Morphologically Governed Accent In Optimality Theory

Alderete examines the influences of morphological factors on stress and pitch accent within Optimality Theory.

This volume draws together papers that argue for a renewed focus on the role of hard constraints on phonological representations as well as the processes that operate on them. These are issues that have been sidelined since the shift in emphasis in phonological research to functionally grounded output-oriented constraints. Taking Optimality Theory as their starting point, the articles attack the question to what degree the Generator function Gen should be given freedom of analysis on three fronts. (1) What is the nature of the representations that Gen manipulates? Is a return to more articulated theories of segmental and prosodic representation desirable? (2) What restrictions might there be on the operations that Gen carries out on representations? Should Gen be endowed with structure-changing potential, as assumed in work couched within Correspondence Theory, or is a return to the principle of Containment preferable? Should Gen be restricted in the number of edits it can carry out at any one time? Should Gen be restricted to generating phonetically interpretable candidates? (3) What is the relationship between Gen and functionally arbitrary or opaque phonological patterns? Should Gen's freedom be restricted in order to account for language-specific phonology? The solutions offered to these questions bear significantly on current issues that are of fundamental concern in linguistic theory, including representations, parallelism vs. serialism, and the division of labour between linguistic modules. The authors scrutinize these issues using data from a variety of unrelated languages, including Czech, English, Greek, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Lardil, Spanish, Turkish, and Yowlumne.

Explains and explores the central premises of OT and the results of their praxis.

The book contains a number of studies in Japanese phonology and morphology, all analyses by leading scholars in the field. It presents an overview of the work that has been done in Japan and other countries and offers new solutions to long-standing problems. In the phonology chapters, it focuses on segmental as well as suprasegmental issues, including voicing and tone, approaching these issues from a variety of perspectives, including Optimality Theory and Government Phonology. In the morphology chapters, attention is given to truncation patterns and the possibilities for compound formation.

Optimality Theory in Phonology: A Reader is a collection of readings on this important new theory by leading figures in the field, including a lengthy excerpt from Prince and Smolensky’s never-before-published Optimality Theory: Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar. Compiles the most important readings about Optimality Theory in phonology from some of the most prominent researchers in the field. Contains 33 excerpts spanning a range of topics in phonology and including many never-before-published papers. Includes a lengthy excerpt from Prince and Smolensky’s foundational 1993 manuscript Optimality Theory: Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar. Includes introductory notes and study/research questions for each chapter.

Representing Phonological Detail Part I: Segmental Structure and Representations Part II: Syllable, Stress and Sign Part II of Representing Phonological Detail focuses on the latest phonological research on suprasegmental structure and sign language. The first main theme in this volume is syllable structure, touching on phonotactics, syllabification, gemination, syllable weight, diphthongization, and other rules. The other main theme is tone and stress, including issues in data collection, the assignment of primary and secondary stress, resolution of stress clashes, lexical accent, and syntax-tone interaction. The final section is on sign language, with special attention paid to iconicity, phonological processes, and the relation between phonetic and phonological representation.

This book presents a phenomenon-oriented survey of the interaction between phonology and morphology. It examines the ways in which morphology, i.e. word formation, demonstrates sensitivity to phonological information and how phonological patterns can be sensitive to morphology. Chapters focus on morphologically conditioned phonology, process morphology, prosodic templates, reduplication, infixation, phonology-morphology interleaving effects, prosodic-morphological mismatches, ineffability, and other cases of phonology-morphology interaction. The overview discusses the relevance of a variety of phenomena for theoretical issues in the field. These include the debate over item-based vs. realizational approaches to morphology; the question of whether cyclic effects can be subsumed under paradigmatic effects; whether reduplication is phonological copying or morphological doubling; whether infixation and suppletive allomorphy are phonologically optimizing, and more. The book is intended to be used in graduate or advanced undergraduate courses or as a reference for those pursuing individual topics in the phonology-morphology interface.

Top researchers explore the nature of stress and accent patterns in languages, especially the nature of their representations and how people learn them.