• The Consequence of Rule Ordering in Haya Tonology

      Hyman, Larry; Fulmer, S. Lee; Ishihara, Masahide; Wiswall, Wendy; University of California, Berkeley (Department of Linguistics, University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ), 1989)
      In the 1970's a major debate took place on the question of rule ordering in phonology. One group argued that the specific ordering of phonological rules, if needed at all, was always intrinsic, being predictable on the basis of universal principles. The second group, following in the tradition of Chomsky and Halle and the SOUND PATTERN OF ENGLISH, responded that these principles did not work, and that rule ordering is extrinsic, having to be stipulated in the phonologies of a number of languages. In the course of this debate, the proponents of extrinsic rule ordering sometimes argued that the analyses forced by the universal, intrinsic approach lacked insight, missed generalizations or simply did not work. Curiously, although positions were taken against extrinsic rule ordering and in favor of either simultaneous or random sequential ordering, no one to my knowledge argued in parallel fashion that the extrinsic approach lacked insight, missed generalizations, or simply did not work. In this paper I would like to present one such possible case. I shall attempt to demonstrate that in the lexical tonology of Haya, an Eastern Bantu language spoken in Tanzania, extrinsic rule ordering simply gets in the way. In section 1 I present the relevant tonal data, showing that a classical autosegmental analysis utilizing extrinsic rule ordering runs into serious problems. After showing, in section 2, that various alternative solutions involving rule ordering still fail to overcome these problems, I then consider in section 3 two possible analyses: one with simultaneous application of the three lexical tone rules in question, the other exploiting morphemic planes. I will conclude that this may be one language where simultaneous rule application is warranted. The data come from the lexical tonology of Haya, a subject that was covered in some detail in Hyman and Byarushengo (1984). For reasons of simplicity, I shall present only the underlying and lexical representations of Haya verb forms. It should be borne in mind that the forms cited in this study are subject to subsequent postlexical tone rules that are described in the Hyman and Byarushengo paper.
    • Floating Accent in Mayo

      Hagberg, Larry; Fulmer, S. Lee; Ishihara, Masahide; Wiswall, Wendy; University of Arizona (Department of Linguistics, University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ), 1989)
      A major claim of this paper is that the distinctive features of lexical accent are formally identical to those of tone, or at least to a subset of tonal features. The terms accent and tone have been used in many different ways in the literature, but throughout this paper I will use both terms to refer only to lexical features that surface as contrastive pitch, length, volume and/or other features of prominence. By lexical I mean features those phonetic realization cannot be predicted by any regular metrical structure or phonological rule. I am assuming that the placement of stress is always determined by a set of language- particular (but parameter - based) rules which build metrical structure, with the location of exceptional stress indicated by a lexical diacritic called accent. Examples of such systems of rules are described in Hayes (1982), Hammond (1986) and Halle and Vergnaud (1987 a and b). Although metrical structure has generally been associated with non-tonal languages, there are also some tonal languages which exhibit the presence of metrical structure. Examples of such languages include Creek (Haas (1977)), Malayalam (Mohanan (1982)) and Capella Trique (Hollenbach (1988)). Thus the presence of metrical structure is not sufficient in itself to distinguish a non-tonal language from a tonal language. What, then, distinguishes these two categories from one another? There are two general distinctions which have traditionally been made in classifying languages as tonal versus non-tonal. One distinction is that many tonal languages exhibit a variety of lexically contrastive tones, while mast, if not all, of the degrees of stress in a non-tonal language can usually be explained using only one kind of lexical accent. Thus, tonal languages can have more than one kind of lexical tone, whereas non -tonal languages can have lexical accent but not tone, and there is apparently only one kind of lexical accent. I will discuss this apparent asymmetry in section three. The other distinction between tonal and non-tonal, for which I present counterevidence in this paper, is that autosegmental status has been attributed to tone, but not to accent, in a number of languages; see, for example, Goldsmith (1976), Williams (1976) and Pulleyblank (1983). For all such languages, the Universal Association Convention (UAC) (Goldsmith (1976)) predicts the location of most tones, with the remaining tones accounted for by lexical pre- linking. From an examination of the literature it appears, then, that the main distinction between the terms tonal and non-tonal is that tonal languages have lexical tone while non-tonal languages have lexical accent. Formally, both of these devices are lexical diacritics, but they appear to differ in that tone can be an autosegment, while no such status has ever been claimed for accent. Therefore, the question to be addressed in this paper is this: Can an accentual diacritic have autosegmental status? Using data from Mayo, a Uto-Aztecan language of northwestern Mexico, I will show that the answer is yes. The implication, then, is that accent is formally the same as tone, or at least the same as one variety of tone. A significant claim follows from this. If accent is formally the same as a tone, then no language can exist in which lexical accent occurs independently of all tonal features. As far as I know, no such language has been shown to exist. The paper is organized as follows. Section one presents the data and provides two possible analyses of Mayo stress using the theory of Halle and Vergnaud (1987 a and b) (henceforth H&V). I show that Mayo has lexical accent which floats in underlying representation (UR), just like an autosegmental tone. Section two demonstrates that stress assignment crucially has to precede and follow reduplication, thus indicating that the rules of stress assignment are cyclic and that lexical accent refloats at the end of each cycle. In section three I explore the theoretical implications of this analysis and propose that accent is formally the same as tone.
    • The Morphemic Plane Hypothesis and Plane Internal Phonological Domains

