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Calendrier / Schedule 2016-2017

Markus Pöchtrager

(university of Vienna)

Vowel height and structure

Basically all versions of Government Phonology/Element Theory share the idea that the element A is a key player in the representation of vowel height. However, this element A has proven to be an eternal trouble maker, in that its behaviour is quite different from other elements. While that difference has been known for a long time, finding a viable explanation for it has turned out to be a more recalcitrant problem, if it has been attempted at all.

In this talk I first want to look at the element A in vowels and propose a particular kind of structure to replace it. This structure allows for a unified account of vowel reduction and also provides a link to stress. Interestingly enough, this structural approach also makes predictions about other vowel-related phenomena, viz. vowel harmony. In particular, it allows for an account of the behaviour and distribution of so-called transparent vowels (vowels that are skipped by harmony), an unexpected result for a theory of vowel height. Better still, the model can also also be extended to deal with cases of lenition of consonants.

Calendrier / Schedule 2018-2019

John Alderte (Simon Fraser University)

Phonological regularity, perceptual biases, and the role of phonotactics in speech error analysis

This talk investigates a set of phonological patterns in the SFU Speech Error Database (SFUSED), with the goal of understanding if and how phonological grammar is involved in online processes of phonological encoding. It assesses 2,076 sound errors in English of various types (phonological substitutions, deletions, additions, etc.) for their phonological regularity (do they violate English phonotactics?). The results show that sound errors are much less regular (violate phonotactics more often) than reported in prior work, and in some contexts to not deviate significantly from chance expectations. The higher degree of phonological irregularity is attributed to methodology, because the methods for collecting speech errors in SFUSED are demonstrably less prone to perceptual bias. While

phonological encoding may require linguistic representations of planning units (e.g., segments), these findings suggest that some of the tools of phonological grammars, like syllable-structure algorithms, may not be required in the retrieval of phonological segments in words.

Guillaume Enguehard (Université d'Orléans, CNRS LLL) et Luo Xiaoliang (Tours/lll, École Polytechnique)

Force des voyelles et Branchement

Dans cette présentation, nous abordons la notion de "force" (degré de soumission aux phénomènes de fortition/lénition) dans le domaine des voyelles. Notre objectif est de montrer que la force des consonnes et celle des voyelles peuvent être unifiées. Pour cela, nous proposons que le seul facteur de force est la longueur. Plus précisément, les segments branchants sont plus forts tandis que les segments partageant leurs positions sont plus faibles. Nous abordons plusieurs phénomènes vocaliques illustrant cette hiérarchie.

Bien Dobui

Implications of Nasalization Blocking Strategies in Xochistlahuaca Amuzgo

Nasalization, both progressive and regressive, is an important phenomenon in the Amuzgo spoken in Xochistlahuaca in Mexico. However, on a reduced syllabic form of CCV, identity is easily lost. This presentation looks at different blocking strategies employed to block nasalization at the lexical and morphological levels and their implications.

Paralleling Stephen Marlett’s observation on Mixtec in his 1992 work, *NV and *LVⁿ do not occur in Amuzgo (N being a nasal sonorant, L a non-nasal sonorant, V a vowel and Vⁿ a nasal vowel). This attests to both progressive and regressive nasalization. On the other hand, and as may be expected, LV and NVⁿ do occur.

What is particular to Amuzgo, however, is the template NTV, better analyzed as N^TV given that N^T becomes N when V is nasalized, e.g. by the 3SGHUM marker, as in examples 4 to 6. The difference between the template NTV, which also exists, is seen when the latter is nasalized without loss of the stop, as in example 7.

These strategies seem to imply a balancing of concerns against preventing identity loss through nasalization by maintaining what may appear to be an array of nasal allophones and allomorphs, but that actually form a strictly dedicated set that works to preserve identity.

Francesc-Josep Torres Tamarit (Université Paris 8 CNRS SFL) (avec Eulália Bonet, UBA)

Verb-clitic structures in Eivissan Catalan: recursive prosodic words and allomorphy

This presentation deals with stress shift in verb-clitic structures in Eivissan Catalan, an understudied Romance variety. Within Balearic Catalan, this is the only subdialect in which stress shift is restricted to apply only in second conjugation infinitives followed by pronominal enclitics, those that, as opposed to other conjugations, have penultimate stress when they are pronounced in isolation. Stress in second conjugation infinitives in Eivissan Catalan shifts one syllable to the right, that is, to the final syllable of the verbal stem, when one or more pronominal enclitics follow. There is no stress shift in imperatives followed by pronominal enclitics. We claim that pronominal enclitics in Eivissan Catalan adjoin to a recursive, maximal prosodic word, and that the domain for stress assignment is the minimal, embedded prosodic word. We further analyze two cases of stress-conditioned allomorphy (i.e. allomorphy of the infinitive morph and allomorphy of the verbal root) that occur in infinitive-clitic structures and that we analyze as cases of phonologically-conditioned allomorphy triggered by stress shift.

