A Unified Account of Two Vowel Devoicing Phenomena: the Case of Cheyenne

This paper investigates two vowel devoicing processes in Cheyenne, which appear on the surface to be fundamentally different, occurring in distinct segmental and prosodic environments. One process occurs in phrase-final vowels in any segmental environment, while the other occurs only before voiceless consonants in the surface penultimate vowels of some words. The first is consistent with typological expectations and is phonetically grounded, whereas the second is at first glance, neither typologically expected nor phonetically motivated. I provide a unified Stratal Optimality Theory account of these processes, demonstrating that both can, in fact, be treated as cases of domain-final devoicing, and attributed to the same family of positional markedness constraints. Different rankings of the markedness constraints relative to a faithfulness constraint result in different segmental conditions for the two processes. Moreover, I suggest that the two processes may be related via Domain Generalization, whereby a phonetically motivated utterance-final effect phonologizes and extends to smaller prosodic domains. In this way, while the word-level process is not itself phonetically motivated, it can be understood as an extension of another phonetically motivated process in the same language.

An Optimality Analysis of the Phonological Processes in the Speech of Autistic Algerian Children: A Case Study

The current paper scrutinizes the phonological processes used by an autistic child, in Standard Arabic, via the use of a constraint-based framework of optimality theory. The data of the present study were collected through a picture-naming test. To ensure that the pictures are representative of all standard Arabic phonemes, the researcher designed a test containing 84 pictures representing three intra-word positions (initial, medial, and final). The results reveal that the autistic child grammar is characterized, mainly, with seven phonological processes: sibilant dentalization, de-emphasization, gliding, stopping, nasality spreading, final consonant deletion, and fronting. Autistic children's phonological system is stigmatized by unmarked forms. In terms of optimality theory, treating the phonological problems of autistic children requires demoting the highly ranked unmarked constraints and promoting the lowest-ranked faithfulness constraint.

An Optimality Theoretic account of verbal pattern-root consonant assimilation in Modern Standard Arabic

The goal of this study is to propose an Optimality-Theoretic (OT) account of the assimilation that arises from adjacency between root and pattern consonants in the two verbal patterns “ɪn-a-a-” and “ɪ-ta-a” in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). As for the pattern of “ɪn-a-a-”, ranking syntagmatic constraints higher than the faithfulness constraint of the root explains why the nasal /n/ agrees with the first radical in place features. In the second pattern (“ɪ-ta-a-”), ranking syntagmatic constraints higher than the faithfulness constraints correctly predicts the change of the pattern affix /t/ to [d] provided that it follows a voiced coronal consonant. This ranking also successfully explains why /t/ becomes emphatic (i.e., [tˤ]) when it occurs after an emphatic radical. Some constraints are posited in order to account for the change of pattern /t/ into /w/ when the latter comes after the vowel /ɪ/.

Truncation in message-oriented phonology: a case study using Korean vocative truncation

This paper analyzes the vocative truncation pattern in Korean from the viewpoint of Message-Oriented Phonology (MOP), which capitalizes on the idea that sound patterns are governed by a principle that makes message transfer effective. In the traditional naming pattern, Korean first names consist of a generation marker and a unique portion, and the order between these two elements alternates between generations. To derive vocative forms, the generation marker is truncated, and the suffixal [(j)a] is attached to the unique portion. We argue that MOP naturally predicts this type of truncation. As the generation marker is shared by all the members of the same generation, the generation marker is highly predictable and hence does not reduce uncertainty about the intended message. To achieve effective communication, predictable portions are deleted. Our analysis implies that MOP is relevant not only to phonetic implementation patterns, but also to morphophonological patterns. It also provides support for MOP based on data from a non-Indo-European language. Finally, we aim to integrate insights of MOP with a more formal proposal like Optimality Theory, by relating the predictability of a contrast to the ranking of the faithfulness constraint that it protects, following the spirit of the P-map hypothesis.

Unproductive alternations and allomorph storage: the case of Sino-Japanese

This paper examines the phonology of Sino-Japanese within the framework of Optimality Theory, incorporating elements from Itō and Mester’s (1999) coreperiphery model. A major component of Itō and Mester’s model-the unmarked status of Yamato words-was challenged by Kawahara, Nishimura, and Ono (2002), who argued that Sino-Japanese must be the unmarked option. While it is true that Sino-Japanese is the least marked stratum, automatically declaring the least-marked stratum as the default incorrectly predicts that speakers will overgeneralize alternations regardless of their productivity. Taking inspiration from Kurisu’s (2000) analysis of Sino-Japanese geminates and Mascaró’s (2007) formalization of allomorphy, I propose that where a lower stratum’s alternations are unproductive, speakers actually store all allomorphs in the underlying form, thus exempting the stratum from the implicated faithfulness constraint. This allows the unindexed faithfulness constraint to be ranked higher as needed to ensure that only productive alternations are extended to novel items.

Constraining Welsh vowel mutation

Welsh vowel mutation is a purely positional vowel alternation, the effects of which serve to obscure phonemic contrasts between three vowels in the system, namely barred-i, schwa and [u]. The theoretical interest in this alternation stems from the surface orientation of current phonological theory: is such a non-surface-true state of affairs amenable to plausible modelling in an optimality-theoretic framework, or are the relevant relationships best accounted for through lexical listing? In this paper I argue that a straightforward optimality-theoretic account is available and that this account is simpler than any of its predecessors. The analysis differs from previous derivational analyses (e.g. Thomas 1979, 1984; Williams 1983; Bosch 1996) in various ways, including the underlying values of some of the vowels involved, the avoidance of ad hoc extrinsic rule ordering, and the lack of reliance on intermediate representations. Furthermore, reference to phonological position alone is sufficient, with no need to refer either to stress or to morphological complexity. The correct results emerge primarily through the interaction of a high-ranking structural constraint prohibiting schwa in a final syllable, an input–output faithfulness constraint on vowel features, and a constraint prohibiting a high central rounded vowel, [u with bar through].

Gaps and repairs at the phonology–morphology interface

The paper discusses phonologically motivated gaps in inflectional paradigms. A model is offered in which the appearance of gaps is based on a tension between markedness constraints, faithfulness constraints, and constraints which require the expression of morphological categories. After presenting the model, additional implications are analyzed. Situations in which the same problem has different solutions in different morphological contexts are predicted insofar as constraints requiring the expression of different categories can vary in their ranking relative to some faithfulness constraint. Hence, the same phonotactic problem can yield a gap in one situation and a repair in another. This prediction is illustrated and further details of the prediction are explored, including the identification of a situation requiring a more restrictive version of the model. This is achieved by drawing on Smith's (2001) proposal that faithfulness constraints can be indexed to lexical categories to model this situation.