What indexical shift sounds like: Uyghur intonation and interpreting speech reports
Travis Major, Connor Mayer
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004591
May 2019
Recent years have given rise to a considerable amount of research on exceptional behaviors of indexicals (e.g., I, you, here, there, etc.) in embedded contexts, a phenomenon referred to as indexical shift. This paper provides a novel field methodology for diagnosing indexical shift, by eliciting target sentences in controlled discourse contexts and analyzing the prosody of the elicited utterances. This is less cumbersome for consultants than standard semantic diagnostics, and allows for more detailed empirical description. We demonstrate this by investigating indexical shift in Uyghur. In addition to providing a more complete empirical picture, we suggest a modification to the analysis of Uyghur indexical shift proposed by Shklovsky and Sudo (2014). Applying these methods to other languages with indexical shift has the potential to further improve both our empirical and theoretical understanding of the phenomenon.

The intervocalic palatal glide in Cognitive Phonetics
Veno Volenec, Charles Reiss
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004582
May 2019
This study addresses a puzzle in Croatian regarding the fate of the underlying palatal glide in intervocalic position. Approaching the puzzle from the perspective of Cognitive Phonetics (CP), we advance two claims: First, output phonological representations consisting of features are not directly interpretable by the articulatory system; rather, the interface between the phonology and the articulatory system is mediated by a universal transduction system. Second, the main units of speech production are transduced phonological features, and not segments, syllables, or articulatory gestures.

The phonology, phonetics, and diachrony of Sturtevant’s Law
Anthony Yates
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004571
April 2019
This paper presents a systematic reassessment of STURTEVANT’S LAW (Sturtevant 1932), which governs the differing outcomes of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) voiced and voiceless obstruents in Hittite (Anatolian). I argue that STURTEVANT’S LAW was a conditioned pre-Hittite sound change whereby (i) contrastively voiceless word-medial obstruents regularly underwent gemination (cf.Melchert 1994), but gemination was blocked for stops in pre-stop position; and (ii) the inherited [+/-voice] contrast was then lost, replaced by the [+/-long] opposition observed in Hittite (cf. Blevins 2004). I provide empirical and typological support for this novel restriction, which is shown not only to account straightforwardly for data that is problematic under previous analyses, but also to be phonetically motivated, a natural consequence of the poorly cued durational contrast between voiceless and voiced stops in pre-stop environments. I develop an optimality-theoretic analysis of this gemination pattern in pre-Hittite, and discuss how this grammar gave rise to synchronic Hittite via “transphonologization” (Hyman 1976, 2013). Finally, it is argued that this analysis supports deriving the Hittite stop system from the PIE system as traditionally reconstructed (contra Kloekhorst 2016, Jäntti 2017).

Phonological teamwork in Kalahari Basin languages
Florian Lionnet
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004555
December 2018
This paper describes the complex, multiple-trigger, cumulative assimilation processes targeting the initial vowel (V1) of bimoraic stems in Kalahari Basin languages (KBA), first described by Anthony Traill (1985) in East ?Xoon (Tuu). The focus is on two languages: East ?Xoon and G?ui (Khoe-Kwadi). The goal is to describe these processes in as much detail as is possible from the available published and unpublished sources. Marked differences between the two languages in focus are brought to light, thus giving an idea of the so far unnoticed diversity of V1 realization in KBA languages. Finally, this paper briefly highlights important problems posed by such cumulative processes to phonological theory, many of which had already been identified by Traill (1985).

Inferring Pokémon types using sound symbolism: The effects of voicing and labiality
Shigeto Kawahara, Gakuji Kumagai
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004551
April 2019
Recent studies show that sound symbolic principles are operative in Pokémon characters’ names; e.g., those characters with names that contain more voiced obstruents tend to be larger and heavier (Kawahara et al. 2018b). One question that arose from this line of research is whether other attributes of Pokémon—specifically their types—show any tangible effects of sound symbolism. This question is related to the more general issue of what kinds of semantic attributes/dimensions can be signaled by sound symbolism. In answer to this question, Hosokawa et al. (2018) showed that the dark type characters are more likely to contain voiced stops and less likely to contain labial consonants in their names than the fairy type characters. The current judgment experiment shows that these associations are productive. Moreover, the effect sizes of sound symbolism were not correlated with each participant’s familiarity with Pokémon, suggesting that the sound symbolic knowledge is more abstract than what can be gleaned from the Pokémon lexicon.