Alexis Michaud (CNRS-LACITO)

L'articulation phonétique/phonologie au miroir de l'intelligence artificielle : analyse des résultats de la transcription automatique de la langue Na (famille sino-tibétaine) par le logiciel Persephone

Les systèmes de reconnaissance automatique de la parole permettent désormais d'entraîner un modèle acoustique sur la base de deux ou trois heures d'enregistrements transcrits (pour un système mono-locuteur), au lieu de dizaines d'heures pour les outils antérieurs. Au-delà de l'intérêt pratique que présentent ces avancées technologiques pour les tâches de documentation linguistique, se pose la question de la mise en correspondance entre les modèles phonologiques et les modèles statistiques construits par les logiciels d'intelligence artificielle. En effet, l'algorithme réalise son entraînement sur la base de transcriptions fournies en entrée par le linguiste, transcriptions qui reposent sur un ensemble – plus ou moins élaboré, et plus ou moins explicite – d'hypothèses phonologiques. Le modèle acoustique, décalqué (par des méthodes statistiques) des transcriptions du phonéticien/phonologue jointes au signal acoustique, peut-il être interrogé par le chercheur, en un jeu de miroir ? Que peut nous apprendre la confrontation ainsi renouvelée avec le signal acoustique ?

L'exposé vise à ouvrir des pistes pour élaborer une perspective phonologique sur ces questions nées à l'intersection de plusieurs disciplines. L'exposé, qui ne présuppose pas de connaissances préalables en traitement automatique des langues, commencera par une présentation du logiciel Persephone et de son application à la langue na de Yongning (famille sino-tibétaine). Des exemples précis de divergences entre la notation du linguiste et celle du logiciel seront offerts à la sagacité des participants, pour un exercice partagé de phono-philologie (ou philo-phonologie) numérique.

Joanna Zaleska (Leipzig University)

Defining phonologically relevant substrings

In this talk, I examine the question of how to restrict the application of a phonological process to the relevant portion of the linear string. As a test case, I take a particularly intricate pattern of phonological process application reported in Standard Indonesian (Lapoliwa 1981, Cohn 1989, Sneddon et al. 2010). The main challenge posed by the data is that the subparts of the word affected by different phonological processes are not nested but rather partially overlap. Some of these processes affect the lexical root and the suffix, but not prefixes. For others, the situation is reversed: Roots and prefixes are involved, while suffixes seem invisible. The analysis I propose for this set of data includes two types of restrictions on phonological processes. I argue that the root and suffixes in Indonesian form a single prosodic domain; the processes that fail to apply to prefixes are restricted to this domain. Prefixes, however, are attached to roots earlier than suffixes. Processes that seem to ignore suffixal material apply at a point at which suffixes are not yet present in the structure. In the final part of the talk, I will speculate about a possible reanalysis of the data, whereby the phonologically relevant portions of the linear string are identified exclusively by means of procedural mechanisms, as postulated by Scheer (2011) and D'Alessandro & Scheer (2015).

Jelena Stojković (Leipzig University)

(Vowel) Dissimilation is an Illusion – Looking from Afar

This talk concerns a very complex vowel dissimilation pattern in the Afar language (Cushitic; Bliese 1981, Didier 2012, Parker & Hayward 1985): with the particular/singulative and plural morphemes low vowels dissimilate. The two dissimilations differ in resulting vowels /u, i, o/, loci and conditions for application, but are also the only two environments where this alternation is present. Supported with data from outside the nominal domain in Afar, as well as data from a typological survey of 25 languages, I claim that all these cases are misinterpreted and the apparent dissimilation is in fact featural affixation, where the height and place features involved in the change are actually floating information the respective morphemes are specified with.

Guillaume Enguehard (Université d'Orléans, CNRS LLL)

À propos de la cénématique (et de son application aux langues et aux jeux)

Le terme "cénématique", introduit par l'école de Copenhague, désigne l'étude de la structure immanente à l'expression d'un système sémiotique (c'est à dire sans considération pour ses aspects physiques, psychiques et sociaux). L'objectif de cette présentation est de montrer que cette approche holiste de la langue n'a pas pour seule vocation de fournir la description d'un réseau d'oppositions. Elle permet également de dériver les classes d'unités réalisées par les segments, les tons, les accents et les longueurs. Premièrement, j'argumente que les approches historiques de la phonologie sont mises en difficulté lorsqu'il s'agit de proposer un appareil théorique permettant à la fois une description univoque de l'objet étudié et une prédiction univoque de ses possibilités. Deuxièmement, je propose un raisonnement strictement déductif aboutissant à une typologie des unités cénématiques et à la procédure permettant de les identifier. Troisièmement, j'applique cette procédure à des exemples concrets afin de montrer que les unités prédites sont attestées dans deux types de systèmes sémiotiques : les langues et les jeux combinatoires abstraits. Je conclus en soulignant que cette approche n'est pas en opposition avec les écoles distributionnaliste, fonctionnaliste et générativiste. Elle les complète en remplissant l'une des cases du schéma réunissant les aspects extra-, intra- et inter-individuels de la langue.

