Vowel Hiatus Research Articles

Hiatus resolution and linguistic diversity in Australian English.

Vowel hiatus is typically resolved in Australian English through complementary strategies of liaison (j-gliding/w-gliding/linking-r) and glottalisation. Previous work suggests a change in progress towards increased use of glottalisation as an optimal hiatus-breaker, which creates syntagmatic contrast between adjacent vowels, particularly when the right-edge vowel is strong (i.e.at the foot boundary). Liaison continues to be used when right-edge vowels are weak, but glottalisation as a hiatus resolution strategy in general appears to be increasing and may be more common in speakers from non-English speaking backgrounds raising the question of whether exposure to linguistic diversity could be driving the change. We examine hiatus resolution in speakers from neighbourhoods that vary according to levels of language diversity. We elicited gliding and linking-r hiatus contexts to determine how prosodic strength of flanking vowels and speakers' exposure to linguistic diversity affect hiatus resolution. Results confirm that glottalisation occurs most frequently with strong right-edge vowels, and gliding/linking-r are more likely with weak right-edge vowels. However, strategies differ between gliding and linking-r contexts, suggesting differing implementation mechanisms. In addition, speakers from ethnolinguistically diverse areas produce increased glottalisation in all contexts supporting the idea that change to the hiatus resolution system may be driven by language contact.

Influence of Morphophonological Processes on the Verbal Structure of the Mambwe Language

Mambwe language is said to be from the ancestor language, the Fipa in Southern Tanzania. Guthrie (1948) classifies the Mambwe language as M15. This article aims to contribute to describing the verbal structure of Mambwe focusing on the influence of morphophonological processes. Using insights from comparative Bantu morphophonology, descriptive linguistics, elicitation, and direct observation data, the article outlines the prominent morphophonological processes which have an influence on the verbal structure of the language, which include; vowel lengthening, gliding, glide harmony, vowel hiatus, vowel and consonant harmony, vowel deletion, vowel maintenance, assimilation, internal change or zero modification and coalescence. The paper shows that the verbal structure in the prefix, subject, and object marker, and the root is influenced by either the palatal glide [y] or the bilabial glide [w] in the plural, glide maintenance, or glide interchange to harmonise the verbs. It is envisaged such a descriptive analysis will make it easier for curriculum developers to understand the verbal structure of the language and enable them to develop grammar as well as curriculum material.

Vowel hiatus resolution strategies in the Lungu, Mambwe and Namwanga languages: a micro-variation analysis

Guthrie classifies Lungu as M14, Mambwe as M15 and Namwanga as M22. Lungu, Mambwe and Namwanga (LuMaNa) have been characterised as emanating from a language called Fipa. The purpose of this article is to account for similarities and microvariations in the LuMaNa languages by examining the strategies evident in the manner that vowel hiatus is resolved. Using micro-variation linguistic theory, particularly in Bantu languages, and insights from studies on hiatus resolution in Bantu languages, the article identifies and presents the various morphophonological processes used in the three languages to resolve the VV [vowel, vowel] sequences. The article concludes that vowel elision and glide formation are the preferred hiatus resolution strategies, and that these strategies are largely applied similarly in the LuMaNa languages. In particular, Lungu and Mambwe are so similar that they might as well be regarded as the same language. Namwanga shows minor variations in some aspects of vowel hiatus resolution from the other two languages, but not wide enough to be considered mutually unintelligible.

