New Perspectives on Romance Linguistics VolUME II: Phonetics, Phonology and Dialectology
AMSTERDAM STUDIES IN THE THEORY AND HISTORY OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE General Editor E.F.K. KOERNER (Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Typologie und Universalienforschung, Berlin) Series IV – CURRENT ISSUES IN LINGUISTIC THEORY Advisory Editorial Board Lyle Campbell (Salt Lake City); Sheila Embleton (Toronto) Brian D. Joseph (Columbus, Ohio); John E. Joseph (Edinburgh) Manfred Krifka (Berlin); E. Wyn Roberts (Vancouver, B.C.) Joseph C. Salmons (Madison, Wis.); Hans-Jürgen Sasse (Köln)
Volume 276
Jean-Pierre Y. Montreuil (ed.) New Perspectives on Romance Linguistics Volume II: Phonetics, Phonology and Dialectology Selected papers from the 35th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Austin, Texas, February 2005
New Perspectives on Romance Linguistics VolUME II: Phonetics, Phonology and Dialectology Selected papers from the 35th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Austin, Texas, February 2005
Edited by
Jean-Pierre Y. Montreuil University of Texas, Austin
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
4-
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data New perspectives on romance linguistics. Vol.II: Phonetics, Phonology and Dialectology. Selected papers from the 35th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Austin, Texas, February 2005 / edited by Jean-Pierre Y. Montreuil. p. cm. -- (Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science. Series IV, Current issues in linguistic theory, ISSN 0304-0763 ; v. 276) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Romance languages--Congresses PC11 .L53 2006 440--dc22 2006045892 ISBN 90 272 4790 0 (Hb; alk. paper) © 2006 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. • P.O.Box 36224 • 1020 ME Amsterdam • The Netherlands John Benjamins North America • P.O.Box 27519 • Philadelphia PA 19118-0519 • USA
CONTENTS
An Acoustic Basis for Palatal Geminate Behavior in Spanish Gary K. Baker
1
Mapping the Patterns of Maintenance versus Merger in Bilingual Phonology: The Preservation of [a] vs. [A] in Frenchville French Barbara E. Bullock, Amanda Dalola, Chip Gerfen
15
New Tendencies in Geographical Dialectology: The Catalan Corpus Oral Dialectal (COD) Esteve Clua & Maria-Rosa Lloret
31
Output-to-output Correspondence and the Emergence of the Unmarked in Spanish Plural Formation Sonia Colina
49
Mapping French Pronunciation: The PFC Project Jacques Durand
65
Phonological Variability in the Laboratory: Word-naming in Bidialectal Spanish Speakers Chip Gerfen & Wendy Rizzo
83
Constraint Re-ranking in Three Grammars: Spirantization and Coda Devoicing in Peninsular Spanish Carolina González
97
Mid Vowels and Schwa in Eastern Catalan: Five non-Barcelona Dialects Dylan Herrick
113
The Nominal Stress System of Romanian (re)revisited Cristian Iscrulescu
127
Proto-Romance Stress Shift Revisited Haike Jacobs
141
vi
CONTENTS
Final -m in Yucatan Spanish: A Rapid and Anonymous Survey Jim Michnowicz
155
Stressed Enclitics? Francisco Ordóñez & Lori Repetti
167
How To Do Things Without Junk: The Refunctionalization of a Pronominal Subsystem between Latin and Romance John Charles Smith
183
Subject Index
207
INTRODUCTION The 35th annual Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages took place on February 24–27, 2005 on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin. Over fifty papers were given and five keynote speakers were heard. The special parasession was entitled Current Approaches to Historical Linguistics and Dialectology. This volume includes a selection of papers from both sessions. These offerings relate to phonetics, phonology, morphophonology, dialectology and language variation. Phonetics. Gary Baker exploits the insights of Gordon’s (2002) model for measuring the intensity of rimes and shows that prepalatal vowels lengthen significantly enough to explain restrictions on stress assignment in proparoxytones and to justify recent phonological claims regarding the preservation of moraic structure. Dylan Herrick provides measurements on mid-vowels and schwa in Eastern Catalan and compares them to similar measurements in the Catalan of Barcelona. He shows that schwa-lowering and mid-vowel neutralization have not yet spread from Barcelona to the neighboring regions under investigation. Phonology. In three stress-related papers and one segmental study, formal treatments in Optimality Theory are revisited. Sonia Colina reexamines the input-related problems engendered by traditional analyses that posit final vowel-epenthesis in Spanish. She argues that a clearer picture emerges if it is recognized that nominal plurals stand in an output-to-output relation to singular forms. Cristian Iscrulescu proposes an alternative to the treatment of Romanian nominal stress offered by Chitoran (2002). Arguing for weight-insensitive feet and a Sympathy understanding of counter-bleeding opacity, he concludes that the nominal stress system demonstrates great regularity and requires few lexically-marked exceptions. Haike Jacobs revisits the perennially problematic issue of stress shift in some Latin proparoxytones, for which Bullock (2002) had proposed a double-prosody analysis. Obviating the need for such a mechanism, he opts for the introduction of a specific constraint that penalizes short vowels before -CL- clusters. Carolina González elicits cross-dialectal pronunciations of coda /b d g/ in nonce words and finds significant variation, notably between the Northern and Central dialects of peninsular Spanish. These observations serve as the
viii
INTRODUCTION
basis for an Optimality Theory analysis detailing the interaction of constraints through reranking and conjunction. Morphophonology. Francisco Ordoñez and Lori Repetti start with an observation on the oxymoronic character of “stressed enclitics”. They argue, on the basis of pre- vs. post-verbal asymmetries, that clitics and weak pronouns each associate with a different set of properties. The recognition of this distinction is crucial to a satisfactory account of their dialectal Italian data. In a comparative examination of Romance singular pronouns, John Charles Smith shows how some dative and accusative forms have been refunctionalized, providing a clear case of linguistic exaptation. He goes on to demonstrate, however, that throughout their evolution, these case distinctions have retained some functional value at a more abstract level and borrows from art history the notion of skeuomorphy to underline its relevance to language studies. Dialectology, sociolinguistics and language variation. Esteve Clua & Maria-Rosa Lloret outline a new methodology to establish accurate quantitative dialectometrics based on large oral corpora. Crucially, they argue that the measurement of linguistic distance must take input forms into account. Jacques Durand describes the research and methodology underlying the ambitious Phonologie du français contemporain (PFC) project. He explains how the data-gathering -of unprecedented proportions- and the controlled protocol will lead to reliable comparative statistics and to a new perspective on regional variation in the Francophone world. Complementing these cross-dialectal studies, Chip Gerfen and Wendy Rizzo study aspects of the speech of monolingual, bidialectal speakers. They focus on the manner in which six different processes determining coda realizations in Andalusian Spanish are affected by such factors as, among others, linguistic loyalty, word frequency and the presence of a single orthographic norm. Jim Michnowicz investigates the sociolinguistics of Mayan-influenced labialization of final nasals in Yucatán Spanish. While linguistic theory views this labialization as a marked phenomenon, Michnowicz’s findings suggest that final –m is increasing in use and gaining acceptance, as language attitudes are shifting. In a series of recent articles, Barbara Bullock and Chip Gerfen had scrutinized various aspects of attrition and preservation in the Pennsylvania dialect of Frenchville. Here, they examine, together with Amanda Dalola, the implications of the preservation of low vowels and demonstrate how
INTRODUCTION
ix
convergence is regulated not by phonetic properties alone but by phonological contrasts as well. Many scholars contributed to the success of LSRL-35 and numerous acknowledgements are in order. The editor is especially thankful to Dina Sherzer and the UT-France Institute, on whose initiative Prof. Jacques Durand could be invited as a special keynote speaker. The financial support of College of Liberal Arts and the Department of French and Italian is also much appreciated. In addition, the editor would like to express special thanks to Chiyo Nishida, Pascal Denis, Marta Ortega-Llebaria, Alex Teodorescu, Nathan True, Stephanie Lain, Jason Brazeal and Ezra Van Everbroeck for their editing help and their organizational work. Reviewers for this volume included David Birdsong, Carl Blyth, Barbara Bullock, Ioana Chitoran, Sonia Colina, Megan Crowhurst, Timothy Face, Randall Gess, José I. Hualde, Haike Jacobs, Dale Koike, John Lipski, Fernando Martínez-Gil, Scott Myers, Rafael Nuñez-Cedeño, Francisco Ordóñez, Pilar Prieto, Lori Repetti, Bernard Tranel, Enric Vallduví and Dieter Wanner. Jean-Pierre Montreuil
Austin, Texas, March 2006
AN ACOUSTIC BASIS FOR PALATAL GEMINATE BEHAVIOR IN SPANISH*
GARY K. BAKER University of Georgia
0. Introduction: palatal sonorants as structural geminates This paper investigates the phonetic underpinnings of aspects of the phonological behavior of the palatal sonorants /¯ ¥ ∆/ of Spanish.1 These segments have attracted considerable attention in the literature due to their rather exceptional distributional and prosodic effects both in Spanish phonology (Carreira 1988, Lipski 1989) and beyond (Giangola 1995, Wetzels 1997 for Brazilian Portuguese; Davis 1999 for Italian). Specifically, these segments do not occur in syllable-final position or in clusters. Moreover, they seem to function as ‘heavy onsets’. That is, the palatal sonorants, despite being limited to (crosslinguistically weightless) onset position in Spanish, appear to exert an influence on stress assignment. While Spanish stress normally may occur within a right-aligned three-mora ‘window’ (lícito “legal” ~ licíto “I bid” ~ licitó “(s)he bid”), Harris (1983, 1995) shows that a palatal onset in the ultimae of polysyllabic words precludes the possibility of antepenultimate stress: whereas sábana “bedsheet” and cálido “warm” are licit words in Spanish, *sábaña and *cálillo (and words of similar structure) are unattested, even impossible (Roca 1988:417). Given that heavy penults also block antepenultimate stress (i.e. *sábalna, *cábaura), a quantity-based effect is
* Thanks to the audience at LSRL XXXV for feedback and suggestions. All errors are, of course, solely my own. 1 I include the palatal fricative /∆/ here because the vast majority of Spanish dialects now practice yeísmo, whereby the palatal lateral loses its lateral element in favor of a ‘plain’ palatal fricative. The fricative thus represents the lateral in most modern dialects. Moreover, the fricative participates fully in the anomalous behavior ascribed to its palatal congeners, and indeed, results of this analysis fully support its inclusion. I hereafter represent the palatal cohort in question as /X ~ (Y ~ Z)/ to reflect both lleista and yeista dialects.
2
GARY K. BAKER
suggested whereby heavy penults and ‘palatal ultimae’ simply shoulder antepenultimate syllables outside the stress window of Spanish. I follow Giangola (1995) and Davis (1999) in assuming a moraic geminate structure (after Hayes 1989) for the palatals to explain the effects: (1) Moraic models of (a) singleton /t/ (It. fato “fate”), (b) geminate /t:/ (It. fatto “fact”), and (c) palatal /¥/ (Sp. fallo “error”)
Thus, geminate /t:/ and palatal /¥/ of (1b,c) are moraic segments, contributing a unit of weight to preceding syllables while serving as their syllables’ onsets. This structure neatly explains the absence of geminates and palatals syllablefinally and in clusters, as these positions block the structure of (1b,c). Moreover, such structure explains the window-narrowing effect in stress assignment: by rendering preceding syllables heavy (i.e. bimoraic), the palatals effectively force antepenults out of the three-mora window of Spanish.2 Yet what is the phonetic basis for such phonological structure? What do speakers hear that causes them to reject *sábaña? It is not apparently a question of duration: while traditional geminates typically show considerable durational differences with their singleton counterparts (roughly double), Spanish data in Lavoie (2000) shows /¯ ¥/ to be only some 33% longer than their alveolar congeners /n l/, respectively, in pre-stress position. Spanish /r/, by contrast, has well over twice the duration of flap /R/ in Lavoie’s data. Thus, while the model in (1c) effectively explains the stress phenomenon in phonological terms, it is unclear how such structure is represented (and transmitted) phonetically.3 To shed light on this issue, the present study shifts 2
Both the Spanish trill /r/ and affricate /tS/ are likewise barred from clusters and syllable-final position and, notably, also exert the window-narrowing effect in Spanish. I view the Spanish trill as a true geminate (i.e. an underlyingly moraic segment). This prosodic effect is therefore predictable. The affricate I leave to future research. As a contour segment, its syllable dynamics are not comparable to those of the sonorants. Moreover, its membership in the palatal class may well be in doubt; Recasens (1990) classifies the segment as a laminopostalveolar and does not ascribe to it any consistent or salient degree of dorsum raising that is key to the present analysis. 3 Indeed, the acoustic correlates of moraicity and syllable weight remain elusive (Perlmutter 1995, Broselow et al. 1997, Gordon 2002).
ACOUSTICS OF PALATAL BEHAVIOR IN SPANISH
3
attention to prepalatal vowels. The articulatory demands of /¯ ¥/ may well affect these vowels; lengthened prepalatal vowels, for example, could account for the moraic structure of (1c). I thus analyze the acoustic makeup of vowels in open, closed, and pre-palatal positions with an eye toward identifying some common ‘coda effect’ in support of this proposed structure. The paper thus contributes to our understanding of the palatal phenomena in question as well as, more generally, the phonetic reality of syllable weight in Spanish. The paper is organized as follows. Section 1 describes the relevant articulatory and acoustic properties of the palatal sonorants. Section 2 provides a brief discussion of the findings of previous work on the phonetics of syllable weight that inform the study. Section 3 describes the study methodology, while 4 presents the tests and results. Finally, Section 5 discusses the results and provides conclusions. 1. The articulatory and acoustic characteristics of the palatal sonorants The palatal sonorants, and palatal articulations in general, involve a raising and fronting of the tongue body that gives rise to a large degree of linguopalatal contact (Recasens 1990, Keating 1991, Keating & Lahiri 1993, Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996). This gesture—similar to that for /i/ but both higher and more fronted (Keating 1991)—has important articulatory and acoustic repercussions. Articulatorily, the salient lingual gestures in palatals impose large anticipatory effects on vowels (Recasens 1999a:94-5). We may therefore well expect to find acoustic marking (via anticipatory coarticulation) on the vowels preceding the palatal sonorants (e.g. /a/ in 1c). Acoustically, the high, fronted tongue body gesture of palatals generates prominent F2 (second formant) excursions (see Recasens 1990, 1991; Quilis 1999; Flemming 2002). A function of lingual frontness/backness, F2 values are strongly impacted by the raised, fronted tongue body of /¯ ¥ ∆/. Indeed, Quilis (1981, 1999) identifies F2 transitions as the principal means of differentiating /¯~n/ and /¥~l/. Given the high degree of anticipatory coarticulation ascribed to palatals, one may fully expect their high F2 component to be marked upon preceding syllables; salient F2 excursions could thus serve as a diagnostic for anticipatory coarticulation. Specifically, high, rising F2 profiles should emerge in the acoustic signal in the formant makeup of prepalatal vowels. 2. The acoustic correlates of syllabic weight: duration and intensity Recent studies of syllable weight and the phonetic instantiation of moraic structure have focused on duration (Broselow et al. 1997; Hubbard 1995) and intensity (Gordon 2002). Of the two, duration has been posited more often as the acoustic correlate of syllable weight, in line with the basic contrast in many
4
GARY K. BAKER
languages between bimoraic long vowels (as universally heavy nuclei) and monomoraic short ones (universally light). Broselow et al. (1997) provide striking evidence that moraic structure impacts vowel duration. They look at three languages with contrasting heavy syllable structure and measure vowel lengths to see to what extent variant moraic structure affects timing patterns in vowels. Vowels that share moraic units with codas are shorter than ‘discrete’ vowels in Malayalam, for instance, while Hindi vowels—never morasharing—have consistent duration across contexts. Moreover, in Levantine Arabic, in which a coda consonant is mora-sharing only when preceded by an already bimoraic long vowel, the expected results are observed: VV duration was greater than in the vowels of VVC (with mora-sharing), itself greater than the single-mora vowels of VC and V. Hubbard (1995) also investigates the correlation of moraic structure with phonetic timing. Analyzing various Bantu languages, she shows that, on the whole, mora count in a word is systematically reflected in durational terms. Interestingly, Hubbard’s study also investigates compensatory lengthening phenomena in Luganda, where vowels preceding a /nasal+consonant/ sequence typically lengthen. She attributes this to the drive to retain the mora of the nasal, which is given up when that nasal becomes part of a prenasalized stop onset. This is illustrated in (2): (2) Luganda compensatory lengthening (adapted from Hubbard 1995)
In essence, the vowel lengthens to preserve the mora relinquished by the nasal when it becomes part of the (nonmoraic, non-weight-bearing) onset. In the same vein, if /¯ ¥ ∆/ in Spanish are at once moraic and yet phonologically associated with the following onset, we might expect to see similar compensatory lengthening of the preceding vowel, as in Luganda. This is modeled in (3) (NB: /¯/ is transcribed /nj/ for expositional clarity):
ACOUSTICS OF PALATAL BEHAVIOR IN SPANISH
5
(3) Posited compensatory lengthening of prepalatal vowel: seña “sign”
Given the findings above, I measure vowel durations in open (light), closed (heavy), and pre-palatal positions in Spanish to see if some duration-based effect obtains. If vowels in closed and pre-palatal syllables pattern together in durational terms to the exclusion of vowels in light syllables, the posited moraic structure of /¯ ¥ ∆/ (1c) could be validated. Alternately, greater lengthening in the pre-palatal vowels could support (3). Gordon (2002) provides another approach. He investigates the length-asstress issue and also takes into account the phonetic correlate of overall energy. He cites numerous studies of various languages that identify both an increase in duration and in energy or perceptual loudness as correlates of word stress (Gordon 2002:59). His findings suggest that weight assignment in languages correlates much more closely with a metric based on the total energy or intensity of the rime than on simple duration or other such considerations. He establishes a means of calculating total energy which involves getting the average amplitude (RMS) in decibels for target rimes and converting that value into perceived loudness, which is then multiplied by the duration of the rime components, i.e. the nuclear vowel and, if present, the coda. His findings suggest that these loudness values predict cross-linguistic weight systems much more accurately than does duration. Following Gordon (2002), then, I look at the intensity of stressed rimes to see if any pattern emerges which might indicate that the presence of a palatal ‘ramps up’ the intensity of a preceding rime in such a way as to render it heavy. 3.