Alexandre Vaxman

How to uniformly capture accentual regularities and exceptions both within a given accent system and across different types of systems using a single accent-assigning mechanism? In this talk, I will focus on exceptional affixes in lexical accent systems (accented dominant suffixes in Central Selkup and Uzbek) and in mixed systems (Eastern Literary Mari, Tundra Nenets). Since morphemes, on a par with syllables, are able to attract/repel word accent, I propose that morphemes also have weight, albeit unpredictable (“diacritic weight”). Since “weight” is an ordinal variable (as evidenced by phonological weight scales) and since diacritic weight is a type of weight, novel types of weight scales are predicted, which order either diacritic weight alone (in lexical accent systems), or both syllable weight and diacritic weight (in mixed systems). In the latter type of system, the two types of weight may be independent (Mari), or dependent (Tundra Nenets). Reference to such weight scales enables the parametric component of the grammar to correctly and uniformly assign word accent in all three types of systems (phonological, lexical and mixed). An advantage of this approach is that it makes accent location in languages like Tundra Nenets partly predictable, thereby reducing the amount of lexical specification of weight. I will show that it also allows for a straightforward account of Moses Columbian Salish, traditionally analyzed as involving a highly complex “strength hierarchy”, dominance and morpheme extrametricality.

Conor Youngberg (Université de Nantes)

Japanese dialects, the moraic nasal and diglossia

In this talk, I discuss the representation of the Japanese moraic nasal, typically transcribed as <N>. I propose that this segment is not a (phonological) consonant in every dialect. N is traditionally analysed as a sparsely specified coda or moraic segment consisting only of the feature [+nasal] (McCawley 1968, Itō 1987, Vance 2008; Labrune 2012), realised as a dorso-uvular glide intervocalically and finally (cf. Vance 2008) e.g. <hoN> [hoɰ̃] ‘book’, or as a homorganic nasal when preceding a consonant, e.g. <hoNdana> [hondana] ‘bookshelf’. Alternatively, N is viewed as a syllabic nasal or nasal back vowel vowel in word-final & intervocalic contexts and a coda elsewhere (Yoshida Y. 1999, Yoshida S. 2003). I claim that alternative representations are necessary in order to capture facts of N beyond homorganicity. I propose that in Tōkyō Japanese, the orthographic vowel-N sequence is phonologically a nasal vowel, while in Osaka Japanese N is a syllabic consonant. Finally, I propose that in Kagoshima Japanese, N is a true coda consonant. I frame the alternative representations of N within Strict CV (Lowenstamm 1996) and the TBU status of N is directly connected to the status of the V position within the relevant CV unit. I consider the accommodation of diglossia through licensing parameters (Cyran 2010). I conclude with an outline of forthcoming instrumental investigations of nasality in the dialects discussed.

Guillaume Enguehard & Xiaoliang Luo (Université d'Orléans)

A Strength is Length solution to Edge and Bipositionality

Cette présentation se fonde sur la comparaison entre deux hypothèses récentes : Edge-and-Bipositionality (Lahrouchi & Ulfsbjorninn 2016) et Strength-is-Length (Luo & Enguehard à paraître). Notre objectif est de mettre en évidence les points de convergences et de divergences dans la manière dont ces hypothèses traitent la distribution de la sonorité. Nous argumentons que les généralisations de Edge-and-Bipositionality peuvent être formulées par Strength-is-Length avec plus de détail et moins de concepts théoriques.

Noam Faust (Université Paris 8, CNRS SFL)

"You may emerge, but on my terms!" said UG to the epenthetic vowel

Much of the phonology of Modern Hebrew (MH) emerged out of the phonologies of the native languages of the dominant group of founding speakers, the Ashkenazi jews of eastern Europe. For this reason, it is especially interesting to examine aspects of MH phonology that do not replicate patterns in those languages. One such aspect is the quality of its epenthetic vowel, [e]. This quality is surprising for two, related reasons. First, epenthetic [e] seems to be rare among the world’s languages (Hall 2006, Lombardi 2002). Second, and more importantly for the present purpose, it is not the epenthetic vowel of Yiddish or Russian. I claim that [e] is motivated by the interaction between the universal principles that govern the choice of epenthetic vowels and the specific morphology of Modern Hebrew. Specifically, among the three lexical vowels that alternate with zero, /e/ is the one that does so in the most contexts. I will present the proposal in Faust & Smolensky (2017), according to which an alternating vowel is lexicalized with an activity level (=strength) that is inferior to that of a non-alternating vowel. Within gradient harmonic grammar (Smolensky & Goldrick 2016), syncopating an alternating vowel is thus less of a violation of Max than syncopating a non-alternating vowel like /i/. Given this manner of lexicalizing weakness, the choice of the quality /e/ for the epenthetic vowel follows from the OT notion of epenthesis as a violation of an output’s dependence on the input: /e/ is selected because it least violates Dep. To generalize from MH, given (i) a language with V-zero alternations in lexical vowels, (ii) the absence of a designated, non-lexical epenthetic quality, and (iii) the universal principles of phonology, the quality of epenthesis is predictable. I will therefore be making the claim that the quality of epenthesis is both universally determined and emergent. It emerges from the data according to universal principles.

