Vowel length as evidence for a distinction between free and bound prefixes in Czech
Pavel Caha, Markéta Ziková
March 2016

direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/002919

In Czech as well as other Slavic languages, verbal particles (throw the cat OUT) are always glued to the verb, and can never be separated from it. Therefore, they are traditionaly analyzed as forming a complex head with the verb. Against this background, we look at an alternation in vocalic length that can be found with a couple of prefixes in Czech. We argue that the best way to understand this alternation is in terms of their free/bound status. Hence, we propose that despite the fact that the prefixes are always glued to the verb, they actually undergo the same process as Germanic particles. The reason why they are always glued to the verb is because of the way pied-piping works; when the verb moves, it moves as a big phrase and always carries the particle along.

A description of a hardware implementation of a multilayer neural network speech recognition system.

http://websites.umass.edu/brain-wars/files/2016/03/nagy-1963-tobermory-perceptron.pdf

For further information about Tobermory and other projects of Rosenblatt’s group at the time, see Nagy (1991).

Nagy, George. 1963. System and circuit designs for the Tobermory perceptron. Technical report number 5, Cognitive Systems Research Program, Cornell University, Ithaca New York.

Japanese geminate devoicing once again: Insights from Information Theory
Shigeto Kawahara
March 2016
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/002904

This paper is about devoicing of voiced obstruent geminates found in Japanese loanword phonology. Nishimura (2003) discovered that voiced geminates can optionally devoice when they co-occur with another voiced obstruent (e.g. /beddo/ ? [betto] “bed” and /doggu/ ? [dokku] “dog”). I myself proposed an Optimality Theoretic (Prince and Smolensky, 1993/2004) analysis of this devoicing in Kawahara (2006), based on the P-map theory (Steriade, 2001/2008), which attempted to explain the phonological pattern from the phonetic properties of voiced geminates in Japanese. In that analysis, however, phonetic properties of voiced geminates in Japanese were given, rather than explained, and those were exploited to explain the phonological pattern. In this paper, I sketch an alternative explanation of this geminate devoicing pattern based on Information Theory (Shannon, 1948), which demonstrably explains both the phonetic and phonological patterns of voiced geminates.

From Tony Woodbury – a set of dissertations, and two papers, on the fascinating Chatino tonal systems. 

The Chatino dissertations that deal with tone are all at:

https://sites.google.com/site/lenguachatino/recursos-academicos

In particular, there are five dissertations, each on a different variety.

Villard, Stéphanie. 2015. The phonology and morphology of Zacatepec Chatino. Doctoral dissertation. University of Texas at Austin. pdf

Cruz, Emiliana. 2011. Phonology, tone, and the functions of tone in San Juan Quiahije Chatino. Doctoral dissertation. University of Texas at Austin. pdf

Campbell, Eric W. 2014. Aspects of the Phonology and Morphology of Zenzontepec Chatino, a Zapotecan Language of Oaxaca, Mexico. Doctoral dissertation. University of Texas at Austin. pdf  

Sullivant, John Ryan. 2015. The Phonology and Inflectional Morphology of Chá?knyá, Tataltepec de Valdés Chatino, a Zapotecan Language. Doctoral dissertation. University of Texas at Austin. pdf

McIntosh, Justin D. 2015. Aspects of phonology and morphology of Teotepec Eastern Chatino. Doctoral dissertation. University of Texas at Austin. pdf  

Also, for a historically oriented discussion of tonal morphology that touches on several of the above languages, here is a new “to appear” paper of mine:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4-pvfKWqpprdERnaUprTjVDU28/view?usp=sharing

Finally, this is an overview of our tone work:

Cruz, Emiliana, & Anthony C. Woodbury. 2015. Finding a way into a family of tone languages: The story and methods of the Chatino Language Documentation Project.  Language documentation & conservation 8:490-524. Special Issue: Steven Bird & Larry Hyman (guest eds.), How to study a tone language.

