Non-optimizing phonologically conditioned allomorphy as constraint conjunction

a talk by Thomas B. Klein, Georgia Southern University

Wednesday, October 26, 2011 1:30 PM to 3:00 PM EDT
Enterprise Hall, 275

Patterns of phonological conditioning in allomorphy commonly display allomorphs which best satisfy some well-formedness constraint. Thus, English a is chosen before consonant (a glass, not *an glass) to avoid an unnecessary coda, whereas an is chosen before vowel (an apron, not *a apron) to avoid vowel hiatus. However, phonologically conditioned allomorphy appears as non-optimizing when outputs do not seem to improve in phonological well-formedness. One important example is the postposed definite determiner in Haitian Creole which appears as unexpected from the syllable markedness perspective. La is chosen after a stem ending in a consonant or a glide which results in an otherwise unnecessary coda (1a,b), whereas a is chosen after a stem ending in a vowel. This results in vowel hiatus after a stem-final a and lax mid vowels (1c, d). A glide is inserted when the stem ends in other vowels (1e, f). (1) (a) pitit la ‘the child’ (b) kaj la ‘the house’ (c) papa a ‘the father’ (d) vε a ‘the glass’ (e) diri ja ‘the rice’ (f) pje ja ‘the foot’ (Valdman 1978) Some have claimed that Haitian Creole determiner allomorphy “do[es] not appear to relate to any universal well-formedness generalizations” (Paster 2006 : 76). Several accounts have been proposed in Optimality Theory (OT), but these analyses have had to enrich the lexicon. (2) Klein (2003): Lexical constraint violations; Bonet et al. (2007): Lexical ordering of allomorphs; Bye (2007): Morpholexical constraints; Paster (2006, 2009): Lexical subcategorization frames The problem with the approaches in (2) is that they all violate the OT principle of Richness of the Base (Prince & Smolensky 1993/2004) – the idea that “languages cannot differ systematically in their lexicons” (McCarthy 2008: 88). This paper proposes to reconceptualize non-optimizing phonologically conditioned allomorphy (NOPCA) as crucially involving constraint conjunction (Smolensky 1997, 2006). It is shown that the conjunction of ordinary OT constraints makes it possible for the analysis of NOPCA patterns such as Haitian Creole determiner allomorphy to comply with Richness of the Base and to flow from universal well-formedness conditions.

Hosted by GMU Linguistics Club.

Sponsored by GMU Linguistics Club and the Program in LInguistics.