<OT> New posting: ROA 903-0307

[Rutgers Optimality Archive]

ROA 903-0307

Context insensitive vowel hiatus resolution in Ciayo

Darren Tanner <dstanner at u.washington.edu>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=903


Abstract:
This paper discusses typological considerations for vowel
hiatus resolution and in particular the phenomenon of asymetric
hiatus resolution.  Earlier analyses of asymmetric hiatus
resolution posited that asymmetric coalescence arises when
both feature-sensitive and position-sensitive constraints
are active in the evaluation of output candidates; that
is, the feature specification [-high] must be preserved
in preference to [+high], otherwise all features of the
stem vowel are to be preserved (Casali 1996).  By analyzing
data from Ciayo (Ngunga 2000), I show that there exists
a second type of language exhibiting asymmetric hiatus resolution
that is not sensitive to stem/affix distinctions.  I propose
that height coalescence in this language is a result of
segmental fusion, where two segments in the input correspond
to a single output segment (Kager 1999; Pater 2004), and
a ranking of Ident(-F) over Ident(+F), where F refers to
the vowel articulatory features [high] and [low].

Comments:
Keywords: Ciyao, coalescence, vowel hiatus, hiatus resolution
Areas: Phonology,Formal Analysis
Type: Manuscript

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=903