OT Analysis Research Articles

Examining negative transfer in Cantonese learners of English as a foreign language: an optimality theory approach to English syllable acquisition

Abstract The contrasting differences that exist in the English and Cantonese phonological systems result in divergent articulatory production between them. This article aims to investigate the negative transfer of Cantonese EFL learners in acquiring English consonant clusters and the constraint rankings of Cantonese and English syllable systems by comparing syllable structures and analyzing experimental statistics. The objective is to elucidate the reasons behind their negative transfer in English syllable acquisition. The research results demonstrated that Cantonese EFL learners found it easier to acquire consonant clusters in the onset position compared to the coda position. Additionally, an increase in consonants in the coda position posed greater difficulties for Cantonese EFL learners. The results also indicated that participants encountered the most problems with deletion, followed by substitution and epenthesis. The OT analysis reveals that the different rankings of faithfulness and markedness constraints in Cantonese and English led to transfer errors.

Sensitivity to complex onsets in Iron Ossetian

This paper describes and analyzes the onset-sensitive stress system of Iron Ossetian (Eastern Iranian; Russia, Georgia; henceforth Iron). Iron instantiates a rare stress pattern that has been controversially identified in previous literature. Attested onset sensitive systems are commonly sensitive to onset presence or quality (Hyde 2007; Gordon 2005; Topintzi 2010). However, stress in Iron is categorically sensitive to onset complexity, but not onset presence. Syllables with simplex onsets or null onsets are light. Those with complex onsets are heavy. Such a pattern has only been claimed for a few languages, often controversially (Topintzi 2010, 2022). This pattern provides a challenge for current OT frameworks designed to analyze onset sensitive stress. This paper first establishes evidence for the weight of the aforementioned syllable types and then provides an OT analysis for this onset-sensitive pattern.

Human sweat contains oxytocin

BackgroundOxytocin (OT) has been detected in various body fluids, including blood, urine, saliva, breastmilk, and spinal fluid. Consistent with models that regard skin as a social organ and in line with studies demonstrating that skin cells express both OT and its receptor, our study sought to examine the presence of OT in human sweat. MethodsOverall, 553 individuals participated in a pilot study and three experiments. Firstly, 50 participants provided sweat after engaging in various sports for different durations. Secondly, 26 participants provided sweat from forehead, upper-chest, forearm, and underarm, including 11 in natural setting and 15 following OT administration and a 30-minute exercise. Thirdly, of 435 volunteers, 97 provided sufficient axillary sweat for assaying. Of these, 84 participated in a naturalistic experiment that involved saliva and sweat collection in response to physical activity in either solitary or social settings. OT and testosterone (TS) were assayed in sweat and saliva. ResultsIntense activity for at least 25 min was required to produce sufficient sweat for OT analysis. Highest OT levels were found in axillary sweat compared to sweat from the forehead, upper-chest, and forearm. Salivary OT and TS increased after both solitary and social physical activity; however, higher sweat OT was found after solitary sports. Post-hoc preliminary findings indicate that highly extroverted individuals exercising in solitary environments showed the highest sweat OT levels. ConclusionsFindings demonstrate, for the first time, the presence of OT in human sweat and show the feasibility of its measurement. Much further research is required to illuminate how sweat OT is impacted by personality and social context and to uncover the role of the skin in OT production.

