<OT> ROA-861: Canadian French Vowel Harmony

[Rutgers Optimality Archive]

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ROA-861-0906

Title: Canadian French Vowel Harmony
Author: Gabriel Poliquin, University of Delaware <poliquin at udel.edu>
Comment: Ph.D. dissertation, 2006 (Harvard University)
Length: 338 pp.

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=861

Abstract:
This thesis provides a phonological, psycholinguistic and phonetic
description of vowel harmony in Canadian French (CF), as well as a
theoretical account of the phenomenon showing that the CF facts may
only be accounted for in derivational frameworks that include the
notion of 'cycle.' CF [ATR] vowel harmony is regressive, optional, and
parasitic on the feature [+high]. CF [ATR] harmony involves spreading
of a [-ATR] feature from a final [+high] vowel in a closed syllable to
other [+high] vowels within the same word that are in non-final open
syllables (e.g. [fi.lIp] or [fI.lIp] are both acceptable variants for
'Phillip'). The thesis describes and explains the four key attributes
of harmony in this language:

1) There is inter-speaker (and possibly intra-speaker) variation with
respect to whether harmony is applied locally and/or iteratively.
Variation with respect to these parameters leads to the existence of
three patterns of harmony, as evidenced by words of more than two
syllables. There is the local non-iterative pattern, e.g. [i.lI.sIt]
('illicit'), the non-local pattern, e.g. [I.li.sIt] and the
'across-the-board' pattern [I.lI.sIt].

2) As shown in 1), there exists a pattern of non-local harmony, in
which the target vowel is separated from the trigger by another
[+high] vowel.

3) Harmony is counterbled by a process of 'pre-fricative tensing,'
which leads to opaque allophony.

4) Harmony applies cyclically, but is then counterbled by another
'open-syllable tensing' process, which results in another case of
opacity. For example, harmony can apply in a word like [mY.zIk]
('music'), but if we concatenate a resyllabifying suffix like [al], we
obtain [mY.zi.kal] ('musical'). The initial [+high] vowel can be
[-ATR], since harmony applied in the stem, but the resyllabified
trigger must be [+ATR], by an open syllable tensing rule.

The thesis makes the following claim: CF vowel harmony shows very
compellingly that models of the phonological component must include
mechanisms accounting for non-local relations, derivational opacity
and the interaction between phonology and morphology.

Area: Phonology
Keywords: Optimality Theory, Lexical Phonology, vowel harmony, French,
Quebec French, sympathy, turbidity, candidate chains, stratal OT,
nanovariation, opacity
Type: PhD Dissertation

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=861