Vowel hiatus resolution in Koine Greek

Abstract The spellings -ις, -ιν instead of -ιος, -ιον are a characteristic feature of Koine Greek. The circumstances in which they arose have constituted a vexed question. Their presence in Egyptian Greek documentary papyri from III BC to VIII AD stands out. Nowadays it is possible, thanks to new digital tools, to access all the regularized spellings in modern editions. Analysis and typological comparison allow us to rethink the hypotheses put forward in previous studies. In particular, it is useful not to study these spellings independently of the spellings -oῦ, -ῶ(ι) instead of -ίου, -ίω(ι). The graphic omission of ⟨o⟩ in some forms and of ⟨ι⟩ in others reflects different results of a vowel hiatus resolution process in sequences of increasing sonority [i.V(C)]. This process is gradient and different allophones could be represented by the same spelling. Of the possible factors for the omission of ⟨o⟩ or ⟨ι⟩, the word accent distribution is the basic cause determining the final form. However, as usually happens in processes of vowel hiatus resolution in other languages, other internal or external factors may also have influenced the results. Due to this gradience in the process and the distinction of glides of different types, the effect of V1 (converted into a glide) on the previous consonant could be different from what has been documented in [Cj] groups in other stages of Greek.

Vowel Hiatus in Lubukusu Revisited: A Positional Faithfulness Reanalysis

Previous phonological studies have indicated that a sequence of dissimilar hetero-syllabic/morphemic vowels are dispreferred across languages because it creates vowel hiatus. As a result, it may engender multiple repair mechanisms. However, the repair mechanisms do not apply liberally; they may be resisted in certain positions when segmental deletion or featural change fail to take place. Segments in phonetically and psycholinguistically privileged positions invariably resist such repair strategies that may be quite regular in the grammar of the language. In this study, a reanalysis of data from Lubukusu language (Bantu, Kenya) shows that a Positional Faithfulness (PF) account within an Optimality Theory (OT) framework may be felicitous in explaining both the initiation and resistance to the said repair processes. The findings indicate that the positional faithfulness of the vowel in question may determine whether it is deleted or which features may be changed based on a single constraint hierarchy in an optimal grammar of the language. Preservation of lexical contrast in positions that are critical in language processing is accounted for through positional sensitive constraint domination.

Fifty years of change to prevocalic definite article allomorphy in Australian English

The English definite article has two major allomorphs: prevocalic /ðiː/ and preconsonantal /ðə/. Recent studies have shown changes to definite article allomorphy in some English varieties. Younger speakers, particularly from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, often use /ðə/ prevocalically rather than /ðiː/. The prevocalic definite article (PVDA) /ðiː/ facilitates management of vowel hiatus because it supports the emergence of [j] in preventing vowel adjacency (e.g. the ash [ðiːjœʃ]). An alternative strategy for separating adjacent vowels is glottalisation or glottal stop ([ðiːʔœʃ]). Few studies have explored the relationship between the vowel in the PVDA and hiatus management during the process of change. We report a diachronic analysis of Australian English (AusE) PVDA and associated hiatus management across a 50-year period (∼1960s to ∼2010s) and a synchronic analysis of present-day speakers from mainstream (MS) and non-mainstream (non-MS) (diverse) backgrounds using two read-sentence contexts. The aim is to provide insight into the process of change and factors that may influence its progression. Speech data from adolescents recorded in 1959/1960 were compared with recordings from Mainstream AusE-speaking (MS) young people recorded in the 2010s. Results showed significantly greater incidence of schwa in the PVDA and hiatus-breaking glottalisation in the modern data, particularly amongst females. The synchronic analysis comparing present-day MS and non-MS speakers showed increased use of glottalisation in females and non-MS speakers. Additionally, acoustic analysis showed more schwa-like productions in the PVDA by non-MS speakers. Of key importance in both analyses is that glottalisation was more prevalent than schwa, possibly indicating glottalisation triggered the change.