Disyllabic hypocoristics in Chilean Spanish: a stratal OT analysis

Abstract Hypocoristics have received considerable interest from phonologists in recent decades, particularly within the Optimality-theoretic literature. While most of these analyses have been situated in parallelist OT, I claim that this architectural choice entails hidden complexities. It is cross-linguistically common for multiple hypocoristics to be formed from a single proper noun, e.g., Matthew → Matt/Matty. In this case, parallelist OT must resort to co-phonologies to avoid ranking paradoxes, which results in significant analytical complexity. By contrast, I argue in this paper that a stratal analysis is crucial for capturing multiple patterns of Hypocoristic Formation (HF) within a single architecture. I present here data of disyllabic hypocoristics from Standard Chilean Spanish. These hypocoristics are derived from the proper nouns by means of two separate anchoring sites: to the left edge of the full name, or to prominence in the full name, i.e., the tonic syllable. In addition, hypocoristics may be prosodically- or morphologically-driven: they may solely be formed by truncating the material of the proper noun, or, in the latter case, there may also be additional suffixal material provided. These data, therefore, lend themselves to a four-way categorisation. I show that this categorisation can be fully accounted for within a stratal architecture, and without the need for additional co-phonologies. Within the analysis, I locate each of the anchoring sites within the lexical phonology: edge-anchoring occurs at the stem level, along with syllabification and stress assignment, while prominence-anchoring occurs at the word level. In this way, the input to edge-anchoring at the stem level comprises a string of segments, while the input to prominence-anchoring at the word-level contains prosodic units up to the foot, which permits word-level HF to anchor to prominence. I further posit that prosodic- and morphologically-driven HF are caused through the passing of hypocoristic morphemes from the morpho-syntax to the phonology. Purely prosodic HF is triggered through a null or covert morpheme, while morphological HF triggered by an overt one. The hypocoristic morphemes themselves are stored as diacritics in the proper nouns’ lexical entries. Furthermore, the constraints that select the hypocoristic forms as optimal are sensitive to the presence of this hypocoristic morpheme, which is reflected in tableaux through indexing. When a hypocoristic morpheme is present in the input of a proper noun to a particular stratum, these highly-ranked indexed constraints select a corresponding hypocoristic form as optimal. If the hypocoristic morpheme is absent, these constraints do not assign violations, and the proper noun is instead (vacuously) found optimal. This analysis thus unifies two distinct patterns of HF in one phonological grammar through the inclusion of indexed-constraints and the serial derivation in a constraint-based architecture.

Phrase-Level ATR Vowel Harmony in Anum—A Case of Recursive Prosodic Phrasing

(1) Like many other Kwa languages, Anum employs a pattern of [ATR] vowel harmony that is regressive and [+ATR] dominant (RVH). This paper analyses RVH as a phrasal process which takes into account recursive phonological phrases. The proposal argues for an application of the process within and across non-maximal phonological phrases (φ) and a blocking of application across maximal phonological phrases (φmax). (2) Investigating RVH in Anum in more detail, the size of constituents and the complexity of sentence structures are varied. Target sentences were recorded and transcribed for [ATR] vowel harmony. (3) The empirical data show that RVH applies frequently between words that belong to either the same or to different syntactic constituents, but is blocked between two verb phrases of a serial verb construction and between any word and a following sentence-final time adverbial. Interestingly, RVH occurs between a sentence-initial subject constituent and a following verb or verb phrase, independent of the size of the subject constituent and the remaining number of words in the sentence. (4) The proposed OT analysis accounts for RVH within syntax-phonology Match Theory and addresses both word-level and phrase-level harmony. The special behaviour of subject constituents that prosodically phrase together with verbs and with constituents of the verb phrase (VP) is discussed. Either a phonological well-formedness constraint or a syntactically distinct input may account for phrasing effects with subject constituents in Anum.

Tone-driven epenthesis in Wamey

AbstractThis paper argues that tone-driven epenthesis is possible in tonal languages. In Wamey, an epenthetic [ə] is inserted to host a high tone in two contexts: first, to host a tone which would otherwise be left floating due to a restriction on rising tones (/cv̀cⒽ/ maps to [cv̀cə́] due to a ban *[cv̌c]); and second, to host a tone which is introduced by word-level morphology but is restricted from associating across a stem boundary. These patterns cannot be attributed to syllable phonotactics, which freely allow all consonants in the coda position. We assemble the evidence for tone-driven epenthesis, focusing on the distribution of final [ə] in lexical stem structure and [ə]-alternating suffixes. A simple OT analysis derives [ə]-epenthesis, utilising common constraints (e.g. *Rise, OCP(H), etc.) together with constraints against associating tone across prosodic boundaries. In total, Wamey epenthesis exemplifies the cultivation of segmental environments for the purpose of realising pitch targets.

On Finnic and Khanty vowel harmony: domains, slopes and their role in typology

The main purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the inaccuracies in the article by Paul Kiparsky and Karl Pajusalu (2003). Their influential study suggests a typological classification of vowel harmony based on mostly Finnic languages and their dialects which is claimed to be supported by a particular OT analysis. However, in many cases, their example languages and dialects are hardly classifiable into the category suggested by them. Moreover, their OT analysis completely ignores cases of variation (including vacillation) in the example languages. The present study deals with the data available for Estonian (Mulgi and Northeastern dialects), Veps and Khanty, and demonstrates – mostly based on the same sources referred to by Kiparsky and Pajusalu – that the actual patterns of harmony are considerably different from the patterns described in their article. It is emphasized that many patterns do not arise from the behavior of neutral vowels but instead, they can be results of the length and the nature of the harmonic domain. The paper also introduces the notion of harmonicity slope, according to which the domain has no strict borders and in which the tendency for the vowels to harmonize gradually diminishes.

