<OT> New Posting: ROA-881

[roa at ruccs.rutgers.edu]

ROA 881-1006

Anti-Homophony Blocking and its Productivity in Transparadigmatic Relations

Larry Ichimura <LIchimura at aol.com>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=881


Abstract:
This dissertation addresses 'anti-homophony blocking' in
transparadigmatic relations, where an application of a particular
phonological process is blocked in order to avoid homophony
creation by neutralization of distinct inputs between morphologic
ally unrelated words.


Past research was concerned with anti-homophony blocking
but only within the inflectional paradigm. The possibility
that this principle is also applied to transparadigmatic
relations has not been pursued. In recent literature, anti-homoph
ony constraints in paradigmatic relations have been proposed
(Crosswhite 1999, 2001, among others) within the framework
of Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 1993). However,
no attempt has been documented that proves that anti-homophony
blocking is in fact a productive process. I examine these
two key issues: first that anti-homophony blocking applies
to transparadigmatic relations; second that it is productive,
using a case of anti-homophony blocking in Japanese.


The main data comes from "contracted forms" (Kikuzawa 1935,
Toki 1975) in derived environments in Japanese, created
by syncope along with lenition or deletion of the adjacent
consonant. Within the framework of Optimality Theory, I
will demonstrate that the contraction process and anti-homophony
blocking in transparadigmatic relations are accounted for
by particular constraints and ranking specific to the contraction
grammar. I propose an anti-homophony constraint called CONTRAST,
which is integrated into the contraction grammar. Analyses
are given as to why homophony is created in inflectional
morphology, as it could be counterevidence to my claim of
anti-homophony blocking. I will argue that the anti-homophony
principle must be phonology-internal which is embedded in
the phonological grammar.


I conducted an experiment to test the extent to which anti-homoph
ony blocking is part of the phonological grammar of Japanese,
which provides some evidence in support of the claim that
contraction and anti-homophony blocking are productive processes.
Using a Japanese corpus, I found that there is no positive
influence of word frequency and word familiarity on the
occurrence and blocking of contractions.


This dissertation concludes that anti-homophony blocking
is not limited to an inflectional paradigm but also occurs
in transparadigmatic relations, and it is part of the productive
phonological grammar.

Comments: 2006 Boston University doctoral dissertation
Keywords: contraction, Japanese, paradigm, homophony, blocking
Areas: Phonology
Type: PhD Dissertation

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=881