Syllable Structure Constraints Research Articles

Vowel-consonant metathesis in Nivaĉle

AbstractVowel-consonant metathesis is observed in a variety of contexts throughout the Nivaĉle (Mataguayan) grammar. It occurs in both verbal and nominal domains, characteristically resulting from the affixation of a consonant-initial suffix to a consonant-final stem. This paper provides an optimality theoretic account for vowel-consonant metathesis and vowel epenthesis in Nivaĉle. It is demonstrated that metathesis responds to phonological requirements; specifically, it serves to avoid marked structures in the language: complex codas, derived complex onsets, and bad syllable contacts. The prosodic analysis of syllable structure constraints aims to provide broad empirical coverage, as well as a coherent and integrated theoretical interpretation.

Influence of L2 English phonotactics in L1 Brazilian Portuguese illusory vowel perception

This study examines potential changes to L1 (Brazilian Portuguese, BP) perception of phonotactic structure as a function of L2 (English) experience. Syllables with a coda stop violate syllable structure constraints in BP, but are licit in English. As a result, BP monolinguals perceive an illusory /i/ after an illicit coda (e.g., ob/i/ter ‘to obtain’). To understand the effects on L1 perception when the L2 phonology allows a syllabic structure that is illicit in the L1, we tested 15 L1 speakers of BP in an L2 English immersion setting. In separate BP and English sessions, participants completed an explicit metalinguistic vowel identification task and two ABX tasks, with one ABX task designed to tap lower-level processing and the other, higher-level phonological processing. Our analysis reveals that, while not fully target-like in L2 English, the bilinguals’ perception data in both languages contrast sharply with existing monolingual BP data. This is the case whether participants employ what we assume here to be metalinguistic strategies, lower-level encoding strategies, or higher-level encoding strategies in perception. Based on this pattern of results, we conclude that the data provide evidence of L2 phonotactic influence in L1 perception.

The Role of the OCP and Syllable Structure in Makkan Arabic Hypocoristics

This paper shows that the failure of names related to glide-medial and glide-final roots to form Pattern I C1aC2C2uuC3 hypocoristics is due to the effects of the OCP and syllable structure constraints, respectively. Names related to roots with medial [w] fail to form Pattern I hypocoristics since the sequence -wuu- violates the OCP. Names related to glide final roots [y] or [w] form C1aC2C2u hypocoristics where the deletion of the final glide avoids violation of syllable structure constraints in the language. The Optimality-Theoretic account in this paper demonstrates that there is only one native pattern of hypocoristic formation in Makkan Arabic with two manifestations, C1aC2C2uuC3 and C1aC2C2u. Syllable structure constraints and the OCP account for the apparent differences between these two forms. Data from Makkan Arabic hypocoristic formation show that native speakers can factor out the root consonants from the actual name and use them in hypocoristic formation.

Syllable Reduction in Ye’kwana: Morphologized Phonology

In syllable reduction, the vowel of a nonfinal syllable deletes (… CV.CV …), resulting in the creation of a consonant cluster (… C.CV …) where the first consonant of such a cluster can be said to be phonetically simplified with respect to the original consonant. Ye’kwana presents some unique features of syllable reduction: (i) attested thus far only at morpheme boundaries, alternation of reducing syllables occurs here within a single morpheme; (ii) reduction is conditioned by what could be analyzed as vowel initial suffixes. This latter phenomenon deviates from the patterns found in other Cariban languages and appears to violate explanations given in terms of syllable structure constraints. I discuss the problems in generating a synchronic phonological analysis to model the resultant apparent counterexamples, and then I demonstrate that this apparent violation is historically consistent with the overall pattern, but that a late sound change has eliminated the onset consonant from the suffix.

Perceptually Based Constraints and Metathesis: Evidence from Artificial Grammar

The present paper explores the role of sonority and other perceptual constraints in governing syllable structure constraints. One of the most important issues in phonology today is the formalization of the phonetic grounding of markedness constraints (Hayes and Steriade 2004). Sonority constraints have been particularly controversial because there is no formalized definition of sonority, but rather several different contributing factors, such as intensity, constriction and formant transitions, that all vary depending on context (Henke, Kaisse, and Wright 2012; Wright 2004). This paper makes use of an artificial grammar learning paradigm, whereby adult English speakers were exposed to a consonant-consonant metathesis pattern that either improved sonority at a syllable boundary, or worsened sonority at a syllable boundary. Learners did not show generalization in line with sonority-based syllable contact laws, but instead showed generalization in accordance with avoidance of a voiced obstruent in coda position, thus supporting a theory of sonority and syllable contact that makes use of the interaction of perceptual cues, rather than a strict, abstract sonority hierarchy.