Comparison of Ultrasonography with other Imaging Modalities for Detection of Adnexal Torosion: A Systematic Review

Background: Adnexal Torsion (AT), serious emergency of gynecology, frequently shows among nonspecific signs prominent to late analysis. Aim: To compare the test accuracy of Ultrasound, Computed Tomography (CT) and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) for diagnosis of adnexal torsion. Methodology: We observed google scholar as well as Radiographics key till Dec 2019. Assortment standards studies report upon Imaging Modality accuracy (index test) within paediatric and adult females alleged of adnexal torsion matched by clinical analysis or usual clinical or radiological follow up duration till symptoms firmness (reference standard). Results: We mark off 3836 references, comprised 18 Studies (1654 females, 665-cases), as well as comprised 15 into meta analyses, ultrasound pooled-sensitivity (n =12, 1187 females) was 0.79 (95% CI= 0.63 to 0.92) as well as specificity was 0.76 (95% CI= 0.54 to 0.93), by means of positive as well as negative probability fractions 4.35 (95% CI= 2.03 to 9.32) and 0.29 (95% CI= 0.13 to 0.66), correspondingly. By Doppler Ultrasound (n=7, 845 females) produced alike and specificity (0.88, 95% CI= 0.72 to 1.00) and sensitivity (0.80, 95% CI= 0.67 to 0.93). For magnetic resonance imaging (n=3, 99 females), pooled-sensitivity was 0.81 (95% CI=0.63 to 0.91) as well as specificity was 0.91 (95% CI= 0.80 to 0.96). Meta-analysis for Computed Tomography was impossible by 2 case control-studies as well as one cohort-study (n=3, 232 females). Its range of sensitivity was 0.74 to 0.95 as well as specificity 0.80 to 0.90. Conclusions: As a first line analytic examination for alleged AT, ultrasound has good performance. Increment in quantity of AT cases needs precise, rapid, as well as correct analytic extent. It has been utmost popular method as allied with further Imaging Modalities. MRI might compromise better specificity for investigating intricate morphology of ovary, nonetheless further proof is wanted. Beside with medical doubt as well as approximations. This study will offer sufficient appreciated evidence to understand sonographic markers impact during OT analysis precisely. Keywords: Adnexa, Computed Tomography, Doppler, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Meta-analysis, Ovary, Test Accuracy,

Comparing Tropopause‐Penetrating Convection Identifications Derived From NEXRAD and GOES Over the Contiguous United States

AbstractOvershooting tops (OTs) are a well‐known indicator of updrafts capable of transporting air from the troposphere to the stratosphere and generating hazardous weather conditions. Satellites and radars have long been used to identify OTs, but the results have not been entirely consistent due to differences in sensor and measurement characteristics. OT detection approaches based on satellite infrared (IR) imagery have often been validated using human‐expert OT identifications, but such datasets are time‐consuming to compile over broad geographic regions. Despite radar limitations to detect the true physical cloud top, OTs identified within multi‐radar composites can serve as a stable reference for comprehensive satellite OT analysis and detection validation. This study analyzes a large OT data set compiled from Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES)‐13/16 geostationary IR data and gridded volumetric Next‐Generation Radar (NEXRAD) reflectivity to better understand radar and IR observations of OTs, quantify agreement between satellite and radar OT detections, and demonstrate how an increased spatial sampling from GOES‐13 to GOES‐16 impacts OT appearance and detection performance. For nearly time‐matched scenes and moderate OT probability, the GOES‐13 detection rate (∼60%) is ∼15% lower than GOES‐16 (∼75%), which is mostly attributed to coarser spatial resolution. NEXRAD column‐maximum reflectivity and tropopause‐relative echo‐top height as a function of GOES OT probability were quite consistent between the two satellites however, indicating that efforts to account for differing resolution were largely successful. GOES false detections are unavoidable because outflow from nearby or recently decayed OTs can be substantially colder than the tropopause and look like an OT to an automated algorithm.