Optimality Theoretical Approach in Resolving Vocalic Hiatus in Tiv Language

This paper investigates vocalic hiatus resolution strategies in Tiv language. Hiatus is a phonological phenomenon whereby two vowel sounds occur in adjacent syllables with no intervening consonant. It is a dispreferred configuration in many languages but when it inevitably occurs, it is resolved through some of these strategies: epenthesis, vowel assimilation, vowel elision, secondary articulation, vowel coalescence, glide formation and diphthongization. Though there are other hiatus resolution strategies in Tiv, for want of time and space, this paper examines the most common ones: vowel assimilation and vowel elision, as hiatus resolution/repair strategies in Tiv, through the lenses of the Optimality Theory. It adopts a descriptive and analytical research design. The intuitive phonological ability of the researcher and oral interview through purposive sampling were used for eliciting data. Data were presented and analysed in tables. The study establishes the occurrence of vowel hiatus in Tiv. It demonstrates that vocalic hiatus is dispreferred in Tiv as it is in many other languages of the world. The study has shown that Tiv utilises inter-alia vowel assimilation and vowel elision to resolve vowel hiatus. The resolution is meant to ease articulation of Tiv words. Well-formedness of vowel configurations in Tiv was found to be constraint based in which case optimality of a candidate that undergoes repairs through either vowel assimilation or elision is determined by the ranking of the universal constraints that interact in the selection of candidates.

Phonological and Morphological Influences on Vowel Hiatus Resolution in Rutooro

When the morphology of a language creates instances of successive vowels, these cases of vowel hiatus are often resolved or repaired. This paper presents a wide variety of instances where vowel hiatus is created within verbs in Rutooro, a Ugandan Bantu language. It is shown that five different strategies are employed to resolve vowel hiatus: deletion, gliding, diphthongisation, epenthesis, and lexical allomorphy. While some of these processes are largely phonological, there are a number of morphological factors which also play a role in determining which of the various strategies are employed. All of these are explored and discussed.

Resolving hiatus in Tonga

The study investigates hiatus contexts and hiatus resolution strategies in Zimbabwean Tonga. Data for this research were collected through intuition because one of the researchers is a native speaker of Tonga. The data were verified by other native speakers of Tonga. The analysis is couched within generative CV Phonology model (Clements & Keyser, 1983). The study establishes that Tonga does not allow vowel hiatus and when it occurs it is resolved by vowel deletion, secondary articulation, glide formation, glide epenthesis and vowel coalescence.These strategies do not operate haphazardly but they are motivated by different morphosyntactic and phonological environments. The study also found out that compensatory lengthening accompanies each strategy in well-defined morphosyntactic and phonological contexts. Morphosyntactically, it accompanies other hiatus resolution strategies in the verbal domain and infinitive verbs. Phonologically, compensatory lengthening accompanies other strategies when V1 is either /u/ or/i/. The major contribution of this research is typological because it adds to the Bantu literature as to how Tonga language resolves hiatus. Tonga is unique in the sense that it uses accompanying compensatory lengthening. Compensatory lengthening in Tonga occurs only in the verbal domain when V1 is either /u/or/i/.

Vowel Hiatus Resolution Processes as Delimiters of Prosodic Domains in Kisa

In a language, certain phenomena are sensitive to specific prosodic domains. In a model of morphology syntax phonology interaction in which morphological and syntactic structure projects phonological domains belonging to a set hierarchy, each phonological process refers to a specific level of that hierarchy. Therefore, describing a phonological process generally requires specifying the domain within which it applies. In Kisa, a Bantu language spoken in Western Kenya, a sequence of two vowels with different qualities is unacceptable. The ill-formed sequence is repaired through at least one of the vowel processes: gliding, coalescence, raising, assimilation and deletion. These vowel processes involve vowels occurring at different morphological and syntactic boundaries and apply within different prosodic domains in Kisa. Using a qualitative descriptive design and basing on data generated by the author as a native speaker of Kisa, this study identifies and describes the boundaries at which and the prosodic domains in which the vowel processes stated above apply. The findings show that unacceptable vowel sequences occur both at morphological and syntactic boundaries in Kisa. The strategies used to repair the unwanted vowel sequences at each boundary differ depending on the combining vowels. Further, the findings of the study show that the vowel processes attested in the language apply in different domains.