The phonetics and the phonology of final boundary tone in Northern Kurdish
Adel Rahimi
March 2016

In this study we have analyzed the difference in boundary tone in northern Kurdish (Kurmanji) in four different sentence structures: Declarative, Imperative, Exclamatory and Interrogative. The study shows that the mean difference in all sentence structures in Kurmanji language is 59 and the L%, L+H%, H%, L%, and % changes in the ToBI system were observed. In this paper we propose a systematic way to transcribe Kurdish intonation named: KuBI (Kurdish ToBI)

Enhancing stressed /a/ low frequency components in the context of sonorants. Some proposals on the phonological representations
Leonardo Savoia
February 2016

In this article two main topics are addressed: the treatment of vowel-sonorant interaction processes and, as a crucial point, the nature of phonological representations. As to the first point, data from some Italo-Romance and Romansh varieties will be examined. In particular the relation between segmental phonological content and its prosodic manifestation will be explored combining the experimental observations with the documented phenomena. The second point has been recently explored and in particular the most debated points concern the explanatory role of structure and its relation with the melodic content of segments (Kaye 2014, Pöchtrager and Kaye 2013, Pöchtrager 2006, 2015, van Oostemdorp 2013).

Contrastive representations in non-segmental phonology
Christopher Spahr
January 2016

This thesis develops and tests a unified model of word-level prosodic contrasts. Traditionally, word prosody has been analyzed within disparate models (such as autosegmental theory for tone, metrical theory for stress, and CV, X-slot, or moraic theory for length), meaning that it has not been possible to make clear predictions about how many different prosodic features can be employed in a single language. I present a minimal architecture for word prosodic representations based on a single set of formal elements. A tier of segmental root nodes, or X-slots, bears the binary contrastive features that divide the segmental inventory and represents quantity contrasts through two-to-one linking, while a tier of prosodic root nodes, or “pi-nodes”, bears the binary features dividing the autosegmental inventory. Features on pi-nodes are used in tone languages with more than one tonal autosegment, but in privative tone languages, the pi-node itself reflects the phonetic realization of the marked member of the tone opposition. The same featureless pi-node is used as an autosegmental marker of accented positions in lexical stress systems, where its language-specific phonetic realization is that of stress: some combination of increased pitch, duration, and intensity. The predictive power of this model is that it restricts systems to a maximum of two independent word prosodic contrasts, since each requires its own tier of root nodes. The pi-tier can represent either tone or accent separately from length on the X-tier, but this leaves no means to represent a third contrast. In certain systems, surface stress may be represented covertly as length on the X-tier with tone represented on the pi-tier, but no mechanism is available to host a third contrast, since the X-tier is already used for stress.

Description and Explanation in Morphophonology: The Case of Japanese Verb Inflection
Brent de Chene
January 2016

The suffixal alternations of Japanese verbal inflection have been analyzed in at least four distinct ways in the literature. In this paper, working in the context of a general model of the inferential relation between synchrony and diachrony in inflectional morphophonology, I compute the predictions for potential change for three analyses of those alternations and show that only one set of predictions is consistent with the ongoing changes evident in a nationwide survey of inflection. I conclude that the analysis generating the correct predictions is the unique descriptively adequate analysis of the system of alternations in question. With regard to the explanatory principles governing the choice of that analysis from the set of observationally adequate alternatives, I show that the Japanese case counterexemplifies a wide range of proposals that have been made about the operation of morphophonological analysis and change and propose that the choice of both base forms and rules is due to a principle of Generalized Type Frequency. Among the general themes of the paper are the grammatical reality of language-specific phonological rules, the relevance of analogical processes to synchronic description and explanation, and the limited role played in morphophonological analysis by global considerations of predictability. [The present text rectifies various typos in the JEAL version of the paper.]

r-Epenthesis and Ryukyuan
Brent de Chene
January 2016

Focusing to begin with on the Shuri dialect of Okinawan, this paper poses the question of whether Ryukyuan languages display evidence for the analysis of verbal morphology proposed for Japanese by de Chene (2015), an analysis according to which consonant-stem allomorphs are the underlying or default representations of alternating suffixes and regular vowel-stem allomorphs are derived by intervocalic epenthesis of r at verb stem boundary. It is found that Shuri combines two characteristics that make it particularly revealing as evidence for the r-Epenthesis analysis. First, with respect to primary vowel-stems, Shuri illustrates the logical endpoint of the changes entailed by that analysis, namely the total assimilation of vowel-stem inflection to the inflectional pattern of r-stems. Second, because of the creation of secondary vowel stems from historical w-stems and the ongoing nature of the assimilation of those vowel-stems to r-stem inflection, it displays evidence at the same time for r-Epenthesis as a living process that is still being extended. When we broaden the focus from Shuri to Ryukyuan and to Japonic as a whole, we find that, with regard to the initiation of changes that lead in the direction of assimilation of vowel-stem to r-stem inflection, the area from northern Kyushu to southern Okinawa constitutes a dialect continuum straddling the Japanese-Ryukyuan boundary within which, to a first approximation, those changes are further advanced the further south one proceeds.