Vowel Loss Research Articles

Proto-Nivkh Accent System

Abstract The aim of this paper is to reconstruct the Proto-Nivkh accent system and vocalism with the help of loanword analysis and internal reconstruction. It is shown that the place of the Proto-Nivkh accent depended on vowel height and syllable structure. The paper also argues that the unstressed vowel loss, which led to a radical change in Nivkh phonotactics, consonant system and morphophonology, occurred after the breakup of the last common ancestor of modern Nivkh varieties.

The Monophthongization of /ai/ and /oi/ in Kom: An Autosegmental Perspective

A great deal of scholarship has gone into examining monophthongization as a phonological phenomenon occurring within the different chronological stages of languages. Some studies have examined it as a sociolinguistic index of dialectal variation while some others have studied it as a purely idiosyncratic matter within the same language variety. Almost all of these studies have been purely descriptive in nature. This study used the derivational phonology approach to analyze monophthongization as a synchronic phenomenon in the Kom language within the framework of Autosegmental Phonology. Derivations were constructed mapping underlying diphthongal forms to their surface monophthongal realizations. The results show that in natural spontaneous speech, the diphthongs /ai/ and /Oi/ lose their gliding part and become monophthongs when they occur in a syllable that shares boundary to the right with a vowel-initial word. This vowel loss is followed by a compensatory lengthening of the new monophthongized vowel.

Final Vowel Loss in Lower Kasai Bantu (drc) as a Contact-Induced Change

Abstract In this article, we present a qualitative and quantitative comparative account of Final Vowel Loss (fvl) in the Bantu languages of the Lower Kasai region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We argue that this diachronic sound shift rose relatively late in Bantu language history as a contact-induced change and affected adjacent West-Coastal and Central-Western Bantu languages belonging to different phylogenetic clusters. We account for its emergence and spread by resorting to two successive processes of language contact: (1) substrate influence from extinct hunter-gatherer languages in the center of innovation consisting of Bantu B80 languages, and (2) dialectal diffusion towards certain peripheral Bantu B70, C80, H40 and L10 languages.

On the diachronic origins of the accentual contrast in Terena (Arawakan)

AbstractThis paper presents internal and comparative evidence showing that the origin of the accentual contrast of modern Terena, an Arawakan language of southwestern Brazil, is related to a diachronic process of word‐initial vowel loss. Alternations internal to the language involve a relation between vowel‐initial trisyllabic allomorphs and consonant‐initial disyllabic allomorphs, the latter bearing a tonal accent. Comparative evidence from Mojeño, one of Terena’s closest relatives, provides crucial support for the correspondence between word‐initial vowels and an initial tonal accent. A coherent account is proposed, tracing both the loss of initial syllables and the emergence of an accentual contrast to sub‐phonemic patterns enforcing durational unevenness in iambic feet: syllables in foot‐internal, non‐head position were lost, while the previously allophonic lengthening of the head syllable was phonologized, yielding the tonally marked accent.

Redução vocálica:

Este artigo tem por objetivo descrever o fenômeno de redução e apagamento da vogal alta posterior átona, em final de palavras, quando precedida de vogal alta anterior ou glide palatal, como, por exemplo, em tio [??i.?] ~ [??i?] e maio [?ma?? ?] ~ [?ma???]. Sugerimos que o que é tradicionalmente denominado cancelamento, perda ou apagamento vocálico, deve ser compreendido como o estágio final de reorganização segmental, em que um segmento inicialmente presente deixa de ocorrer. Sugerimos também que a reorganização segmental é gradiente e tem impacto na representação fonológica. A Teoria de Exemplares é o modelo teórico adotado neste trabalho. Argumentamos que embora a vogal alta posterior não seja audível em final de palavras, ela é caracterizada de maneira específica a partir do detalhe fonético decorrente da reorganização segmental. O detalhe fonético pode ser experimentalmente investigado e, neste artigo, a investigação foi realizada por análise acústica. Este artigo oferece evidências para a relevância de estudos experimentais em fonologia.

