Transcript Li8 Structure of English

Li6 Phonology and Morphology
Syllables and syllabification
Today’s topics
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Evidence for the syllable and its
components
How syllable structure is assigned
to phonological representations
Syllable structure
σ
Rhyme
Onset
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Nucleus
Coda
Maybe also Appendix (though this
probably attaches to the Prosodic
Word)
Syllables
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Most people have clear intuitions about
syllable counts and divisions.
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sing.er : see.ker
at.lan.tic : a.tro.cious
Are they simply counting vowels? No:
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button
Abkhaz mts’k’ ‘type of fly’ (Vaux 1997)
Syllable divisions cannot refer simply to vowels
 pa.per vs sing.er, distend vs distaste
 Vulg. Lat. /ad.ri.pa.re/  ar.ri.va.re ‘arrive’ vs.
ca.the.dra ‘chair’ (Steriade 1988)
Evidence for syllables as
phonological units
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Morphological rules
Language games
Psycholinguistic phenomena
Restrictions on coarticulation
Phonological rules
Poetics
Writing systems
Morphological rules
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Armenian plural selection (Vaux 2003)
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šun-er ‘dogs’ : katu-ner ‘cats’
Language games
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French ‘Verlan’
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Fula
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l’envers
vérité  térivé, etc. (cf. Plénat 1995)
deftere  teredef, etc. (Bagemihl 1989)
Korean
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original
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type 1
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san†ok’i †ok’iya ³til¥l kan¥nya?
k’a²…o² k’a²…o² t’wimy³ns³ ³til¥l kan¥nya?
wild rabbit, wild rabbit, where are you going?
running hoppity-hop, where are you going?
k’i†osan yak’i†o l¥lti³ nyan¥ka?
…o²k’a² …o²k’a² s³my³nt’wi l¥lti³ nyan¥ka?
type 2
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sapa†opok’ipi †opok’ipiyapa ³p³tipil¥p¥ kapan¥p¥nyapa?
k’apa…opo k’apa…opo t’wipimy³p³s³p³ ³p³tipil¥p¥ kapan¥p¥nyapa?
Psycholinguistic phenomena
Response times
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Mehler, Dommergues, Frauenfelder & Segui 1981
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“press the button once you hear [pa]”
subjects detected [pa] faster in pa.lace
subjects detected [pal] faster in pal.mier.
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Tip of the tongue phenomena
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Brown and McNeill 1966
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Speech errors
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Fromkin 1971
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Onset metathesis
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dreater swying
Rhyme metathesis
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A hunk of jeep
Stemberger: more than 90% of ordering speech errors invert O-O, C-C
omission of entire syllable
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unanímity  unámity, treméndously  trémenly, specifícity  specífity
Restrictions on coarticulation
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Phonetic coarticulation effects
generally restricted to tautosyllabic
contexts
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e.g. In French, onset but not coda
consonants coarticulate with a
tautosyllabic vowel, whether or not other
consonants intervene
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e.g. in oucri [u.ki], k shows significant
effects from the i, despite the intervening
liquid (Rialland 1994:144).
English r-coloring
Phonological rules
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English aspiration
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[ph]it : s[p]it
dis[t]end : dis[th]aste
Nickname formation
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Andy, *Andry (Kenstowicz 1994)
Poetics
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Many languages employ syllablecounting meters, e.g. Sanskrit anuʂʈubh (4
x 8 σ)
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Rigveda 10.90.12 (Sacrifice of the primeval
giant Purusha)
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brāhmaņo [a]sya mukham āsīd,
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bāhū rāĵaniah krtah
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His two arms were made the warrior,
ūrū tad asya yad vayšyah
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His mouth was the priest,
His two thighs were the farmer,
padbhyām šūdro aĵāyata.
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From his two feet the dog-eater was born.
Writing systems
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Some Linear B renditions of Mycenean Greek:
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U qe [kwe] ‘and’
YcMt qa-si-re-u [gwasileus] ‘king’
yZn ~ yZ wa-na(-ka) [wanaks] ‘king’
q.> a-ko-ro [agros] ‘field’ vs q/> a-ku-ro [arguros] ‘silver’
Evidence for syllabic constituents
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Onset vs Rhyme
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Rhyme
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Buenos Aires Spanish y  ž: ley ‘law’ vs. ležes ‘laws’
Pig Latin?
Nucleus
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common domain of poetic rhyme
Syllable weight
Onset
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English L-allomorphy
Blends (see next slides)
Japanese -rV- language game?
Coda
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English glottalization/unrelease (e.g. hat, Atlantic vs. atrocious)
German devoicing (Freun[t] ‘friend (m)’ vs. Freun[d]in ‘friend
(f)’, glau[p]lich)
assuming that disjoint environments aren’t allowed, we need
the Coda
σ
O
Blends
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Experiment 1
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σ
R
N
O
C
k r i n t
R
N
C
g l u p th
Question
 Do Onsets and Rimes exist (as suggested by e.g. brunch
vs. *blunch)?
Method
 Train subjects to combine pairs of well-formed English
nonce monosyllables (such as krint and glupth) into a
new monosyllable that contains parts of both.