Radwa Fathi (Université de Nantes, LLING) & Jean Lowenstamm (Université Paris Diderot, LLF)

The gender assignment pattern of French nouns

Au cours des 20 dernières années, l'identité et le rôle des traits phi a occupé une place importante dans les préoccupations des morphologues 'minimalistes'. Mais curieusement, ce n'est que beaucoup plus récemment que le Genre a été sérieusement étudié (dans le cadre en question), et que la question de l'assignation du genre aux noms a été confrontée. Les critères selon lesquels le genre est assigné sont-ils formels, sémantiques, ou impliquent-ils une combinaison ? Nous démontrerons que le genre des noms du français leur est assigné sur la base de critères formels dans des conditions définies. Lorsque ces conditions ne sont pas réunies, le genre est assigné arbitrairement. Dans la mesure où notre proposition ne reconnaît pas de rôle à des critères biologiques comme le sexe, il nous appartiendra de dériver les régularités évidentes que l'on observe dans le cas des espèces sexuées: de fait, si un locuteur du français est informé du fait que rétroscopiste est une profession, il n'a aucun mal à savoir a) que LE rétroscopiste et LA rétroscopiste sont tous deux des noms possibles, b) lequel des deux est une femme. Nous montrerons pourquoi et comment. La présentation de nos critères formels nous donnera l'occasion de consacrer une partie importante de notre intervention au développement d'une proposition nouvelle pour la représentation des consonnes flottantes du français.

Nicola Lampitelli (Université de Tours, LLL) & Francesc-Josep Torres Tamarit (université Paris 8, LSF)

Vowel length in Friulian: extrasyllabicity of voiced final obstruents and mora affixation

In this presentation we reflect on the sources of vowel length in Friulian. We will show that vowel length in this language is sometimes phonologically predictable and sometimes an instance of mora affixation in first conjugation verbs. Underlyingly voiced obstruents in word-final position cannot be parsed in coda position due to restrictions on the type of allowed codas in the language. Underlyingly voiced obstruents become extrametrical and devoice. Foot-Binarity enforces vowel lengthening. A formal analysis of these data will be presented within Turbidity Theory (Goldrick 2001, van Oostendorp 2008), based on the phonetic findings of Baroni & Vanelli (2000), which suggests that obstruent final devoicing in Friulian is an instance of incomplete neutralization. We will present new data on verbal morphology in Friulian and show that vowel length is also the expression of the Theme morpheme in first conjugation verbs, which ahs distinct allomorphs. One of the sources of vowel length in Friulian is therefore mora affixation. This analysis of morphological length in Friulian shows that there is no need for an L-shpaed morphome analysis of the data (Maiden 2004). In our analysis, each morph, including length, spells out a morphosyntactic feature.

Ora Matushansky (université Paris 8, LSF) parler de

Russian athematic verbs, without stress (and with)

As is well-known, each Russian morpheme is accentually prespecified as accented, post-accenting, pre-accenting or unaccented. In addition, the morphophonology of the Russian verb involves a number of vowel hiatus resolution strategies such as deletion or conflation and glide formation. So what happens to various types of accent when the vocalic morpheme that it is associated with disappears from the surface representation?

In this talk I will first establish the accentual properties of various relevant morphemes in athematic verbs and additional processes that might influence the position of stress in Russian verbs. I will then demonstrate that different vowel hiatus resolution strategies influence the eventual position of stress in different ways and discuss what this means for various theories of lexical accent.

Owen D.E. Edwards (université de Leiden)

Metathesis and Unmetathesis in Amarasi

I provide a complete analysis of synchronic CV -> VC metathesis in Amarasi, an Austronesian language of western Timor. Metathesis and unmetathesis realise a paradigm of parallel forms, pairs of which occur to complement each other throughout the language.

Metathesis in Amarasi is superficially associated with a bewildering array of disparate phonological processes including: vowel deletion, consonant deletion, consonant insertion and multiple kinds of vowel assimilation, any of which can (and do) vary by lect in their realisation. By proposing that Amarasi has an obligatory CVCVC foot in which C-slots can be empty, all these phonological processes can be straightforwardly derived from a single rule of metathesis and two associated phonological rules.

Three kinds of metathesis can be identified in Amarasi. (i) Before vowel initial enclitics, roots must undergo metathesis, responding to the need to create a phonological boundary between prosodic words. (ii) Metathesis occurs within the syntax to signal attributive modification. A syntactically metathesised form cannot occur at the end of a phrase and thus requires the presence of an unmetathesised form to complete it syntactically. (iii) In the discourse an unmetathesised form marks an unresolved event or situation. Such an unmetathesised form cannot occur in isolation and requires a metathesised form to achieve resolution. Metathesis in Amarasi is the central linguistic process around which linguistic structures are organised.