Study methodology: participants and procedures Five speakers of northern Iberian Spanish, all female, all between 22–45 years of age, and all possessed of post-graduate level education, were recorded in a sound-attenuated booth on a Sony TCD-D8 DAT recorder with a headmounted, unidirectional Shure SM10A microphone. The recordings were digitized as WAV files, sampled at 22.050 kHz, on Kay CSL 4400 hardware. Tokens were segmented with CoolEdit software and analyzed with Praat (©2004, Paul Boersma & David Weenink).
6
GARY K. BAKER
Participants read a series of sentences from note cards. Each card included a preparatory warm-up sentence in which the target item was used in a contextually transparent way in order to guarantee comprehension of the word. Occasional nonce words (consistent with Spanish phonotactics) were employed to provide for more complete control of word structure. These words often merely evoked real words with slightly variant spelling, as in seltas for celtas “Celt”. All words were presented in set-up sentences that left no doubt as to general meaning: e.g. Se dice que las setas silvestres causan locura “It is said that woodland mushrooms cause madness”. Following the preparatory sentence was the frame sentence: Digo (setas) para ti “I say X for you” in which the target item was reproduced. All target items (nine words in all) were produced three times in random order as part of a large set of words, including numerous distractors, which was read in its entirety three times. Target words (though not distractors) were exclusively disyllabic with stress on the initial syllable to control for prosodic context. Additionally, target words all began with /s/ for consistency and ease of segmentation, and the target vowel was always /e/ to avoid any possibility of interference due to inherent vowel length differences. The second vowel was limited to /a/ and occasionally /o/. In sum, then, target words of the shape C1V1C2(C3)V2 were segmented to allow measurements of V1 in open syllables (CV, as in seca “dry”), closed syllables (CVC, as in senda “path”), and in syllables followed by palatals (as in seña “sign”).4 Segmentation criteria largely followed techniques found in the literature (e.g. Recasens 1999b). Target vowel (V1) onset was taken to be the onset of periodicity following the cessation of noise from the preceding sibilant. Vowel offset was marked at F2 offset. For C2, bursts in stops or, in the case of nasals and laterals, the onset of antiformants as evinced by formant discontinuities and energy changes was used. In the case of yeísta productions of /¥/ as [∆], C2 onset was taken to be the point of greatest oral occlusion as evidenced by F1 minima.5 4
The complete list of target items is: seca “dry”, setas “mushrooms”, sela (nonce), senos “breasts”, senda “path”, sesta (nonce), seltas (nonce), seña “sign”, and sello “stamp”. 5 A troublesome aspect of the analysis of vowels in contact with /∆/ (or “/j/-like” elements, for that matter) is the difficulty of segmentation. It is notoriously difficult to know when the vowel proper ends and the fricative begins. I opt here for the F1 minimum in line with the very articulatory facts on which this analysis is based. As set forth in section 1, the palatal sonorants involve lingual gestures that exert considerable anticipatory coarticulation on preceding vowels. Thus, in transitioning from a vowel to a following /¯ ¥ ∆/, the speaker produces a vowel with a greatly enhanced F2 component. Given sonority sequencing protocols as they are understood, there is little reason to assume the listener will parse these transitional effects— clearly vocoidal—with the lower-sonority, higher-occlusion onset that follows. Segmenting in terms of F1 minima reflects this.
ACOUSTICS OF PALATAL BEHAVIOR IN SPANISH
7
4. Tests and results 4.1 V1 duration Target vowel length for all tokens was measured with Praat and relativized to a reference vowel (tonic /a/ of para in the frame sentence) to compensate for speech rate variation. I then conducted a series of statistical tests comparing vowel lengths in various environments with an eye toward investigating any special role for palatals and pre-palatal environments. I first measured vowels in open versus closed syllables, treating palatals as singletons (hence including pre-palatal vowels with those in open syllables). A one-way ANOVA with syllabic affiliation as the independent variable showed potential significance (p=.05) but with an F value not reaching the critical threshold (F=3.905). A second one-way ANOVA lumping palatals in with closed syllable environments yielded no significant results (p=.09, F=2.87). Omitting palatals from the data gave the least significant results: p=.618, F=.251, suggesting that no lengthening effect as a function of syllabic environment obtains in Spanish. However, a fourth one-way ANOVA that considered open syllable, closed syllable, and pre-palatal vowels showed significant differences (p=.000, F=10.263, well above critical values) between pre-palatal vowel length and that of the others. Post-hoc Tukey and Scheffé tests show prepalatal vowels to be significantly longer than vowels in either of the other groups (p=.000 in both tests with 95% confidence intervals), grouping homogeneously apart from the others, which group together. Vowels in prepalatal position appear to be lengthened. This is discussed in section 5 below. 4.2 Vowel intensity To test vowel intensity, I looked at the RMS (root-mean-square) values of vowels in varying contexts, comparing vowels in open (therefore light or monomoraic) syllables with those in closed (heavy, bimoraic) syllables. RMS, as its name indicates, finds a sort of average value of wave amplitude or variations in air pressure. RMS is calculated by squaring the amplitude value of each sample in a particular waveform, then the average of the results is found and the square root taken (see Johnson 1997:36–7 for more details). Since the loudness of a sound generally depends on the amplitude of its wave (Ladefoged 1996:80), the RMS value provides a good means of calculating a sound’s perceptual loudness. Similar to the duration test above, relativized intensity values of pre-palatal vowels were compared with those of vowels in open and closed syllables and analyzed for significant patterns. No pattern was found: indeed, the relative intensity of (atonic) V2 is often greater than that of tonic V1. Though clearly the procedure here is far simpler than the calculations taken by Gordon (2002), it is difficult to imagine how the lower intensity
8
GARY K. BAKER
values of stressed vowels could consistently outweigh those of the (often higher intensity and, in my data, longer) atonic vowels.6 For the present purposes, it seems clear that RMS is not relevant to the palatals in question. Moreover, one-way ANOVA testing the correlation of RMS to syllabic affiliation shows no pattern (p=.239, F=1.448). 4.3 F2 contours I compared F2 profiles in vowels in pre-resonant (pre-/n l/), pre-occlusive (pre-/t k/) and pre-palatal (pre-/¯ ¥ ∆/) contexts. Tokens with CVC syllables were not considered in order to focus on the differential behavior of palatals versus singleton segments. To measure F2 contours, a Praat script tracked across each target vowel and took F2 readings every 5ms for the vowel’s duration. The resultant formant readings were calculated as percentages of change and, accordingly, a move downward from 2500Hz to 2000Hz would represent a -20% change. For each word, a mean percentage of change was calculated, resulting in a general value reflecting net positive (F2 increase) or negative (F2 decrease) values. End effects—i.e. large sudden jumps up or down at the end of the token—were suppressed to avoid skewing. Similar ‘perturbations’ in mid-token, perhaps due to idiosyncratic articulations on the parts of the participants, were retained and factored into the calculations. In a second test, I reexamined the same formant readings used above, focusing solely on pre-palatal (pre-/¯ ¥ ∆/) versus pre-resonant (pre-/n l/) vowels. Using the criteria of Kewley-Port (1982), I found the period of steady state for each vowel, that is, when the formant frequency values show a period of acoustic stability. After isolating the steady-state portions of each vowel, I assumed that the largest period of steady-state—there was generally only one that spanned more than a single frame—was the F2 target for the vowel. I next located and measured spans of clear F2 transitions, defining transition as sustained, uninterrupted periods of F2 increase or decrease. For methodological consistency, I did not consider periods of F2 transition that were broken up by apparently anomalous F2 dips or rises, as might be the case due to articulatory ‘flutter’ or idiosyncratic linguistic behavior. Thus, even in cases where it seems clear that an F2 rise (the case with some pre-palatal vowels) has been interrupted by a single frame of ‘flutter’, only the portion before or after the event is considered. This could have the effect of skewing the findings, since the transitions could conceivably be much greater; however, 6
This data seems to fall in line with observations by Quilis (1999) concerning stress in Spanish: duration and intensity are at best sporadic correlates of stress, with pitch apparently a far more consistent marker.
ACOUSTICS OF PALATAL BEHAVIOR IN SPANISH
9
it is noteworthy that even with this very conservative approach, the pre-palatal vowels show greater periods of F2 transition. Moreover, pre-palatal transitions are almost without exception F2 rises (as are the unconsidered secondary periods of F2 transition), while those of non-prepalatal vowels are mixed, more often than not showing an F2 fall. This is discussed more fully below. Finally, I also found the F2 slope of pre-palatal and pre-resonant vowels. That is, I found the value based on a linear regression analysis of the F2 frequency changes (the y axis) as functions of time (each 5ms increment being a point on the x axis). This in effect shows the overall direction of the F2 trajectory across each vowel. I did not suppress edge effects in this analysis. Results show that F2 transitions are consistently longer before palatal segments, averaging some 52% of the overall vowel length as compared to 40% for vowels before /n l/. This in itself would perhaps be unimpressive were it not for the fact that the pre-palatal vowels are also significantly longer than their non-prepalatal counterparts, which therefore means that the transitions are in absolute terms much greater than those before /n l/. Also, recall that only the single longest interval of F2 transition was used for the calculations. Prepalatal vowels (and much less frequently the non-prepalatal vowels) often show a second F2 rise nearly as long as that reported above, such that one could well argue that the two should be considered together to give a more accurate F2 profile of the segment. Given that steady states are on average longer in the non-prepalatal vowels (21.3 and 19.2% of overall vowel length respectively for /n l/ as opposed to 19 and 14.8% for /¯ ¥ ∆/), we may conclude that transitional effects dominate in the pre-palatal vowels. Moreover, prepalatal vowels were far more often marked by long transitional excursions from vowel onset than were the non-pre-palatals. This supports the notion that F2 excursions are marked earlier and longer in pre-palatal vowels than in the vowels preceding the palatals’ singleton counterparts. As a diagnostic for anticipatory coarticulation, evidence clearly suggests that prepalatal vowels are strongly influenced by the following palatal. Secondly, the slope analysis reveals important differences in the two groups, with the pre-palatal vowels showing much higher slope values than the non-prepalatals. Note moreover that negative slope values, indicating a general downward trend, are virtually never associated with pre-palatal vowels (one case for sello), while negative values obtain more than half the time for the non-prepalatals. The average F2 slopes for vowels before /¯ ¥ ∆/ are 6.5 and 5.1, respectively; averages before /n l/ are -.5 and -.7, respectively. These results confirm the findings of the approach discussed above. The means were tested with SPSS software. Significant results in a one-way ANOVA procedure obtained among all three groups (p=.000, F=30.15), and
10
GARY K. BAKER
subsequent Tukey and Scheffé post-hoc tests showed discrete grouping for all contexts. The greatest F2 means were found in pre-palatal position (mean value 1.172%). Thus, the F2 contour of the palatals reflects a positive trend upwards of about 1% per 5ms window.7 Pre-occlusive vowels show a mean F2 contour value of .499, roughly half that of pre-palatal vowels. Pre-resonant vowels show negative F2 values (-.223), reflecting a tendency to lower F2 across the vowel. These findings support the idea that F2 contour, the result of the tongue body raising required of palatalization, functions as a principal cue to palatal/non-palatal distinctions. Moreover, such a distinction is markedly greater between the palatals /¯ ¥ j/and their coronal congeners /n l/. This is borne out by results of a one-way ANOVA on the slope analysis of pre-palatal and pre-resonant (/n l/) vowels: highly significant differences (p=.000, F=90.1) are shown between the high, rising slope values of prepalatals and the low, falling ones of the pre-resonant vowels. The data show that pre-palatal vowels are subject to a significant and steady F2 rise, generally from 2000Hz to approximately 2500Hz or higher. By contrast, trends in the non-palatal counterparts of /¯ ¥ (∆)/, i.e. /n l/, vary widely. Given that pre-palatal vowels are considerably longer, it is reasonable to assume that F2-based cues are available longer—and are thus more salient— in the signal. Indeed, it may be that the two are part of the same phenomenon. Lengthening, in essence, could serve to accommodate the enhanced F2 and the tongue-fronting gesture that gives rise to it. Speakers may seek to preserve steady-state values of the underlying vowel while also anticipating the tongue body gesture required for the following palatal. This transition appends in essence what can only be parsable as a vocalic segment of rising F2 that may ultimately serve to lengthen the overall duration of the vowel. See further discussion below. 5. Discussion and conclusions The statistical tests reveal significant differences in both vowel length and F2 contours as a function of palatal/non-palatal context. These findings seem temptingly complementary. We see that not only are the pre-palatal vowels longer in overall duration but that their F2 transitions are longer as well. 7
An average 1% change is not trivial. It is important to bear in mind that average F2 values of the /e/ used as a constant here hovered consistently in the 1900-2400Hz range. A 1% shift therefore shows change of some 20Hz. Following Kewley-Port’s (1982) criteria for vowel steady-state whereby changes of less than 10Hz per 5ms constitute steady state, we see that pre-palatal vowels are significantly unsteady, i.e. they tend towards an F2 rise rather than the flat frequencies that characterize vowels at steady state.
ACOUSTICS OF PALATAL BEHAVIOR IN SPANISH
11
Perceptually, we might characterize this transitional lengthening as a subtle diphthong effect, as suggested above. This could conceivably be sufficient to motivate the prosodic effects on the Spanish stress window. The lengthened vowel in tandem with the very high F2 excursions may effectively simulate a falling diphthong, always heavy in Spanish. Such an effect is predictable for all of the segments in question (/¯ ¥ ∆/) due to the articulatory engagement of the tongue dorsum involved in their production. Now, the consistency of these transitions (unfailingly rising compared to the variation of pre-alveolar vowels) is totally predictable due to the articulatory demands of the following palatal segments. I would therefore suggest that the vowel lengthening here is not precisely the same phenomenon as Hubbard’s (1995) phonologically driven compensatory lengthening in Luganda (2.1; fig. 2). The effect here has purely phonetic underpinnings: the coarticulatory demands of /¯ ¥ ∆/ may alone be sufficient to engender the lengthening effect. This does not undermine the phonological relevance of the process, however. I would stress that the effects under investigation—which are morapreserving for all intents and purposes—are not incidental. I view /¯ ¥ ∆/ as historical reanalyses of Latin /n: l:/ that reinterpret gestural duration (i.e. geminate length) in terms of gestural magnitude, in consonance with the massive tongue body fronting and extensive linguopalatal contact they entail (see Baker 2004 for more detailed discussion). In essence, these segments perpetuate former geminate~singleton contrasts in revised spatiotemporal terms (cf. similar proposals in Lloyd 1987 and Holt 2003).8 It is precisely this enhanced linguopalatal contact—imposing a considerable degree of anticipatory coarticulation—that occasions the lengthening observed here and thus preserves moraic structure. We thus have a plausible phonetic mechanism by which to explain the prosodic effects of palatals in Spanish stress assignment.9
8
Such a fortis~lenis style position is supported by the concept of consonant strength as a function of linguopalatal contact (as in Cho & Keating 2001; see also Straka 1965). Compare, too, Pagliuca & Mowrey’s (1987) Substantive vs. Temporal Reduction. 9 A similar conclusion concerns mora-based syllable- and word-level timing. These results suggest that pre-palatal vowel lengthening is unrelated to word-level timing in the sense of Hubbard (1995) or indeed with syllable-timing at all, since there is no apparent mora-based reason to assume that pre-palatal vowels would behave differently from vowels in both CV light and CVC heavy syllables as they do in the data. It appears instead that the effect is due, again, to the nature of the following segment: the palatals exert an exceptional lengthening effect on preceding vowels that is itself a response to the high degree of anticipatory tonguebody raising and fronting involved in their production.
12
GARY K. BAKER
References Baker, Gary K. 2004. Palatal Phenomena in Spanish Phonology. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Florida. Broselow, Ellen, Su-I Chen, & Marie Huffman. 1997. “Syllable weight: convergence of phonology and phonetics.” Phonology 14.47–82. Carreira, María. 1988. “The structure of palatal consonants in Spanish.” Chicago Linguistic Society 24.73–87. Cho, Taehong & Patricia Keating. 2001. “Articulatory and acoustic studies on domain-initial strengthening in Korean.” Journal of Phonetics 29.155–190. Davis, Stuart. 1999. “On the representation of initial geminates.” Phonology 16.93–104. Farnetani, Edda. 1990. “V-C-V lingual coarticulation and its spatio-temporal domain.” Speech production and speech modelling ed. by William Hardcastle & Alain Marchal, 93–110. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic. Flemming, Edward S. 2002. Auditory Representations in Phonology. New York: Routledge. Giangola, James P. 1995. “Complex Palatal Geminates in Brazilian Portuguese.” The Proceedings of the Thirteenth West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics ed. by Raul Aranovich, William Byrne, Susanne Preuss & Martha Senturia, 46–61. Gordon, Matthew. 2002. “A Phonetically Driven Account of Syllable Weight.” Language 78.51–80. Harris, James. 1983. Syllable Structure and Stress in Spanish. Cambridge: Massachussetts Institute of Technology. ——. 1995. “Projection and edge marking in the computation of stress in Spanish.” The Handbook of Phonological Theory ed. by John Goldsmith, 867–887. Oxford: Blackwell. Hayes, Bruce. 1989. “Compensatory lengthening in moraic phonology.” Linguistic Inquiry 20.253–306. Holt, D. Eric. 2003. “The Emergence of Palatal Sonorants and Alternating Diphthongs in Old Spanish.” Optimality Theory and Language Change ed. by D. Eric Holt, 285–305. Boston: Kluwer Academic. Hubbard, Kathleen. 1995. “Toward a theory of phonological and phonetic timing: evidence from Bantu.” Phonology and Phonetic Evidence: Papers in Laboratory Phonology IV ed. by Bruce Connell & Amalia Arvaniti, 168– 87. Cambridge University Press. Johnson, Keith. 1997. Acoustic and Auditory Phonetics. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell.
