Gradual Vowel Epenthesis in Urban Hijazi Arabic

In this paper, vowel epenthesis in Urban Hijazi Arabic is analysed as a process of gradual structural build-up. Harmonic Serialism, a derivational framework of Optimality Theory, provides the theoretical foundation to illustrate the arguments. Rather than epenthesising an entire vowel all at once, featural structure progressively increases in successive steps. This accumulation continues until the required vowel quality is achieved. Specifically, the constraint hierarchy predicts high epenthetic vowels to occur in closed syllables and the low epenthetic vowel in open syllables. The same constraint hierarchy, however, is also expected to predict both gradual epenthesis and gradual deletion. In that regard, a seemingly paradoxical situation is created when the very same intermediate vowel quality is achieved through accumulation or attrition of featural structure. This particular vowel quality, in exactly the same environment, will have to continue gaining internal structure towards epenthesis or continue losing internal structure towards deletion. Eventually, identifying the path that the derivation takes to reach a certain vowel will help to resolve the issue.

Gender separation and the speech community: Rhoticity in early 20th century Southland New Zealand English

The existence of a shared constraint hierarchy is one of the criteria that defines and delimits speech communities. In particular, women and men are thought to differ only in their rates of variable usage, not in the constraints governing their variation; that is, women and men are typically considered to belong to the same speech community. We find that in early twentieth century Southland, New Zealand, women and men had different constraint hierarchies for rhoticity, with a community grammar of rhoticity only developing later. These results may be a product of a particular set of sociohistorical facts thatare not peculiar to Southland. We suggest that further research in other geographical locations may indeed reveal that men and women have different constraint hierarchies for other variables. Speech communities may thus be delimited along social lines in ways that have not been previously considered.

An OT-ET Analysis of Polish Singular-Plural Pairs

Optimality Theory (OT) and Exemplar Theory (ET) are two enchanting theories to many scholars, but each still faces criticism and remaining persistent problems. Application of both theories to areas in linguistics where conflicts may arise has been attempted, but still the suitability of combining the two theories to resolve contradictions awaits further analysis and verification. This article takes Polish singular-plural pairs as the object of study and argues in favor of an OT-ET combined model of analyzing the linguistic phenomenon. First, an underlying representation is identified to be the input in an OT analysis. Then two main changes are recognized between the input and output, and are regarded as instances of positional neutralization, and their relevant constraints and constraint hierarchies are presented. Following this, challenges are posed to OT despite its merits. It turns out that the combined OT-ET model works well, with historical development, underspecification, constraint hierarchy, and resemblance to existing word clouds, among others, all playing relevant parts. The current study adds to the extensiveness of language data analyzed for or against combining OT and ET, and sketches the analysis pattern of thus doing, with a view to offering more real-life language materials for an OT-ET combined model.

A unified analysis of two reduplication processes in Saraiki

We analyse two reduplication processes in Saraiki, an Indo-Aryan language spoken in Pakistan. The two processes are only minimally different: the first type involves total reduplication and the second type involves overwriting with an initial consonant (“fixed segment reduplication”). The goal of the paper is to expose the difficulties of analysing both processes in a single grammar, i.e. with a single constraint hierarchy in Optimality Theory: we finally opt for an analysis based on allomorphy for the second type, to capture the morpheme-specific nature of the processes involved.

From experiment results to a constraint hierarchy with the ‘Rank Centrality’ algorithm

Rank Centrality (RC; Negahban, Oh, & Shah 2017) is a rank-aggregation algorithm that computes a total ranking of elements from noisy pairwise ranking information. I test RC as an alternative to incremental error-driven learning algorithms such as GLA-MaxEnt (Boersma & Hayes 2001; Jäger 2007) for modeling a constraint hierarchy on the basis of two-alternative forced-choice experiment results. For the case study examined here, RC agrees well with GLA-MaxEnt on the ordering of the constraints, but differs somewhat on the distance between constraints; in particular, RC assigns more extreme (low) positions to constraints at the bottom of the hierarchy than GLA-MaxEnt does. Overall, these initial results are promising, and RC merits further investigation as a constraint-ranking method in experimental linguistics.