Amarasi metatheses also reflect fundamental Timorese notions of societal and cosmic organisation. Alongside weaving and other performed activities, metathesis is an important linguistic marker of identity in a region obsessed with similarities and differences of identity between different groups. The complementarity of Amarasi metathesis and unmetathesis within the syntax and within discourse reflects the Timorese division of the world into a series of mutually dependent binary and complementary pairs. As well as being the key which unlocks the structure of the language, metathesis is also a reflection of the structure of Amarasi society and culture.

Adèle Jatteau (SFL)

Définir les domaines du « mot » phonologique : le cas du grec ancien

Les processus phonologiques s’appliquent souvent dans des domaines plus petits ou plus larges que le « mot » morphologique. Comment définir ces domaines ? Dans cet exposé, je m’intéresse au cas du grec ancien. Je montre que, alors que les processus segmentaux et phonotactiques (syllabation, clusters, distribution de /h/, assimilation) traitent le préfixe comme un objet indépendant de la base, les règles de placement de l’accent obéissent à un schéma plus complexe : le domaine accentuel est le mot préfixé dans son ensemble, mais l’accent ne peut pas remonter plus loin que la dernière syllabe du préfixe. Par ailleurs, alors que d’autres processus segmentaux s’étendent au mot affixé mais aussi aux clitiques, suggérant que l’ensemble clitique + hôte forme à son tour un « mot » pour la phonologie (Golston 1995, Agbayani & Golston 2010, Kiparsky 2003), l’accent ne s’étend pas aux clitiques. Pour rendre compte de ces phénomènes, je compare plusieurs traitements théoriques, et propose une analyse combinant domaines cycliques et prosodiques.

Florian Breit (University College London)

Reconciling Mutation and Modularity in Welsh

Initial Consonant Mutation (ICM) is a phenomenon in which words undergo a phonologically regular change that is conditioned by a morphosyntactic environment rather than a phonological one. For instance, Welsh /tad/ ‘father’ is variously realised with a nasal following the 1s possessive ([və n̥ʰad] ‘my fatrher’), with a voiced stop following the 2s possessive ([də dad] ‘thy father’), with a fricative following the 3s feminine possessive ([i θad] ‘her father’) or with no change at all following the otherwise homophonous 3s masculine possessive ([i tad], ‘his father’).

ICM phenomena are challenging for theories of the Morphosyntax–Phonology Interface. They appear to require either that morphosyntactic information is conveyed to the phonology and can condition alternation there, or that somehow certain phonological alternations can take place at some stage of morphosyntactic computation. Both options are incompatible with standard assumptions about the modularity of the mind that underpin current models of linguistic architecture (cf. Fodor 1983, Segal 1996, et al.). While linguists have long denied the latter option (phonology inside syntax), the former is still commonly employed, usually in the form of a module-transcending ad-hoc feature. For mutation, the basic story goes something like this: the morphosyntax annotates a node with a diacritic feature (say, [M]) which–-unlike regular syntactico-semantic features–-perseveres across the interface, where it can then condition phonological alternations such as ICM.

Virtually all the available theories of Welsh ICM (e.g. Ball & Müller 1992, Kibre 1997, Green 2007, Hannahs 2013) are, in one form or another, different riffs on the modularity-violating diacritic solution above. In contrast, I argue that even though Welsh ICM might seem like the ultimate modularity-breaker, a different analysis is possible. Taking inspiration from Lieber’s (1983) autosegmental account, I propose that mutations are the surface effect of floating phonological features that form part of the spell-out of morphosyntactic terminals, either as part of the underlying form of a trigger such as the various possessives above, or as the sole exponent of a terminal. Crucially, the insertion of the floating features is phonologically conditioned, so that a different floating feature may be inserted next to a oral vs nasal stops, for example. This overcomes various paradoxes known to arise from Lieber’s previous account.

It will be shown that the new account is not only compatible with modularity, but also empirically superior in many regards: it accounts for the productivity of the process, makes better predictions about variation and exceptionality, and brings within reach a first satisfactory account of items that appear to completely resist mutation (e.g. /ge:m/ ‘game’ is never affected by mutation and we have [və ge:m], [də ge:m], etc.). Based on this I conclude that mutation is best accounted for precisely when modularity is taken into account and respected.

Calendrier / Schedule 2019-2020

11 sep, salle 159

Metaphony in proparoxytones

Francesc-Josep Torres-Tamarit (SFL)

Proparoxytones in Italo-Romance offer the best source of evidence to investigate certain properties of vowel harmony, among them lookahead effects. According to Mascaró (in press), metaphonic systems are divided into those in which metaphony only applies in paroxytones and those in which it applies in both paroxytones and proparoxytones. Within the latter group, harmony is claimed to be always myopic (againt Kimper 2012, Walker 2010). In myopic harmony, posttonic potential undergoers in proparoxytones are targeted by metaphony irrespective of whether the non-local target, the stressed vowel, is or is not a potential undergoer. In non-myopic harmony, however, vowel harmony of the posttonic vowel in proparoxytones is blocked if the non-local target is a non-undergoer. Building on previous literature, this talk explores the typological predictions of different spreading-favoring markedness constraint (AGREE, ALIGN and IDENT within Agreement by Correspondence), in conjunction with internally layered, minimally recursive feet (Martínez-Paricio 2013). Taking Mascaró's (in press) typology to be the valid one, this paper shows that only IDENT in Agreement by Correspondence produces a factorial typology of metaphonic systems that matches the empirical data: absence of unattested non-myopia and presence of attested myopia in proparoxytones (e.g. *ˈpɛrseɡ-i, ˈpɛrsiɡ-i 'peach.pl' ~ ˈpɛrseɡ-o 'peach.sg'), as well as absence of unattested gapped configurations across potential undergoers (e.g. * ˈzuven-i, ˈzuvin-i 'young.pl' ~ ˈzoven-e 'young.sg'), and presence of both opaque and transparent intervening non-undergoers (e.g. la ˈvorav-i / la ˈvurav-i 'worked.2sg impf. ind' ~ laˈvorav-a 'worked.1sg impf. ind').