ACOUSTICS OF PALATAL BEHAVIOR IN SPANISH
13
Keating, Patricia. 1988. “Palatals are complex segments: x-ray evidence.” UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics 69.77–91. ——. 1991. “Coronal Places of Articulation.” Phonetics and Phonology: The Special Status of Coronals ed. by Carole Paradis & Jean-François Prunet, 29–48. San Diego, Calif: Academic. Keating, Patricia & Amalia Lahiri. 1993. “Fronted velars, palatalized velars, and palatals.” Phonetica 50.73–101. Kewley-Port, Diane. 1982. “Measurement of formant transitions in naturally produced stop consonant-vowel syllables.” Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 72.379–89. Kühnert, Barbara, & Francis Nolan. 1999. “The origin of coarticulation.” Coarticulation: Theory, Data and Techniques ed. by William Hardcastle & Nigel Hewlett, 7–30. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ladefoged, Peter. 1996. Elements of Acoustic Phonetics, 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago. Ladefoged, Peter & Ian Maddieson. 1996. The Sounds of the World’s Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. Lavoie, Lisa M. 2000. Phonological Patterns and Phonetic Manifestations of Consonant Weakening. Ph.D. dissertation, Cornell University. Lipski, John. 1989. “Spanish yeísmo and the Palatal Resonants: Towards a Unified Analysis.” Probus 1.211–23. Lloyd, Paul M. 1987. From Latin to Spanish. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society. Maddieson, Ian. 1985. “Phonetic cues to syllabification.” Phonetic Linguistics ed. by Victoria Fromkin, 203–21. Orlando: Academic. Pagliuca, William & Richard Mowrey. 1987. “Articulatory evolution.” Papers from the VIIth International Conference on Historical Linguistics ed. by Anna Giacalone Ramat, Onofrio Carruba & Giuliana Bernini, 459–72. Amsterdam & Boston: John Benjamins. Perlmutter, David. 1995. “Phonological quantity and multiple association.” The Handbook of Phonological Theory ed. by John Goldsmith, 307–317. Oxford: Blackwell. Quilis, Antonio. 1981. Fonética acústica de la lengua española. Madrid: Gredos. ——. 1999. Tratado de fonología y fonética españolas. Madrid: Gredos. Recasens, Daniel. 1989. “Long range coarticulatory effects for tongue dorsum contact in VCVCV sequences.” Haskins Laboratories Status Reports on Speech Research SR99/100.19–37. ——. 1990. “The Articulatory Characteristics of Palatal Consonants.” Journal of Phonetics 18.267–80.
14
GARY K. BAKER
——. 1991. Fonètica descriptiva del català. Barcelona: Institut d’Estudis Catalans. ——. 1999a. “Lingual Coarticulation.” Coarticulation: Theory, Data and Techniques ed. by William Hardcastle & Nigel Hewlett, 80–104. Cambridge: Cambridge University. ——. 1999b. “Acoustic Analysis.” Coarticulation: Theory, Data and Techniques ed. by William Hardcastle & Nigel Hewlett, 322–336. Cambridge: Cambridge University. Recasens, Daniel & Joaquin Romero. 1997. “An EMMA study of segmental complexity in alveopalatals and palatalized alveolars.” Phonetica 54.43–58. Roca, Ignacio. 1988. “Theoretical Implications of Spanish Word Stress.” Linguistic Inquiry 19.393–423. Straka, Georges. 1965. “Naissance et disparition des consonnes palatales dans l’évolution du latin au français.” Travaux de Linguistique et de Littérature 3.117–167. Wetzels, W. Leo. 1997. “The Lexical Representation of Nasality in Brazilian Portuguese.” Probus 9:2.203–232.
MAPPING THE PATTERNS OF MAINTENANCE VERSUS MERGER IN BILINGUAL PHONOLOGY THE PRESERVATION OF [a] vs. [A] IN FRENCHVILLE FRENCH
BARBARA E. BULLOCK, AMANDA DALOLA, CHIP GERFEN The Pennsylvania State University
0.
Maintenance and convergence in contact phonology Much of the research on languages undergoing attrition in bilingual contexts documents the transfer of phonological properties from the dominant language to the receding language, but neglects to analyze areas of the phonology that are inexplicably unaffected by contact. We believe that this preferential focus on interference phenomena has skewed the vision of phonology in attrition toward a view where attrition necessarily entails a loss of structural attributes. Essentially, extant theories of bilingual phonology predict that interference, what we call convergence, occurs mainly in the context of low-level phonetic variation (Weinreich 1970, Andersen 1982). This reduces the linguistic effects of contact to a simple strategy of “seek and replace,” whereby the phonetic properties of the dominant language substitute for those of the receding one. Maintenance, then, is dependent on the need to preserve phonological contrasts (Andersen 1982). This formula relegates convergence to the phonetic domain and maintenance to the phonology. However intuitively appealing this notion may be with its strict division of labor between the two components of the sound system of a language, in our experience, it is inadequate to account for the actual patterns of preservation versus merger encountered in the speech of bilinguals. As we have demonstrated earlier (Bullock & Gerfen 2004a, 2004b, 2005), convergence with English in the contact variety under analysis here, Frenchville French, can operate over areas of the sound system that are not necessarily low-level but contrastive, even if only marginally so. For instance, the French mid front rounded vowels /ø/ and /œ/ have both merged with the American English rhoticized schwa. At the same time, Frenchville French maintains a distinct
16
BULLOCK, DALOLA & GERFEN
rhotic consonant, generally an apical tap or trill, that is not mapped to the English retroflexed or ‘bunched r’, even though such a merger would be arguably cost-free in that it would lead to no loss of contrast in either language. Such facts suggest a more complex perspective on the effects of long-term contact on the phonological system of bilinguals than can be accommodated by current models of bilingual phonology. The present work demonstrates that there are areas of the phonological system of a language undergoing shift that may be vulnerable to convergence, but that nonetheless remain target-like. Specifically, we document the preservation of the two French low vowels /a/ and /A/ in the speech of one of the remaining fluent speakers of Frenchville (Pennsylvania) French (hereafter FF). The resilience of this contrast in our speaker’s productions, which is perceptually salient, is remarkable given there are various linguistic internal and external pressures that might have caused him to alter his phonetic realizations of these two vowels. This analysis will demonstrate that the low vowel contrast is largely intact phonetically, and that the vowels are distributed in a manner entirely consistent with French phonology, despite long-term contact with English. We surmise that our speaker’s bilingualism, far from disrupting the sound system of his receding French through interference, might have helped maintain this contrast. If so, this bolsters our claims made elsewhere that “convergence results in little loss or simplification to the system; at the same time it allows for the preservation of many of the acoustic and perceptual characteristics” of the original system (Bullock & Gerfen 2005). We argue further that the conservation of these vowels provides further evidence that “languages in contact can sustain incursions and nevertheless remain stable at the core” (Toribio et al., to appear). In other words, languages undergoing shift and attrition, despite showing some obvious signs of weakness, do not gradually turn over from one system to another, but remain substantially intact (see also Myers-Scotton 1998 on morphosyntax). 1.
Frenchville French sociolinguistic history and phonology FF is a direct nineteenth century import from the departments of the Haute-Saône and Haute-Marne in eastern France, a region that is reported to maintain a contrast between /a/ and /A/ (Carton 1983). The language was implanted into rural central western Pennsylvania in two small waves of migration between 1830 and 1845. Since that time, it has been a linguistic isolate, surviving more than the three generation shift pattern of immigrant communities, probably due to a combination of geographic remoteness, endogamous practices among the French-speaking Catholics in a largely protestant region, local schooling, and local employment as farmers, surface
PATTERNS OF MAINTENANCE
17
miners, loggers and laborers. Further, several elderly residents report that as the village became increasingly bilingual, many parents chose to compartmentalize French as their home language, even if English were required as a language of broader communication outside the home. Despite the fact that newspapers from the 60’s (“Bit of France is Rapidly Eroding Away in the Hills of Clearfield County”, Philadelphia Inquirer April 20, 1969) through the 90’s (“Just 2 Residents Still Speak City’s Unique French”, The News-Herald, July 19, 1990) have continually heralded the demise of French in Frenchville, fieldwork by the first author shows that the reports of the ‘last speakers’ were, not surprisingly, premature since our study participant, still a fluent speaker of FF, is not counted among the two residents identified by the press in 1990. Even though those speakers have died, FF still continues to be spoken. Nonetheless, the fact that all the fluent speakers, the ‘formerly fluent’ speakers, and the receptive bilinguals are over 60 years of age means that the “unique French” of Frenchville is now moribund. Our participant in this study is one of the only known fluent speakers left in Frenchville. He is now in his 70’s and has not spoken FF regularly for several decades, nor has he ever learned to read or write in French, even though it was his first language and he spoke it regularly until the time he married in his early 20’s. Aside from a tour of military duty in Austria, he has always lived in the village, where he worked as a laborer. He completed seven years of schooling in his youth, but left early to assist his father on their farm. Today, he speaks French only occasionally with his brother and with the first author of this paper. The FF naturalistic data elicited from the current study participant and his brother manifest a number of syntactic, morphological and lexical properties that are consistent with language decline. In brief, the mappings between syntactic features and their morphological exponents show signs of erosion, but the core syntactic system appears to be monolingual-like (see Bullock & Toribio to appear). These findings parallel those for morphosyntax in other language contact situations (King 2000), and in language use by heritage speakers (Montrul 2004) and second language acquirers (Sorace 2000). The FF phonological phenomena that have been analyzed in detail display a mix of innovative and conservative characteristics. As noted above, these speakers consistently merge the mid front round French vowels with the English retroflexed schwa, as produced in the word sir. This is endemic except before /r/, where [œ] may be variably preserved, as in the word soeur “sister”, which is produced on a continuum from target-like [sœr] to partially retroflexed [s‘ør] to a vowel fully convergent with the English retroflexed schwa [s‘] (Bullock & Gerfen 2004b). That all targeted vowels have not been
18
BULLOCK, DALOLA & GERFEN
completely neutralized strongly suggests that convergence with English does not operate in a wholesale fashion, but is, instead, subject to limitations.1 While the mid front round vowels have generally converged with English [‘] in FF, French schwa resists merger. When pronounced, schwa is preserved in our participants’ speech with an acoustic profile indicating that it is articulated along the dimensions of height and backness in a manner appropriate for [œ] in Conservative Standard French (CSF) (see Bullock & Gerfen 2005). This reveals that the mid front round vowel is not banned outright from the FF vowel system, rather it is reserved for the phonetic reflex of schwa. In this sense, it has diverged phonetically from the realization of the mid front round vowels with which it is often reputed to be identical in most varieties of French (Morin 1978). Consider the implications of these findings for theories of phonological attrition. If one focuses only on the merger of the mid front round vowels, the facts would appear to indicate that FF phonology is, in some sense, eroding phonologically from the loss of a potentially contrastive set of mid vowels and phonetically from the apparent reduction of its front round vowel series. But, considered together, the convergence of the mid front vowels with [‘] and the maintenance of schwa as [œ] point to a different interpretation. That is, rather than losing native phonetic properties and potential contrasts through transfer, the convergence can conceivably be viewed as contrast enhancing along a different dimension. That is, unlike in CSF, where schwa and [œ] are phonetically identical, but arguably phonologically different, in FF they are dramatically divergent, clearly signally independent phonological entities. In sum, although there exist definite signs of English influence in FF, they do not necessarily occur where predicted. Further, the convergence manifested is not phonetically automatic, but appears to be at least partially dependent upon the phonological status of the targeted sounds, since schwa displays a surprising immunity to the merger. Significantly, it is only a close analysis of the patterns of schwa maintenance that allows us to identify the repercussions of the convergence on the vowel system more systemically. What at first glance appears to be a simple case of phonetic transfer or replacement turns out, at closer inspection, to actually preserve or even enhance an internal phonological distinction in the native language. Thus, convergence and maintenance appear to operate in tandem. In the analysis that follows, we consider the preservation in FF of the low vowels, a contrast that is only tenuously maintained today in CSF and that may 1
The exact motivation for these limitations is unclear. They could result from phonological constraints banning two adjacent rhoticized elements, from articulatory competition, or from perceptual salience (see Bullock & Gerfen 2004b for a full discussion).
PATTERNS OF MAINTENANCE
19
well be expected to be vulnerable to alteration. The overriding question for this research becomes, given the convergence elsewhere in the system, how is it that our speaker has preserved this arguably unstable contrast? 2.
The problem The two low vowels of contemporary French in France are subject to a great deal of variation. In many speakers, the low vowels, which are acoustically quite similar, have neutralized to the anterior low vowel and contrast has been abandoned. Even for those speakers for whom a contrast is maintained, it is often indeterminate with massive variation among individuals regarding how these vowels are distributed within specific lexical items (Martinet & Walter 1973, Walter 1976, Warnant 1987, Fagan 1989). A qualitative contrast between the low vowels is generally accompanied by a length difference where [A˘] is considerably longer than [a]. When the posterior vowel is maintained, its realization is conditioned in CSF by several phonological factors, overviewed in (1) (Walker 2001, Tranel 1987). (1) Phonological Context a. [A] occurs more often in stressed syllables than in unstressed ones. b. [A] occurs preferentially before [z], as in phrase “sentence” [frA˘z], gaz “gas” [gA˘z] c. [wA˘] occurs preferentially after /r/, as in roi “king” [{wA˘], trois “three” [t{wA˘] Additionally, there are a number of orthographic cues, generally justified by historical deletion or by morphological differentiation, that signal the choice of the back variant in particular lexical items. These are given in (2) with lexical examples. (2) Orthographic cues a. words with orthographic â favor [A]: âne “donkey” [A˘n], câble “cable” [kA˘bl] b. words ending in silent s favor [A]: bas “low” [bA˘], mois “month” [mwA˘] Finally, there are a number of minimal pairs, following the cues in (2), signaling that the low vowel difference may be contrastive for some speakers. Exemplars are given in (3).
20
BULLOCK, DALOLA & GERFEN
(3) Phonemic contrasts patte “paw” [pat] moi “me” [mwa]
pâte mois
“dough” [pA˘t] “month” [mwA˘]
Phonetically, the two low vowels are of identical height and are identifiable only by a relatively small degree of difference in the front-back dimension, reflected acoustically in the second formant. The average formant measurements, correlating with height (F1) and roughly with backness, (F2) are shown in (4) (Clas, Demers & Charbonneau 1968). (4) Average formant frequencies F1 F2 French /a/ = 750 1350 French /A/ = 750 1200 It is perhaps a combination of the acoustic proximity of these vowels and their opaque phonological differentiation that has provoked variability or merger to a single low vowel in many monolingual grammars. The preceding description of the unstable phonetic and phonological status of the low vowels in CSF and various pressures on our speaker suggest that he might have altered the phonetic categories for the French low vowels in either of two ways. First, there are factors that might lead him to map the two low vowels to a single category; these include (a) our speaker’s inability to read French, thus depriving him of the orthographic cues for the posterior vowels and (b) the acoustic proximity of these vowels, which might make them perceptually indistinct. Conversely, there are pressures due to our participant’s bilingualism that might have led to a different mapping. That is, (c) the decline of our speaker’s French due to several decades of an almost exclusive use of English, and (d) the presence of a similarly discrete set of low vowels (anterior [æ] vs. posterior [A]) in his dominant language, English, might motivate him to settle on a convergent set of front–back low vowels for both of his component languages, since, arguably, the difference between the realization of the French and English low vowels is allophonic in nature. Under either scenario, the most likely outcome of long-term isolation and contact with English is that the FF speaker would have altered the phonetic categories for the low vowel series with respect to CSF. Yet the following analysis is inspired by the observation of the first author that our speaker appears to use both low vowels in his speech. This observation, then, leads to the specific research questions posed in (5).
PATTERNS OF MAINTENANCE
(5)
21
a. Are the low vowels of this speaker distributed randomly across the low vowel space (i.e., in free variation)? b. Are the low vowels of this speaker distributed according to the norms of CSF (i.e., are they inherited)? c. Are the low vowels of this speaker mapped to distinct anteriorposterior categories in a manner distinct from the norms of CSF (i.e., are they more akin to English or to French)?
3.
The data and methods The corpus for this study was collected in taped sessions of structured but naturalistic interview sessions. These were recorded on a Marantz PDM221 professional cassette recorder and subsequently digitized using a sampling rate of 44kHz with 16bit quantization on a Macintosh G4 laptop. From these recordings, we extracted every audible token of the low vowels and, using PRAAT, manually measured the first three formants for each vowel at midpoint and the duration of each vowel. We also indicated for each vowel whether it was produced with or without stress, since FF stress may fall on syllables other than the final one. We report only on the measures of the first two formants and on the durations here. The data were coded in two different ways. First, we coded each token according to the tendencies documented for CSF and outlined above in (1) and (2). This means that we only coded a vowel as a back variant when it met either the phonological or orthographic criteria specified above. For example, by this coding, the pronoun moi “me”, with a front vowel, contrasts with mois “month,” considered as a back vowel due to its final orthographic s. We report first on the results analyzed according to this coding scheme. 3.1 Results of FF compared strictly to CSF Our first analysis considers the height of the vowels. These results are shown in Table 1. Note that we have uneven sample sizes. This reflects the relative rarity of the back low vowel in the French lexicon and is not due to our sampling. Statistical results of a two-tailed unpaired t-test indicate that the 10hz difference for the mean F1 values of these vowels is not significant (t(284)=.971, p =.17). Thus, our speaker produces these vowels at the same height. Vowel Tokens F1 (Hz) Sd /a/ 225 690 73 /A/ 61 680 68 Table 1: Means of F1 values for vowel height
BULLOCK, DALOLA & GERFEN
22
With regard to the front-back dimension, we hypothesized that we would find a difference between the two vowels, as this was perceptible in the speech sample. Thus, we completed an unpaired, one-tailed t-test which demonstrated that the mean difference in backness for these two categories is highly significant (t(284) = 7.695, p =.0001). These results are shown in Table 2. Vowel /a/ /A/
Tokens Mean F2-F1 in Hz Sd 225 644 173 61 438 223 Table 2: Means of F2-F1 for backness
Interpreting smaller differences between F1 and F2 as a correlate for backness, it is clear from the results in Table 2 that [A] is produced significantly further back than is the anterior vowel. The vowels, plotted with regard to CSF norms in a standard vowel plot can be seen in the scattergram in Figure 1. The x-axis represents the value of the F2-F1 difference for each vowel, while the F1 value is plotted long the y-axis. While there is a degree of overlap apparent in the distribution of these vowels, there is a nonetheless a visible separation of the front and back categories.
