The lexical tone and intonation contrasts in the Limburgish dialect of Maastricht are remarkable in a number of ways. While a falling pitch contour on an IP-medial syllable signals a non-declarative intonation, on an IP-final syllable it signals a declarative intonation. In addition, although there is a binary tone contrast (Accent 1 vs. Accent 2) and four nuclear intonation contours, only three intonation contours exist for nuclear syllables with Accent 2, while in IP-final position only two intonation contours exist for nuclear syllables with Accent 1, so that the full set of four intonation contours is only observable in IP-medial nuclear syllables with Accent 1. The context-dependent function of the pitch fall and the asymmetries are explained by a grammar in which the OCP is enforced absolutely, and the number of tones per syllable is restricted to two, unless the three tones each represent a different morpheme: OCP, Realise.orph≫#TTT.

This paper employs a computational framework to demonstrate that two competing feature-geometric models of tonal representation are notationally equivalent. A model-theoretic analysis of these structures using a low-complexity logic yields two main results. First, the current study demonstrates that the models do not differ in their empirical coverage of assimilatory tone-sandhi processes in Chinese dialects, contrary to previous claims. Second, the models are shown to be bi-interpretable (using a more restrictive definition of bi-interpretability than earlier studies), thus providing a formally rigorous demonstration that the differences between the structures of the models are superficial, rather than substantive. The computational characterisation pursued here is well suited to questions of notational equivalence, because it allows for a principled comparison of the empirical coverage and structural content of two models using a single formalism.

‘Phonologisation’ is a process whereby a phonetic phenomenon enters the phonological grammar and becomes conceptualised as the result of categorical manipulation of phonological symbols. I analyse the phonologisation of a predictable phonological pattern in Welsh, with particular attention to identifying criteria for whether phonologisation has occurred. I argue for a model where phonologisation experiences bottom-up and top-down biases. From the bottom up, there is pressure to phonologise phenomena with a categorical distribution; from the top down, there exist formal constraints on featural specification. I focus on the requirement for featural specifications to obey the Contrastivist Hypothesis, which denies that redundant features can be involved in phonological computation, in the context of a framework with emergent features. I suggest that the Contrastivist Hypothesis provides a useful boundary condition for emergent-feature theories, whilst independent phonologisation criteria provide contrastivist approaches with a more solid conceptual underpinning.

In the Southern Bavarian variety of Tyrolean, laryngeal contrasts undergo a typologically interesting process of neutralisation in word-initial position. We undertake an acoustic analysis of Tyrolean stops in word-initial, word-medial intersonorant and word-final contexts, as well as in obstruent clusters, investigating the role of the acoustic parameters VOT, prevoicing, closure duration and F0 and H1–H2* on following vowels in implementing contrast, if any. Results show that stops contrast word-medially via [voice] (supported by the acoustic cues of closure duration and F0), and are neutralised completely in word-final position and in obstruent clusters. Word-initially, neutralisation is subject to inter- and intraspeaker variability, and is sensitive to place of articulation. Aspiration plays no role in implementing laryngeal contrasts in Tyrolean.

The phenomenon of incomplete neutralisation describes a situation where a putative case of categorical phonological neutralisation is observed to be phonetically non-neutralising. This has been argued to be a problem for phonological theories that employ categorical features. Here, we use two distinct feeding orders of tone sandhi processes from Huai’an Mandarin to show that incomplete phonetic neutralisation is compatible with categorical phonological phenomena. Therefore, incomplete phonetic neutralisation does not automatically inform us of gradient phonological representations. We further show that incomplete phonetic neutralisation can in fact have a large effect size. Such results are not surprising from a classic generative view of phonology where linguistic performance is argued to be a multi-factorial problem, and linguistic knowledge (i.e., competence) is only one of the many factors involved. Furthermore, our results suggest that the observed incompleteness or gradience may have a source outside phonological knowledge.

This paper presents the results of a corpus study and an online loanword adaptation experiment examining the tonal adaptation of English loanwords in Mandarin. Using maximum entropy models, I control for the substantial influences of lexical tone distributions and standardisation, and uncover phonological determinants of tone beyond these lexical and conventional factors. The most important phonological determinant of tone in the corpus was English voicing, while in the experiment it was English stress-aligned pitch contours. I argue that these distinct tonal adaptation patterns constitute two different perceptual mappings, one from F0 perturbations to tone and the other from English intonation to tone, both arising due to particular borrowing contexts. I suggest that increasingly close contact between English and Mandarin may lead to more intonation-driven tonal adaptation in the latest wave of borrowing. The maximum entropy approach holds promise for the analysis of complex cases of tonal adaptation in other languages.

