Abstract
The article scrutinises several vowel reduction and lenition phenomena by employing a model of syntax-like structural representations, i.e. Government Phonology 2.0. In contrast to the standard GP model, whereby lenition and vowel reduction can be viewed as shortening, element suppression or status switching, the structural approach employs the procedure of tree pruning with a heavily limited role of melodic annotation. This paper will take a closer look at node removal with special attention to its trajectory. In particular, two basic directionalities are considered: top-down and bottom-up. The former has been proposed to account for vowel reduction whereby the highest positions are deleted retaining the head and potentially its sister. The acquisition of plosives and fricatives points to the latter trajectory, which disposes of nodes closer to the head. However, the choice of positions that are targeted in weak contexts might be also related to the inherently encoded hierarchy of terminal nodes within the constituents in question.
Highlights
Models of phonological representation that utilise privative units recognise lenition and vowel reduction as a loss, suppression or deactivation of melodic content in weak prosodic positions
This paper aims to establish whether any of these approaches can be favoured by investigating several phenomena occurring in weak positions across languages
As vowels in weak positions are characterised by a smaller number of projection layers than vowels in stressed positions, what seems primarily indicative of strength in GP 2.0 is the complexity of structures
Summary
Models of phonological representation that utilise privative units recognise lenition and vowel reduction as a loss, suppression or deactivation of melodic content in weak prosodic positions. Government Phonology addresses this issue by assigning weak positions less licensing power to sustain melodic primes (Harris 1990, 1994, 2005) In effect, this process becomes defined as shortening of long segments, simplification of complex expressions by suppression of some elements and changing the status of head elements to non-heads (cf Backley 2011: 50–54, 184– 194). I U L phonetic correlates palatality, “dIp” pattern – low F1 coupled with high spectral peak (convergence of F2 and F3) labiality, “rUmp” pattern – low spectral peak (convergence of F1 and F2) nasality, VOT lead Beside these primes, phonological information is expressed by means of structural configurations and relationships between nodes.. I will look into how the distance from the head of the expression affects the position’s vulnerability to being deleted and whether licensing (e.g. in a form of m-command) plays any particular role in preventing tree pruning
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