Ponapean Song Meter in Optimality Theory

The exploration of poetry and songs has been essential to the progress of generative metrical theory that is concerned with the linguistic study of versification. The main issue is that the majority of work is highly concentrated on English poetry. Research on the poetic meter of other languages is thus crucial for a sufficient understanding of meter and metrical rules even though other perspectives and theoretical approaches are utilised. Bearing such a goal in mind, the current study aims to examine the meter in Ponapean songs in the light of Optimality Theory. It found that Ponapean songs are regulated by poetic meter that constrains both the size of the line with a fixed number of morae as well as the prominence that requires stressed morae. The proposed OT analysis derives the restriction on the size of the line with minimality and maximality constraints along with obligatoriness and alignment constraints that account for the prominence. Further rhythmic constraints are needed to regulate the alteration between stressed and unstressed morae. OT is shown in this study to be a framework which is capable of predicting the well-formed nature of rhythmic meter that constrains both the phonological constituency and prominence with regard to Ponapean songs. The proposed analysis might be used for other rhythmic meter that constrains the size and prominence at the same metric level, such as Luganda.

Partial Dependency of Vowel Reduction on Stress Shift: Evidence from English -ion Nominalization

While classic theories utilize the comparison between cómp[ɛ]nsate going to comp[ə]nsátion and cond[ɛ́]nse going to cond[ɛ]nsátion to argue that stressed vowels are immune to reduction in multiple affixations (e.g., SPE), this paper presents a corpus-based case study that looks into this quantitative interaction between vowel reduction and stress shift during English -ion nominalization and offers discoveries that go against the classic claim. After analyzing 1,047 verb-noun target pairs extracted from the CELEX2 dictionary corpus, this study claims that vowel reduction only partially depends on its stress-bearing feature and that the suffix type, the stress shift pattern, vowel tenseness, and crucially some lexically specific constraints also predict vowel reduction. This finding is further supported by an OT analysis and a statistical model. As a quantitative study that relies on an exhaustive list of English samples to derive theoretical analysis, this research not only provides new insights into this long-lasting debate but also aims to highlight the significance of incorporating large data samples for a complete understanding of phonological phenomena.

Morphosyntax–phonology mismatches in Muskogee

The mismatching of morphosyntactic and phonological domains inside words provides a testing ground for models of the morphosyntax–phonology interface. This paper describes a pattern of morphosyntax–phonology mismatches in Muskogee. Muskogee verbs are spelled out at two phases, vP and CP, resulting in two phonological domains, which this paper models as ω-recursion. The vP phase and ωmin are mismatched: either vP-phase material is parsed outside ωmin – an undermatch – or CP-phase material is parsed inside ωmin – an overmatch. The mismatch pattern requires a parallel model of morphosyntax–phonology mapping to distinguish mismatches using gradient Align constraints, rather than categorial Match constraints. Additionally, a phase-based model must allow earlier cycles to be altered in later cycles, ruling out strict phase inalterability in phonology, while a Stratal OT analysis must send a word's first phase through the stem-level phonology, regardless of its ultimate phasal structure.

Hypocoristic truncation in Sardinian

AbstractThis article focuses on hypocoristic truncation in Sardinian. Besides disyllabic truncation, hypocoristic truncation in Sardinian also yields trisyllabic truncated forms by means of a process of reduplicative prefixation (e.g.,Totore ← Servatore) and, more interestingly, a process of copy of what is analyzed as an internally layered ternary foot (e.g.,(Va(tore)) ← Servatore). In this paper we develop an OT analysis of hypocoristic truncation based on output-output correspondence relations between bases and truncated morphemes that gives further support to internally layered ternary feet in the domain of the phonology–morphology interface.

Prominence conditioned transformation in metrical analysis

Abstract Crowhurst and Michael (2005) develops an OT analysis of the complex word stress system of Nanti, an Amazonian language of the Kampa group. They claim that the difficulty of developing a transformational analysis of the system clearly demonstrates the superiority of OT. One goal of this paper is to show that their claim is false and the complexities of the system are well within the scope of transformational phonology; a straightforward analysis is possible. The second goal is to show how prominence can naturally be included in rule systems.

Vowel harmony in Persian

Persian is a language with several types of vowel harmony. This paper applies Optimality Theory (henceforth OT) to analyze this phonological process which includes various types of regressive and progressive vowel harmony in different words and expressions, as well as translaryngeal harmony and parasitism. It offers various examples whose trigger or target does not exist in the underlying representation and is therefore created in an intermediate representation. It discusses how backness harmony feeds height harmony in English loanwords. It also discusses blockers and exceptionality. The latter is analyzed using Pater's Lexically Specific Constraint Theory. It also addresses two cases of opacity in feeding and counterfeeding interactions. The main contribution of this paper is that it presents a set of empirical data on Persian vowel harmony and OT analyses which are of general theoretical interest.