What is the status of schwa in Tashlhiyt? How does it pattern at the segmental and suprasegmental levels? This paper studies these questions by examining the frequencies with which schwa is inserted in different segmental contexts, and by exploring the nature of the interaction between schwa insertion and prosodic prominence. The results show the coexistence of two types of schwa in the language: a transitional schwa and a prosodically triggered schwa. The former is ignored by the phonological system of the language; its occurrence depends solely on the phonetic characteristics of the adjacent consonants. The latter surfaces whenever a prosodically prominent feature does not attach to a vowel or sonorant already present within the word. Both schwas are argued to be manifestations of a more general principle governing the coordination pattern of consonant sequences in Tashlhiyt.

Ever since Baudouin de Courtenay (e.g. 1917 [1990: 500]), the founder of phonology, it has been customary for every new phonological theory to make claims about the particular level(s) at which rules of versification may refer to phonological representations. Baudouin himself, for example, took rhyming to be evidence of phonemic identity. The birth of generative phonology thus led to a series of claims that rules of versification may have access to underlying representations – or to various intermediate levels of representation more shallow than the underlying but still deeper than phonemic. Starting with Zeps (1963) and for the next twenty-odd years a certain number of such arguments have been published, and it appears that their validity is widely assumed in the field, as reflected in such survey articles as O'Connor (1982: 155–156) and Hayes (1988: 228–229). Presumably it is precisely the widespread acceptance of these arguments that explains the relative lull in the debate recently (but see Malone 1982,1983, 1988a, b).

Linguists have been attempting to define the range of locations in which infixescan occur since Ultan's pioneering work in 1975, but to date therehas been no unambiguous evidence for infixation after the first syllable,despite previous (now controversial) claims of its existence by Ultan (1975) andMoravcsik (2000), as well as its predicted existence by Yu's SalientPivot Hypothesis (‘phonological pivots must be salient at thepsycholinguistic or phonetic level’) (2003, 2007). Previouslyexamined potential examples are controversial due to restricted patterns and theacceptability of alternative analyses such as a first-vowel pivot or afoot-based pivot (Samuels 2010). In this article, I present strong evidence fromfieldwork on Yeri, an endangered Torricelli language of Papua New Guinea, thatimperfective and additive morphemes productively occur as infixes after thefirst syllable of the verb stem, and that a first-vowel or foot-based analysiscannot account for their position.

It has long been observed that languages tend to preserve contrast, either by introducing sound changes or by inhibiting them. However, it is not clear if any instances of so-called homophony avoidance reported to date constitute an active synchronic restriction in the grammar. This paper presents an instance of homophony avoidance in Russian masculine nouns. A perception experiment shows that the trends observed in the corpus are only partially extended to nonce words. I argue that the asymmetry observed in the experimental results can only be attributed to a synchronic restriction against homophonous forms in the same paradigm. Thus this paper presents strong evidence in favour of a synchronic anti-homophony constraint.

In local optionality, an optional process may apply at some loci in a form but not at others. Some theories of optionality, such as Partial Orders Theory, produce optionality by making multiple strict constraint rankings available, and have been claimed to be incompatible with local optionality: if the process-triggering constraint outranks faithfulness, the process applies exhaustively; under the opposite ranking, it applies nowhere. On this view, candidates in which the process applies at some loci but not others are harmonically bounded. This paper argues against that position by showing that for a variety of locally optional processes each locus can be independently manipulated if the theory makes use of constraints that target particular prosodic or morphosyntactic units – constraints that are motivated independently of their utility in local optionality. The result is that, contrary to the harmonic-bounding argument, Partial Orders Theory can provide plausible accounts of local optionality.

In any study of empirical phenomena, the unusual holds particular attraction. The Bird of Paradise with its amazing feathers, the monolithic baobabs and the joint nursing of emperor penguins are phenomena that catch the imagination of the specialist and the interested lay person alike. The scientific study of ‘outliers’ holds particular promise, often revealing a system's complexity that is not evident when studying simpler phenomena.

Black (1991) proposes that the failure of Velar Glide Deletion in some contexts motivates an iambic typology in which a disyllabic iamb is better than a monosyllabic iamb. Velar Glide Deletion in Axininca fails when a demotion on the iambic scale would result from its application. However, empirical findings from epenthesis, the regressive marker, augmentation and comparative data from Caquinte Campa argue against this analysis. It is important to note the relationship between the assumption that the root + suffix constitutes the prosodic domain of Velar Glide Deletion, as argued by the typological analysis, and the conclusion that Velar Glide Deletion fails when a monosyllabic foot would result from a disyllabic one. If the suffix is abandoned as part of the prosodic domain for computing Velar Glide Deletion, the root alone is the prosodic domain prohibiting Velar Glide Deletion. In the latter case, the minimal word blocking Deletion is a regular, minimal quantity-sensitive foot.