F2-F1 (Hz) 1000
800
600
400
200
0 400 back front
500
600
700
800
900
1000
1100
Figure 1: Vowels plotted according to CSF norms
F1 (Hz)
1200
23
PATTERNS OF MAINTENANCE
F2-F1 (Hz) 1200
1000
800
600
400
200 shifting front vowels front vowels
0 400 500
700 800
F1 (Hz)
600
900 1000 1100
Figure 2: Migrating ‘front’ vowels The results for durational differences between these two vowel categories are also significant. Since we did not have a prediction regarding vowel length, we ran a two-tailed unpaired t-test. The results, as shown in Table 3, reveal that the back low vowel is appreciably longer than its front counterpart, as it normally is in CSF (t(284) = -3.25, p = .0007). Vowel /a/ /A/
Tokens Duration in ms Sd 225 111 89 61 153 83 Table 3: Mean durations in milliseconds
3.2 Front to back ‘migrations’ according to FF norms While coding the data, it was apparent that many of the vowels that would be classified as low front vowels in CSF sounded audibly back, but in predictable contexts. Therefore, we recoded the data corresponding to the extended phonological environment for the FF back vowel. All tokens that met the following criteria were recoded as FF back vowels: (a) all tokens containing orthographic “oi”, (b) low vowels preceding a fricative, and (c) all low vowels in stressed, final position. In Figure 2, we present a scattergram of these vowels, which we term ‘migrating vowels’, plotted only within the category of the anterior vowels.
BULLOCK, DALOLA & GERFEN
24
Notice that the recategorized vowels tend to cluster between the 450 and 550 Hz range on the x-axis, falling rather solidly between the anterior and the posterior mean. If they are plotted instead as back vowels, as in Figure 3, then a clearer visible representation of the significant separation between the two vowel categories according to the front–back dimension emerges.
F1-F2 (Hz) 1200
1000
800
600
400
200
0 400 back front
500
600
F1
700
800
900
1000
1100
Figure 3: Migrating vowels plotted as back vowels 4.
Discussion In answer to our study questions, the acoustic analysis has shown that our FF speaker does indeed preserve a significant contrast between low vowels, with the respective vowels largely distributed according to the phonology of CSF. Further, the average formant measures for these vowels are phonetically very similar to CSF along the posterior–anterior dimension norms, even though this speaker produces them as less open than the corresponding CSF vowels, as shown in Table 4 (CSF measures from Clas et al. 1968).
Vowel /a/ /A/
CSF means FF means F1 F2-F1 F1 F2-F1 750 600 600 644 750 450 450 438 Table 4: Mean durations in milliseconds
These facts lead us to conclude that our answer to research question (5a) is in the negative; these vowels are not randomly distributed. In answer to question (5b), our speaker does maintain an inherited contrast.
PATTERNS OF MAINTENANCE
25
On the other hand, our FF speaker shows some innovation with respect to CSF. If we consider the contexts to which he has extended the posterior low vowel, a pattern begins to emerge. Specifically, he neutralizes ‘oi’ [wa] productions to the posterior vowel, and extends the back round vowel to all stressed low vowels in absolute final position, whereas CSF often limits the posterior vowel in this position to contexts marked by an orthographic s. Each of these innovations could be due to our speaker’s lack of literacy in French. That is, our speaker has no knowledge of French orthographic norms. Thus, he is almost certain to be unaware of the orthographic final s that helps to reinforce the contrast in CSF, and he has, therefore, neutralized the different pronunciations. However, it should be mentioned here that there is evidence that the contrast for this speaker has been acquired lexically for certain items. Specifically, his pronunciation of the French word râteau [rA˘to], a word that he uses for “rake” or “thresher,” is produced consistently with the posterior low vowel, precisely as the circumflex would indicate for a CSF pronunciation. Since we must assume that he is unaware of the circumflex, but has still acquired this lexical item with the posterior vowel pronunciation, it is not impossible that he could have acquired the other orthographically marked distinctions on a lexical basis. That he instead appears to have neutralized them may equally well be due to factors other than his lack of literacy. For instance, these vowels could already have been backed in the input he received when acquiring French as a child, or the presence of a similar low back vowel in English in similar environments may have enhanced his perception and production of the back vowel (e.g., [wA]: wash, walk, waltz, final [A]: spa, pa, ma). In either case, these FF innovations with respect to CSF are not random, but phonologically generalized. The extension of the posterior variant to the context preceding all fricatives, and not just [z] as in CSF, can be viewed as a phonologically conditioned innovation. Here the effect cannot be easily attributable to our speaker’s bilingualism since, within stressed syllables in English, both posterior and anterior low vowels can occur before fricatives such as [s] (e.g., anterior class, grass, past and posterior possible, pasta, pot.) Instead, we interpret this change as an extension of an environment already present in CSF. The conclusion that we draw from our speaker’s innovations is that they are entirely consistent with internally motivated changes in his French. In all cases, our subject has merely extended a pattern of distribution for the low back vowels that was already present in that language. This implies that despite long-term English dominance, his French phonology remains target-like with respect to the low vowel categories. Any effect of his English in extending the
26
BULLOCK, DALOLA & GERFEN
context for the posterior vowel may merely be to enhance congruence between the two languages. It is instructive to compare the mean frequencies of the FF vowel formants with those given for American English (Ladefoged 1993) given in Table 5.
F1 F2-F1
AE [æ] FF[a] FF[A] AE[A] 690 690 680 710 870 600 450 390 Table 5: American English and FF low vowel frequencies
What is apparent from an inspection of Table 5 is that the AE low vowels are dispersed or distant in the sense of Lindblom (1986, 1990) along the front– back dimension, as shown by the mean F2-F1 values. The Frenchville vowels, which we have determined to be phonologically contrastive, are each produced more centrally than their English counterpoints. What this implies is that, unless his French has affected the low vowel categories of his English, he appears to maintain a phonetically discrete set of front–back low vowels in his French that he has not mapped to his English vowel categories (in the sense of Flege 1987). While we have not yet analyzed his English vowels, we know that he does not have any pronunciation properties that deviate perceptibly from his monolingual western central Pennsylvanian neighbors.
5.
Implications of this analysis In our previous research on FF, we have demonstrated that the susceptibility of the phonology to convergence with English cannot be viewed as a mere low-level phonetic merger. We have suggested that “bilingual phonologies may become particularly permeable where they are acoustically and perceptually unstable and where they are already congruent to some degree” (Bullock & Gerfen 2004a:103). Given the results of the current analysis, a larger question emerges: How do we reconcile the maintenance of the French low vowel categories in FF with the merger of the mid front round vowels, since this case presents a profile that is very similar to the convergent one? First, as with the front round vowels, the contrast between [a] and [A] is inherently unstable perceptually and acoustically, which makes it a likely candidate for convergence. Second, congruent categories exist for these vowels along the parameters of vowel height and relative front–back position in the dominant language, English.
PATTERNS OF MAINTENANCE
27
We suggest that it may be that the phonological congruence with English helps to preserve separate French categories for these vowels. That is, an English contrast between front–back low vowels may enhance the preexisting French one, thus underscoring the role of phonology in cross-language perception (Best 1995) and production. Importantly, this does not entail that our speaker necessarily maps his phonetic categories for these vowels onto those of his dominant language. For instance, it may be that for this speaker the anterior vowels are not perceived to be sufficiently similar in French and English to merge together or, perhaps, that one or more of these vowels serve for him as salient sociophonetic markers of ‘Frenchness’ or ‘Englishness’. Although robust empirical work on the phonetic systems of bilinguals in attrition contexts is scant, there appears to be a growing consensus that only some phonetic characteristics of the receding language are impacted by contact, and that a simple explanation for patterns of maintenance versus merger will prove illusive (Godson 2004, Bond, Markus & Stockmal 2004). We add that our Frenchville studies diverge significantly from previous works in considering phonetic properties in tandem with traditional concerns of phonological distributions. The picture that is emerging is one in which the outcome of convergence between two systems appears to be remarkably conservative. That is, despite some salient English-like properties in FF pronunciation, the phonology and, indeed, the phonetic system of the language remain resolutely French.
References Andersen, Roger W. 1982. “Determining the Linguistic Attributes of Language Attrition.” The Loss of Language Skills, ed. by Wallace Lambert & Barbara Freed, 83–118. Rowley, Mass.: Newbury. Best, Catherine. 1995. “A Direct Realistic Perspective on Cross-Language Speech Perception.” Speech Perception and linguistic experience: Issues in Cross-Language Research, ed. by Winifred Strange, 171–206. Timonium, Md: York Press. Bond, Zinnie S., Dace Marcus & Verna Stockmal. 2004. “Sixty Years of Bilingualism Affect the Pronunciation of Latvian Vowels.” Paper presented at the Conference on Laboratory Phonology 9, University of Illinois. Bullock, Barbara E. & Chip Gerfen. 2004a. “Phonological Convergence in a Contracting Language Variety.” Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 7.2.95–104.
28
BULLOCK, DALOLA & GERFEN
——. 2004b. “Frenchville French: A Case Study in Phonological Attrition.” International Journal of Bilingualism 8.3.303–320. ——. 2005. “The preservation of schwa in the converging phonological system of Frenchville (PA) French.” Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 8(2), 117–130. Bullock, Barbara E. & Almeida Jacqueline Toribio. To appear. “Intra-systemic Variability and Change in Nominal and Verbal Morphology.” Historical Romance Linguistics: Retrospectives and Perspectives, ed. by Randall Gess & Deborah Arteaga. Amsterdam/Philadelphia. John Benjamins. Carton, Fernand. 1983. Les Accents des français. Paris: Hachette. Clas, André, Jeanne Demers & René Charbonneau. 1968. Phonétique Appliquée. Montreal: Librairie Beauchemin Limitée. Fagan, David. S. 1989. “New Directions in the Merger of Parisian French /A/ and /a/.” Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 21.2.65–78. Flege, James Emil. 1987. “The production of ‘new’ and ‘similar’ phones in a foreign language.” Human Communication and its Disorders: A review, ed. by Harris Winitz, 224–401. Norwood, N.J.: Ablex. Godson, Linda. 2004. “Vowel Production in the Speech of Western Armenian Heritage Speakers.” Heritage Language Journal 2.1–22. King, Ruth. 2000. The Lexical Basis of Grammatical Borrowing: A Prince Edward Island French Case Study. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Lindblom, Bjørn. 1986. “Phonetic Universals in Vowel Systems.” Experimental Phonology, ed, by John J. Ohala & Jeri J. Jaeger, 13–43. Orlando: Academic Press. ——. 1990. “Models of Phonetic Variation and Selection.” PERILIUS: [Phonetic Experimental Research Institute of Linguistics, University of Stockholm] 11.65–100. Martinet, André & Henriette Walter. 1973. Dictionnaire de la pronunciation du français dans son usage réel. Paris: France Expansion. Montrul, Silvina. 2004. “Subject and Object Expression in Spanish Heritage Speakers: A Case of Morphosyntactic Convergence.” Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 7.2.125–142. Morin, Yves-Charles. 1978. “The Status of Mute ‘e’.” Studies in French Linguistics 1.2.79–140. Sorace, Antonella. 2000. “Syntactic Optionality in Non-native Grammars.” Second Language Research 16.93–102. Toribio, Almeida Jacqueline, Barbara E. Bullock, Chris G. Botero & Allen K. Davis. To appear. “Perseverative Phonetic Effects in Bilingual CodeSwitching.” Proceedings of LSRL 34.
PATTERNS OF MAINTENANCE
29
Tranel, Bernard. 1987. The Sounds of French. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Walker, Douglas C. 2001. French Sound Structure. Calgary: University of Calgary Press. Walter, Henriette. 1976. La dynamique des phonèmes française dans le lexique français contemporain. Paris: France Expansion. Warnant, Léon. 1987. Dictionnaire de la prononciation française dans sa norme actuelle. Paris: Duculot. Weinreich, Uriel. 1970. Languages in Contact: Findings and Problems. The Hague: Mouton.
NEW TENDENCIES IN GEOGRAPHICAL DIALECTOLOGY THE CATALAN CORPUS ORAL DIALECTAL (COD)*
ESTEVE CLUA & MARIA-ROSA LLORET Universitat Pompeu Fabra & Universitat de Barcelona
0.
Introduction Traditional dialect grouping was done on the basis of qualitative criteria, usually related to the concept of ‘isogloss’ or ‘bundles of isoglosses’. As known, a major flaw of this method is that it takes into account a very limited number of words or linguistic features, and the decision on which words and features are selected is rather controversial. More recently, with the use of data computerization and statistical techniques, a much bigger percentage of items can be taken into account, and several methods related to data quantification have been developed for dialect grouping. The most important difference of the quantitative approach with respect to the qualitative one is that the statistical method does not assign a priority qualitative ranking of the variables used for classificatory purposes; rather, all variables weight alike, they are all equally measured. Therefore, the quantitative approach lies on the global measurement of the variables found in a big set of data, and not on a small selection of variables and data. A well-known drawback of this method though is that, since each of the items used for measurement is equal to each of the others, the measure does not indicate structural similarity between varieties but it just counts superficial coincidences or differences. A way of correcting this defect would be to weight the items in a different way, but it is claimed that such mechanism would introduce arbitrariness in the methodology and, for this
*
This research is sponsored by the Spanish Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia and the FEDER (research project HUM2004-01504/FILO: “Explotación de un corpus oral dialectal (ECOD)”). It also benefits from funding by the Catalan Government (Departament d’Universitats, Recerca i Societat; Generalitat de Catalunya; research group 2001SGR0004). More information about this project is available online at: http://www.ub.edu/lincat.
32
ESTEVE CLUA & MARIA-ROSA LLORET
reason, quantitative studies continue leaving aside structural differences (cf. Francis 1983). The goal of this paper is to show that there is a principled way of capturing structural (i.e., qualitative) differences within a quantitative approach and that the result of applying such methodology to dialect grouping is more accurate than the one obtained on purely qualitative or quantitative grounds. The paper is organized as follows. First, we will present the characteristics of the corpus on which our study is based, the Catalan Corpus Oral Dialectal. Second, we will introduce the main tenets of the quantitative dialectometrical methodology. Third, we will show the kind of linguistic analysis we pursue to distinguish regular phonetic facts from underlying differences and we will evaluate the consequences of such distinction for dialectometrics. Finally, we will illustrate the results of our research by reviewing the dialectal classification of Valencian Catalan. 1.
The Catalan Corpus Oral Dialectal (COD) Throughout the last fifteen years the Departament de Filologia Catalana of the Universitat de Barcelona has gathered and systematized in databases a corpus of contemporary Catalan --the Corpus Oral Dialectal (COD). Data were collected with computerization in mind through a questionnaire of approximately 600 phonetic and morphological items and recordings of 10minute samples of casual speech. The fieldwork was carried out in each of the 86 county towns of the whole Catalan-speaking area, throughout Spain, Andorra, the southeast part of France and the city of Alghero in Sardinia, Italy (see Figure 1). We interviewed 2-3 speakers in each town. The use of a third speaker was designed in order to be able to select the majority form in cases with variation where data computerization required a single answer. The informants were 3045 years old, middle class speakers, with a minimum amount of formal education. The selection of localities and speakers was done with the purpose of recording the common mode of speaking of the inhabitants of more urban areas, where the population concentrates nowadays. Our aim, thus, is different from that of traditional surveys, which concentrate on recording old speakers of small rural areas that preserve the indigenous varieties of a language that are usually in danger of being lost due to the pressure of education, media and the standard variety, among others. The results of the questionnaire have been systematized in databases, which nowadays contain 135.480 phonetic items and 532.508 morphological items. Up to now, 50 free-speech samples have been orthographically and
NEW TENDENCIES IN GEOGRAPHICAL DIALECTOLOGY
33
phonetically transcribed and aligned with their corresponding sound files (cf. Viaplana & Perea 2003). (More details on the characteristics of the corpus appear in Lloret & Perea 2002.)
Figure 1: General map From the corpus, we have developed the following three different lines of research: a) we are making the questionnaire data accessible through computerized maps (cf. Perea 2005). b) we analyze the questionnaire data from the phonological and morphological views, and the free-speech data from the syntactic view as well (cf., among others, Bonet & Lloret 2005a, b; Grimalt 2002; Lloret 2004; Pons 2004a, b; Querol 2004). We also develop studies related to language variation and linguistic change by comparing our data with those in old questionnaires and atlases (cf., among others, Campmany 2004a, b; Lloret 2003). c) we use the analyzed data from the questionnaire to develop dialectgrouping techniques based on a multivariate analysis, in line with
34
ESTEVE CLUA & MARIA-ROSA LLORET
dialectometrics and the cluster analysis (cf. Clua 1999a, b, 2005; Viaplana 1999). As said, in this paper, we are going to focus on this last issue. 2.
Dialectometric approach to dialect grouping The crucial notion of the quantitative approaches to dialect grouping is the concept of ‘linguistic distance’, which is the measurement of the set of similarities between dialects; or, conversely, the measurement of dissimilarities or distance. The similarities or dissimilarities taken into account are the variables of the statistical analysis (cf., among others, Séguy 1973 and Goebl 1992.) The methodology used to calculate the linguistic distance is the following. First, one has to establish comparative matrices that relate the set of linguistic variables analyzed with the set of localities taken into account (Table 1).
Variables Localities Locality 1 Locality 2 Locality 3 ... Locality n
X1
X2
X3
...
Xp
X11 X21 X31 ... Xn1
X12 X22 X32 ... Xn2
X13 X23 X33 ... Xn3
... ... ... ... ...
X1p X2p X3p ... Xnp
Table 1: Comparative matrix From these matrices, the coincidences between varieties are calculated in order to get the similarity matrices. Before that, though, we need to establish the similarity index from which the computer program can calculate the coincidences and automatically determine the linguistic distance between localities. The choice of this index is very important for the results, since they may vary according to the kind of index used. This is especially relevant when the comparative matrices contain null cells (due to the lack of information) or when they contain multiple answers. Traditionally, this problem was difficult to overcome as the data used for the analysis were not homogeneous because they were not collected with computerization in mind; rather dialectometrical studies usually take as point of departure data from the linguistic atlases or from old questionnaires. In our project this problem has been completely overcome due to the fact that data were collected with computerization in mind from the beginning. Thus there are no blanks and a single majority form per item can be selected when this is required for the computer program.