Fonētisko īpatnību dinamika dziļajās tāmnieku izloksnēs

The article aims to ascertain the dynamics of the phonetic features in the deep Tamian (tāmnieku) subdialects of the Livonianized dialect. The analysis is based on the materials of spoken language in subdialects of Pope, Ziras, Piltene, Zlēkas, Ance, Dundaga, and Ugāle, acquired by the author during the period of 2008–2019. These materials are compared with the data of the dialect archive of the Latvian Language Institute of the University of Latvia (the 50s and 60s of the 20th century). The dynamics of the phonetic features in the deep Tamian subdialects have been determined using several degrees of stability: stable, less stable, features that are disappearing, features fixed only in some subdialects, and features that have been lost. The language analysis shows that nowadays, the most stable features of the deep Tamian subdialects are the loss of short vowels in final syllables, e. g., ʒiêsm (< dziesma) ‘song’, zȇm (< zeme) ‘ground’, up (< upe) ‘river’, dar (< dara) ‘do, does’, and the reduction of long vowels in word endings, e. g., skuõla (< skuolā) ‘in the school’, mãjas (< mājās) ‘at home’, meža (< mežā) ‘in the forest’, stûri (< stūrī) ‘in the corner’, which are still widespread and most often used features in the speech of all generations. Less stable features are the reduction of monophthongs and diphthongs with a quality change, e. g., skuõlę (< skuolā) ‘in the school’, mãjęs (< mājās) ‘at home’, mežę // meže (< mežā) ‘in the forest’, stûra (< stūrī) ‘in the corner’, grãvas (< grāvjuos) ‘in the ditches’, and the insertion of the vowels a and ę for the elimination of syllabic liquids and nasals, e. g., ʒiêsam (< ʒiêsm < ʒiesma) ‘song’, vętar (< vętr < vętra) ‘storm’, sak̄ęn (< sak̄n̥ < sak̄ne) ‘root’. One of the endangered features is the loss of long vowels and diphthongs in the roots and suffixes, e. g., âbliš (< ābuoliņš) ‘clover’, kâpst (< kāpuosti) ‘cabbages’, vak̄riņ (< vakariņi ‘vakariņas’) ‘supper’, gȗlt (< gulēt) ‘to sleep’, rȗnt (< runāt) ‘to speak’, ʒîut (< dzīvuot) ‘to live’, which is observed only in older generation’s speech. The subdialects of Ance and Dundaga have preserved an archaic feature: a loss of a consonant is in future tense forms without the insertion of vowel ī, e. g., eîs (< ēdīs) ‘will eat’, laîs (< laidīs) ‘will let’, kris (< kritīs) ‘will fall’, sis (< sitīs) ‘will hit’. Few older generation’s speakers of the subdialects of Ance and Dundaga have maintained voiced consonants instead of unvoiced consonants at the end of the word or prefix, e. g., nãg (< nāk) ‘comes’, liêg (< liek) ‘lies’, krîd (< krīt) ‘falls’, tĩrid (< tīrīt) ‘to clean’, vęlag (< vęlāk) ‘later’, abrakˉ (< apraka) ‘buried’. The monophthongization and the labialization are lost in most of the deep Tamian subdialects.

Ainu Internal Reconstruction: on the Origin and Typological Context of the Affiliative Form

Abstract This paper discusses the history and prehistory of the so-called affiliative form in Ainu, also known as the “possessive” or “concrete” form of nominals. In earlier research, this form has been understood as belonging to the sphere of suffixal morphology, complicated by the impact of vowel harmony and/or nominal classes. This paper shows, however, that the marking of the affiliative form actually involves a trace of the original stem-final vowel otherwise lost in the language, followed by a recently grammaticalized separate particle. This means that Ainu must have undergone a general process of final vowel loss, which has substantially changed its morpheme structure and ultimately caused the morphophonological alternations connected with the affiliative form. This conclusion potentially opens up the way towards a more comprehensive internal reconstruction of Ainu.