Learning metathesis: Evidence for syllable structure constraints.

One of the major questions in the cognitive science of language is whether the perceptual and phonological motivations for the rules and patterns that govern the sounds of language are a part of the psychological reality of grammatical representations. This question is particularly important in the study of phonological patterns - systematic constraints on the representation of sounds, because phonological patterns tend to be grounded in phonetic constraints. This paper focuses on phonological metathesis, which occurs when two adjacent sounds switch positions (e.g., cast pronounced as cats ). While many cases of phonological metathesis appear to be motivated by constraints on syllable structure, it is possible that these metathesis patterns are merely artifacts of historical change, and do not represent the linguistic knowledge of the speaker (Blevins & Garrett, 1998). Participants who were exposed to a metathesis pattern that can be explained in terms of structural or perceptual improvement were less likely to generalize to metathesis patterns that did not show the same improvements. These results support a substantively biased theory in which phonological patterns are encoded in terms of structurally motivated constraints.

The Influence of Moraic Structure on L2 English Syllable-Final Consonants

[Abstract not available]

Polish yers: Representation and analysis

This article proposes a new analysis of yers in Polish and addresses the issue of how yers should be represented. Reviving the debate started by Kiparsky (1973), the article argues that diacritic use of phonological features is superior to phonological use of diacritic features. Since diacritic representation of yers misses generalizations, yers are better represented as floating melodic segments (Rubach 1986, Kenstowicz & Rubach 1987). The patterns of Yer Vocalization and Yer Deletion are derived without recourse to syllable structure constraints such as *COMPLEX-Coda. Yer Deletion applies at an earlier level than Yer Vocalization and is enforced by a distribution-based constraint. Yer Vocalization, on the other hand, is a context-free process that is driven by the need to parse segments in output representations.

Resolving hiatus in (isi)Ndebele: An optimality theoretic account

Vowel hiatus is a dispreferred phenomenon in many languages. When vowel sequences arise through morphophonological concatenations in (isi)Ndebele, hiatus may be resolved in one of three processes: (i) one of the two vowels undergoes elision; (ii) one of the vowels (mostly the first vowel in the sequence) undergoes glide formation; and (iii) the two vowels undergo vowel coalescence – the merging of the two vowels into a neutral vowel that has the qualities of both the two initial vowels straddling a word boundary. This article examines these vowel hiatus resolution strategies in (isi)Ndebele, through the theoretical explications of Optimality Theory (OT) and CV Phonology. In (isi)Ndebele, the featural qualities of the two vowels straddling a word boundary and the morphological contexts at which the hiatal configurations occur determine what process repairs vowel hiatus. Hiatus resolution is also invariably ONSET and feature driven: driven by Preferred Syllable Structure Rules(PSSRs) and constraints.

An L1 grammar-driven model of loanword adaptation

The present study proposes an L1 grammar-driven loanword-adaptation model with three intermediate steps — L1 perception, L1 lexical representations and L1 phonology — between L2 acoustic output and L1 output by examining how the distinctive features, syllable structure constraints and structural restrictions of one’s native language steer speakers in their search to replace foreign sounds with native sounds. Our main source of data in support of this model comes from differences between the Korean adaptations of English and French voicing contrasts on the basis of a recent survey of English and French loans in the year 2011. In word-initial position, for example, English voiceless plosives are borrowed as aspirated plosives, while French voiceless plosives are borrowed as either aspirated or fortis plosives in free variation. Considering the data examined here, we suggest that the different Korean adaptations of English and French voicing contrasts in plosives are based on Korean speakers’ perception of redundant phonetic variants in the donor languages (L2) and that this perception is conditioned by the acoustic cues to the laryngeal features [±spread glottis] and [±tense] of Korean, the host language (L1). In contrast to some current models, it shows that the distinctive feature composition of L1 segments plays an important role in loanword adaptations. We also suggest that not only L1 laryngeal features but also L1 syllable structure constraints and lexical restrictions influence L1 perception of the L2 voicing contrasts in word-final postvocalic plosives and that variation in vowel insertion after the plosives in our 2011 data collection is motivated by L1 phonology in both English and French loans. Variation in vowel insertion after English and French word-internal preconsonantal coda plosives is also affected by the native phonology in the 2011 data, no matter whether the plosives are released, as in French, or unreleased, as in English.