      Ishihara, Masahide; Fulmer, S. Lee; Ishihara, Masahide; Wiswall, Wendy; University of Arizona (Department of Linguistics, University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ), 1989)
    • On the Feature [rtr] in Chiliatin: A Problem for the Feature Hierarchy

      Goad, Heather; Fulmer, S. Lee; Ishihara, Masahide; Wiswall, Wendy; University of Southern California (Department of Linguistics, University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ), 1989)
      In this paper, I discuss two rules in Chilcotin (Athapaskan), both of which involve spreading of the feature [retracted tongue root] ([rtr]). The first rule is a coronal consonant harmony rule, Sibilant Assimilation, which requires that all coronal sibilants in a word agree in their specification for [rtr). The second rule, a tongue root harmony rule called Flattening, spreads [+rtr] fresh velar segments and coronal sibilants onto neighbouring vowels. Only a subset of the [+rtr] segments which trigger Flattening undergo Sibilant Assimilation. Given the structure of the feature hierarchy, the spreading of this subset in Sibilant Assimilation is impossible without violating locality. I suggest that the theory of tree geometry be modified to accomodate this problem.
    • Patterns of Feature Cooccurrence: The Case of Nasality

      Pulleyblank, Doug; Fulmer, S. Lee; Ishihara, Masahide; Wiswall, Wendy; University of Ottawa (Department of Linguistics, University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ), 1989)
      It is widely acknowledged that certain feature combinations are more likely to occur than others. For example, the feature of nasality is much more likely to appear on segments that are voiced than on segments that are voiceless (see discussion below). Several properties of such combinatorial restrictions are important, including the following: (i) the motivation or source of such restrictions, (ii) their cross-linguistic variability, (iii) their language -internal strength, (iv) the manners in which they manifest themselves. This paper examines certain aspects of the phonology of nasal segments that bear on these issues. The paper focusses on the phenomenon of nasal opacity, where opacity is used to refer to the arresting of a process of feature propagation. When some feature (in this paper, nasality) is transmitted throughout some domain, the presence of certain opaque segments interrupts such a transmission. It is shown that in a wide range of cases involving nasality, the class of opaque segments is systematically defined. Blocking is not due to the lexical idiosyncracy of particular segments; the class of blockers is defined in terms of particular phonological features. This property raises two important issues. On the one hand, how can the possible classes of blockers be characterised in terms of their feature composition? On the other hand, by what mechanism do the opaque elements actually accomplish blocking. In the following sections, I first discuss certain cross-linguistic generalisations concerning cooccurrence restrictions involving nasality; I go on to demonstrate that the types of cooccurrence restrictions governing segmental inventories also define typical classes of opaque segments; finally, it is demonstrated that the actual mechanism for accomplishing the blocking of feature transmission involves feature cooccurrence restrictions in a central way.
    • Preface (Arizona Phonology Conference, Volume 2, 1989)

      Fulmer, S. Lee; Ishihara, Masahide; Wiswall, Wendy (Department of Linguistics, University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ), 1989)
    • Reduplication as Copy: Evidence from Axininca Campa

      Spring, Cari; Fulmer, S. Lee; Ishihara, Masahide; Wiswall, Wendy; Univesity of Arizona (Department of Linguistics, University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ), 1989)
    • Reduplication in Lexical Phonology: Javanese Plural Reduplication

      Schlindwein, Debbie; Fulmer, S. Lee; Ishihara, Masahide; Wiswall, Wendy; University of Southern California (Department of Linguistics, University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ), 1989)
    • Rime Change in Two Chinese Dialects

      Lin, Yen-Hwei; Fulmer, S. Lee; Ishihara, Masahide; Wiswall, Wendy; University of Texas at Austin (Department of Linguistics, University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ), 1989)
    • Vowel Reduction in Tiberian Biblical Hebrew as Evidence for a Sub-foot Level of Maximally Trimoraic Metrical Constituents

      Churchyard, Henry; Fulmer, S. Lee; Ishihara, Masahide; Wiswall, Wendy; University of Texas, Austin (Department of Linguistics, University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ), 1989)