky, P. (1993). Optimality theory: constraint interaction in generative grammar. (Technical Report 2.) Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science. (To be published by Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996).Google Scholar
Pulleyblank, D. (1986). Tone in lexical phonology. Dordrecht: Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pulleyblank, D. (1989). Patterns of feature co-occurrence: the case of nasality. Coyote Papers 9: Arizona Phonology Conference 2. Tucson: Arizona. 98115.Google Scholar
Pulleyblank, D. (1993). Vowel harmony and Optimality theory. Paper presented at Workshop Sobre Fonologia, University of Coimbra.Google Scholar
Pulleyblank, D. (1994). Neutral vowels in optimality theory: a comparison of Yoruba and Wolof. Ms., University of British Columbia.Google Scholar
Rice, K. (1987). The function of structure preservation: derived environments. Proceedings of NELS 17. 501519.Google Scholar
Roberts, J. S. (1994). Nontonal features as grammatical morphemes. Paper presented at 25th Annual Conference on African Linguistics, Rutgers University.Google Scholar
Rose, S. (1993). Palatalization, underspecification, and plane conflation in Chaha. Proceedings of WCCFL 12. 101116.Google Scholar
Sagey, E. (1986). The representation of features and relations in nonlinear phonology. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.Google Scholar
Samek-Lodovici, V. (1993). A unified analysis of crosslinguistic morphological gemination. Proceedings of CONSOLE 1. 265283.Google Scholar
Schourup, L. & Tamori, I. (1992). Palatalization in Japanese mimetics: response to Mester and Ito. Language 68. 139148.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Selkirk, E. (1986). On derived domains in sentence phonology. Phonology Yearbook 3. 371405.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shimizu, K. (1983). The Zing dialect of Mumuye: a descriptive grammar. Hamburg: Buske.Google Scholar
Smolensky, P. (1993). Harmony, markedness, and phonological activity. Paper presented at Rutgers Optimality Workshop 1, Rutgers University.Google Scholar
Spencer, A. (1991). Morphological theory. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Stanley, R. (1967). Redundancy rules in phonology. Language 43. 393436.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steriade, D. (1993). Closure, release and nasal contours. In Huffman, M. K. & Krakow, R. A. (eds.) Phonetics and Phonology 5. San Diego: Academic Press. 401470.Google Scholar
Wonderly, W. L. (1951). Zoque II: phonemes and morphophonemes. International Journal of American Linguistics 17. 105123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zoll, C. (1994). Anchors away: a unified treatment of latent segments and floating features. Ms., University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar