<OT> New Posting: ROA-965

[roa at ruccs.rutgers.edu]

ROA 965-0408

English stress preservation and Stratal Optimality Theory

Sarah Collie <sejcollie at hotmail.com>

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=965


Abstract:
Since Chomsky & Halle (1968), English stress preservation
-- orìginálity (oríginal), óbviousness (óbvious) --
has been important in generative discussions of morphophonologica
l interaction. This thesis carries out empirical investigations
into English stress preservation, and uses their results
to argue for a particular version of Optimality Theory:
Stratal Optimality Theory ('Stratal OT') (Kiparsky, 1998a,
2000, 2003a; Bermúdez-Otero, 1999, 2003, in preparation).
In particular, the version of Stratal OT proposed in Bermúdez-Ot
ero (in preparation) and Bermúdez-Otero & McMahon (2006)
is supported.


The empirical investigations focus upon the type of preservation
where preserved stress is subordinated in the preserving
word ('weak preservation'): e.g. orìginálity (oríginal);
antìcipátion (antícipate). Evidence for the existence
of weak preservation is presented. However, it is also shown
that weak preservation is not consistently successful, but
that it is, rather, probabilistically dependent upon word
frequency. This result is expected in light of work like
Hay (2003), where it is proposed that word frequency affects
the strength of relationships between words: stress preservation
is an indicator of such a relationship.


Stratal OT can handle the existence of English stress preservatio
n: by incorporating the cyclic interaction between morphological
and phonological modules proposed in Lexical Phonology and
Morphology ('LPM'), Stratal OT has the intrinsic serialism
which is necessary to predict a phenomenon like English
stress preservation. It is shown that the same cannot be
said for those of models of OT which attempt to handle preservati
on while avoiding such serialism, notably, Benua (1997).


Bermúdez-Otero's (in preparation) proposal of 'fake cyclicity'
for the first stratum in Stratal OT can capture weak preservation
's probabilistic dependence upon word frequency. Fake cyclicity
rejects the cycle which has previously been proposed to
handle weak stress preservation, in LPM and elsewhere; instead,
fake cyclicity proposes that weak preservation is a result
of blocking among stored lexical entries. Blocking is independent
ly established as a psycholinguistic phenomenon that is
probabilistically dependent upon word frequency; in contrast,
the cycle is not a probabilistic mechanism, and so can only
handle instances of stress preservation failure by stipulation.

Comments: Revised version to be published with Mouton de Gruyter
Keywords: stress, preservation, cyclic, cycle, Stratal Optimality Theory, opacity, serialism, fake cyclicity, frequency, English
Areas: Phonology
Type: PhD Dissertation

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/view.php3?roa=965