<OT> New Posting: ROA-634

[roa at ruccs.rutgers.edu]

ROA 634-1103

Systemic Contrast and the Diachrony of Spanish Sibilant Voicing

Travis G. Bradley <tgbradley at ucdavis.edu>
Ann Marie Delforge <amdelforge at ucdavis.edu>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=634


Abstract:
According to the Saussurian view, a phonological form must
be understood in the context of the larger system of forms
of which it is a part. The notion of systemic contrast plays
a key role in structuralist accounts of sound change, especially
in the work of Martinet. Recent applications of Dispersion
Theory (Flemming 1995) to historical sound change have attempted
to make Martinet's ideas more explicit by appealing to constraint
s that require surface contrasts to be maintained and kept
perceptually distinct. In this study, we examine a well
known historical development whereby intervocalic voiced
sibilants in medieval Spanish devoiced and merged with their
voiceless counterparts. Following recent developments in
Dispersion Theory (Ní Chiosáin & Padgett 2001, Padgett 2003a,b,c)
, we develop an analysis of the contextual realizations
of sibilant voicing across various diachronic stages, and
we extend the analysis to cover related developments in
contemporary Spanish dialects. Central to the account is
a proposed distinction between sibilants that are phonologically
specified for [voice] and neutral sibilants that are phonetically
underspecified for this feature, where gradient interpolation
of laryngeal values determines phonetic voicing in context
(Ernestus 2000, Steriade 1997). We argue that such a distinction
is descriptively adequate in accounting for the phonetic
nature of sibilant voicing in Spanish. On a theoretical
level, we show that Dispersion Theory makes it possible
to incorporate a universally non-contrastive phonetic category
into the phonology. Because contrast well-formedness is
regulated by systemic markedness constraints, direct appeal
to non-contrastive aspects of phonetic detail does not overpredic
t the range of possible contrasts.

References

Ernestus, Mirjam. 2000. "Voice Assimilation and Segment
Reduction in Casual Dutch: A corpus-based study of the phonology-
phonetics interface". Ph.D. dissertation, Vrije Universiteit
Amsterdam.

Flemming, Edward. 1995. Auditory Representations in Phonology.
Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles.

Ní Chiosáin, Máire, & Jaye Padgett. 2001. "Markedness, Segment
Realization, and Locality in Spreading". Segmental Phonology
in Optimality Theory: Constraints and Representations ed.
by Linda Lombardi., 118-156. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.

Padgett, Jaye. 2003a. "Contrast and Post-Velar Fronting
in Russian". Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 21.39-87.

----------. 2003b. "The Emergence of Contrastive Palatalization
in Russian". Optimality Theory and Language Change ed. by
D. Eric Holt, 307-335. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

----------. 2003c. "Systemic Contrast and Catalan Rhotics".
Ms., University of California, Santa Cruz.

Steriade, Donca. 1997. "Phonetics in Phonology: The case
of laryngeal neutralization". Ms., University of California,
Los Angeles.

Comments: 
Keywords: Spanish, sibilants, devoicing, voicing, Dispersion Theory, phonetic underpsecification, systemic contrast
Areas: Phonology,Phonetics,Historical Linguistics
Type: Manuscript

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=634