25 sep, salle 159

An “aa!” moment in Modern Hebrew

Noam Faust (SFL)

This talk presents the latest chapter in my ongoing (neverending?) study of the fate of historical gutturals in Modern Hebrew (MH). MH orthography involves four symbols which in Biblical Hebrew (BH) stood for the pharyngeal [ʕ,ħ] and the glottal [ʔ,h]. However, these sounds are mostly absent from the phonetics of MH. The letters for [ʕ,h,ʔ] are now either unpronounced (in onset position) or realized as unstressed [a] (in coda position). For this reason I have analyzed them as /a^G/ (Faust 2005, Enguehard & Faust 2018; the superscript ^G is strictly for ease of reference). Two aspects of the issue remained untreated:

i. The merger of guttural /a/ with a preceding /a/ iff the latter is stressed: /jadáa^G-ti/ => [jadáti] ‘know.pst-1sg’, but /jadaa^G-tí-v/ => [jedaatív] ‘know.pst-1sg-3msg.obj’ and /jaa^Gkóv/ => [jaakóv] ‘follow.fut.3msg’.

ii. The contrast between [χ] (<orth. /ħ/) and [χ] from spirantized /k/ (with spirantization no longer a synchronic process in MH): only the former has an effect on preceding non-low vowels: [sibeχ] ‘complexify’ (<orth. /sibek/) vs. [ʃibéaχ] ‘praise’ (<orth. /ʃibeħ/). Forms like [ʃibéaχ] pose a challenge for a skeletal take on templates, because there does not seem to be enough space in the general template for the [éaχ] sequence.

Stressed vowels are phonetically longer in MH (Cohen et al. 2018). I interpret this as stress adding a CV unit (Larsen 1998, Enguehard 2016 and references therein). To motivate the insertion, I adopt an idea from Ulfsbjorninn (2014), according to which the stressed vowel must head an incorporation domain. All these ingredients conspire to the effect that i. the sequence /aa^G/ sound like a single stressed [á], and ii. if the lowering /χ/ is interpreted as /a^Gχ/, there is in fact enough space for it in the template.

30 octobre

The dual system of gender assignment of Omani Mehri

Radwa Fathi

The gender assignment mechanism of two-gender languages, such as Omani Mehri, offers a recurrent analytical challenge, namely the presence of two distinct subsystems. The first such subsystem produces pairs of nouns (masculine and feminine) from the same root. The other subsystem produces singleton nouns (masculine or feminine). What are these two subsystems, and how do they relate to each other? I propose that mono-gendered nouns result from a probing system connecting Head Gen and the radical system. Bi-gendered nouns arise when probing is suspended. As Mehri nouns and adjectives are arguably non-distinct morphological constructions, the discussion involves both.

13 novembre

Comment le PCO sort gagnant de la résolution d'un paradoxe ou pourquoi la simple observation d'un fait non-analysé ne nous apprend pas grand chose

Jean Lowenstamm

Le chaha est une langue sémitique d'Ethiopie bien connue, notamment pour ses morphèmes "flottants" dont le comportement sera expliqué et illustré de façon quasi exhaustive au cours de la présentation. Reprenant la démonstration de McCarthy (1983), je montrerai en quoi le comportement des morphèmes flottants du chaha constitue l'un des arguments les plus forts possibles en faveur du principe du contour obligatoire (PCO). Mais, l'une des avancées les plus spectaculaires du PCO est la rationalisation de la présence dans les langues à morphologie non-concaténative de racines de type C1C2C2 (ex. sbb, mdd) et de l'absence concomitante de racines C1C1C2 (ex. *ssb, *mmd). Or, de manière apparemment paradoxale, il se trouve que le chaha (comme les autres langues sémitiques d'Ethiopie) présente précisément des racines du type exclu par le PCO, p. ex. q^wäq^wäsä 'devenir calciné', k^yäk^yärä 'serrer dans ses bras' ! Selon Goldenberg (1998), l'existence de tels verbes suffisait à disqualifier le PCO. Je proposerai une analyse de ces verbes et je montrerai que leur existence 1) découle naturellement de caractéristiques propres au système verbal de l'éthio-sémitique, 2) n'est donc pas attendue en dehors de cette branche du sémitique, 3) n'a rien à voir avec le PCO et ne remet aucunement en cause sa validité.