NEW TENDENCIES IN GEOGRAPHICAL DIALECTOLOGY
35
Generally, the index of similarity is based on the percentage of coincidences with respect to the total number of elements compared among two varieties. Under certain conditions, the index can be as simple as assigning the value ‘1’ if two localities i and j coincide with respect to a variable k; and ‘0’ otherwise (see (1)). (1) Measure of similarity s(i , j ) = ! coink (i , j ) k
Where coink (i,j) takes value 1 when, regarding the linguistic variable k, the localities i and j coincide, and it takes value 0 otherwise.
The similarity matrices calculate the number of coincidences between localities with respect to the set of variables taken into account. They measure the linguistic distance between varieties. An example of this kind of matrix is provided in Table 2 (see the complete matrix in the appendix). Ontinyent
Cocentaina
Alcoi
la Vila
Alacant
Novelda
Elx
Guardamar Guardamar 0,00 Elx
2123
0,00
Novelda
2124
2233,17 0,00
Alacant
2050
2156,42 2189,56 0,00
la Vila
2054
2093,53 2149,57 2130,54 0,00
Alcoi
2028
2028,13 2102,14 2090,47 2235,47 0,00
Cocentaina 2053
2033
2107
2140
2256
2236
0,00
Ontinyent
2051
2115
2140
2268
2284
2258
2020
0,00
Table 2: Example of similarity matrices These similarity matrices allow figuring out easily the localities that share a high number of coincidences, that is, the ones that are linguistically closer; or, conversely, the ones that are linguistically farther. However, except for comparison between two varieties, in the previous representation it is difficult to foresee the overall interpretation of the results or to get a plausible, easy visualization of the linguistic distances between all varieties. For this reason, we have to resort to another kind of representation, which is able to represent
ESTEVE CLUA & MARIA-ROSA LLORET
36
in a single level (as in a plane) the original structure of the linguistic distances (which are multidimensional) with a minimal distortion of the data. One of the more usual techniques applied in such cases is the ‘cluster analysis’, which allows an optimal representation of the grouping results. The purpose of this kind of representation is to build clusters based on a measurement of similarities that is fixed by an algorithm. This allows a tree representation, or ‘dendrogram’, as the one shown in Figure 2.
1
2
3
4
5
Figure 2: Example of dendrogram The main element of this kind of analysis is the algorithm used to convert the numerical data into a cluster representation. The one we use is the well-known UPGMA (Unweighted Pair-Group Method using Arithmetic Averages; cf. Sneath & Sokal 1973). 3.
Linguistic analysis and linguistic distance between dialects Traditionally, the quantitative approach as well as the qualitative one is item centered and superficially oriented, that is, it is based on the phonetic outputs. Computer technologies have broadened the linguistic research on dialectology in the sense that it is now possible to deal with enormous amounts of data, but in order to exploit them qualitatively as well we need a mechanism to introduce structural differences. The way we propose to add the qualitative countenance to the quantitative approach is to have a means to weight, in addition to the surface differences, the real underlying differences that are due to the effects of the regular phenomena that a language display. We will next illustrate this point by looking at the shape of the second person singular pronominal clitic in Valencian Catalan (2). (The clitic appears in bold in the examples below.) (2) a.
et parle
Variety 1 [etpárle]
Variety 2 [tepárle]
Variety 3 [tepárle]
“I talk to you”
NEW TENDENCIES IN GEOGRAPHICAL DIALECTOLOGY b. c. d.
t’anime animant-te anima’t
[taníme] [animánte] [anímat]
[taníme] [animánte] [anímat]
[taníme] [animánte] [anímate]
37
“I cheer you up” “cheering you up” “cheer you up!”
The examples in (2) show that all the varieties display a non-syllabic form [t] and different syllabic forms: one with a vowel before the consonant ([et]) and another one with the vowel after the consonant ([te]). In variety 1, [et] appears before a verb that begins with a consonant (2a), while [te] appears after a verb that ends in a consonant (2c). In variety 2, [te] shows up in these two cases (2a, c). In variety 3, [te] further appears after a verb ending in vowel (2a, c, d). From the point of view of traditional approaches, the linguistic distance between these three varieties is very similar. All the varieties show the same forms in (2b) and (2c). Varieties 1 and 3 differ in two cases: (2a) and (2d). Variety 2 differs in one form with respect to variety 1, (2a), and in one other form with respect to variety 3, (2d). From the point of view of surface approaches, the distance between varieties 1 and 2 has the value 1 because they differ in one form only: [etpárle] vs. [tepárle]. Varieties 1 and 3 show a linguistic distance of 2 because they differ in two forms: [etpárle] vs. [tepárle] and [anímat] vs. [anímate]. Varieties 2 and 3 display a value of 1 because they differ in one form: [anímat] vs. [anímate]. (See the similarity matrix in Table 3.) Variety 1 Variety 1 Variety 2 1 Variety 3 2
Variety 2 Variety 3
1
Table 3: Similarity matrix based on phonetic data
Figure 3: Dendrogram based on phonetic data
ESTEVE CLUA & MARIA-ROSA LLORET
38
According to these data, in a dendrogram (or tree representation), either varieties 1 and 2 are grouped closer than 3, because they differ in 1 form only, or varieties 2 and 3 are clustered closer than 1, because they also differ in 1 form only (Figure 3). All this variation, though, can be reduced on the basis of syllabification by distinguishing underlying differences from the ones that are due to regular phenomena. Under this view, varieties 1 and 2 have a single underlying form (/t/) and the vowel [e] is inserted in order to satisfy syllabic requirements. That is, as in other contexts, epenthesis applies when the addition of the clitic to the verb creates a sequence that cannot be properly syllabified. The difference between these two dialects lies in the position of the epenthesis. In variety 1, the epenthetic vowel always appears at the periphery of verb-clitic sequences, i.e. at the beginning in (3a) but at the end in (3c) In variety 2 instead it is always placed to the right of the clitic, i.e. [te] in (3a) and (3c). Variety 3 is completely different. The crucial example here is the last one, i.e. anima-te [anímate] (3d). In this case, the verb ends in a vowel and, thus, there is no syllabic reason to assume that the vowel of the clitic is inserted through epenthesis to repair syllabification. For this variety, it is more coherent to establish that the underlying form of the clitic contains the vowel (/te/), although this vowel deletes when it appears in contact with another vowel, cf. t’anime [taníme] in (3b). This vowel also deletes in other vocalic contexts in the language (cf. entre amics: entr[a]mics “between friends”, no és tan gran: n[o]s tan gran “it is not that big”). (3) a. b. c. d.
et parle t’anime animant-te anima’t
Variety 1 /t/ [etpárle] [taníme] [animánte] [anímat]
Variety 2 /t/ [tepárle] [taníme] [animánte] [anímat]
Variety 3 /te/ [tepárle] [taníme] [animánte] [anímate]
“I talk to you” “I cheer you up” “cheering you up” “cheer you up!”
In other words, variety 3 has preserved the old shape of the clitic (/te/, from the Latin form te), but in certain contexts the vowel deletes in accordance with the regular phonology of the language. Unlike variety 3, varieties 1 and 2 have restructured their system. They show a single-consonant underlying form (/t/) that undergoes epenthesis for syllabic reasons. Therefore, the linguistic distance between varieties 1 and 2 is indeed smaller than that with variety 3, which has a different underlying representation. We will next show how our analysis captures this fact.
NEW TENDENCIES IN GEOGRAPHICAL DIALECTOLOGY
39
The similarity matrix presented in Table 4 shows that, as for underlying differences concerning the four forms under study, varieties 1 and 2 have zero differences (both have a /t/ underlying form), but variety 1 with respect to 3, and 2 with respect to 3 show 4 differences (variety 3 departs from a /te/ underlying form).
Variety 1 Variety 2 Variety 3
Variety 1
Variety 2
0 4
4
Variety 3
Table 4: Similarity matrix based on the phonological analysis (I): Underlying differences: /t/1, 2 vs. /te/3 The similarity matrix presented in Table 5 further calculates the differences concerning the phenomena involved. Here, varieties 1 and 2 differ only in the position of the epenthesis. Varieties 1 and 3, and varieties 2 and 3 differ in displaying or not epenthesis and vowel deletion.
Variety 1 Variety 2 Variety 3
Variety 1
Variety 2
1 2
2
Variety 3
Table 5: Similarity matrix based on the phonological analysis (II): Differences in the phenomena involved
Variety 1 Variety 2
Variety 3
Figure 4: Dendrogram based on the phonological analysis
40
ESTEVE CLUA & MARIA-ROSA LLORET
In accordance with our analysis, the resulting dendrogram (Figure 4) shows a closer relation between varieties 1 and 2, and, significantly, a larger distance between these two and variety 3. 4.
Example: The case of Valencian Catalan We will next illustrate the results of applying this methodology to a whole set of data. The example is taken from Clua (1999a, b), where he analyzes the inflection of Valencian Catalan based on the data of our corpus. Clua uses a dialectometric approach to review the traditional dialectal classification (which is based on the notion of bundles of isoglosses), but he applies dialectometrics to the already analyzed data of our corpus, along the lines we have previously illustrated. The overall results of this study are shown in the following dendrometrical representation (Figure 5), extracted from the similarity matrix presented in the appendix (excerpted in Table 2).
Figure 5: Dendrometrical representation for Valencian based on inflectional data
NEW TENDENCIES IN GEOGRAPHICAL DIALECTOLOGY
41
In Figure 5, it is clear that the variety on the left side (apitxat) shows the biggest linguistic distance with respect to the other three. As for the other big group, the two varieties that appear on the right side (alacantí and central) are closer than the other one (septentrional) is. Downwards, we end up having four groups: valencià apitxat (“Tight Valencian”, which is the traditional term to refer to the varieties that show sibilant devoicing); valencià septentrional (“Northern Valencian”); valencià central (“Central Valencian”), and valencià meridional or alacantí (“Southern Valencian”).
Figure 6: Map of the dendrometric classification
42
ESTEVE CLUA & MARIA-ROSA LLORET
In the traditional classifications of Catalan four groups are distinguished too (cf. Colomina 1999). However, while in the traditional approach, which is based on the cartography of certain isoglosses, all four groups are considered to be at the same linguistic distance, in our dendrometric representation (cf. Figure 5) the grouping is much more accurate. In addition to that, a closer look at the results shows significant differences with respect to the scope of each dialect. For the sake of comparison, we present these two classifications in map form: The map in Figure 6 shows the geographical distribution of our results and the one in Figure 7 that of traditional classifications.
Figure 7: Map of the traditional classification By comparing the two maps, note that Southern Valencian (the one containing the city of Alacant) remains almost alike in both approaches. However, the
NEW TENDENCIES IN GEOGRAPHICAL DIALECTOLOGY
43
geographic scope of the other dialects is quite different. Northern Valencian (the one containing the city of Castelló de la Plana) goes further South in the traditional approach. Also, the area of Tight Valencian (the one containing the city of València) is much bigger in the traditional classification, while in ours the area of Central Valencian (the one containing the city of Gandia) is bigger, running from North to South of the central area. 5.
Conclusion In sum, we believe that the dialectal grouping made on the bases of dialectometry with previously analyzed data gives us a better picture of the linguistic distance between dialects. It also allows us to weight the crucial discriminatory facts of each system, which, in the absence of such distinction, remain amalgamated in a simple sum of distinct surface forms. References Bonet, Eulàlia & Maria-Rosa Lloret. 2005a. “Against Serial Evaluation in Optimality Theory.” Lingua 115. 1303–1323. ——. 2005b. “More on Alignment as an Alternative to Domains: The syllabification of Catalan clitics.” Probus 17:1. 37–78. (Prepublication version available online at: http://rucs.rutgers.edu/roa.html, ROA No. 592) Campmany, Elisenda. 2004a. Estudi de la variació dels clítics pronominals en textos formals i informals del català central septentrional. MA thesis, Universitat de Barcelona. ——. 2004b. “Nova aproximació a l’estudi dels proclítics del català central septentrional.” Paper presented at the 50th Annual Conference of the Anglo-Catalan Society / 11th Colloquium of the North American Catalan Society, Eton College, December 2004. Clua, Esteve. 1999a. Variació i distància lingüística. Classificació dialectal del valencià a partir de la morfologia flexiva. Doctoral dissertation, Universitat de Barcelona. ——. 1999b. “Distància lingüística i classificació de varietats dialectals.” Caplletra 26.11–26. ——. 2005. “El mètode dialectomètric: aplicació de l’anàlisi multivariant a la classificació de les varietats del català.” Dialectologia i recursos informàtics ed. by Maria Pilar Perea, 59–87. Barcelona: PPU. [with a CDROM.] Colomina, Jordi. 1999. Dialectologia catalana. Introducció i guia bibliogràfica. Alacant: Universitat d’Alacant.
44
ESTEVE CLUA & MARIA-ROSA LLORET
Francis, W. Nelson. 1983. Dialectology. An Introduction. London & New York: Longman. Goebl, Hans. 1992. “Problèmes et méthodes de la dialectométrie actuelle (avec application à l’AIS).” Nazioarteko Dialektologia Biltzarra Euskaltzaindia. Bilbo 1991 10.21–25. Grimalt, Pere. 2002. Enclisi i accentuació en el català de Mallorca i Menorca. Descripció i anàlisi. MA thesis, Universitat de Barcelona. Lloret, Maria-Rosa. 2003. “Variació condicionada: Aspectes qualitatius i quantitatius.” Catalan Review XVIII:2. ——. 2004. “The Phonological Role of Paradigms: The case of insular Catalan.” Contemporary Approaches to Romance Linguistics. Selected papers from the 33rd Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Bloomington, Indiana, April 2003 ed. by Julie Auger, J. Clancy Clements & Barbara Vance, 275–297. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. (Prepublication version available online at: http://rucs.rutgers.edu/roa.html, ROA No. 646) Lloret, Maria-Rosa & Maria Pilar Perea. 2002. “A Report on the Corpus Oral Dialectal del Català Actual (COD).” Dialectologia et Geolinguistica 10. 1– 18. Perea, Maria Pilar. 2005. “Mapes electrònics i mapes sonors.” Dialectologia i recursos informàtics ed. by Maria Pilar Perea, 135–152. Barcelona: PPU. [With a CD-ROM.] Pons, Clàudia. 2004a. “Segmental and Featural Strategies to Avoid Adjacent Sibilant Segments in Balearic Catalan: An Optimality theoretic account.” Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory. Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’, Groningen, November 2002 ed. by Reineke Bok-Bennema, Bart Hollebrandse & Brigitte Kampers-Manhe, 217–234. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. ——. 2004b. Els contactes consonàntics en balear. Descripció i anàlisi. Doctoral dissertation, Universitat de Barcelona. Querol, Laia. 2004. Distribució i valor morfemàtic dels segments velars en la morfologia verbal del català occidental. MA thesis, Universitat de Barcelona. Séguy, Jean. 1973. “La dialectométrie dans l’Atlas linguistique de la Gascogne.” Revue de linguistique romane 37.1–24. Sneath, P. H. A. & R. R. Sokal. 1973. Numerical Taxonomy. The Principles and Practice of Numerical Classification. A Series of Books in Biology. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Company. Viaplana, Joaquim. 1999. Entre la dialectologia i la lingüística. Barcelona: Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat.
NEW TENDENCIES IN GEOGRAPHICAL DIALECTOLOGY
45
Viaplana, Joaquim & Maria Pilar Perea, eds. 2003. Textos orals dialectals del català sincronitzats. Una selecció. Barcelona: PPU. [With a CD-ROM.]
