The Proceedings of the Southwest Workshop on Optimality Theory / Arizona Phonology Conference is a conference publication of the Linguistics Circle and the Department of Linguistics at the University of Arizona.

Proceedings of the 4th Annual Southwest Workshop on Optimality Theory (SWOT IV) 1998. (Arizona Phonology Conference Volume 6). Edited by Jessica Maye and Mizuki Miyashita.

Excerpt from the Preface:

This volume contains papers presented at the 4th Annual Southwest Workshop on Optimality Theory (SWOT IV), held a the University of Arizona on April 4-5, 1998. Not included in this volume are papers presented by the following authors: Diana Archangeli (U AZ), Scott Myers (UT Austin), Jaye Padgett (UC Santa Cruz), Doug Pulleyblank (UBC), Donca Steriade (UCLA), Bernard Tranel (UC Irvine), Jie Zhang (UCLA), and Kie Ross Zuraw (UCLA).

Recent Submissions

  • Preface (Southwest Workshop on Optimality Theory 4, 1998)

    Maye, Jessica; Miyashita, Mizuki (Department of Linguistics, University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ), 1998)
  • Roots and Correspondence: Denominal Verbs in Modern Hebrew

    Ussishkin, Adam; Maye, Jessica; Miyashita, Mizuki; University of California, Santa Cruz (Department of Linguistics, University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ), 1998)
    Modern Hebrew exhibits a derivational process known as Denominai Verb Formation (DVF) whereby a base form, usually a noun, may become a verb. This process has been analyzed by several researchers (Bat-El 1994, Gafos 1995, Sharvit 1994) but to date a comprehensive, principled account has not been proposed. In this paper, it is my aim to present such a principled account of DVF, within Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky 1993). This account crucially relies on the consonantal root, arguing against the proposal of Bat-El (1994) that the root plays no role in DVF. In addition, I propose to capture the well known effects of left-to-right spreading attested throughout Semitic (McCarthy 1979, 1981, et seq.) using a new form of Anchor constraints. These new Anchor constraints will be useful in accounting for cases of consonant doubling, which is attested in a subset of Modern Hebrew denominai verbs. Finally, I show that Bat-El's (1994) arguments against the consonantal root can be recast as reasons to adopt a separate dimension of correspondence relations in the analysis: namely, the dimension of Output-Output Correspondence, following work of, e.g., Benua (1995, 1997) and Burzio (1996).
  • Causative Formation in Kammu: Prespecified Features and Single Consonant Reduplication

    Takeda, Kazue; Maye, Jessica; Miyashita, Mizuki; University of California, Irvine (Department of Linguistics, University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ), 1998)
  • Less Stress, Less Pressure, Less Voice

    Miyashita, Mizuki; Maye, Jessica; Miyashita, Mizuki; University of Arizona (Department of Linguistics, University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ), 1998)
    In this paper, I provide an analysis of Tohono O'odham vowel devoicing with respect to physiological explanation. There are three points in this paper. First, this paper provides data of devoicing (consonants and vowels) in Tohono O'odham. Second, analysis of devoicing in terms of subglottal pressure drop is provided. Third, the devoicing is accounted for within the framework of OT (McCarthy and Prince 1993, Prince and Smolensky 1993). The organization of the paper is as follows. In section 2, the background of the language including both voiced and voiceless vowels is described. In section 3, the data of Tohono O'odham words with voiceless vowels are provided. Then the distribution of devoiced segments is discussed. In section 4, an analysis of devoicing with respect to subglottal pressure drop is presented with schematic diagrams. Then an OT account utilizing phonetic constraints is presented.
  • A Perceptually Grounded OT Analysis of Stress-Dependent Harmony

    Majors, Tivoli; Maye, Jessica; Miyashita, Mizuki; University of Texas, Austin (Department of Linguistics, University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ), 1998)
    Stress-dependent harmony (SDH) systems are systems in which an unstressed vowel must agree with the stressed vowel of the word in terms of one or more harmonic feature(s). In this paper, I provide cross -linguistic support for the notion of SDH. I then provide an Optimality Theoretic analysis of the SDH of Old Norwegian. In addition to providing a core analysis that accounts for the SDH in several typologically distinct languages, I provide external support for my analysis with experimental studies that phonetically ground the constraint driving the harmony. In exploring the phonetic basis of SDH, I am drawing on a rich history of inquiry into the relationship between phonetics and phonology. Two methodological approaches can be distinguished: constraining phonological analyses via phonetic grounding through formal modeling of phonological phenomena (e.g. Archangeli and Pulleyblank 1994, Beckman 1998, Hayes 1996, Kaun 1996, Myers 1996, Padgett 1998, Steriade 1997), and experimental approaches that seek to explain phonology systems by providing grounding via empirical studies (Busa and Ohala 1997, Cohn 1990, De Jong et al. 1993, Doran 1998, Fowler 1981, Guion 1996, Hura et al. 1992, Keating 1985, Kohler 1990, Myers 1998, Pierrehumbert 1980). These approaches have the same goal: to place constraints on phonological analyses such that they have external explanations lying outside of the formal theory being used to capture the phonological pattern under scrutiny. Using both formal and experimental methods of phonetic grounding provides a more complete analysis of the relationship between phonetics and phonology.
  • On Multiple Sympathy Candidates in Optimality Theory

    Hoshi, Hidehito; Maye, Jessica; Miyashita, Mizuki; University of California, Irvine (Department of Linguistics, University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ), 1998)
  • Shuswap Diminutive Reduplication

    Hendricks, Sean; Maye, Jessica; Miyashita, Mizuki; University of Arizona (Department of Linguistics, University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ), 1998)