27 nov

How do penguins differ from kangaroos? Vowel 'dropability' in the pluralization of vowel-final loanwords in Hebrew

Lior Laks (Bar Ilan Universityu)

This study examines variation (and lack thereof) in the pluralization of loan nouns in Hebrew that end with a vowel. Most loanwords take the suffix plural -im with no variation as demonstrated for pingwin-im 'penguins' (1). In contrast, words that end with vowels other than a exhibit variation. At least four options can be found. The word kenguru 'kangaroo' can take the suffix -im (2a), it can take the same suffix with the deletion of the final vowel (2b), it can retain its singular form (2c), and it can surface in its English plural form (2d)

(1) higiu od šloša pingwin-im

'three more penguins arrived' (https://nanitriptonewzealand.wordpress.com/2016/11/)

(2) a. šloša kenguru-im še hayu ba-kluv barxu

'three kangaroos that were in the cage escaped'

(http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-4268082,00.html(

b. šney kengur-im ravu al nekeva

'two kangaroos were fighting for one female'

(https://forum.12p.co.il/index.php?showtopic=24170)

c. krav egrofim ben šney kenguru

'a feast fight between two kangaroos'

(http://holesinthenet.co.il/uncategorized/%D7%A8%D7%A7_%%A0%D7%99_%D7%A7%D7%A0%D7%92%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%95_%D7%94%D7%95%D7%9C%D7%9B%D7%99%D7%9D_%D7%9E%D7%9B%D7%95%D7%AA_%D7%91%D7%A8%D7%97-4)

d. im lahaka šel 34 kanguru-z

'with agroup of 34 kangaroos'

(http://mynetkfarsaba.co.il/article/140291?OriginalPostId=140478)

Why does such variation occur? Primarily, Hebrew nouns that end with vowels other than a are relatively rare. The Hebrew morphological mechanism is not accustomed to pluralizing such words and as a result, speakers apply a variety of strategies. This talk focuses on the competition between plural forms in (2a) and (2b), namely variation in deleting and not deleting the final vowel. I will propose a hierarchy of vowel 'dropability' with respect to the five vowels in Hebrew. This hierarchy predicts which vowels are more or less likely to be dropped. It is based on the interaction of markedness and faithfulness constraints as well as on paradigm accessibility in word formation.

15 janvier

Cases of tonal alteration in Cuwabo (Mozambique, Bantu P34)

Rozenn Guérois (University of Ghent, CNRS ILLACAN)

A typical feature of Bantu tones is their ability to mark lexical and/or grammatical distinctions. After exposing a few basic properties of the Cuwabo tonal system, I present two particular cases of tonal alteration found in specific syntactic contexts. The first tonal alteration consists in deleting the first underlying H(igh) tone of a word, usually a noun (along with the doubled H resulting from High-Tone Doubling). I examine the different syntactic environments in which “first-H Deletion” occurs in Cuwabo and show how the presence vs absence of this H historically relates to the Proto-Bantu augment. Second, I examine the tonal alterations observed in two types of nominal expressions in Cuwabo, namely N+POSS and N+DEM. I tentatively show how such tone variation interferes with a differential marking of prosodic domains, whereby the modifying element may either form a single prosodic domain or may be prosodically integrated with the head noun. This double behavior is attested in other Bantu languages (see Hyman et al. (1987) for Luganda, Rolle & Hyman (2019) for Makonde, or Downing & Mtenje (2011) for Chewa). I further show how this differential marking of prosodic domains may relate to the presence or absence of the (tonal) augment on the adnominal modifier (with N+POSS nominal expressions) or on the head noun (with N+DEM nominal expressions).

29 janvier

All kinds of activity under the surface: the case of Yiddish stress

Noam Faust (université Paris 8, CNRS SFL)

This talk develops the idea that when epenthetic vowels are of the same quality as a lexical vowel, it is in some sense the weakest lexical vowel. It begins with a reminder of the application of this idea to the issue of the relation between epenthesis and lexical syncope in Modern Hebrew. I then report on the results of a 100-language survey about the same issue just completed. The new analytic pat of the talk, however, is the application of the same idea to another recurrent and related phenomenon, namely the unstressability of the weakest lexical vowel. Indeed, many stress algorithms ignore not only the epenthetic vowel, but also the homophonous lexical vowel. While studies of such phenomena often involve constraints like *Stressed[ə], I seek to derive this effect from the inherent weakness of the vowel.

Yiddish is a good language to do test this idea on, because it has: i. lexical /ə/, ii. [ə]-epenthesis, iii. supposedly default penultimate stress that iv. becomes antepenultimate if the penultimate vowel is a schwa. These facts are illustrated by pairs like [xavúrə] ‘band’ vs. [xásənə] ‘wedding’. Native words, i.e. words of both Germanic and Semitic origin, exhibit vowel reduction to [ə] in post-tonic syllables. In the latter group, this is manifested in alternations in vowel quality upon suffixation: [gánəv] ‘theif’ [ganóv-əm] ‘pl’. I will propose a preliminary analysis for these facts, based on two ideas: i. the relative prominence that is stress is expressed in terms of enhanced activity; and ii. /ə/ is lexically defective in its activity level.