Vowels of the end of Finno-Ugric word basis in the Mordovian languages

The article describes the characteristics of the system of vowels of the end of the Finno-Ugric word base in the Mordovian languages. Considering generally accepted opinions in Finno-Ugric linguistics that the Baltic-Finnish (especially Finnish) and Sami languages ​​preserved the vocalism of the basis language, the nominal and verbal foundations of the Finno-Ugric origin in the Mordovian languages is ​​better than other related languages ​​in terms of comparison with their etymological correspondences of Finnish and Estonian languages. The nominal and verbal foundations of the modern Mordovian languages, which served as the material for the study, are subjected to comparative historical analysis with their etymological correspondences in the Baltic-Finnish (Finnish and Estonian) languages. The analysis of these fundamentals based on the comparative historical method makes it possible to firstly, establish, the preserved genetic community in the sound composition of the end of the basis, secondly, identify significant changes resulting from the isolated development of Mordovian languages, as well as to reveal their extralinguistic and internal language reasons of their appearances. The authors established phonetic correspondences based on the systematization and detailed description of the composition of the vowels of the end of the base. As a result of the loss of vowels, a number of changes occurred in the structure of the ancient base.

Morphological richness, transparency and the evolution of morphonotactic patterns

Abstract Morphonotactics determines phonological conditions on sound sequences produced by morphological operations both with morphemes and across boundaries. This paper examines the historical emergence and the development of morphonotactic consonant clusters in Germanic, Slavic, Baltic, Romance and other languages. It examines the role of the following morphological preference parameters: (i) morphotactic transparency/opacity, (ii) morphosemantic transparency/opacity, (iii) morphological richness. We identify several diachronic processes involved in cluster emergence, production and change: vowel loss, Indo-European ablaut (and comparable Arabic processes), affixation, compounding, metathesis, final and consonant epenthesis. Additionally, we discuss predictions derived from the Net Auditory Distance principle, psycholinguistic evidence and language acquisition. We show that the majority of morphonotactic clusters arise, phonologically, from vowel loss, and morphologically from concatenation.

Word form shapes are selected to be morphotactically indicative

Abstract This paper explores the hypothesis that morphotactically ambiguous segment sequences should be dispreferred and selected against in the evolution of languages. We define morphotactically ambiguous sequences as sequences that can occur both within morphemes and across boundaries, such as final /nd/ or /mz/ in ModE, which occur in simple forms like wind or alms and in complex ones like sinned or seems. We test the hypothesis in two diachronic corpus studies of Middle and Early Modern English word forms ending in clusters of sonorants followed by /d/ or /t/ and /s/ or /z/. These clusters became highly frequent after the loss of unstressed vowels in final syllables and were highly ambiguous when they emerged. Our data show that the ambiguity of these final clusters was indeed reduced so that the distribution of the final clusters became increasingly skewed: clusters ending in voiceless coronals became significantly clearly indicative of simple forms, while clusters ending in voiced ones came to signal inflectional complexity more reliably.

Reduction of unstressed vowels in Proto-Frisian and the Germanic ‘Auslautgesetze’

AbstractThe quantitative reduction and loss of Proto-Germanic vowels during the transition from some form of Common North West Germanic to the attested ‘Old’ languages, such as Old English and Old Frisian, is a complicated process, interfering with morphological restructuring processes. Various reconstructions have been presented, the most extensive one byBoutkan (1995). Scrutiny of the Runic Frisian data, from the period ca. 500–800, shows that especially the apocope of PWGmc *-aand of *-u< PGmc *-ōshould be positioned much later in the relative chronology than envisaged by Boutkan. The order that can be derived from the Runic Frisian data reflects a gradual loss of one mora, running in a cline from the least salient to the most salient vowel, which provides a phonetic rationale for the development. This gradual mora reduction can be dated to the period between ca. 500 and 700. This absolute dating can have implications for phonological processes in which root vowels interact with the quality or quantity of the vowel in the following syllable.

ФОНЕТИЧЕСКАЯ ИНТЕРФЕРЕНЦИЯ В ТУВИНСКОМ ЯЗЫКЕ

The article deals with the phonetic peculiarities of the Tuvan dialects lost under the influence of the literary language and identified as a result of vast dialect material collecting and processing. Attention is also paid to such phenomena, which were previously considered as the peculiarities of a single dialect, but now have become typical of most Tuvans’ speech. In addition, the phonetic features characteristic of the Tuvans’ spontaneous speech are analyzed. Such features of spontaneous speech as correspondence ‘length // shortness of vowels’, loss of vowels, consonants, syllables, palatalization of hushing sounds are revealed.

