<OT> New Posting: ROA-861

[roa at ruccs.rutgers.edu]

ROA 861-0906

Canadian French Vowel Harmony

Gabriel Poliquin <poliquin at udel.edu>

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 derivation
al 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.

Comments: Ph.D. dissertation, 2006 (Harvard University)
Keywords: Optimality Theory, Lexical Phonology, vowel harmony, French, Quebec French, sympathy, turbidity, candidate chains, stratal OT, nanovariation, opacity
Areas: Phonology
Type: PhD Dissertation

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