Opaque distributional generalisations in Tundra Nenets

Based on primary data from Tundra Nenets, this paper explores phonological patterns which seem to require restrictions on the input, and thus present a particular challenge to Optimality Theory. In these patterns, a contrastive segment appears only in the environments where it is also derived by active alternations in the language. I illustrate this with the behaviour of Tundra Nenets /k/, and argue that these patterns can be analysed as distributional generalisations that hold only at early derivational levels. A Stratal OT analysis is proposed. Tundra Nenets also presents a pattern which appears to involve unnatural classes, but is reanalysed with only natural class alternations in my account.

An Optimality Analysis of the Morphophonemic Development of Triconsonantal Verbs of Normal Jordanian Speaking Children

This study carries out an analysis using the framework of Optimality Theory to investigate the acquisition of the morphophonemics of JA triconsonantal verbs. The analyzed data consist of speech samples obtained from a picture/action naming task as well as spontaneous speech collection. The sample of the study consists of 64 normally developing children who are acquiring spoken Jordanian Arabic as their mother tongue. The participants whose ages range from 2;1 to 6 years are selected randomly from different preschools in two Jordanian cities. The major findings of the study suggest that children overcome the morphological complexity of Arabic verbs by applying a number of processes, including: cluster simplification, glottalization, and truncation. The OT analysis indicates that these processes are associated with highly-ranked markedness constraints and lower-ranked faithfulness constraints in child grammar. In addition, the root/affix asymmetry triggers unmarked patterns to emerge in the affix. Finally, the results display that children’s morphophonological abilities improve with age and that the majority of children’s morphophonological processes disappear at age six years.

Interactions between prosody and morphosyntax in Fuzhou VO phrases

Abstract This study examines how tone sandhi domains (TSDs) are determined in Fuzhou. The data include: (i) regular verb-object phrases (VOs) where the verb takes a direct bare noun object; and (ii) non-canonical VOs where the verb takes an adverbial expression as a surface object. Several observations are made. First, a three-way sandhi exists within every TSD. All antepenultimate syllables neutralize to low tones. A penultimate syllable’s sandhi tone is dependent on the final syllable’s citation tone, which remains unchanged. Second, in regular VOs, a monosyllabic verb consistently forms a single TSD with its direct bare noun object, but a disyllabic verb and its object are separated into two TSDs. Third, in non-canonical VOs, a monosyllabic verb never forms a single TSD with its adverbial object. Three questions are raised. First, what is the nature of each TSD? Second, why does the number of syllables in a verb determine the distinct TSDs formed in regular VOs? Third, how can we account for the different patterns of TSD formation in two types of VOs? We propose that each TSD equals to a prosodic word (PrWd). OT analyses are provided to show how PrWds are derived. The analysis of regular VOs relies on the ranking of a prosodic markedness constraint ft bin above the word-level interface correspondence constraints. The contrast between two types of VOs is explained by applying the model of Multiple Spell-Out and a cyclic interaction of morphosyntax and prosody. This approach is new in explaining the TSDs that are constrained by morphosyntax.

Morphological Exceptions to Vowel Reduction in Central Catalan and the Problem of the Missing Base

A certain class of Central Catalan compounds characterized by a first component that lacks a related output word is discussed and analyzed in connection with Vowel Reduction and Destressing. The first component of these compounds contains a vowel [a, ɛ, ɔ] that undergoes Destressing before the stressed vowel of the second component, but does not reduce. This causes an opacity problem because the generalization that there are no unstressed [a, ɛ, ɔ] is not surface-true for these cases. An analysis in the framework of parallel OT with output-to-output constraints is examined in detail and the function that returns the base of the relevant constituent in the candidates being evaluated is made precise. It is shown that such an analysis is not feasible. After showing that compounds have internal constituent structure even under noncompositional semantics, a Stratal OT analysis is presented that can handle such cases.

Phonotactic Adaptation in Loanwords: Insertion vs. Deletion

The goal of this paper is to investigate what repair strategies can be employed when an illegitimate cluster is adapted into a language which lacks complex margins and how a typology can be dealt with within the framework of the Optimality Theory. Vowel insertion is cross-linguistically preferable over consonant deletion. This tendency is well supported by TCRS (Paradis & LaCharite 1997), but if more than one repair is necessary, deletion inevitably happens depending on perceptual salience and similarity. Concerning the position of vowel insertion, three types are all observed in loanword adaptation: only prothesis, only anaptyxis, and a mixed pattern. For the OT analysis, the ranking permutation between SYLLCON and CONTIGUITY can account for such an asymmetrical typology, in combination with some markedness constraints to comply with phonological restrictions.