<OT> New Posting: ROA-859

[roa at ruccs.rutgers.edu]

ROA 859-0806

Exploring recursivity, stringency, and gradience in the Pama-Nyungan stress continuum

John Alderete <alderete at sfu.ca>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=859


Abstract:
This chapter reviews and extends approaches to the morphological
influences on stress in certain Pama-Nyungan languages.
A typological space is characterized, based on data from
Diyari, Dyirbal, Warlpiri, and Pintupi, in which languages
differ in the degree to which morpheme boundaries restrict
prosodic feet. Nine distinct theories (i.e., fragments of
CON that produce a distinct factorial typology) are then
examined that differ in the following properties:

>Recursivity (after McCarthy & Prince 1994, Utrecht Lectures):
whether or not recursive prosodic words are admitted and
relevant to morphological influences on stress
>Stringency: whether or not the morphology-phonology interface
constraints stand in a special-general relationship
>Gradient constraint evaluation: whether or not constraint
violations can be assessed for ‘degrees of violation’, as
this relates to alignment of prosodic feet

The results attest to the validity of factorial typology
as a research methodology and support the following specific
conclusions. First, stringent constraint relations are necessary
because theories without stringency relations for certain
constraints either do not describe all of the data or predict
the existence of rather implausible stress patterns. Second,
while some gradient constraints can (and indeed must) be
dispensed with, it appears that gradient constraints like
AllFeetLeft are still necessary. Third, there is both theoretical
and empirical support for recursivity, and it also makes
predictions about logically possible systems that should
be explored in future work.

Input files and index: the input files to OTSoft used to
construct the nine factorial typologies are included to
facilitate further validation and exploration of the claims
and problems discussed in this chapter. They are included
as a set of worksheets in an Excel spreadsheet file, together
with an index of the output patterns for all the systems.
The first cell of the first worksheet (A1) contains a comment
that describes the structure of the worksheets and the assumption
s about the output forms in all systems.

Comments: To appear in Steve Parker (ed.), Phonological argumentation, Essays on evidence and motivation, Equinox Publishing.
Keywords: morphological stress, recursive constituents, stringency, gradient constraints, alignment, factorial typology
Areas: Morphology,Phonology
Type: Book Chapter

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=859