<OT> New Posting: ROA-860

[roa at ruccs.rutgers.edu]

ROA 860-0806

Winnebago Accent and Dorsey's Law

John Alderete <alderete at sfu.ca>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=860


Abstract:
This paper presents an OT analysis of an apparent challenge
to parallelist OT, namely the interaction between stress
and epenthesis in Winnebago (AKA Hocank, Mississippi Valley
Siouan). The analysis is built upon two core analytical
assumptions, which, taken together, explain the nature of
stress-epenthesis interaction without serial derivation.
The first assumption is that the Winnebago foot is a moraic
trochee, an assumption that is shown to account for initial
extrametricality, stress in reduplicated forms, and a non-automat
ic process of stem shortening. The second assumption has
to do with the syllable structure resulting from Dorsey’s
Law epenthesis, a process that breaks up voiceless obstruent
+ sonorant sequences by inserting a copy of the following
vowel, i.e., /OSV/-->OVSV. Drawing on phonetic evidence,
reduplicative templates, and phonotactic restrictions, it
is argued that the output of Dorsey’s Law, OVSV, patterns
with heavy syllables, so it must be syllabified as such.
These independently motivated assumptions are then shown
to straightforwardly account for the apparent exceptions
in word accent caused by Dorsey’s Law epenthesis, without
recourse to the derivational assumptions typical of prior
analyses.

Comments: Appeared originally in 1995 in Jill N. Beckman, Laura Walsh Dickey, & Suzanne Urbanczyk (eds.), Papers in Optimality Theory, University of Massachusetts Occasional Papers 18, pp. 21-51, Amherst, MA: GLSA.
Keywords: interaction between stress and syllabification, epenthesis, moraic trochee, parallelism, serial derivation
Areas: Phonology
Type: Book Chapter

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=860