An Optimality Analysis of Hiatus Resolution Strategies in Olusuba

An Optimality Analysis of Hiatus Resolution Strategies in Olusuba Walter Ochieng Sande, Dr. Emily Ayieta Ondondo, Prof. Francis Owino Rew Abstract Vowel hiatus is a prohibited configuration of vowels in many languages of the world. This study is established to examine strategies used to resolve vowel hiatus in Olusuba, a Bantu language spoken in parts of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, within the framework of Optimality Theory (OT). The work describes two vowel processes used as hiatus resolution strategies in Olusuba. Well-formedness of data obtained in this study are analysed using OT. The theory explains how constraints interact to optimise the output in this language. Using descriptive analytic research design and following the available data obtained from native speakers of Olusuba, this paper provides two vowel processes used as strategies in resolving a sequence of dissimilar vowels in the language under study. Full Text: PDF DOI: 10.15640/ijlc.v7n1a4

English Vowel Hiatus and Consonant Epenthesis

Vowel hiatus arises when two vowels are locally adjacent but heterosyllabified within words or across word boundaries. In English, as well-described, vowel clash is resolved by two strategies; glide insertion and glottal stop insertion. In fact, these sounds are not underlyingly present but added for ease of articulation in casual or fast speech. Following sonority-driven prominence scale in V1-V2 sequences, the least marked glides are the most favored to fix vowel hiatus. Which glide is adopted is closely related to the feature of the first vowel; for a palatal /j/-glide, V1 is a high front vowel, for a labio-velar /w/-glide, a high back vowel and for a central liquid /r/-glide, also called the intrusive r, a non-high vowel, i.e. homorganic. Furthermore, provided that V2 gets stressed, a laryngeal plosive also fills an empty onset even though it is the most marked at the point of vowel hiatus. These hiatus resolution strategies are well-couched into Optimality Theory(OT) (Prince and Smolensky, 1993/2004; McCarthy and Prince, 1995) where Dep[F] type constraints ranked over the sonority-driven markedness constraints determine the glide j/w-epenthesis the best and the intrusive r the second-best if the former is banned. Glottal stop addition is also employed as a rescue strategy to remove vowel clash when glides are all blocked, i.e. before V2 bearing stress.

Hokkaido Pumpkins and Huawei Phones: Anti-hiatus Tendencies in Slovene

In Slovene, sound shapes of Japanese and Chinese words undergoing the process of assimilation may be quite different from their origins, which in the end should not come as a surprise as it is so in many other languages. However, the fact that there are many cases with two slightly different Slovene pronunciations of the same Japanese or Chinese word, of which one is closer to the original sound shape than the other, calls for a more comprehensive investigation on the factors that contributed to such a result. This research pays attention to vowel sequences in Japanese and Chinese, and how they appear in Slovene as the so called visiting lexica. Though the two languages carry out vowel sequences in different ways, similarities can be found in the way Slovene detects and resolves their vowel hiatuses. Authors stress the importance of metrical aspects of the original sound shapes, which Latin script includes inconsistently or does not express at all. Phonological approach to vowel sequences solution to vowel hiatus and offers systematic guidelines on pronunciation of the Latin script. Besides, it may further bring some new insights into possible solution on conjugation and declination forms of Japanese and Chinese loanwords in Slovene.

HIATUS RESOLUTION IN XITSONGA

Vowel hiatus is dispreferred in many languages of the world. Xitsonga, an understudied cross-border southern Bantu language spoken in South Africa, Mozambique, Swaziland and Zimbabwe, employs a set of four hiatus resolution strategies: glide formation, secondary articulation, elision and coalescence. Glide formation is the primary repair strategy as it shows a least violation of faithfulness. In glide formation, /i/ and /u/ correspond to [j] and [w], respectively. It is blocked when V 1 is preceded by a consonant as this would incur a fatal violation of *Complex. When glide formation is blocked, secondary articulation is the next preferred option. One of the interesting features of Xitsonga is that it allows secondary articulation involving mid-vowels /o e/. OCP is often the trigger for elision, the least preferred strategy. Vowel coalescence can take two forms in Xitsonga: /a + i/ → [e] and /a + u/ → [o], both of which incur a non-fatal violation of Uniformity. When coalescence is blocked due to an impermissible sequence of /a/ and another vowel (excluding /i/ and /u/), the /a/ is elided. We argue that a single constraint hierarchy is responsible for these seemingly disjointed repair strategies. The overall significance of this paper lies in the fact that it is the first consolidated description and formal analysis of vowel hiatus resolution in Xitsonga.

