<OT> New Posting: ROA-891

[roa at ruccs.rutgers.edu]

ROA 891-0107

Floating Consonants in French: the need for the skeleton in input

Shanti Ulfsbjorninn <greatt_lemurs at hotmail.com>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=891


Abstract:
OT and GP don't seem to differ on the basic notion that
phonology is, in its purest form, the science of how sound
structure of the input (UR) is different from the sound
structure of the output (SF).
In GP, a floating consonant is a segment which is part of
the lexical entry of a word but isn't attached to its skeletal
point. If nothing changes the floating consonant will remain
unattached and thus un-parsed. Phonology is change, thus
a phonological effect, in this area, will result in the
uncoupled segment coupling ('epenthesis') just as phonological
effects can lead to a coupled segment uncoupling (deletion).


'Epenthesis' is in brackets because there is a conceptual
difference between the insertion of phonological material
into the output and the phonological material of the input
surfacing in the output. The latter will be called surficant
in this essay. Surficant segments are lexically specific
and variant meanwhile epenthetic segments are stipulated
by the grammar of the language and so will be identical
in association with all lexical items. In GP this is an
unspoken tenet. OT also views surficant consonants and epenthetic
consonants as different with epenthetic consonants occurring
with a lowly ranked DEP and floating consonants surfacing
by a highly ranked PARSE-X (Prince and Smolensky 1993 and
Tranel 1995, ms. respectively).


The difference between GP and OT in terms of floating consonants
is that GP considers syllabification to be a feature of
the lexeme itself and thus a feature of the lexicon. Syllabificat
ion in GP isn't a phonological process it is a phonological
status quo. Conversely, in OT, syllabification is imposed
on the lexical material (input) by constraints such as NO
CODA. This difference of opinion is relevant to this essay
in as much as these hypothesis help or hinder our understanding
of floating consonants. The scope of this essay is not to
compare and contrast GP and OT, rather, in order to understand
floating consonants in OT we must understand two things,
the nature of input and the nature of output, especially
with respect to syllabification.


Section one will show how French floating consonants are
problematic for a correspondence theory (McCarthy and Prince
1995) which makes two strong claims: there is only one step
of derivation and the input is not syllabified. If input
is not syllabified, the assumption that floating consonants
are treated differently from non-floating consonants with
regards to PARSE X has to be a consideration made after
consonants have (or have not) been attached to skeletal
points in the first place (in line with Tranel's assumptions
(1992, 1993, 1995, ms.)). Section Two will show that the
ideal one step derivation can still be maintained in containment
theory (Prince and Smolensky 1993) but that what allows
this approach to work is no different from Tranel's practice
of introducing syllabification, at least partly (the skeleton)
into the input, the significance and consequences of which
are not at all discussed in Tranel (ms.).  Section three
will then ask itself the next logical question: if syllabificatio
n up the skeleton is in the realm of the lexicon and Goldrick
(2000) shows how metrical structure can also be part of
the input then should we understand (as Government Phonology
does) that all basic syllabification is a characteristic
of the lexicon and thus not a process but a status quo.
Arguments promoting this are presented which include a brief
discussion of Kenstowicz's Base-Identity constraint and
its application to Spanish' /-ito/ vs. /-cito/.

Comments: this is nothing but an undergraduate essay with a suggestion, not the last word on any particular topic
Keywords: floating consonants, Optimality Theory, Government Phonology, skeleton, syllabification, base identity, lexicon, input
Areas: Phonology
Type: Manuscript

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=891