<OT> New Posting: ROA-759

[roa at ruccs.rutgers.edu]

ROA 759-0705

Cryptosonorants and the misapplication of voicing assimilation in Biaspectual Phonology

Sylvia Blaho <sylvia.blaho at hum.uit.no>
Patrik Bye <patrik.bye at hum.uit.no>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=759


Abstract:
In Czech, the postalveolar trill is realized phonetically
as an obstruent but generally patterns as a sonorant with
respect to voicing assimilation. This paper argues to treat
such cases as instantiating phonological opacity, and describes
the Czech case using the tools of Biaspectual Phonology
(Bye 2005, Ms.). In BP, the phonological grammar interfaces
with a phonetic interpretation (Phi) and a lexical recognition
(Lambda) component, and different `aspects' of one and the
same phonological representation may be visible to each
system. Opacity becomes possible when what Phi sees and
what Lambda sees do not completely match. The analysis is
compared to other parallelist approaches to opacity and
it is argued that the BP account is superior in two ways.
First, the BP account is able to take full account of the
richness of the base: the right output may be obtained regardless
whether the postalveolar trill is sonorant or obstruent
in the input. Second, the theory allows handling of rule
sandwiching effects. In Czech, the rule sandwiching effect
consists in the fact that the postalveolar trill behaves
like a normal obstruent word-initially, but as a (crypto)sonorant
elsewhere. To date, no parallelist alternative has been
proposed that allows us to capture this kind of situation.

Comments: To appear in: 'Proceedings of Berkeley Linguistics Society (BLS) 31'
Keywords: voicing assimilation, phonological opacity, richness of the base, rule sandwiching, Czech
Areas: Phonology
Type: Conference Proceedings Chapter

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=759