ФОНЕТИЧНІ ЗМІНИ, ПОВ’ЯЗАНІ З ВИПАДІННЯМ ЗВУКІВ, У СХІДНОПОЛІСЬКИХ ГОВІРКАХ НОВГОРОД-СІВЕРЩИНИ

The article analyzes phonetic processes caused by the loss of sounds or sound groups on the basis of the material of the Eastern Polissian language dialect of the Ukrainian language. The author characterizes the essential phonetic and grammatical features of the Siversk dialect, located to the North of Novgorod-Siversk, its specificity relative to the main Eastern Polissian area and notes that the actual Ukrainian (Polissian) language features coexist here with certain Belarusian features.While studying diaeresis, i.e. the elimination of sounds or syllables for ease of pronunciation, the author uses a considerable number of illustrative material, gathered in the area where Siversk dialects are spoken.There is taken into account the position of the absolute beginning of the word that is realized as an apheresis, i.e. the loss of the next vowel when it coincides with the previous one on the edge of the root and prefix and between words. It is noted that the apheresis as well as other sound characteristics integrates it into the Eastern Polissian family of dialects. Cases of loss of etymological vowels and consonants are characterized, which are inherent mainly for borrowed vocabulary, and some examples of dieresis in indigenous dialectics. It is noted that the loss of sounds in the middle of the word (syncope) is quite common. The cases of loss of the sound [й] in the verbal forms, formed from the Common Slavic root *imati, are analyzed; phonetic changes (for example, contamination, assimilation), caused by the loss of not only separate vowels and consonants, but also sound groups and syllables, are described. Thus, unlike other positions, the reduction of the final sound elements (apocope) is noted in remote from the stress syllables and implemented in a small number of dialect word types.It is stated that diaeresis most often occurs due to the elimination of consonant or vowel confluence and reflects the specificity of not only phonetic, but also lexical levels of the Siversk dialect.

Lamalamic Root Structure: Erosion and Expansion

This study analyses the structure of lexical roots in the Lamalamic languages of Cape York Peninsula, in the northeast of Australia. The analysis shows how Lamalamic roots are shaped diachronically by processes of erosion and expansion, leading to root forms that are unusual by Australian standards. Erosion processes include the loss of initial consonants, resulting in vowel-initial roots, and the loss of entire initial syllables, resulting in monosyllabic roots. Expansion processes include leftward expansion through the addition of meaningless VC prefixes, and rightward expansion through morphological augmentation and subsequent semantic bleaching. The analysis describes the basic processes involved for the languages, using historical-comparative and phonotactic evidence, and brings out two points of more general relevance. First, the analysis proposes an analogy-based mechanism to explain loss of initial vowels, which complements the classic account in terms of gradual initial weakening. Second, the analysis also suggests that erosion and expansion processes may be functionally related, in that there is some evidence that expansion processes could originate in a mechanism to counterbalance the development of monosyllables.

О явлениях выпадения гласных в северных диалектах удмуртского языка

The question of vowel omission in the structure of the word in the subdialects of the Northern dialect of the Udmurt language is considered. The empirical base of the research is the language materials of the author’s dialectological expeditions to the areas of Northern Udmurts. The relevance of the study is determined by the importance of information about the originality of the Udmurt dialects, common in the Northern language area and having insufficient coverage in the scientific literature. Particular attention is paid to the features that on the one hand are peculiar to certain North Udmurt dialects, and / or have limited distribution in the group of subdialects of the studied dialects on the other hand. Typical phenomena of omission of vowels in anlaut, inlaut and auslaut of a word are investigated. It is found that omission of vowels in the absolute beginning of the word in the Northern dialects is slightly represented. The most typical for Northern Udmurt dialects is the loss of vowels in the middle and absolute end of a word. It is stated that this process in inlaut and auslaut is most often exposed to the vowel ы . The territorial prevalence of dialect modifications of vowel omission process in the structure of a word is also revealed. Consistent comparison of the language facts of Northern Udmurt dialects with similar phenomena in other dialects of Udmurt is made. These data show that the contractile trend is typical more to the Northern dialects of the Udmurt language than to the southern dialects.

