Transparadigmatic Output-Output Correspondence: A Case Study from Ese Ejja
Nicholas Rolle
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/003819
January 2018
One prominent theory capturing unexpected phonological similarity across morphologically-related forms is Output-Output Correspondence (OO-Corr – Benua 1997; Burzio 1998; a.o.). Classic OO-Corr involves correspondence between an output [X-Y] and a subconstituent base [X], e.g. a derived stem with a bare root [?-DERIV]x ? [?]x (párent-hood ? párent). Further, Paradigmatic OO-Corr (Pa-OO-C) involves correspondence between an output [X-A] and a base [X-B], where the affixes [A] and [B] share a morphosyntactic feature [+F] which places them together in a morphological paradigm (McCarthy 2005, Hall & Scott 2007), e.g. [?-INFL[1SG PAST]]x ? [?-INFL[1SG PRES]]x. In contrast, this paper proposes a novel type of OO-Corr termed Transparadigmatic Output-Output Correspondence (Tr-OO-C), involving correspondence between an output [X-Y-Z] and a base [X-Z]. Under Tr-OO-C, morphologically-related forms share the same root as well as share the same outer morphology, but differ in terms of an inner morphology, e.g. [?-DERIV-INFL]x ? [?-INFL]x. I argue that Ese Ejja (Takanan: Bolivia) is an example of Tr-OO-C, wherein there is unexpected stress uniformity between inflectional and derivational verbal forms. I argue that derivational forms are in correspondence with an inflectional base enforced by highly ranked constraints ID-BO(STRESS), CORR-BO(ROOT), and CORR-BO(INFL), modeled after Agreement-By-Correspondence (Rose & Walker 2004). In total, Ese Ejja prosody is a crucial case study for OO-C and adds to the body of evidence showing how the phonology of words can be shaped by morphologically-related forms.

The Syntax of Italian Clitics
Louis-H Desouvrey
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/003816
January 2018
In this paper, a syntactic account of Italian clitics is presented. It is suggested that clitics in Italian are different from other major Romance languages because of their specification for two pervasive syntactic features, namely [?] and [?]. All clitics but ne carry the feature [?], whereas the feature [?] is present in third person accusative-specified clitics as well as past participles. Due to the feature [?], simple clitics must undergo an unusual long outbound movement under OCP. However, the most remarkable combined effect of these feature is to be found in clusters of object clitics, which must be processed by a compounding rule (CCR), and then licensed by a phonological sandhi rule (ICIS), in order to avoid an overload derivation (DEN>3). The feature [?] has a further effect in the grammar: it forces the agreement of past participles and direct object clitics. Various cooccurrence restrictions, traditionally considered to be arbitrary or idiosyncratic, are accounted for with simplicity and elegance.

What’s in (a) Label? Neural Origins and Behavioral Manifestations of Identity Avoidance in Language and Cognition
Evelina Leivada
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/003798
January 2018
The present work defends the idea that grammatical categories are not intrinsic to mergeable items, taking as a departure point Lenneberg’s (1967, 1975) claim that syntactic objects are definable only contextually. It is argued that there are four different strands of inquiry that are of interest when one seeks to build an evolutionarily plausible theory of labels and operation Label: (i) linguistic constraints on adjacent elements of the same type such as Repetition/Identity Avoidance ([*XX]), (ii) data that flout these constraints ([XX]), (iii) disorders that raise questions as to whether the locus of impairment is a categorial feature per se, and (iv) operation Label as a candidate for human uniqueness. After discussing categorial identity through these perspectives, this work first traces the origins and manifestations of Identity Avoidance in language and other domains of human cognition, with emphasis on attention orienting. Second, it proposes a new processing principle, the Novel Information Bias, that (i) captures linguistic Identity Avoidance based on how the brain decodes types and tokens and (ii) explains the universal fact that generally the existence of adjacent occurrences of syntactically and/or phonologically identical tokens is severely constrained.

Linguistic Missing Links.
Gerard Cheshire
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/003737
January 2018
Linguistic missing links: This paper explains the writing system for Manuscript MS408 (Voynich), which is written in proto-Romance language and uses proto-Italic alphabet, making it a unique document in both respects. It is therefore very important to linguistics in understanding the evolution of the modern Romance languages and the modern Italic alphabet. The manuscript has been dated to c. 1444 and located to the court of Castello Aragonese, Ischia. The companion paper is: Linguistically Dating and Locating Manuscript MS408. http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/003808

Germanic syllable structure
Marc Van Oostendorp
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/003779
December 2017
This chapter gives a descriptive overview of syllable structure phenomena in modern Germanic languages, mostly in their standardized form – Afrikaans, Danish, Dutch, English, Faroese, Frisian, German, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish. It concentrates on consonant cluster phonotactics at various positions in the word and compares the possibilities. It turns out that Germanic languages are extremely similar and all seem to use the same basic template with some minor variation.

Language contact and constructed languages
Marc Van Oostendorp
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/003776
December 2017
This chapter gives an overview of language contact phenomena in so-called constructed or artificial languages, and explains how the study of such languages can be used to understand the phenomenon of language contact better.

Tonal reflexes of movement in Asante Twi
Sampson Korsah, Andrew Murphy
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/003765
December 2017
We argue that Asante Twi has a process of tonal overwriting on verbs that are crossed by an A’-dependency. It is shown that this view captures the distribution of the process across ex-situ focus constructions, relative clauses and adverbial clauses, which are all contexts involving operator movement. Furthermore, we illustrate that this process is unbounded and applies to each verb in a long-distance dependency. We therefore conclude that this is a reflex of successive-cyclic movement through vP. Additionally, we provide a detailed study of resumption in Asante Twi, showing that despite island-insensitivity, resumption is still derived by movement. Finally, the morpho-phonological side of the phenomenon is investigated. It is shown that overwriting affects only those affixes below v and not those above, which follows from cyclic Vocabulary Insertion. This also provides support for Kandybowicz’ (2015) assumption that aspect and negation are lower than vP in Asante Twi.

The Proceedings of the 2017 Annual Meeting on Phonology, held at New York University, have now been published (https://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/amphonology/issue/view/160). The table of contents with links to the papers is reproduced below.

Direct link: http://roa.rutgers.edu/content/article/files/1726_anttila_1.pdf