Results
 responses like krupth (Onset kr- of the first syllable and
Rime -upth of the second) were produced far more often
than any other possible combination.
Conclusion
 The natural break within English syllables is immediately
before the vowel (i.e. Onset vs. Rime).
Experiments from Treiman 1983
Blends
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Experiment 2
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Hypothesis
 If a syllable is composed of Onset + Rime, then artificial
games that keep these units intact should be easier to
learn than games that break up the syllables in a
different way.
Method
 Subjects taught 2 types of word games:
1. Blend
the Onset of a nonce CCVCC syllable with the Rime of
another
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e.g. fl-irz + gr-uns  fl-uns
2. Combine non-constituents (f-runs, flins, flir-s).
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Results
 Game 1 was learned with fewer errors than was Games
2.
Conclusion
 Speakers have access to the constituents O and R.
Experiments from Treiman 1983
Syllabification
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Q: Are syllables part of the lexical entries
of words?
A: Since syllable structure appears to be
predictable, we want to say that it is
assigned by rule.
Q: What rules do we need to assign
syllabic structures?
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Kahn 1976 et seq.:
 attach nuclei
 attach onsets
 attach codas
 cope with whatever’s left over
ordering onset attachment before coda attachment
derives onset maximisation
The basic procedure
Harari (K and K 1977)
UR
t-sʌbr
t-sʌbr-i
y-sʌbr
t-sʌbr
n-sʌbr
t-sʌbr-u
y-sʌbr-u
zʌ-t-sbʌr
zʌ-t-sbʌr-i
zʌ-y-sbʌr
zʌ-t-sbʌr
zʌ-n-sbʌr
zʌ-t-sbʌr-u
zʌ-y-sbʌr-u
SR
tisʌbri
tisʌbri
yisʌbri
tisʌbri
nisʌbri
tisʌbru
yisʌbru
zʌtsibʌr
zʌtsibʌri
zʌysibʌr
zʌtsibʌr
zʌnsibʌr
zʌtsibʌru
zʌysibʌru
gloss
‘break’, 2masc imf.
2f
3m
3f
1pl
2pl
3pl
2m neg imf
2f neg imf
3m neg imf
3f neg imf
1pl neg imf
2pl neg imf
3pl neg imf
<härär bira>
Vowel hiatus
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Generally interpreted as subcase of
requirement that all syllables must
have an onset
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Glottal stop insertion: [/A/t]
‘art’, etc.
Article allomorphy
Glide insertion and r-insertion?
Conclusions
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There is extensive evidence for the
abstract prosodic elements σ, O, N, C, R.
Syllable structure is normally
predictable, and can be derived by a
relatively simple set of rules.
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The ordering of these rules can generate
effects such as Onset Maximisation and
location of epenthetic vowels.
References
Bagemihl, Bruce. 1989. The crossing constraint and ‘backwards languages’. Natural Language &
Linguistic Theory 7.4:481-549.
Brown, Roger & David McNeill. 1966. The “tip-of-the-tongue” phenomenon. Journal of Verbal Learning
and Verbal Behavior 5:325-337.
Fromkin, Victoria. 1971. The non-anomalous nature of anomalous utterances. Language 47:27-52.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tip_of_the_tongue
http://www.smithsrisca.demon.co.uk/speech-errors.html
Kahn, Daniel. 1976. Syllable-based generalizations in English phonology. Doctoral dissertation, MIT.
[Published 1980 New York: Garland Press.]
Kenstowicz, Michael and Charles Kisseberth. 1977. Generative phonology. New York: Academic Press.
Mehler, J., J. Dommergues, Uli Frauenfelder, and J. Segui. 1981. The syllable’s role in speech
segmentation. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 20:298-305.
Plénat, Marc. 1995. Une approche prosodique de la morphologie du verlan. Lingua 95:97-129.
Rialland, Annie. 1994. The phonology and phonetics of extrasyllabicity in French. In Patricia A. Keating,
ed., Phonological Structure and Phonetic Form. Papers in Laboratory Phonology 3. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, pp. 136-159.
Stemberger, Joseph. 1983. Speech errors and theoretical phonology: a review. Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Linguistics Club.
Steriade, Donca 1988. Gemination and the Proto-Romance Syllable Schift. Advances in Romance
Linguistics, edited by David Birdsong & Jean-Pierre Montreuil, 371-409. Dordrecht: Foris.
Treiman, Rebecca. 1983. The structure of spoken syllables: Evidence from novel word games. Cognition
15:49-74.
Vaux, Bert. 1997. The Cwyzhy Dialect of Abkhaz. Harvard Working Papers in Linguistics 6, Susumu
Kuno, Bert Vaux, and Steve Peter, eds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Linguistics Department.
Vaux, Bert. 2003. Syllabification in Armenian, Universal Grammar, and the lexicon. Linguistic Inquiry
34.1:91-125.
Intervocalic C sequences
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A priori, it’s not obvious how to
syllabify intervocalic Cs
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Oft-invoked principle: Onset Maximisation
Problems:
stress
 vowel quality
 morpheme boundaries
 phonotactics
 ambisyllabicity
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merry, happy…