Epenthesis and Devocalization in the Djelfa Dialect of Algerian Arabic: An OT Account

The paper provides a straightforward analysis of some phonological processes attested in the Djelfa dialect, viz., epenthesis, and devocalization. The Djelfa dialect is one of the varieties of Algerian Arabic that has never been investigated before. Thus, this paper aims at delving into some of its phonological intricacies. The paper is couched within Optimality Theory framework (OT) and reveals the interaction underlying the markedness and faithfulness constraints to yield the well-formed syllable structures attested in the dialect. It mainly accounts for /i/ epenthesis to repair the undesired word-final C(C)VVCC and C(C)VCCC syllable structures, which is primarily ascribed to the interplay between *ϛϛ and *3μ. Vowel hiatus, however, is resolved by glide epenthesis unless the first member of the hiatus is [-high] and accordingly, the hegemony of CONTIGUITY-IO ([-high]V) renders devocalization imperative.

Glide Insertion And Dialectal Variation In Kurdish

One of the strategies used as a hiatus resolution is glide insertion. Previous Kurdish phonological works involve only a description of glide insertion in one dialect neglecting the segmental context. This study provides an analysis of glide insertion in word-medial vowel clusters in Kurdish and it is the first attempt to analyse the effects of dialect and segmental context. The speech material includes a set of words consisting of a stem plus a suffix with different vowel sequences at their boundaries. It is produced by four native speakers from four Kurdish speaking areas. The data analysis involves word transcription, their segmentation and the comparison of vowel sequences within and across the subdialects. The results indicate that glide insertion is not the only strategy used as word medial hiatus resolution, but it depends on the segmental context and dialect. Generally, the vowel hiatus is resolved by /j/ insertion. Vowel deletion is also used obligatorily in some segmental contexts when the second vowel in a sequence is /i/ and also when there are identical vowels in a sequences. Dialectal variations are observed in some vowel sequences in which /j/ insertion and vowel deletion both are used and when the first vowels in the sequence are the high back vowels in that /j/ and /w/ insertions are used. The findings suggests that /j/ insertion is the default strategy to resolve word-medial vowel clusters in Kurdish, the insertion of /w/ or vowel deletion are other strategies which are limited to some dialects and vowel sequences.

Review of Kadenge & Simango's 'Comparing vowel hiatus resolution in ciNsenga and chiShona: An Optimality Theory analysis'