Time permitting, I will extend the analysis to the lexical stress of internationalisms and loanwords such as [dómino] vs. [kazíno], [buró] vs. [géto], [kanibál]. In these, I will claim, lexical stress is sometimes marked as enhanced underlying activity.

26 février

Phonetic and phonological sound patterns in Scottish Gaelic

Donald Alasdair Morrison (The University of Manchester)

This talk discusses the results of two studies exploring the relationship between phonetic and phonological sound patterns in the dialect of Scottish Gaelic spoken in Ness, Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. In the first study, several patterns of vowel allophony are explored by measuring formant values in nine Ness speakers. By taking bimodality in the acoustic distribution of tokens to indicate the presence of two discrete phonological categories in a speaker's grammar (Bermúdez-Otero & Trousdale 2011), it is shown that speakers vary as to whether these oppositions are confined to the gradient phonetics or have undergone stabilisation and advanced into the categorical phonology (Bermúdez-Otero 2015). The phonetic grounding of the tense-lax oppositions is also explored, and a solution is offered drawing from Storme's (2019) analysis of closed-syllable laxing in French. In the second study, patterns of vowel nasalisation are explored by measuring nasal airflow in four speakers. By taking plateau-like and cline-like patterns of nasal airflow to represent categorical phonological and gradient phonetic nasalisation respectively (Cohn 1990; 1993), it is shown that only the former is subject to morphologically-triggered overapplication. This result is in accordance with the predictions of strictly modular grammatical frameworks in which no direct interface exists between morphology and phonetics, and contrasts with widespread findings of phonetic paradigmatic effects in other processes such as final devoicing. The findings are taken to support recent proposals by Hall (2017) and Seyfarth et al. (2019) regarding the kinds of morphophonological alternations with which such effects can and cannot occur.

11 mars

Questions de phonologie persane : métathèse consonantique en farsi

Alireza Jafarian (Université Paris 8, SFL)

Dans ce premier exposé à l’Atelier de Phonologie, j’introduirai à la phonologie du farsi, variété iranienne de la langue persane. Je passerai ensuite à une brève présentation de ma thèse doctorale, que j’ai commencée cette année sous la direction de Mohamed Lahrouchi. Elle portera sur des questions de la phonologie persane qui ne sont pas suffisamment étudiées à ce jour et s'organisera en trois parties : structure phonématique, processus phonologiques, et stratégies d’adaptation des emprunts.

Par la suite, je traite avec plus de profondeur la question de la métathèse consonantique, qui fait partie des processus segmentaux. Dans la littérature phonologique, on a tendance à expliquer la métathèse en tant qu’un processus qui résulte en un ordre de sonorité privilégié par la langue (i.e. descendante vs ascendante). Dans ce cas, comment explique-t-on le fait qu’en farsi, la métathèse aboutit tantôt à l’une, tantôt à l’autre ?

25 mars

8 avril

Classe phonémique Orientation : quel est son statut dans la phonologie des langues des signes ?

Justine Mertz (CNRS LLF)

À l’heure actuelle, la phonologie segmentale des langues des signes est façonnée par la géométrie des traits et les relations de dépendance. Ces modèles présupposent trois classes phonémiques comme primitives : la configuration manuelle, le lieu d’articulation, et le mouvement. Une quatrième classe phonémique, l’orientation, est ensuite dérivée à partir de l’interaction entre la configuration manuelle et le lieu d’articulation. En effet, l’orientation est définie par une relation binaire entre une partie de la main (déterminée par un trait de la configuration manuelle) et la partie du lieu d’articulation où le signe est produit (déterminée part un trait du lieu d’articulation) ; l’orientation est donc traitée comme une classe phonémique émergente.

Cette étude a pour objectif i) de mettre en évidence le besoin d’une orientation absolue en plus d’une orientation relative afin de décrire la phonologie de certains signes, et ii) d’améliorer les modèles actuels et leur permettre de rendre compte de la phonologie de ces signes “exceptionnels” à partir d’ajustements minimes.

Dans cette étude sur la langue des signes française, nous portons notre attention sur les signes symétriques à deux mains produits sur le corps tels que CEINTURE, OS, TABOU et CHÔMAGE. Nous montrons que l’orientation relative ne permet pas une description adéquate des signes lorsque les deux mains sont en contact. L’orientation relative peut capturer soit le contact entre les deux mains, soit le contact avec le corps, mais pas les deux. Afin de modéliser l’orientation de ces signes dans un cadre formel, nous proposons l’implémentation de plans secondaires. Tandis que cette implémentation requiert des ajustements minimes dans les théories actuelles, son impact quant à la théorie générale de la phonologie segmentale est, elle, importante. Les plans secondaires imposent des restrictions géométriques et forcent l’orientation absolue ; le concept d’orientation comme simple classe phonémique relationnelle n’est donc plus suffisant (du moins pas pour ces signes).