<OT> New Posting: ROA-834

[roa at ruccs.rutgers.edu]

ROA 834-0606

Morphological derived-environment effects in gestural coordination: a case study of Norwegian clusters

Travis G. Bradley <tgbradley at ucdavis.edu>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=834


Abstract:
This paper examines morphophonological alternations involving
apicoalveolar tap-consonant clusters in Urban East Norwegian
from the framework of gestural Optimality Theory. Articulatory
Phonology provides an insightful explanation of patterns
of vowel intrusion, coalescence, and rhotic deletion in
terms of the temporal coordination of consonantal gestures,
which interacts with both prosodic and morphological structure.
An alignment-based account of derived-environment effects
is proposed in which complete overlap in rhotic-consonant
clusters is blocked within morphemes but not across morpheme
or word boundaries. Alignment constraints on gestural coordinatio
n also play a role in phonologically conditioned allomorphy.
The gestural analysis is contrasted with alternative Optimality-t
heoretic accounts. Furthermore, it is argued that models
of the phonetics-phonology interface which view timing as
a low-level detail of phonetic implementation incorrectly
predict that input morphological structure should have no
effect on gestural coordination. The patterning of rhotic-consona
nt clusters in Norwegian is consistent with a model that
includes gestural representations and constraints directly
in the phonological grammar, where underlying morphological
structure is still visible. On the assumption that Universal
Grammar lacks faithfulness constraints on input timing,
the phonology is free to include non-contrastive phonetic
detail such as intersegmental gestural coordination without
the danger of overgenerating impossible contrasts.

Comments: Pre-print version of the article, to appear in Lingua
Keywords: Urban East Norwegian, Morphological derived-environment effects, Phonologically conditioned allomorphy, Rhotics, Articulatory phonology, Optimality theory
Areas: Phonology,Phonetics,Morphology
Type: Journal Article

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=834