<OT> New Posting: ROA-782

[roa at ruccs.rutgers.edu]

ROA 782-1105

Gradient Phonotactics in Muna and Optimality Theory

Joe Pater <pater at linguist.umass.edu>
Andries W Coetzee <coetzee at umich.edu>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=782


Abstract:
Muna is a western Austronesian language spoken in Indonesia
(Berg 1989). Like Semitic (Greenberg 1950), Javanese (Uhlenbeck
1949), and many other languages, Muna has restrictions on
the co-occurrence of consonants with the same place of articulati
on: words like [kaga] are much rarer than words like [kaba].
As in these other languages, the strength of the restriction
depends on the particular place of articulation; it is weaker
in coronals than other places. It also parallels these other
languages in that the strength of the restriction depends
on whether the consonants are alike in other ways. Muna
is unique in that voicing plays a dominant role in determining
co-occurrence rates: pairs of homorganic consonants agreeing
in voicing (e.g. /m-b/) are rarer than those that disagree
(e.g. /b-p/).


We analyze the Muna data using an expanded set of relativized
OCP constraints (Padgett 1995). As Frisch et al. (2004)
point out in their discussion of similar facts in Arabic,
the main analytic challenge is to capture the gradience
in the degree to which these constraints are obeyed in the
lexicon. Some constraints hold absolutely, like the constraint
against multiple voiced dorsals (OCP-DOR-[VCE]), some hold
of all but a few words (e.g. the constraint against multiple
voiced labials OCP-LAB-[VCE]), and some admit many exceptions,
but fewer than would be expected if the consonants were
subject to no restriction (e.g. the constraint against multiple
voiced coronals OCP-COR-[VCE]). We suggest that native speakers�
� knowledge of the relative strength of these constraints
can be expressed by ranking: OCP-DOR-[VCE] >> OCP-LAB-[VCE]
>> OCP-COR-[VCE]. Lexically specific faithfulness constraints
interspersed between these constraints allow words to violate
the markedness constraints, and help to provide a way of
calculating relative acceptability.


We also analyze Muna in terms of Frisch et al.'s (2004)
similarity metric. While some aspects of this approach are
compatible with the Muna data, neither the strength of the
voicing effect, nor the extent to which the co-occurrence
restrictions are weakened amongst the coronals is predicted
by this theory. This suggests that the greater predictiveness
of this theory relative to a theory with rankable OCP constraints
, held by Frisch et al. to be an asset, may be a liability.

Comments: 
Keywords: OCP, gradience, similarity, exceptions, Muna, Arabic
Areas: Phonology
Type: Journal Article

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=782