1. Summary The article provides a formal comparative analysis of repair strategies used to resolve vowel hiatus in ciNsenga and chiShona within the Optimality Theory framework and shows that while vowel hiatus resolution is categorical in chiShona, it is domain-specific in ciNsenga. The analysis shows that vocalic hiatus is generally dispreferred and the two languages use similar repair strategies in most cases to resolve it. These include glide formation, secondary articulation (labialisation) and deletion. Where the repair strategies differ the variation is attributed to the fact that hiatus resolution is sensitive to phonology and morphosyntax, hiatus resolution strategies applying differently depending on the phonological and morphosyntactic context. In fact ciNsenga permits vowel hiatus in these cases while Shona resolves it through spreading (glide epenthesis). After the introduction, the article begins by providing some background about the two languages, including the regions where they are spoken, and their morphosyntactic structures particularly regarding verbs and nouns. This is followed by a brief sketch of the Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 2004, among others), thereby laying the foundation for the analysis that follows. The first of the two main parts of the article focuses chiefly on similarities in repair strategies used in resolving vowel hiatus in ciNsenga and chiShona. There are three important subsections that focus on glide formation, secondary articulation (labialisation) and vowel elision. In each subsection, relevant constraints are discussed and there are tableaux illustrating the points considered. A wide variety of data from both chiShona and ciNsenga is presented, with supporting data from other languages such as Shimakonde, Ivie and Luganda. The second main part deals with vowel hiatus across the prosodic stem boundary where the two languages exhibit contrasting behaviour. While ciNsenga tolerates vowel hiatus across the prosodic stem boundary chiShona does not. For both ciNsenga and chiShona the three vowel hiatus resolution strategies (glide formation, secondary articulation and vowel elision) that apply to examples in the preceding section are blocked. ChiShona, which does not tolerate vowel hiatus, resolves the problem through glide epenthesis. To account for the tolerance of vowel hiatus in ciNsenga and glide epenthesis in

Comparing vowel hiatus resolution in ciNsenga and chiShona: An Optimality Theory analysis: A reply to Galen Sibanda

In our article (Kadenge and Simango 2014), we set out to present an Optimality Theory (henceforth OT) analysis of intralinguistic and interlinguistic variation of vowel hiatus resolution in ciNsenga and chiShona. We note the variation between ciNsenga and chiShona with respect to how vowel hiatus is resolved in the verbal domain – specifically when the verb stem is V-initial: ciNsenga tolerates hiatus in those contexts whereas chiShona repairs the hiatus through the insertion of a glide (spreading). We account for these facts by proposing that ALIGN (ROOTVERB, L,σ,L) outranks both ONSET and ALIGNL-PSTEM in ciNsenga whereas in chiShona ONSET and ALIGNL-PSTEM outrank ALIGN (ROOTVERB, L,σ,L). We argue that it is the difference in the ranking of these constraints that gives rise to this interlinguistic variation.

Selectional restrictions as phonotactics over sublexicons

Affixation and allomorphy are often phonologically predictable: thus, the English indefinite “a” appears before consonants, and “an” before vowels. We propose a theory of phonological selection that separates rules of morpheme realization from phonological knowledge about the bases and the derived words. This phonological knowledge is encoded in miniature phonotactic grammars, which are learned over sublexicons defined by morphological generalizations. Each sublexical phonotactic grammar determines the likelihood that a new word will follow the associated rule. We examine a complex case of suppletive allomorphy in Russian, whose diminutive suffixes define sublexicons differing in constraints on final consonant place and manner, presence and location of consonant clusters, vowel hiatus, and stress. In elicitation, Russians choose allomorphs for words without diminutives based on how these words and the derived diminutives fare in the sublexical phonotactic grammars. In a nonce word study, Russians also chose allomorphs based on sublexical phonotactic well-formedness, even when the phonotactic violations were non-local to the affix itself. These patterns are missed by alternative approaches such as emergence of the unmarked, insertion rules that refer directly to phonological information, and the Minimal Generalization Learner.

Prosodic stems in Zezuru Shona

In the traditional Prosodic Hierarchy, the Prosodic Word is the lowest level of the hierarchy defined in terms of the interface between morphosyntactic and prosodic constituents. Recent work by Itô and Mester reaffirms this, defining Prosodic Word as matching the syntactic category X (N, V, and offering no sub-lexical constituents. In this article, we present empirical arguments in favour of the Prosodic Stem as a level of the Prosodic Hierarchy, immediately dominated by Prosodic Word. Minimality effects, tone and vowel hiatus resolution processes in Zezuru demonstrate that Prosodic Stem and Prosodic Word levels play distinct roles; they are domains for different phonological processes. Thus, we argue that more constituents of the Prosodic Hierarchy are needed, where the Prosodic Stem domain is distinct from the Prosodic Word.