ESTEVE CLUA & MARIA-ROSA LLORET
46
APPENDIX
Gandia
Xàtiva
Dénia
Ontinyent
Cocentaina
Alcoi
la Vila
Alacant
Novelda
Elx
Guardamar
Guardamar
0,00
Elx
2123,63
Novelda
2124,10 2233,17
0,00
Alacant
2050,98 2156,42 2189,56
la Vila
2054,43 2093,53 2149,57 2130,54
Alcoi
2028,40 2028,13 2102,14 2090,47 2235,47
Cocentaina
2053,43 2033,73 2107,97 2140,78 2256,34 2236,63
Ontinyent
2020,37 2051,89 2115,59 2140,46 2268,29 2284,44 2258,36
Dénia
2035,42 2057,06 2119,67 2174,67 2277,76 2245,34 2258,11 2273,11
Xàtiva
1957,67 2045,40 2027,28 2074,29 2180,75 2180,77 2148,92 2199,83 2210,17
Gandia
1907,30 1947,83 1974,04 1983,39 2120,83 2137,18 2108,69 2146,91 2152,28 2181,46
Sueca
1982,85 1983,54 2022,05 2016,68 2161,50 2194,71 2160,45 2201,93 2202,27 2195,23 2166,90
Alzira
1541,23 1559,29 1592,42 1650,25 1711,54 1717,51 1701,67 1743,88 1718,26 1802,06 1874,66
València
1583,51 1576,13 1579,38 1650,45 1711,06 1710,04 1696,98 1742,98 1739,82 1769,82 1867,48
Llíria
1606,23 1566,07 1544,64 1623,47 1677,43 1677,47 1663,34 1710,55 1695,82 1781,39 1828,81
Sagunt
1594,60 1562,59 1551,68 1629,73 1683,80 1690,54 1717,07 1722,74 1702,18 1787,32 1833,31
Borriana
1942,07 1989,00 2023,17 2095,58 2163,69 2213,31 2166,30 2229,84 2205,12 2175,48 2100,14
Castelló
1809,33 1812,33 1856,43 1938,55 2005,73 2056,57 1994,37 2035,50 2037,30 2044,10 1939,28
l’Alcora
1788,51 1806,56 1871,10 1877,28 1987,89 2043,88 1984,53 2021,90 2011,37 2014,60 1918,66
Albocàsser
1820,02 1773,10 1824,03 1827,98 1969,91 2008,59 2006,57 2004,70 2003,90 2002,57 1906,53
Morella
1772,80 1823,14 1849,98 1862,69 1978,47 2009,70 1949,66 2001,59 2017,14 2005,50 1906,95
Vinaròs
1898,97 1857,53 1900,08 1992,75 2035,80 2084,78 2073,76 2061,15 2087,25 2043,45 1974,59
0,00 0,00 0,00 0,00 0,00 0,00 0,00 0,00 0,00
NEW TENDENCIES IN GEOGRAPHICAL DIALECTOLOGY
47
APPENDIX (continued)
Vinaròs
Morella
Albocàsser
l’Alcora
Castelló
Borriana
Sagunt
Llíria
València
Alzira
Sueca
Guardamar Elx Novelda Alacant la Vila Alcoi Cocentaina Ontinyent Dénia Xàtiva Gandia Sueca
0,00
Alzira
1787,42
València
1811,18 2213,25
Llíria
1787,05 2253,89 2284,18
Sagunt
1794,95 2235,11 2260,84 2283,56
Borriana
2151,55 1739,00 1731,29 1698,11 1711,63
Castelló
1995,90 1529,90 1546,15 1496,90 1503,93 2086,19
l’Alcora
1971,47 1524,83 1523,14 1483,05 1495,63 2102,19 2283,74
Albocàsser
1980,72 1523,71 1530,83 1489,71 1530,35 2051,95 2232,68 2228,60
Morella
1957,67 1515,27 1521,06 1481,60 1491,46 2085,27 2245,63 2257,03 2227,97
Vinaròs
2021,05 1600,33 1604,12 1566,67 1603,37 2153,70 2091,55 2090,73 2110,41 2097,26 0,00
0,00 0,00 0,00 0,00 0,00 0,00 0,00 0,00 0,00
OUTPUT-TO-OUTPUT CORRESPONDENCE AND THE EMERGENCE OF THE UNMARKED IN SPANISH PLURAL FORMATION*
SONIA COLINA University of Arizona & Arizona State University
0. Introduction This chapter presents an epenthesis analysis in which the plural form is in an output-to-output (OO) relation to the singular. The current proposal overcomes the difficulties faced by previous accounts and provides a direct explanation of the pluralization facts, based on the distinction between input and output faithfulness proposed by optimality-theoretic Correspondence Theory (Benua 1995, McCarthy 1995). In addition, this account has the classic advantages of an optimality theory (OT) account, including, but not limited to, the use of universal constraints previously motivated for Spanish. The chapter is organized as follows: the data and previous analyses are briefly presented in sections 1 and 2 respectively. Section 3 contains the analysis proposed for the various kinds of singular bases: the core proposal and the more common plurals formed from vowel and consonant-final singulars are in 3.1, 3.2, & 3.3, including e-final singulars in 3.3. In 3.4 and 3.5 an account is also offered for less common types, such as the plurals of singulars ending in a stressed vowel and exceptional plurals. The chapter ends with a summary and some conclusions. 1. Data Standard plural formation in Spanish consists of adding s [s] to non-verbs ending in unstressed vowels (1a) and es [es] to those ending in consonants. Words ending in a stressed vowel take [es] or [s] except for those in -é which only take [s] (1c). 1 Some existing exceptions to this surface generalization, e.g. *
The author would like to thank F. Martínez-Gil, an anonymous reviewer, the editors and the audience at the LSRL 05 for useful comments and discussion. The usual disclaimers apply. 1 Although much of the variation between [es] and [s] can occur within speakers, for some forms the alternation is across dialects.
50
SONIA COLINA
crisis, crisis “crisis, crises” (vs. regular lapiz[s], lapic[s]es “pencil, pencils”) are shown in (1d) [see also the standard sources (Foley 1967, Saltarelli 1970, Contreras 1977, Harris 1980]. (1)
Singular libro caso niña prole bote
Plural libros casos niñas proles botes
Gloss “book(s)” “case(s)” “girl (s)” “offspring” “boat”/ “container”
b.
mujer mal papel árbol pared césped
mujeres males papeles árboles paredes céspedes
“woman, women” “evil(s)” “paper” “tree” “wall(s)” “lawn”
c.
tisú rubí puré
tisúes ~ tisús rubies ~ rubís purés *purees
“tissue(s)” “ruby, rubies” “puree(s)”
d.
crisis lunes análisis vs. lápiz
crisis lunes análisis
“crisis, crises” “Monday(s)” “analysis”
lápices
“pencil”
a.
2. Previous analyses The Spanish data in (1) have been accounted for as the result of epenthesis (Saltarelli 1970, Contreras 1977, Harris 1980, 1991a, 1999, Colina 1995, Moyna and Wiltshire 2000) or deletion (Foley 1967, Harris 1970, Roca 1996). In the epenthesis proposal the plural morpheme /s/ is realized as [es]; [e] is inserted in contexts in which plural morpheme attachment would result in an ill-formed consonant cluster, e.g., *mujers. (2)
mujer mal papel árbol
mujeres (*mujers) males (*mals) papeles (*papels) árboles (*árbols)
“woman, women” “evil(s)” “paper” “tree”
OUTPUT-TO-OUTPUT CORRESPONDENCE IN SPANISH PLURALS
51
Apocope analyses argue for an account in which the plural morpheme is underlingly /es/ with subsequent deletion of /e/ in the singular of those forms that take [-es] in the plural. (3)
mujer (>mujere) mal (>male) papel (>papeles) árbol (>árbole)
mujeres males papeles árboles
“woman, women” “evil(s)” “paper” “tree”
The bulk of the literature favors epenthesis proposals on the grounds that the rule of singular -e deletion of the apocope analysis is unnatural in Spanish and unnecessarily burdens the lexicon. Epenthesis proposals, however, suffer from several shortcomings as well. For instance, they do not provide a satisfactory explanation of why some clusters like “ls” undergo plural epenthesis (e.g. soles “suns”), despite being well-formed, as demonstrated by the singular forms, e.g. vals “waltz”, solsticio “solstice”. While it could be argued that a form like vals is not part of the core, native lexicon, the same cannot be said of forms like seis [sejs] “six” that also have epenthesis in the plural, ley [lej] “law”, *[lejs] [le.yes] “laws”. In addition, epenthesis proposals crucially rely on the nature of final –e in the singular, bot-e “boat”, (epenthetic or underlying); as a result, some analyses (Harris 1999) are forced to pose two different sources for the same -e, final epenthesis (bot-e) or plural epenthesis (bot-es). In what follows I propose an analysis that overcomes the difficulties faced by previous accounts of Spanish plural formation and provides a direct explanation of the pluralization facts, based on the distinction between input and output faithfulness proposed by optimality-theoretic Correspondence Theory (Benua 1995, McCarthy 1995). 3. Analysis 3.1. The plurals of C and V-final singulars I argue that crucial to an account of pluralization in Spanish is the recognition that the plural is in an output-to-output relation to the singular. There are solid arguments that demonstrate the existence of an output-tooutput correspondence relation in plural formation. A first argument lies in the fact that the plural morpheme, unlike other Spanish suffixes, is attached to the morphological word, after all derivational and inflectional morphemes, including terminal elements, e.g. cas-a, cas-a-s, “house(s)” vs. cas-er-o “housekeeper”. A second argument has to do with forms with underlying final obstruents, such as boicot /boikót/ [bojkó] “boycott” (see boicotear [bojkotear] “to boycott”). These forms often have plurals of the type [bojkós], where the
52
SONIA COLINA
underlying /t/ does not surface, indicating that the plural is modelled on the output of the singular, [bojkós] *[bojkotes]. Singulars ending in obstruent + e, e.g., bote, select the [s] allomorph, because they are formed on the vowel-final output of the singular, e.g, [bote], [bote-s]. Thus, the core of the current proposal is that epenthesis of [e] in the plural reflects the emergence of the unmarked (McCarthy and Prince 1994) with respect to the constraint against coda consonants (*CODA). The relevant correspondence relation for the singular is an input-to-output correspondence relation. *CODA is usually violated in the singular, because of the domination of DEP-IO (input-to-output faithfulness) over *CODA (markedness). In the plural, since the relevant correspondence relation is of the output-to-output type, DEP-IO is trivially satisfied, and domination of *CODA over DEP-OO results in epenthesis. (4) contains the constraints and ranking; (5) and (6) show candidate evaluation for the singular and the plural forms respectively. (4) a.
Constraints I MAX-IO: Every segment present in the input must have a correspondent in the output (Benua 1995, McCarthy 1995). DEP-IO: Every segment present in the output must have a correspondent in the input (Benua 1995, McCarthy 1995). *CODA: No coda segments. DEP-OO: Every segment present in the output must have a correspondent in the input (Benua 1995, McCarthy 1995). MAX-OO: Every segment present in the input must have a correspondent in the output (Benua 1995, McCarthy 1995).
b. Ranking: MAX-IO, DEP-IO >> *CODA and *CODA >> DEP-OO (5) Evaluation of singular forms /muxer/ [muxer] MAX-IO a. muxer b. muxere c. muxe *!
DEP-IO
*CODA *
*!
As seen in (5), candidates (b) and (c), with epenthesis and deletion, are ruled out because of the high ranking of MAX-IO and DEP-IO. (5a) is the winning candidate because it violates *CODA, the lowest-ranked constraint.
OUTPUT-TO-OUTPUT CORRESPONDENCE IN SPANISH PLURALS
53
In (6), since the plural form is in an output-to-output relation to the singular, the relevant faithfulness constraints are not DEP-IO and MAX-IO, which regulate correspondence between the input and the output and are therefore trivially satisfied, but DEP-OO and MAX-OO, which pertain to output to output correspondence relations. The domination of *CODA over DEP-OO explains plural epenthesis. The strings in correspondence are [muxer] [muxeres]. Although both (6a) and (6b) incur *CODA violations on account of the plural morpheme /s/, (6b) has one more *CODA violation and is thus eliminated. (6a), the winner, has one violation of DEP-OO, but this is the lowest-ranked constraint. (6) Evaluation of plurals of C-final singulars I /muxer/ [muxer] + /s/ [muxeres] MAX-IO a. muxeres b. muxers
DEP-IO
*CODA *(s) *(s) *(r)!
DEP-OO *
At this point it is important to clarify how *CODA violations are being assessed. In the OT literature more than one segment in the coda is normally counted as a violation of the constraint against complex codas (*COMPLEX COD ), rather than a *CODA violation (Kager 1999). The current analysis argues that, although such segments do incur a *COMPLEX COD violation, they also need to be marked as *CODA violations. One of the arguments for this position is that there is little evidence in Spanish to suggest that *COMPLEX COD must be high-ranked and therefore, epenthesis in the plural cannot be due to the need to satisfy *COMPLEX COD rather than *CODA (contra Colina 1995 & Moyna and Wiltshire 2000). A second argument is that the correct plural outputs can be obtained through class-specific *CODA constraints (e.g. *CODA/STOP, *CODA/SONORANT), independently needed in Spanish (to account for coda stop deletion vs. retention of coda sonorants, e.g., /eklipse/ [eklise] “eclipse” vs. volver [bolBer]). In addition, contrasts such as: (i) /ekspresidente/ [es.pre.si.Den5.te] “expresident” (deletion) vs. /perspektiba/ [pers.pek.ti.Ba] “perspective” (no deletion); (ii) /biseps/ [bi.ses] “biceps” (deletion) vs. /bals/ [bals] “waltz” , /seis/ [sejs] “six”, Sáinz [sajns] “Sáinz, last name” (no deletion), indicate that deletion is driven by the coda type (obstruent vs. sonorant), not by the complexity of the cluster. Finally, an analysis in which the cluster is the reason for deletion, that is, *COMPLEX COD >> MAX-IO, makes the wrong predictions, such as that the plural of [sol] “sun” should be the illformed *[sos] < [sol] + /s/. In contrast, the output-to-output account
54
SONIA COLINA
proposed here straightforwardly accounts for why non-plural clusters undergo deletion while plural ones prefer epenthesis through the rankings: (i) DEP-IO >> *CODA >> MAX-IO (singular) and (ii) MAX-OO >> *CODA >> DEP-OO (plural).2 In accordance with the above, *COMPLEX COD is considered to be lowranked and not shown in the tableaux for reasons of space. Codas with more than one segment contain *COMPLEX COD violations. Also for reasons of economy, coda-specific constraints (*CODA/STOP, *CODA/FRICATIVE, *CODA/SONORANT) are lumped together under the label *CODA. For each violation, the offending segment is shown in parenthesis, thus indicating the nature of the coda violation involved. To complete the evaluation of the plurals of consonant-final singulars, two additional candidates need to be considered (8c and 8d). The constraints shown in (7) are necessary to rule out these candidates. (7) Constraints II REALIZE MORPHEME (RM): All morphemes must be realized. A morpheme is realized if its input has a correspondent in the output (Samek-Lodovici 1993; McCarthy 2000:124; Kurisu 2001; for application to Spanish plurals, see Colina, in press) ALIGN (Pl, R, Wd, R) (ALIGN-PL): The right edge of the plural morpheme must be aligned with the right edge of the word. (8) Evaluation of plurals of C-final singulars II /muxer/ [muxer] + /s/ [muxeres] MAX-IO DEP-IO a. muxeres b. muxers c. muxerse d. muxere
RM ALIGN-PL
*! *!
*CODA *(s) *(s) *(r)! *(r)
DEP-OO * * *
RM and ALIGN-PL must dominate*CODA because the plural of V-final (unstressed) singulars is formed by attaching [s] to the right of the vowel (9). 2
A related but separate issue has to do with the proposal that final -e in the singular following otherwise ill-formed consonants or clusters, e.g., bote “boat”, parte “part”, is epenthetic. See Colina (2003) for an analysis in which this final -e is underlying and no longer the result of an active rule of epenthesis. Such proposal is in consonance with the existence an active rule of deletion of coda obstruents, e.g., biceps [bises]. This topic, however, is beyond the scope and space limitations of the current paper and therefore the interested reader is referred to the relevant sources (Colina 2003, Bonet, ms).
55
OUTPUT-TO-OUTPUT CORRESPONDENCE IN SPANISH PLURALS
(9) Evaluation of plurals of V-final singulars /ni¯a/ [ni¯a] + /s/ [ni¯as] MAX-IO DEP-IO
RM
a. ni¯as b. ni¯ase c. ni¯a
ALIGN-PL
*CODA *(s)
*!
DEP-OO *
*!
3.2 Cs-final singulars vs. C-e-s plurals The proposed account also explains plural epenthesis in clusters that appear to be well-formed in the singular. Since the relevant faithfulness constraint in the plural (DEP-OO) is dominated by markedness (*CODA), *CODA effects become visible demanding open syllables. In other words, -e is inserted in plurals to allow a coda consonant to be parsed as an onset to the epenthetic vowel. Thus, while DEP-IO >> * CODA selects [bals] “waltz” over *[balse] or *[bales] in the singular (10), in the plural the ranking of markedness over output faithfulness-- * CODA >> DEP -OO--chooses [soles] over *[sols] (11). (10) /bals/ [ bals] “waltz” MAX-IO a. bals b. balse c. bal d. bales
DEP-IO
RM
ALIGN-PL
*CODA *(l)*(s) *(l) *(l) *(s)
DEP-OO
RM
ALIGN-PL
*CODA *(s) *(l) *(l) *(s)*(l)!
DEP-OO * *
*! *! *!
(11) /sol/ [sol] +/s/ [soles] MAX-IO a. soles b. solse c. sol d. sols
DEP-IO
*! *!
As seen in (10-11), the contrast between forms like [bals] and [soles] is now accounted for through general phonological mechanisms. (12-13) show competing candidates for a form with a high glide + /s/ cluster. Evaluation proceeds as in (10–11). Note that in (12d) and (13a) the glide is parsed in the onset and realized as a fricative. The details of this have no bearing on the analysis proposed for plural epenthesis. For this reason and
56
SONIA COLINA
for ease of presentation, evaluation of the segmental content of output candidates for /i/ is not considered in the tableaux. (12) /seis/ [ sejs] “six” MAX-IO a. sejs b. sejse c. sej d. seyes
DEP-IO
RM
ALIGN-PL
*CODA *(l)*(s) *(l) *(l) *(s)
DEP-OO
RM
ALIGN-PL
*CODA *(s) *(l) *(l) *(s)*(l)!
DEP-OO * *
*! *! *!
(13) /lei/ [lej] +/s/ [leyes] MAX-IO a. leyes b. lejse c. lej d. lejs
DEP-IO
*! *!
3.3 The plurals of e-final singulars The fact that the plural is formed on the output of the singular allows for an account of pluralization that is independent of an analysis of base final –e in the singular in which –e is epenthetic (lexical epenthesis, Harris 1991a, 1999) or underlying (Roca 1996, Morin 1999, Colina 2003). In (14) and (15), the strings in output-to-output correspondence are [bote] [botes] in both cases, and therefore evaluation proceeds in the same fashion for (14) and (15). As a result, [botes] is selected as the output of the plural of [bote], independently of the form of the underlying representation. In those analyses that argue for the epenthetic nature of -e, final epenthesis in the singular is the result of the domination of the constraint banning coda stops (*CODASTOP) over DEP-IO. As indicated at the top of the tableau, e is present in the output of the singular, however it is absent from the output of the plural in candidates (d-f), thus incurring OO faithfulness violations.3 All candidates in tableau (14-15) (a-f) are plural outputs. 3
Plurals like fans (*fanes) < fan, “fan” do not show plural epenthesis because, being foreign terms, they are not part of the core lexicon of Spanish and therefore they cannot be morphological words. Since optimization of syllabic structure through OO epenthesis depends on OO correspondence between the output of the morphological word and the output of the plural, foreign terms that are not morphological words do not undergo plural epenthesis. Further evidence in favor of the dependence of plural formation on morphological status (in other words, evidence that it is morphological epenthesis) is that plural epenthesis is not exceptionless. In contrast with morphological epenthesis, purely phonological epenthesis, such as word-initial epenthesis is exceptionless, e.g. estrés (“st”). Thus, the constraint against word-
57
OUTPUT-TO-OUTPUT CORRESPONDENCE IN SPANISH PLURALS
(14)
Base final -e is underlying /bote/ [bote] +/s/ [botes] MAXIO
a. botes b.botese c. bote d. bot e. bots f. botse
DEPIO
RM
(15)
ALIGNPL
Base final -e is epenthetic /bot/ [bote] +/s/ [botes] *CODA
DEPOO
MAX-OO
*(s) *!
*
*! *! *!