Pater, Joe. To appear 2019. Phonological typology in Optimality Theory and Formal Language Theory: Goals and future directions. In Phonology. https://works.bepress.com/joe_pater/37/

Abstract.Much recent work has studied phonological typology in terms of formal language theory (e.g. the Chomsky hierarchy). This paper considers whether Optimality Theory grammars might be constrained to generate only regular languages, and also whether the tools of formal language theory might be used for constructing phonological theories similar to those within Optimality Theory. It offers reasons to be optimistic about the first possibility, and skeptical about the second.

Nyman, Alexandra and Bruce Tesar. 2019. Determining underlying presence in the learning of grammars that allow insertion and deletion. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 4(1): 37. 1–41. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.603

Abstract
The simultaneous learning of a phonological map from inputs to outputs and a lexicon of phonological underlying forms has been a focus of several research efforts (Jarosz 2006; Apoussidou 2007; Merchant 2008; Merchant & Tesar 2008; Tesar 2014). One of the numerous challenges is that of computational efficiency, which led to the investigation of learning with output-driven maps (Tesar 2014). Prior work on learning with output-driven maps has focused on systems in which the only disparities between inputs and outputs were segmental identity disparities (differences in the value of a feature). Inclusion of segmental insertion and deletion disparities exacerbates computational concerns, as it increases the number of possible correspondence relations between an input and an output, and makes the space of possible inputs for a word infinite due to the possible presence of an unbounded number of deleted segments. We propose an extension of that earlier work to handle phonologies that permit insertion and deletion, and evaluate the proposal by applying it to cases in Basic CV Syllable Theory (Jakobson 1962; Clements & Keyser 1983; Prince & Smolensky 2004). First, we propose that a learner represent information about the possible presence/absence of a segment in an underlying form via a presence feature. The presence feature can be set using the same inconsistency detection method that has previously been used to set other segmental features. This allows the learner to combine evidence from paradigmatically related words in a single compact representation. Second, we propose that the learner only consider for underlying forms segments that surface in at least one surface realization of the morpheme. This approach is justified by the structure of output-driven maps, and avoids the potential for an unbounded number of possibly deleted segments in an underlying form. A proof is given for the validity of the method for avoiding unbounded deletion. The resulting learner is able to learn some grammatical regularities about segmental insertion and deletion; this is shown via two manual step-by-step applications of the algorithm. Verificatory simulations for learning the entire typology of Basic CV Syllable Theory are left to work in the near future.

Malagasy OCP targets a single affix: implications for morphosyntactic generalization in learning
Jesse Zymet
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004540
March 2019
Despite claims of the existence of phonological processes that apply strictly in limited morphosyntactic domains, recent corpus and experimental findings suggest that such processes are unproductive and difficult to learn. Martin (2011) and Chong (2017) consequently posit learning models having a generality bias, such that they cannot acquire morphosyntactically specific restrictions without supporting statistical tendencies from other domains. This article presents a corpus study of Malagasy backness dissimilation, showing that it applies consistently and exclusively to the passive imperative suffix, the only suffix eligible to undergo it. Dissimilation was extended to loanwords having the suffix and has persisted for multiple generations, but is entirely unsupported by the lexicon, which instead displays a phonotactic harmony tendency. These findings suggest that no degree of generality is necessary for learning. Rather, if the bias is active, then it must be overridable.

Coarticulation affects faithfulness: Evidence from subphonemically conditioned featural affixation in Laal
Florian Lionnet
direct link: http://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/004537
March 2019
This paper describes and analyzes the unusually complex multifeatural plural affix /L [+high, +round]/ of Laal (endangered isolate), focusing on its most intriguing property: the realization of the [+round] subexponent is conditioned by the presence of a labial consonant in the base. Instrumental evidence shows that the conditioning factor is the rounding coarticulatory effect exerted on the vowel by the adjacent labial consonant. This is evidence that coarticulation has a role to play in phonology. Specifically, I show that the degree of faithfulness to a feature value[?F] can be weakened if the realization of that feature is affected by coarticulation. I propose an analysis utilizing both subfeatural representations and scalar faithfulness constraints, both of which are shown to be necessary. This analysis is shown to both confirm and supersede Steriade’s (2009) P-map hypothesis. The subfeatural analysis is compared to an Agreement by Correspondence alternative, shown to be less satisfactory.