Cairne Arabic Syllable Structure though Different Phonological Theories

Since the times of the old Arab grammarians, the syllable has played a major role in the phonology of classical as well as colloquial Arabic. In the 1970s, phonologists investigated Cairene Arabic (CA) syllable structure and found it to be the domain of some phonological processes, such as emphatic spread, CVC syllables light word final but heavy word internally, limitations on consonant clusters in certain positions of a word, and epenthesis of a vowel to break consonant clusters if there happen to be more than two consonants in word concatenation. This paper discusses some CA phonological phenomena investigated through different theories in generative phonology, i.e. rule based, autosegmental and Optimality Theory (OT). An overview of early theories is given. Early generative theories contributed substantially to the theory of the syllable of CA; however, each theory was able to explain a given phonological phenomenon. It is through the generative Optimality Theoretic approach that more than one phenomenon can be described and analyzed. The paper’s aim is not to compare between the different theories, but to describe the progression CA syllable structure analysis took in generative phonology. Unlike earlier research which based conclusions on some CA words mixed with some other classical Arabic words pronounced by CA native speakers, this paper presents an Optimality Theoretic analysis that is based on uniquely CA phonetic outputs. The analysis finds that some syllable structure constraints are high ranked and inviolable such as ONSET, and *[μ μ μ]σ. The study also shows that OT analysis can illustrate and explain in one representation, i.e. tableau two different phonological phenomena, insertion and deletion of a vowel in consonant clusters, despite their relatedness to separate prosodic domains, the syllable, the prosodic word, and the phrase. This is carried out by analyzing the ranking, relationship and interaction between the following constraints, ONSET MAX-IO, *[μ μ μ], *COMPLEX CODA, DEP-IO >> NOCODA, *APPENDIX; -*V,+hi]$:, ALIGNR (σ, PrWd), and LINEARITY. The study analyzes data that is mainly from Cairene spoken Arabic, attempting to fill a gap created by one of the contentious issues related to studies of the phonology of CA, and that is mixing between colloquial Cairene and classical Arabic.

The Sonority Sequencing Principle in Sanandaji/Erdelani Kurdish: An Optimality Theoretical Perspective

The aim of this article is to study Sanandaji consonant clusters in relation with their conformity to the principle of sonority sequencing. Analyzing the data provided in this paper, we found out that, of the three kinds of consonant clusters existing in all languages, only core clusters—clusters that conform to the sonority sequencing principle (SSP)—are found in Sanandaji, and therefore the arrangement and combination of segments to make syllables in this dialect of Kurdish is absolutely governed by the SSP. Applying principles of Optimality Theory on the data, the relative ranking of syllable structure constraints is determined, the outcome of which is deriving surface phonotactic patterns through the interaction of markedness and faithfulness constraints.

Syllable Structure Constraints and the Perception of Biconsonantal Clusters by Korean EFL Learners

Syllable Structure Constraints and the Perception of Biconsonantal Clusters by Korean EFL Learners

Phonetic discrimination is affected by native language phonology.

English and Japanese speakers were tested on discrimination of phonetic contrasts that vary in their phonemic status according to phonological context. The presence versus absence of /u/ in English stimulus pair ebzo‐ebuzo is nonphonemic in Japanese due to phonological syllable structure constraints, but in word‐initial position (stimulus pair zobe‐uzobe the same contrast is phonemic. Similarly, the contrast between Japanese /d/ versus /r/ is nonphonemic in the foot‐medial position in American English due to an allophonic flapping process, but in word‐initial position the two sounds are perceived as the English phonemic contrast /d/ versus /l/ (Japanese stimulus pairs gudo‐guro and dogu‐rogu. Participants were tested in a four‐token oddball task on all four stimulus sets in a blocked design. Each participant group (Japanese and English) showed significantly poorer discrimination of the non‐native contrast when it appeared in the phonological context in which it is nonphonemic in their native language (p’s < 0.001). This result was equally robust even for stimuli in which the contrastive portion of the stimulus (zo‐uzo, do‐ro) was spliced from the nonphonemic context and pasted into the phonemic context. These data indicate that phonological context plays an integral role in the perception of phonetic signals.