*(s)*(t) *(t)
*
* * *
(14–15e) and (14–15a) are the only candidates that do not violate one of the top-ranked constraints. (14–15e) loses to (14–15a) because (14–15e) incurs a one more *CODA violation on account of the final t. 4 3.4 The plurals of singulars ending in a stressed vowel In sum, the analysis presented in sections 3.1–3 accounts for the majority of plural forms in Spanish in straightforward manner that overcomes the difficulties faced by previous analyses. A few remaining cases that have proved problematic for all analyses are the plurals of singulars ending in a stressed vowel (1c) and the exceptional forms listed in (1d). An analysis of these remaining cases is presented next. It is shown that variation in the case of the forms in (1d) is easily explained by a constraint-based analysis. Variation in the plurals of forms ending in stressed vowels (1c) (rubí, rubies~ rubís, “ruby, rubies”) is explained through conflicting demands on the output, that are inexistent in (unstressed) vowel and consonant-final bases.5 While attachment of the [es] allomorph to consonant-final bases brings about unmarked structure—syllabic (by opening the final VC syllable), morphological (by conforming to the preferred structure for the morphological word consisting of a stem and an unstressed vocalic terminal element, cas + a initial s+obstruent clusters (“st”) must be undominated. In contrast, in plural formation *CODA is dominated by IO faithfulness in the singular and it dominates OO faithfulness in the plural. It is crucially dependent on morphological-word status. 4 Note that the illformedness of (14-15e) cannot be attributed to a constraint banning coda stops (*CODA/STOP), as the same effects can be observed with sonorant codas (e.g. *sols; rey, reyes *reys “kings” ). Both *CODA/STOP and *CODA/SONORANT must dominate DEP-OO, thus making it possible to include them both under *CODA. In fact when considering singulars with a coda stop, the complete detailed ranking must be DEP-IO >> *CODA/STOP >> MAX-IO >> *CODA/SONORANT >> DEP-OO. 5 Some frequently occurring forms may have lexicalized plurals, e.g. papás, *papáes, “dads”.
58
SONIA COLINA
“house”, hotel, hotel+es “hotel(s)”), and metrical (iambic feet become trochaic)—, this is not the case for forms like rubí “ruby”.6 The [es] allomorph (rubi.es) creates an unmarked trochaic foot (FTFORM (TROCH) violation), but it also introduces an onsetless syllable (ONSET violation). The [s] form of the plural (ru.bís), on the other hand, results in a syllable onset (satisfies ONSET), but creates an iambic foot (FTFORM (TROCH) violation). Under these conflicting demands, ONSET and FTFORM (TROCH) remain unranked, resulting in variation and in the production of two alternative outputs (17). (16)
Constraints III ONSET: Syllables have onsets. FTFORM (TROCH): The preferred foot type is a (syllabic) trochee. STRESS-IDENT (IO&OO): Preserve lexically specified stress
In addition, STRESS-IDENT, requiring the preservation of lexically-specified stress, must dominate ONSET and FTFORM(TROCH) because stress shift cannot be resorted to in order to avoid ONSET or FTFORM(TROCH) violations.7 As seen in tableau (17), candidate (c), with stress shift, is ruled out because it violates the more highly ranked STRESS-IDENT, despite containing no violations of ONSET or FTFORM(TROCH). (17)
/rubí/ [rubí] +/s/ [rubíes] ~ [rubís] DEP-IO
a. rubíes b. rubís c. rúbis 6
MAX-IO
STRESSIDENT
FTFORM (TROCH)
ONSET *
* *!
The plurals of paroxytone singulars are preparoxytones due to the need to preserve lexical stress. 7 As one anonymous reviewer suggests, one could argue that variation is connected to the fact that rubí lacks overt gender marking: the final vowel is part of the stem.” This solution is not unrelated to the one presented here, yet the issue at stake is the stressed status of the final vowel, rather than overt gender marking. In addition to there being no clear one-to-one correlation between final unstressed vowels and gender marking (Harris 1991b), final unstressed vowels in Spanish are often (re)interpreted as word markers/suffixes (non-stem final), regardless of their gender marking status, as shown by forms with no intrinsic gender, such as adverbs, e.g. ahora “now”, ahor-it-a “now-DIM”; lejos “far-ADV”, lej-it-os “far-AdvDIM”, lej-an-o “far-ADJ”, lej-an-ía “distance”. Hence one can conclude that the final vowel of rubí cannot be reinterpreted as a word-marker, and therefore cannot take the -s plural allomorph, because it is stressed (and lexical stress needs to preserved), not because it is stemfinal or lacks overt gender marking. Note that word-markers cannot bear stress in Spanish.
OUTPUT-TO-OUTPUT CORRESPONDENCE IN SPANISH PLURALS
59
é-final forms (café, cafés *cafees “coffee”), without variation, can be accounted for by means of an OCP-type constraint that bans identical consecutive segments and dominates FTFORM(TROCH). 3.5 Exceptional forms (1d) (18)
crisis lunes análisis vs. lápiz
crisis lunes análisis
“crisis, crises” “Monday(s)” “analysis”
lápices
“pencil”
The forms in (1d), repeated here in (18), can be accounted for through a highly-ranked OCP-type constraint against identical segments (*eses).8 Domination of IO faithfulness over *eses preserves these sequences in underlying representations (in non-plurals, when OO correspondence is not at stake). However, when [eses] is the result of morpheme concatenation, it is avoided through coalescence (a violation of UNIFORMITY), which also serves to satisfy RM. (19)
UNIFORMITY: No element of the output has multiple correspondents in the input. *eses, RM >> UNIFORMITY
In (20), (a) is the optimal candidate because it does not violate the top-ranked constraint *eses as (20b) does. Although (20a) fails on account of UNIFORMITY , as [es] in the singular is in correspondence with input /es/ and plural [es], this constraint is the lowest-ranked one and thus (20a) becomes the winner. (20)
/lunes/ [lunes] +/s/ [lunes] *eses
a. lunes b.luneses
*RM
UNIFORMITY *
*!
Stress-related constraints, such as FTFORM(TROCH), STRESS-IDENT, and those banning monosyllabic forms (minimality) and the placement of stress on the 8
I use the admittedly adhoc label *eses for the sake of convenience. Further work is necessary to determine the exact nature of this OCP violation.
60
SONIA COLINA
plural morpheme dominate *eses. The ranking of minimality over *eses accounts for plurals such as meses *mes (>mes) “months”; while reveses *revés * réveses (
/rebés/ [reBe@s] +/s/ [reBe@ses] STRESS-IDENT
a. reBe@ses b. reBe@s c. re@Beses
FTFORM (TROCH)
*eses
*RM
UNIFORMITY
* *! *!
* *
regímenes > régimen “regime” shows that STRESS-IDENT must be dominated by the constraints responsible for the three-syllable window, as lexical stress is shifted to avoid stress placement beyond the antepenultimate. As seen in (22), the constraints and the constraints ranking above account regularly for plurals like [lápises] (>[lápis]). Since [lapises] contains no violations of *eses or UNIFORMITY, it is selected as the optimal candidate. (22)
/lapis/ [lapis] +/s/ [lapises] *eses
a. lapis b.lapises
*RM
UNIFORMITY *
How does the current account explain the plural crisis *crisises (vs. [lápis] [lápises])? The explanation has to do again with OCP-type constraints that ban the presence of the same onset and coda in two consecutive syllables ([s]). The exact formulation of the OCP constraints involved is unclear at this point, but I speculate that they are related to restrictions on the nature of the last two contiguous syllables: -es attachment is not possible when the last syllable of the singular contains a nucleus [e] (22a), and/or an onset [s] (22b) identical to those of the last syllable of the plural. In other words, for singulars ending in s, the form of the plural is dependent on the nucleus and onset of the last syllable: if at least one of them is identical to one of the segments in the plural allomorph [es], coalesence is resorted to (with [s] or [es]); when neither the 9
In addition, plural [e] (epenthetic) cannot coalesce with a stressed [e]. Epenthetic elements are usually unable to carry stress.
OUTPUT-TO-OUTPUT CORRESPONDENCE IN SPANISH PLURALS
61
onset or the nucleus is identical, plural formation is as predicted for C-final singulars. (23)
a. b. c.
*lu *cri la
ne si pi
ses ses ses
4. Conclusions / Summary This article proposes that the plural in Spanish is in an output-to-output relation to the singular, with [e] being the result of epenthesis. Plural epenthesis of -e is a consequence of the ranking *CODA >> DEP-OO (emergence of the unmarked), while the ranking DEP-IO >> *CODA prevents epenthesis in the singular.
MAX-IO ALIGN-PL DEP-IO
STRESS-IDENT
FTFORM (TROCH)
ONSET
*RM, *eses
UNIFORMITY *CODA
DEP-OO
MAX-OO Figure 1. Constraint ranking for Spanish plural formation
62
SONIA COLINA
Some superior points of the current proposal with respect to previous ones are that: (a) it explains plural epenthesis with clusters that appear to be wellformed in the singular, e.g. vals *vales, * valse “waltz”; solsticio * solesticio “solstice” vs. sol-es *sols “suns”-- emergence of OO constraints (DEP-OO). (b) it is independent of an analysis of base final –e in the singular in which –e is epenthetic (lexical epenthesis, Harris 1991a, 1999) or underlying (Roca 1996, Morin 1999, Colina 2003). (c) it explains variation in the plural of singulars ending in a stressed vowel, due to unranked constraints (ONSET and FTFORM(TROCH)). The nature of the OCP violations involved in some exceptional forms is in need of further investigation. (d) it brings out the difference between plural epenthesis (exceptional) and initial epenthesis (unexceptional), plural epenthesis being morphological (morphology-dependent constraints), and initial epenthesis, phonological (purely phonological constraints). (e) it relies on constraints that are independently motivated for Spanish and other languages (universal) (see Colina, in press, for an account of Dominican plurals based on OO-correspondence between the output of the singular and the plural). References Benua, Laura. 1995. “Identity Effects in Morphological Truncation.” University of Massachusetts Occcasional Papers in Linguistics 18: Papers in Optimality Theory, ed. by Jill Beckman, Laura Walsh, and Suzanne Urbanczyk, 77–136. Amherst, Mass.: GLS. Bonet, Eulàlia. 2005. “Gender Allomorphy and Epenthesis in Spanish.” ms. Barcelona: Universitat Autònoma. Colina, Sonia. 1995. “A Constraint-based Approach to Syllabification in Spanish, Galician and Catalan.” PhD dissertation, The University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. ——. 2002. “Interdialectal Variation in Spanish /s/ Aspiration.” Structure, Meaning and Acquisition in Spanish, ed. by James Lee, Kimberly Geeslin and Clancy Clements, 230–243. Somerville, Mass.: Cascadilla Press. ——. 2003. “The Status of Word-final [e] in Spanish.” Southwest Journal of Linguistics 22.87–108. —— (in press). “No ‘Double Plurals’ in Dominican Spanish: An OptimalityTheoretic Account.” Linguistics. ——. 2005. “Optimality-theoretic Advances in our Understanding of Spanish Syllabic Structure.” ms. Tempe: Arizona State University.
OUTPUT-TO-OUTPUT CORRESPONDENCE IN SPANISH PLURALS
63
Contreras, Heles. 1977. “Spanish Epenthesis and Stress.” Working Papers in Linguistics 3. 9–33. Seattle: University of Washington. Foley, James. 1967. “ Spanish Plural Formation.” Language 43.486–493. Harris, James W. 1970. “A Note on Spanish Plural Formation.” Language 46.928–930. ——. 1980. “Nonconcatenative Morphology and Spanish Plurals.” Journal of Linguistic Research 1.15–31. ——. 1991a. “The Form Classes of Spanish Substantives.” Yearbook of Morphology, ed. by Geert Booij and Jaap van Marle, 65–88. Dordrecht: Kluwer. ——. 1991b. “The Exponence of Gender in Spanish.” Linguistic Inquiry 22.27–62. ——. 1999. “Nasal Depalatalization No, Morphological Wellformedness Sí; the Structure of Spanish Word Classes.” MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 33.47–82. Kager, René. 1999. Optimality Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McCarthy, John. 1995. “Faithfulness and Reduplicative Identity.” University of Massachusetts Occasional Papers in Linguistics 18: Papers in Optimality Theory, ed. by Jill Beckman, Laura Walsh, and Suzanne Urbanczyk, 249–384. Amherst, MA: GLSA. MacCarthy, John & Alan Prince. 1994. “The Emergence of the Unmarked.” Proceedings of the North East Linguistic Society 24, ed. by Mercè Gonzàlez, 333–79. Amherst, MA: GLSA. Morin, Regina. 1999. “Spanish Substantives: How Many Classes? Advances in Hispanic linguistics, ed. by Javier Gutiérrez-Rexach and Fernando Martínez-Gil, 214–230. Somerville, Mass.: Cascadilla Press. Moyna, Irene & Wiltshire, Caroline. 2000. “Spanish Plurals: Why [s] Isn’t Always Optimal.” Hispanic linguistics at the turn of the millenium, ed. by Héctor Campos, Elena Herburger, Alfonso Morales-Front and Thomas J. Walsh, 31–48. Somerville, Mass.: Cascadilla Press. Roca, Iggy 1996. “Phonology-Morphology Interface in Spanish Plural Formation: an Optimality Analysis.” Interfaces in phonology, ed. by Ursula Kleinhenz, 210–230. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Saltarelli, Mario. 1970. “Spanish Plural Formation: Apocope or Epenthesis.” Language 46.89–9
MAPPING FRENCH PRONUNCIATION THE PFC PROJECT
JACQUES DURAND ERSS-CNRS, Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail
0.
Introduction The project presented here is called ‘La Phonologie du Français Contemporain (PFC) : usages, variétés et structure’, PFC for short.1 It is probably the largest and most ambitious surveys of modern French ever conceived from a phonological perspective. The PFC project, under the coordination of Jacques Durand (Toulouse II), Bernard Laks (Paris X) and Chantal Lyche (Oslo), involves over thirty researchers from a variety of countries and aims at the recording, partial transcription and analysis of over 500 speakers from the francophone world on the basis of a common protocol. We aim at a broad coverage of varieties of contemporary French by selecting groups of speakers from approximately 50 different locations in the francophone world. So far well over 400 speakers have already been recorded in various parts of the francophone world beside France, including Belgium, Burkina Faso, Canada, Côte d’Ivoire, Louisiana and Switzerland. The aims of the paper will be to present the project, its motivation, its goals, its actors, the methodology and the research tools used. I finally discuss some preliminary results concerning vocalic systems, the treatment of liaison and that of schwa. 1.
Data, French and phonological theory Ever since the birth of phonology, French has been a favorite testing ground for theoretical claims concerning phonological structure. From the nineteen twenties onwards, the work of Martinet and his disciples provided a 1
The work reported here has benefited from contracts awarded by the ILF, the DGLF and the CNRS TCAN programme. I am particularly grateful to Bernard Laks, Chantal Lyche and JeanPierre Montreuil for their support and their advice during the preparation of the final version of this paper.
66
JACQUES DURAND
thorough illustration of the structuralist approach to language. Then, during the period when Chomsky and Halle’s The Sound Pattern of English (1968) was dominant, the contributions of linguists such as Schane, Dell or Selkirk, to name but a few, presented an illustration and defense of the main concepts of classical generative phonology. Later on, when multilinear systems were devised, they were once again extensively tested on French by linguists like Clements and Selkirk, among others. More recently, the rise of Optimality Theory has coincided with a spate of articles interpreting French data within this new theoretical framework. While new data have occasionally been unearthed, more often than not the observations on which theoretical accounts have been based have just been reinterpretations of idealized data borrowed from the technical literature or observations taken from normative orthoepic work aiming at teaching foreigners to pronounce French correctly. Worse still, in order to present strong claims about phonological structure (the Popperian maxim that the more vulnerable an approach the better it is), assertions have been made about data being unattested or impossible when in fact such data are well attested in the descriptive literature. One of the basic difficulties is that too many theoretical phonologists continue to work on idealized data which have no social or geographical basis. As Morin (1987) observed : “Some of these data … have indeed been rehearsed so often that they have acquired a quite unjustified respectability in generative analyses of standard French.” Worse still, as bemoaned in the same article by Morin, the original sources continue to be modified, extended or reduced in arbitrary ways. This is not to say that introspection, intuition and off-thecuff observations should play no role in the work of the linguist. But they should be integrated to a more controlled approach. The data are not just out there, at hand, ready to be theorized but they are part and parcel of theoryconstruction. This is an assumption which lies at the core of the PFC approach, described hereafter. 2.
