<OT> New Posting: ROA-932

[roa at ruccs.rutgers.edu]

ROA 932-1007

The RTR Harmonic Domain in Two Dialects of Yorùbá

Jeremy Perkins <jerperk at eden.rutgers.edu>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=932


Abstract:
In this thesis, a process of vowel harmony is explored in
two dialects of Yorùbá where the tongue-root values of
adjacent vowels generally agree. In Standard Yorùbá, this
process of tongue-root harmony affects only vowels within
the prosodic word. However, in Moba Yorùbá, tongue-root
harmony affects vowels in the class of proclitics in addition
to those contained in the prosodic word. It is argued that
this difference in the domain of application of tongue-root
harmony is captured by defining constraints that refer to
different harmonic domains in each dialect. A prosodic domain
that dominates the prosodic word, the clitic group, is posited
in order to capture this dialectal difference.


Three different optimality-theoretic accounts that deal
with tongue-root harmony in Standard Yorùbá are presented.
The ability of these analyses to capture patterns within
four dialects of Yorùbá (Ekiti, Ife, Moba, and Standard
Yorùbá) and their general theoretical relevance are the
main criteria for evaluation. An account utilizing alignment
constraints (Pulleyblank 1996) succeeds in capturing the
cross-dialectal patterns of tongue-root harmony in all four
dialects of Yorùbá, however it relies on the formulation
of gradiently evaluated alignment constraints. This is a
situation that is theoretically undesirable. An account
enforcing stem-control (Bakovic 2000) succeeds in capturing
the patterns seen in two of the four dialects. I argue against
a basic assumption that this account relies on: that all
VCV nouns are morphologically complex. It is shown that
if at least some of these nouns are not analyzed as morphological
ly complex, the stem-control account cannot succeed in capturing
the attested pattern of tongue-root harmony in any dialect
of Yorùbá.


Finally, an account that utilizes markedness constraints
prohibiting certain featural sequences (Pulleyblank 2002)
can capture the pattern seen in Standard Yorùbá. An adaptation
of this account that includes positional faithfulness is
offered to account for Ife, Ekiti and Moba Yorùbá. This
positional faithfulness account avoids the need to use gradiently
evaluated constraints and it does not rely on morphological
constituency. Instead, it uses prosodic constituents as
domains of reference for OT constraints.

Comments: 
Keywords: Yoruba, vowel harmony, ATR harmony
Areas: Phonology
Type: Masters Dissertation

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=932