Perceptual Distortions in the Adaptation of English Consonant Clusters: Syllable Structure or Consonantal Contact Constraints?

We present the results from an experiment that tests the perception of English consonantal sequences by Korean speakers and we confirm that perceptual epenthesis in a second languge (L2) arises from syllable structure restrictions of the first language (L1), rather than linear co-occurence restrictions. Our study replicates and extends Dupoux, Kakehi, Hirose, Pallier, & Mehler's (1999) results that suggested that listeners perceive epenthetic vowels within consonantal sequences that violate the phonotactics of their L1. Korean employs at least two kinds of phonotactic restrictions: (i) syllable structure restrictions that prohibit the occurence of certain consonants in coda position STRUCTURE (e.g., *[c.], *[g.]), while allowing others (e.g., [k.], [l.]), and (ii) consonantal contact restrictions that ban the co-occurrence of certain heterosyllabic consonants (e.g., *[k.m]; *[l.n]) due to various phonological processes that repair such sequences on the surface (i.e., /k.m/ --> [n.m]; /ll.n/ --> [l.l]). The results suggest that Korean syllable structure restrictions, rather than consonantal contact restrictions, result in the perception of epenthetic vowels. Furthermore, the frequency of co-occurrence fails to explain the epenthesis effects in the percept of consonant clusters employed in the present study. We address questions regarding the interaction between speech perception and phonology and test the validity of Steriade's (2001 a,b) Perceptual-Mapping (P-Map) hypothesis for the Korean sonorant assimilation processes. Our results indicate that Steriade's hypothesis makes incorrect predictions about Korean phonology and that speech perception is not isomorphic to speech production.

A Typological Approach to the Adjustment Process on Syllable Structure Constraints

A Typological Approach to the Adjustment Process on Syllable Structure Constraints

Reduction in syllable onsets in the acquisition of Polish: deletion, coalescence, metathesis and gemination

This paper focuses on four strategies of onset reduction employed by a single child (4;0-4;4) acquiring Polish: deletion, coalescence, metathesis, and gemination. Deletion and coalescence occur in word-initial onsets while metathesis and gemination are restricted to word-medial position. The data, which constitute an intriguing 'conspiracy' case (Kisseberth, 1970), are analysed within OPTIMALITY THEORY (henceforth, OT; Prince & Smolensky, 1993/2004; McCarthy & Prince, 1995) in which all surface-true 'processes' are motivated through the interaction of ranked and violable constraints. The OT account makes it possible to envisage the four strategies as different surface responses to the undominated *COMPLEXOnset which militates against onset clusters. The choice of a particular strategy as well as its restriction to a particular word position is not random but follows from the interplay between *COMPLEXOnset, sonority-based syllable structure constraints (Margin Hierarchy, CONTACT LAW), context-sensitive markedness constraints (CODA CONDITION, *Nasal-Fricative) and faithfulness constraints. The present study confirms previous sonority-based findings, supplies further evidence for universal sonority mechanisms from word-medial clusters, and points to the coexistence of child-specific and abstract adult-based phonological strategies in the child's system.

Cantonese and Japanese listeners’ processing of Russian onset and coda stops

The study investigated influences of native phonological and phonetic knowledge on Cantonese and Japanese listeners’ processing of non-native stop consonants. Phonologically, Cantonese Chinese has a three-way place contrast in stops in onset and coda positions; Japanese has a similar contrast, however, only in onset position. Phonetically, Cantonese coda stops are acoustically unreleased; Japanese stops followed by devoiced vowels are acoustically similar to released coda stops in other languages, such as Russian. Two groups of listeners, native speakers of Hong-Kong Cantonese and Japanese, were presented with sequences of Russian voiceless stops (VC1♯C2V, where C1/C2=/p/, /t/, or /k/). Two tasks were employed: (i) identification of onset or coda stops and (ii) discrimination of sequences that differed in either onset or coda consonant. Both groups performed equally well in the identification and discrimination of onset stops. However, Japanese listeners performed significantly better than Cantonese listeners in the identification and discrimination of coda stops. The findings suggest that in non-native listening, the low-level native phonetic knowledge—the acoustic realization of stop place contrasts—can override the higher-level phonological knowledge—syllable structure constraints on the distribution of place features. [Work supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.]