From experiment results to a constraint hierarchy with the ‘Rank Centrality’ algorithm

Rank Centrality (RC; Negahban, Oh, & Shah 2017) is a rank-aggregation algorithm that computes a total ranking of elements from noisy pairwise ranking information. I test RC as an alternative to incremental error-driven learning algorithms such as GLA-MaxEnt (Boersma & Hayes 2001; Jäger 2007) for modeling a constraint hierarchy on the basis of two-alternative forced-choice experiment results. For the case study examined here, RC agrees well with GLA-MaxEnt on the ordering of the constraints, but differs somewhat on the distance between constraints; in particular, RC assigns more extreme (low) positions to constraints at the bottom of the hierarchy than GLA-MaxEnt does. Overall, these initial results are promising, and RC merits further investigation as a constraint-ranking method in experimental linguistics.

Truncating English and Arabic Onset Cluster by a Bilingual Child: An Optimality Theory Perspective

This study investigates the process of truncating English and Arabic onset cluster in the early speech of a bilingual child within the framework of Optimality Theory Model. It specifically proposes the child’s hierarchical grammar(s) responsible for the child’s process of simplifying English and Arabic consonantal sequences into singletons in onset position. The importance of this research stems from the absence of research on truncating Arabic onset cluster within the Optimality Theory perspective. Therefore, it is the first to put this theory into practice as far as reducing Arabic clusters is concerned. The data for this research were collected through parental diaries. Only data collected between the ages of 1;9 and 2;5 were analysed. The results reveal two different hierarchies of the grammar each of which is responsible for truncating the clusters into singletons in one particular language. The results also reveal a conformity with the universally fixed onset constraint hierarchy in the child’s English production. However, a deviation from this universally fixed onset constraint hierarchy is detected in the production of the sequence formed by fricative followed by stop or vice versa in Arabic.

A prosodic account of consonant gemination in Japanese loanwords

This chapter is a study of the distribution of geminate consonants in Japanese loanwords, which differs in significant ways from their distribution in native words. Both prosodic markedness and faithfulness to the source word plays a central role. Sometimes, such as in loanwords from Italian, geminates are preserved as such. But usually, as in loanwords from English, gemination is a way of preserving word-final coda-hood in the source word. Whether or not a given consonant is geminated depends on a host of complex segmental factors that are the result of a whole family of anti-gemination constraints, ranked at different points within the constraint hierarchy of an optimality-theoretic grammar. Finally, significant higher-level prosodic factors that are part of the native system are at work, and explain many details of the gemination pattern that are rooted neither in faithfulness to the source word nor in segmental features.

The Acquisition of French (L3) Coda Consonant Clusters by English (L2) Learners Speakers of Persian (L1): An Optimality Account

<p>The present study presents an Optimality Theoretic account of syllable codas in French by the learners whose first and second languages are Persian and English respectively. Additionally, it investigates transfer at the L3 initial state, testing between the three hypotheses of Full Transfer/ Full Access (Schwartz &amp; Sprouse, as cited in Özçelik, 2009) i.e., the main L1 transfer effect, L2 Status Factor (Bardel &amp; Falk, 2007, 2011) i.e., the main L2 transfer effect, and Cumulative Enhancement Model (Flynn et al., 2004) i.e., all previously known languages’ positive or neutral transfer effect. As a matter of fact, OT is also used to see whether it supports what is obtained through transfer effects or not. To do so, two groups of Persian native speakers, but with differing English proficiencies (lower-intermediate and upper-intermediate) that were at the initial state of acquiring L3 French were asked to complete two tests, namely oral judgment test and production test. The analysis of the data was done through the mixed between-within subjects ANOVA. Results of the transfer effect provided a major role for the “L2 status factor”, while casting doubt on the tenability of several aspects of the CEM and provided no support for the FT/FA hypothesis. Regarding OT, the following constraint hierarchies were obtained for OJT and PT respectively: MAX-IO&gt;&gt; DEP-IO&gt;&gt;COMPLEX&gt;&gt; INDENT-IO and DEP-IO&gt;&gt; MAX-IO&gt;&gt; INDENT-IO&gt;&gt; COMPLEX. In fact, these rankings, especially the latter one, advocated the L2 constraint hierarchy and this was in accordance with the results of cross-linguistic effect, providing a major role for the L2 status factor.</p>