<OT> New Posting: ROA-655

[roa at ruccs.rutgers.edu]

ROA 655-0404

Crossing morpheme boundaries in Dutch

Marc van Oostendorp <Marc.van.Oostendorp at Meertens.knaw.nl>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=655


Abstract:
On the basis of Dutch data, this article argues that many
differences between types of affixes which are usually described
by arbitrary morphological diacritics in the literature,
can be made to follow from the phonological shape of affixes.
Two cases are studied in some detail: the difference between
prefixes and suffixes, and differences between 'cohering'
and 'noncohering' suffixes.


Prefixes in many languages of the world behave as prosodically
more independent than suffixes with respect to syllabification:
the former usually do not integrate with the stem, whereas
the latter do. Dutch is an example of a language to which
this applies. It is argued that this asymmetry does not
have to be stipulated, but can be made to follow from the
fact that the phonotactic reason for crossing a morpheme
boundary usually involves the creation of an onset, which
is on the left-hand side of a vowel and not on its right-hand
side, plus some general (symmetric) conditions on the interface
between phonology and morphology.


The differences between 'cohering' and 'noncohering' suffixes
with respect to syllable structure and stress in Dutch is
argued to similarly follow from the phonological shape of
these affixes. Once we have set up an appropriately sophisticated
structure for every affix, there is no need any more to
stipulate arbitrary morphological markings: differences
in phonological behaviour follow from differences in phonological
shape alone, given a sufficiently precise theory of universal
constraint and their interactions.

Comments: 
Keywords: Dutch phonology, phonology-morphology interface, prosody
Areas: Phonology,Morphology
Type: Journal Article

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=655