Use of complex phonological patterns in speech processing: evidence from Korean

Korean has a very complex phonology, with many interacting alternations. In a coronal-/i/ sequence, depending on the type of phonological boundary present, alternations such as palatalization, nasal insertion, nasal assimilation, coda neutralization, and intervocalic voicing can apply. This paper investigates how the phonological patterns of Korean affect processing of morphemes and words. Past research on languages such as English, German, Dutch, and Finnish has shown that listeners exploit syllable structure constraints in processing speech and segmenting it into words. The current study shows that in parsing speech, listeners also use much more complex patterns that relate the surface phonological string to various boundaries.

Introduction

Introduction Heather Goad and Yvan Rose 1. Introduction A significant portion of research conducted on the acquisition of phonology has traditionally focussed on segmental development, on the acquisition of contrasts, and on processes commonly affecting target sounds. While early generative research was primarily concerned with first language (L1) learners (Smith 1973; Ingram 1974), an important body of work was devoted to second language (L2) learners (Eckman 1977; Flege 1980) and to individuals exhibiting delayed or disordered phonological development as well (e.g., Grunwell 1975; Ingram 1976). In the 1970s and early 1980s, the segmental focus of work in acquisition was largely due to influence from theoretical research in generative phonology at the time, which accorded no formal status to the syllable or to hierachical representations more generally (Chomsky and Halle 1968). With the onset of nonlinear phonology (Goldsmith 1976; Kahn 1976) and subsequent development of highly articulated models of feature organization (Sagey 1986), the acquisition research on segment structure shifted to investigating the ways that feature organization could predict paths in the emergence of contrasts (Rice 1996; Brown and Matthews 1997) and appropriately constrain the rule components of developing grammars (Hancin-Bhatt 1994; Levelt 1994; Dinnsen 1998). The new focus on highly structured representations in theoretical phonology led to the development of nonlinear approaches to prosodic representation (Selkirk 1980; Clements and Keyser 1983). With this, some attention was turned to the acquisition of syllable structure, stress, and prosodic constraints on word shape in [End Page 139] both first (Spencer 1986; Fikkert 1994) and second language acquisition (Broselow 1984; Archibald 1993). Researchers also began to systematically investigate the role that prosodic factors play in segmental acquisition (e.g., Macken 1992). While nonlinear phonology standardly assumes that both segments and prosodic units are highly articulated, they constitute independent modules of the grammar. These modules can, of course, interact, but the architecture of the model predicts their behaviour to be largely autonomous. In the more recently developed Optimality Theory (OT; Prince and Smolensky 1993), the opposite view is taken as a starting point. In OT, where the principal source of explanation is a set of universal, rankable constraints, a single constraint can contain both segmental and prosodic information, and constraints which express segmental generalizations can be inter-ranked with those that express prosodic generalizations. In short, segmental-prosodic interaction is expected to be the norm. The interactive approach that defines OT is supported by work on positional effects in end-state grammars, namely, that the realization of segmental contrasts is often dependent on position in the string: a greater range of contrasts is observed in those positions that are strong, while loss or lack of contrast is observed in contexts that are weak. Strong-weak asymmetries are conventionally tied to structural considerations, that is, to prosodic licensing (Itô 1986; Goldsmith 1990; Harris 1997; in OT, see, e.g., Zoll 1998). Recently, however, other sources of explanation have been sought; strong-weak asymmetries have been attributed to the relative strength of perceptual cues (e.g., Steriade 1999; Côté 2000) or to psycholinguistic considerations (e.g., Beckman 1997). Regardless of the source of explanation for position-sensitive effects, an appeal to markedness enters into most accounts of the asymmetries observed. Specifically, faithfulness to segmental contrast is less likely to be respected in weak positions where markedness considerations take priority. Turning to acquisition, there is widespread recognition that in first language development, children's early productions are unmarked (Jakobson 1968; Demuth 1995; Gnanadesikan in press). In second language acquisition, where most research has focussed on the acquisition of aspects of grammar where the L1 is a subset of the L2, markedness has been shown to play an important role in shaping interlanguage (IL) outputs as well (Eckman 1977; Broselow, Chen, and Wang 1998). These two factors, the focus on position-sensitive effects and on the role of markedness in shaping grammars, serve to contextualize the theme of the current issue: segmental-prosodic interaction in phonological acquisition. Our goal has been to include articles that reflect different points of view on the formalization of this interaction. While some contributions discuss the effects of prosodic factors on learners' development, others appeal to alternative sources of explanation for...