A'ingae (or Cofán) is a language isolate spoken in the Ecuadorian and Colombian Amazon. This study presents a description and analysis of the language's morphologically conditioned verbal stress assignment. Specifically, I show that A'ingae verbal morphemes can be classified with two binary parameters: the presence or absence of prestressing and the presence or absence of stress deletion (i.e. dominance), which vary independently. I formalise my analysis in Cophonology Theory, a non-representational theory of the phonology–morphology interface, which captures morpheme-specific phonology with constraint rankings particularised to morphological constructions. I argue that while non-representational approaches such as Cophonology Theory can handle the facts of A'ingae stress deletion straightforwardly, representational approaches lack the expressive power necessary to capture the stress facts of the language.

We analyse the distribution of vowel laxness and stress alternations in Slovenian nouns (for example in the nominative and genitive forms of the masculine noun [ˈjɛzik ~ jeˈzika] ‘tongue’), showing that stress shifts away from mid lax vowels in initial syllables. A stress shift of this sort is predicted by positional faithfulness (Beckman 1997). We show that this prediction is correct, contra McCarthy (2007, 2010) and Jesney (2011). The productivity of the pattern is confirmed in a large-scale nonce-word task. Stress shift in Slovenian is a result of the markedness of mid lax vowels and, perhaps counterintuitively, faithfulness to laxness in initial stressed position.

Köhnlein (2016) proposes to represent the Franconian tone contrast as a difference in foot structure, whereby Accent 1 appears in lexically marked syllabic trochees and Accent 2 in default moraic trochees, as an alternative to analyses with an underlying privative tone for Accent 2. After sketching the two approaches, we argue against three arguments Köhnlein advances in favour of the metrical analysis. We then show that one of the disadvantages incurred by the metrically derived tonal representations is the introduction of a novel and otherwise unsupported concept of a single tone that incorporates two morphologically different but phonologically identical tones. We also evaluate Köhnlein's (2018) more recent proposal to use the syllabic trochee to account for subtractive plurals in tonal dialects. Finally, we compare the predictive powers of the metrical and tonal analyses of the Arzbach dialect.

Correspondence is a relation between one representation and another (McCarthy & Prince 1993, 1994, 1995). This relationship may be between an underlying or lexical representation and a surface representation, that is: Input–Output forms; or between surface forms such as a reduplicant and its base (McCarthy & Prince 1995) or other derivationally related pairs (see for example Benua 1995, McCarthy 1995, Kenstowicz 1996) – i.e. Output–Output. Correspondence constraints over related words in a paradigm ensure uniformity within the paradigm. In earlier theories this effect was ensured by the Strict Cycle Constraint, which forbade structure-changing operations except in immediately derived environments and thus ensured that most of the base word stayed the same in derivation. In this paper we show that correspondence between derivationally related output forms (Benua 1995) is essential for the proper analysis of vowel length in Warray, a language of Northern Australia spoken near Darwin, and superior to an account making use of cyclicity. Correspondence constraints ensuring identity between output forms explain the pattern of vowel length in nouns, predicting both where long vowels occur as well as the apparently anomalous appearance of short vowels where long vowels might be expected.

Šmartno is a critically endangered dialect of Slovenian that exhibits three interacting processes: final devoicing, unstressed high vowel deletion and vowel–glide coalescence. Their interaction is opaque: final obstruents devoice, unless they become final due to vowel deletion; high vowels delete, but not when created by coalescence. These patterns constitute a synchronic chain shift that leads to two emergent contrasts: final obstruent voicing and vowel length (due to compensatory lengthening). The paper examines all nominal paradigms, and complements them with an acoustic analysis of vowel duration and obstruent voicing. This work presents one of the most thoroughly documented instances of counterfeeding opacity on environment.

This article presents a selection of methods to analyse, compare, verify and formally prove properties about phonological generalisations. Drawing from both well-known and recent results in the domains of model checking and automata theory, a useful methodology for automating the task of comparing analyses and inventing counterexamples is explored. The methods are illustrated by practical case studies that are intended to both resolve concrete issues and be representative of typical techniques and results.

In the Yakima dialect of Sahaptin, the smallest forms of words are CCV and CVC, as established by a study of lexical patterns and the obligatory augmentation of subminimal roots. We argue that CCV words cannot be considered a type of disyllable, nor do the initial consonants in CCV words exhibit properties (apart from minimality) that would allow them to be classified as moraic. We therefore propose that Yakima Sahaptin represents a previously unrecognised type of minimality, biconsonantal minimality. This kind of minimality requires a theoretical framework in which consonants can be distinguished from vowels, as do other phonological phenomena.