The incomplete story of feminine gender loss in Northwestern Latvian dialects

The aim of this paper is to show that Northwestern Latvian dialects (also called Tamian) are insufficiently characterized by placing them on a simple linear hierarchy of feminine gender loss, which is how they are traditionally approached in Latvian dialectology. While Lithuanian and Central and High Latvian dialects all have very similar and fairly canonical gender systems, various Northwestern Latvian dialects display a wealth of underexplored non-canonical gender properties, such as the reactivated topic marker gender relic, honorific feminine gender, pronominal adjectives behaving differently from attributive adjectives, the noun ‘boy’ turning into a hybrid feminine noun, and a third controller gender restricted to some diminutives. Feminine gender loss is traditionally explained by Livonian (Finnic) substrate. It is shown in this paper that the developments in NW Latvian have multiple causes, one of them being apocope (loss of short vowels in final syllables), a common feature of NW Latvian dialects which prompted many developments making NW Latvian different from Central Latvian dialects and which is also ultimately due to language contact. Apocope and other developments made the system more complex. The non-canonical gender properties described in this paper are the effect of subsequent developments reducing system complexity again.
 

Drifting without an anchor: how pitch accents withstand vowel loss.

We offer an analysis of the influence exerted by segmental rules on the suprasegmental structure in the dialect of Ipiros Greek (IG). In particular we investigated how vowel deletion (VD) affects the phonetic realization of the L*+H pitch accent. Our data empirically establish that the H tone aligns much earlier when VD applies than when it does not. Furthermore, we show that there is a phonological contrast between the nuclear L+H* and the prenuclear L*+H which hinges on early versus late H alignment respectively. We demonstrate that the contrast between the L*+H and the L+H* pitch accents is not compromised by the earlier alignment caused by VD. In other words, intonational contrasts are not endangered by fine phonetic alignment variability within the same category.

Interactions at the syntax–phonology interface: Evidence from Ojibwe

This paper provides evidence that word-internal syntax can play a crucial role in the determination of phonological well-formedness. The focus is on an apparent paradox in Ojibwe; the language both avoids and tolerates vowels in hiatus. Adopting the theory of Distributed Morphology, we argue that VV sequences are avoided within domains that are realizations of syntactic phases, based on the theory of cyclic derivation proposed by Chomsky (2001, 2008) and others. In contrast, when a VV sequence spans the boundary between phases, it is tolerated. The apparent paradox is a consequence of the fact that the elements outside the spell-out of a phase cannot be evaluated to determine the well-formedness of prosodic entities like syllables, feet and prosodic words. Derivation by phase and Distributed Morphology also provide insights into two strategies for avoiding vowels in hiatus within a phase-domain; vowel loss applies to combinations of vocabulary items inserted in the same phase, while consonant epenthesis applies to items inserted in different phases but merged phonologically after insertion. The conditions under which consonant epenthesis occurs provide support for post-syntactic movement at the PF interface, triggered entirely by phonological factors.

An Innovated Possessor Suffix and Category in Central Choiseul

Oceanic languages typically display possessor-indexing suffixes that distinguish the usual four Oceanic person categories, along with at least singular and plural. However, a group of languages of central Choiseul (Solomon Islands), including Ririo, Babatana, and Sisiqa, display only three possessor-indexing suffixes. Two reflect Proto-Oceanic forms and index 1 sg and 2 sg possessors. The third, an innovated form, indexes all other person number categories (that is, 3 sg and all nonsingular categories). This paper investigates the formal and structural characteristics of this innovated non-1/2 sg suffix. It examines the phenomenon in each of the three languages, including allomorphy of the suffix, and the manner in which person and number categories are expressed in the presence of the innovated suffix. In terms of the former, it finds each language displays different allomorphy patterns, with both - e and - a occurring, along with - i when following a high vowel. Various other factors are at play in one or more languages, including vowel harmony and presuffix vowel loss. In terms of the coding of non-1/2 sg person and number categories, the paper finds that the innovated suffix licenses a possessor NP that may contain a lexical noun or dependent pronoun. However, in the absence of an overt possessor NP, the suffix prompts a default 3 sg reading.

Vowel Loss in Tirax and the History of the Apicolabial Shift

Vowel Loss in Tirax and the History of the Apicolabial Shift