The PFC project and its methodology The PFC methodology is inspired by the classical work of Labov in that, for each selection of speakers, it involves the reading aloud of a word-list and a passage as well as ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ conversation. But in each area surveyed, the speakers (usually groups between 10 and 20 informants) are selected on a network principle well known in the United Kingdom, particularly from the work of the Milroys and their associates. Until now, within the project, we have favoured geographical variation; that is, the recording and analysis of cohorts of speakers from as many different locations as possible in the French-speaking world. Within each location, in so far as possible, the groups include an equal number of men and
MAPPING FRENCH PRONUNCIATION
67
women and well defined age ranges (e.g. 20+, 40+, 70+). Social diversity is less easy to achieve with small groups of speakers and it has been found profitable to study family networks which allow for better comparison of agegrading especially when the social background of the informants has remained relatively stable. 2.1 The PFC protocol As indicated above, the protocol provides for the recording of various styles for each speaker: (1) the reading aloud of a wordlist, (2) the reading aloud of a written passage (hereafter called ‘the text’), (3) a guided (‘formal’) interview and (4) a free (‘informal’) conversation. We shall examine each of these in turn. 2.1.1 The Wordlist The word list (94 words in all listed after this paragraph) has been devised in order to establish an initial inventory of the informant’s system. All the words belong to the everyday vocabulary; they are fairly short, and are often taken from the literature and already realized surveys. This guarantees a comparability between PFC and previous surveys and gives historical depth to our study. Although our list includes all the standard consonantal oppositions and the analysis of a few consonantal clusters, we have favoured vocalic contrasts in stressed position. The systematic study of various other phenomena such as vowel harmony or vowel laxing, for instance, would have required more extensive lists. The order adopted within the list is random (but respected when reading aloud) except for the last ten words which are minimal pairs. The informant is asked to read aloud the number which precedes each word in the list. This allows us to index the word at analysis stage but also gives some precious hints as to the nature of the reader’s less monitored style. This is all the more interesting as the French number system gives access to a wide range of phonemic contrasts as well as some lexical differences. Thus, while standard French for 90 is ‘quatre-vingt-dix’ other varieties of French (e.g. Belgium and Switzerland) go for ‘nonante’. The realizations that can be observed cannot be taken at face value, but this does not mean that they can never be trusted. Even if the informant’s reading performance will often reflect past school practices or other influences, not all features can be equally manipulated in reading aloud. Moreover, there exists an asymmetry in the value of reading aloud. The presence of an opposition within the word list (and in particular in the reading aloud of minimal pairs) does not prove that the opposition in question is part and parcel of the everyday system. On the other hand, the absence of an opposition in reading aloud is a very
JACQUES DURAND
68
strong indication that the opposition in question is NOT part of the speaker’s spontaneous style. Thus, the vast majority of the Midi French speakers we have studied, do not make vocalic contrasts in the reading aloud of the minimal pairs 85 to 92 (patte = pâte, épais = épée, jeune = jeûne, beauté = botté) but they distinguish 93–94 brun vs. brin. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.
roc rat jeune mal ras fou à lier des jeunets intact nous prendrions fêtard nièce pâte piquet épée compagnie fête islamique agneau pêcheur médecin paume infect dégeler bêtement épier millionnaire brun scier fêter mouette déjeuner ex-femme
33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64.
liège baignoire pécheur socialisme relier aspect niais épais des genêts blond creux reliure piqué malle gnôle bouleverser million explosion influence mâle ex-mari pomme étrier chemise brin lierre blanc petit jeûne rhinocéros miette slip
65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94.
compagne peuple rauque cinquième nier extraordinaire meurtre vous prendriez botté patte étriller faites feutre quatrième muette piquais trouer piquer creuse beauté patte pâte épais épée jeune jeûne beauté botté brun brin
Table 1. The PFC word-list We have no example in our recordings of a speaker who does not make the distinctions just mentioned in reading the lists aloud but who makes them in spontaneous speech. Equally, if we consider phonotactics, we know that some consonantal groups are not treated in the same way across varieties of French. Thus, /kt/ in (8) intact or (22) infect can be realised in Midi accents
MAPPING FRENCH PRONUNCIATION
69
(among others) without the final coronal /t/ which is present within inflection and derivation (cf. infect [E))fEk] vs infecte [E))fEkt´] ou infecter [E))fEkte]). 1. mettre 2. maître 3. écoeurer 4. évêque 5. câlice 6. sable 7. vite 8. libre 9. juste 10. plume 11. couple 12. pitoune 13. ville 14. vire 15. juge 16. court 17. courte 18. boulevard 19. filtrer 20. abusif 21. ministre 22. pilule 23. touriste 24. cuisine 25. cuisiner 26. pur 27. rouge 28. neige 29. neutre 30. chaude 31. père 32. beurre 33. port 34. part 35. pâte 36. crainte 37. emprunte 38. honte 39. lente 40. équiper
41. équiper 42. député 43. écouter 44. professeur 45. piscine 46. malle 47. mâle 48. Jacques 49. cadenas 50. éclater 51. éclat 52. il est là 53. voyage 54. voyager 55. mauvais 56. jamais 57. parfaite 58. toi 59. bois 60. boivent 61. noir 62. boisson 63. voyons 64. soirée 65. doigt 66. avoir 67. boire 68. froid 69. crois 70. poigné 71. bain 72. quinze 73. un 74. jungle 75. crayon 76. honte 77. absent 78. il vente 79. reculer 80. brouette
81. février 82. tabernacle 83. coutume 84. rendu 85. dire 86. diète 87. duel 88. tube 89. tuile 90. pas d’idée 91. voûte immense 92. le prêtre 93. aveugle 94. convaincre 95. vinaigre 96. orchestre 97. anglicisme 98. debout 99. pourrie 100. ombre 101. épingle 102. signe 103. enseigner 104. champagne 105. dehors 106. hâler 107. chercher 108. arbre 109. plutôt 110. il en a 111. c’est un niaiseux ! 112. cent piastres 113. sur la table 114. dans la maison 115. je les ai vus 116. sans les voir
Table 2. Additional PFC wordlist for Canada The [E))fEkt] realisation in reading aloud must be confronted with other data to establish its value. But, again, by the principle of asymmetry, if
70
JACQUES DURAND
speakers use [E))fEk] in the reading aloud the word-list, we can be more or less certain that this feature is characteristic of their unmonitored speech. If we combine observations from the word list, the text and spontaneous speech, we can begin to make strong hypotheses concerning the phonological system of each informant. Of course, any study of a given variety must be based on extensive knowledge of the variety in question and of the results of previous studies. The reader may well have badly identified a word or may exhibit special features according to the nature of the reading task. Thus, some informants from Languedoc, when reading aloud first conjugation verbs in -er pronounce the final
: for instance, chanter [Sa)ntE“] (or [Sa)ntEr] or [Sa)ntEX]). But in the recordings we have made so far, this pronunciation is only applied to citation forms within the word list but not to the reading aloud of texts or to spontaneous speech, where Marie va chanter would be realised as e.g. [ma“ivaSa)nte]. This specific feature, which I had already observed among members of my own family, needs to be known and the form [Sa)ntE“] has to be interpreted as a belonging to a special reading register. Before closing this section, it should be recognised that although this list can usefully be applied to all varieties of French, it should ideally be supplemented with a further list, if the informants are able and willing to participate in additional recordings. In Canada, for example, Douglas Walker (University of Calgary) has devised an additional list which is better suited to the Canadian situation in that it includes more examples of vocalic laxing, diphthongisation and the treatment of final consonants: 2.1.2 The PFC passage The second part of the recordings is the reading aloud of a text which is given below : Le Premier Ministre ira-t-il à Beaulieu? Le village de Beaulieu est en grand émoi. Le Premier Ministre a en effet décidé de faire étape dans cette commune au cours de sa tournée de la région en fin d'année. Jusqu'ici les seuls titres de gloire de Beaulieu étaient son vin blanc sec, ses chemises en soie, un champion local de course à pied (Louis Garret), quatrième aux jeux olympiques de Berlin en 1936, et plus récemment, son usine de pâtes italiennes. Qu'est-ce qui a donc valu à Beaulieu ce grand honneur? Le hasard, tout bêtement, car le Premier Ministre, lassé des circuits habituels qui tournaient toujours autour des mêmes villes, veut découvrir ce qu'il appelle "la campagne profonde". Le maire de Beaulieu - Marc Blanc - est en revanche très inquiet. La cote du Premier Ministre ne cesse de baisser depuis les élections. Comment, en plus, éviter les manifestations qui ont eu tendance à se multiplier lors des visites officielles ? La côte escarpée du Mont Saint-Pierre qui mène au village connaît des barrages chaque fois que les opposants de tous les bords manifestent leur colère. D'un autre côté, à chaque voyage du
MAPPING FRENCH PRONUNCIATION
71
Premier Ministre, le gouvernement prend contact avec la préfecture la plus proche et s'assure que tout est fait pour le protéger. Or, un gros détachement de police, comme on en a vu à Jonquière, et des vérifications d’identité risquent de provoquer une explosion. Un jeune membre de l'opposition aurait déclaré: "Dans le coin, on est jaloux de notre liberté. S'il faut montrer patte blanche pour circuler, nous ne répondons pas de la réaction des gens du pays. Nous avons le soutien du village entier." De plus, quelques articles parus dans La Dépêche du Centre, L'Express, Ouest Liberté et Le Nouvel Observateur indiqueraient que des activistes des communes voisines préparent une journée chaude au Premier Ministre. Quelques fanatiques auraient même entamé un jeûne prolongé dans l'église de Saint Martinville. Le sympathique maire de Beaulieu ne sait plus à quel saint se vouer. Il a le sentiment de se trouver dans une impasse stupide. Il s'est, en désespoir de cause, décidé à écrire au Premier Ministre pour vérifier si son village était vraiment une étape nécessaire dans la tournée prévue. Beaulieu préfère être inconnue et tranquille plutôt que de se trouver au centre d'une bataille politique dont, par la télévision, seraient témoins des millions d’électeurs. Texte PFC (© Projet PFC)
This passage, which has been artificially constructed, is intended to read like a newspaper article. The reason for this choice is that reading aloud extracts from newspapers is an activity that many people indulge in within families or groups of friends. On the other hand, the reading aloud of an extract from a novel or a poem is completely artificial for most people. The text and its context are French-based but we have tried through successive versions to eliminate words or expressions too specific to France. In our experience so far, the style is not perceived as high-faluting and, according to some sophisticated informants, the passage reads far more as an extract from a second-rate regional newspaper than from Le Monde. If this is indeed true, it is to be welcomed since reading aloud is a highly symbolic act which may remind participants of school and educational failure. This is why the protocol requires extensive knowledge of the ‘terrain’ and can only be successfully applied if the investigator, however friendly he or she may be, is in fact a friend or the close friend of a member of the network of informants. When the text was devised, the aim was to include not only the majority of vocalic and consonantal oppositions attested in French but also a range of phonological phenomena typical of French. All of the phonemic oppositions tested in the word-list are included in the text (with many identical words used in both). Schwa and liaison are systematically tested but other features are also included: palatalization, gliding and various types of assimilation. The reading aloud of a text does not, of course, yield absolutely trustworthy data for a study of spontaneous speech but given the diversity of parameters involved we are getting nearer actual performance. In any case, as stressed earlier, all observations based on this type of corpus must always be interpreted relationally, not only in terms of the four styles elicited by the
72
JACQUES DURAND
protocol but also in relation to other observations and previous descriptions (if they are available). 2.1.3 The conversations The two remaining parts of the protocol are a guided (‘formal’) interview between the fieldworker and the informant, and a free (‘informal’) conversation between members of the group. Ideally, it is preferable for the investigator not to be present during the informal conversations, but this has the drawback that it often becomes much harder to reconstitute part of what is being said. In my own practice, I tend to leave members of the group together and experience shows that, for phonetic purposes, there should no be more than three participants. Sadly, when there are four people or more, crossconversations create an acoustic mishmash often impossible to disentangle. In the ideal case, the four types of recording as presented here yield an ascending scale of formality but the interpretation of the data needs a great deal of care. In particular, terms like ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ should not be taken at face value. As far as the conversations are concerned, much depends on the fieldworkers involved, their experience and their ability to set up proper conditions for the recordings. The two spoken styles are not always as sharply differentiated as one might have wished. This difficulty is not specific to the PFC project but characterizes all attempts to obtain natural spoken data while respecting informants and their rights.2 The hardest task, once the recordings are made, is to format them and annotate them in a way which will facilitate an insightful analysis of the data. 2.2 Transcriptions and codings In a large decentralized project, one of the first questions to be tackled is the following: how should the data be formatted and processed? The only way to ensure comparability of results is to adopt a common format for the storage, annotation, transcription, and preliminary analysis of the data. This is not as simple as it may appear at first sight. The approach adopted until fairly recently within many projects has consisted, on the one hand, in recording speech, and, on the other, in transcribing or annotating it with separate text-processing systems. This yields corpora which cannot easily be used for experimental research. Nowadays, a number of software tools are available which allows both for the transcription, annotation and interpretation of the material. 2
A consent form specifying the nature of the recordings and their possible uses is given to all informants and must be signed by them at the time of each survey.
MAPPING FRENCH PRONUNCIATION
73
Within the PFC project, we have chosen David Weenink and Paul Boersma’s well-known tool, Praat, as our base level environment (cf. http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/). With Praat, we can directly align the audio signal to a text file in a very simple manner, and this in turn permits a convenient manoeuvring of linguistic data: for instance, spontaneous speech from a long conversation can be segmented, labelled and transcribed while the sound itself is displayed (and is available for listening) in the same window as the text files. More importantly, one can work simultaneously on several tiers. In addition, with Praat, one can also perform phonetic and acoustic analyses both at the segmental and the suprasegmental level, manipulate and modify the speech signal, do speech synthesis, build learning tools (neural nets, Optimality Theory grammars) and perform statistical analyses. Although Praat offers a rich environment for the analysis of the speech signal, the project only prescribes the use of Praat for the initial transcription and coding of the data. The base level annotation used in the PFC project is an orthographic transcription aligned with the signal. The conventions we use are indebted to the work done around the GARS Corpus in Aix (Université de Provence) and VALIBEL (UCL, Louvain-la-Neuve). We have also taken into account the recommendations of the EAGLES group and the instructions put forward by Gjert Kristoffersen (University of Bergen) for the transcription of large dialectal corpus in Norway. We have adopted standard orthography (including punctuation but reduced to comma, full stop and question mark with precise recommendations as to their use). An example of PFC transcription (obviously extracted from its Praat format) looks as follows: (1) Sample of PFC transcription E1: Alors, c'était pas trop dur, comme ça d'une traite, c'est toujours, euh, (bruit de feuille). FB: Et voilà. E1: Donc, euh, donc, donc, je vais vous poser des questions si jamais ça vous gêne, s'il y a quoique ce soit, qu'il n'y ait pas de, euh. Tout d'abord, est-ce que vous êtes née dans la région? FB: Euh, dans le Tarn et Garonne. E1: Dans le Tarn et Garonne. A? FB: Moissac. E1: Moissac. FB: Pas loin de Montauban. E1: Pas loin de Montauban. Oui, donc c'est et vous y retour/ enfin, vous y retournez, euh. Donc, là, vous êtes sur la fac, sur Toulouse. FB: La semaine. <E1: La semaine > Et le week-end, chez mes parents à Moissac. E1 : D'accord. Et, euh. Vous êtes née quand ? FB : En mille neuf cent soixante dix sept.
74
JACQUES DURAND
A number of linguists express surprise at the idea that the starting point for phonological and phonetic analyses within PFC is an orthographic level. They wonder why some form of ‘phonetic’ transcription has not been chosen. Experience shows that ‘phonetic’ transcriptions are in fact problematic. The difficulty is not simply the lack of intersubjective agreement between specialists. After all, it could be argued that with sufficient training and an explicit framework, transcribers might converge towards the same solutions. The real problem is in fact elsewhere. As is well-known, there are two standard levels of transcription: phonological and phonetic. Not everybody agrees about what a phonological analysis is, but, even if we agreed on an interpretation (say a ‘phonemic’ transcription in the classical sense), one can immediately see that such a transcription presupposes that the system underlying the data under observation has already been discovered - but the whole point of the analysis is to establish such a system! At the phonetic level, the problem is different but no less acute. The IPA system for instance does offer a full range of symbols and diacritics. But many phenomena are not adequately represented by binary symbols (absence or presence of a property). Nasalisation, length, aspiration, for example, are scalar phenomena and require detailed instrumental analysis to be properly studied. A transcription at that level would involve never ending discussions as to how fine-grained our notation should be. For these reasons, many current projects adopt an initial orthographic transcription as a way of indexing the data and then use this transcription as a basis for further analysis. Within Praat, the PFC initial strategy has involved annotating the orthographic transcription on separate tiers: i.e. coding for schwa (mute ‘e’) on a second tier, and liaison coding on a third tier. A number of software applications have been developed which allow for a mechanical extraction of our codings and the statistical exploration of the results. In parallel, two subprojects involve (a) the acoustic exploration of the data via the automatic extraction of formant charts (Espesser and Nguyen 2003), (b) the construction of additional tiers for work on prosody: stress, rhythm, intonation (Simon, Caelen-Haumont and Pagliano 2006). In the next section, we shall illustrate the coding for liaison before examining some overall results in §4. 2.3 The PFC annotation for liaison Our claim is that liaison can be appropriately described, at least pretheoretically, by using an orthographic transcription as a starting point. The coding system we use is a set of alphanumeric symbols which are added to each potential linking word of French. The coding is applied to three styles: the text, free conversation (5 mn) and guided conversation (5 mn). The coding is auditory at this initial stage and intended to be as simple as possible as it aims at a global description of the data. Therefore, it is no accident if we have gone
MAPPING FRENCH PRONUNCIATION
75
for a notation which is not too fine-grained: for instance, we do not try and describe within our system the precise quality of the vowel in liaisons such as trop[p]intéressant. This type of detailed phonetic investigation demands a separate stage of analysis. The main objective we pursue is the identification of the standard contexts of liaison : i.e. in which contexts is liaison always present (categorical liaison), in which contexts is it optional (variable liaison), and in which contexts is it totally or virtually absent (erratic liaison)? By liaison, we mean the pronunciation of any latent consonant when the word following a linking word is vowel-initial: mes amis (mes [z]amis), petit ami (petit [t]ami), toujours amis (toujours [z]amis). In a case like avec elle pronounced [a.vE.kEl] we are not dealing with liaison but with ‘enchaînement’ (forward linking). French liaison can be ‘enchaînée’ or not as in the following examples: (2) Il est ému: Il est ému:
il est [t]ému il est[t] ému
liaison enchaînée liaison non enchaînée
Since we code any graphical consonant which is potentially a liaison consonant, we should stress that there are cases of liaison which are not indicated in the orthography - e.g. quatre enfants (quat' [z] enfants), il va à Paris (i' va [t] à Paris). These liaison cases are also taken into account. (as well indeed as very rare cases of liaison before consonant-initial words as il peut venir (il peut [t] venir). We speak of ‘epenthetic liaison’ here but without committing ourselves to an analysis in terms of epenthesis. The labels we use (e.g. latent or epenthetic consonant) should not be confused with an analysis which can be couched in a variety of frameworks. All our codings are sequences of alphanumeric symbols, minimally two. The first coding position involves a decision as to whether the linking word is phonetically monosyllabic or polysyllabic : • 1 = one syllable • 2 = two syllables or more and the second figure is drawn from the set{0, 1, 2, 3, 4} where: • 0 = absence of liaison • 1 = liaison enchaînée (forward-linked) • 2 = liaison non enchaînée (not forward-linked) • 3 = uncertainty • 4 = epenthetic liaison The other symbols that we use indicate the nature of the liaison consonant, the presence of pauses, hesitations or glottal stops, cases of unexpected liaison (in relation to spelling) and liaisons involving nasal consonants. The sequence of symbols is fixed.
JACQUES DURAND
76
Before presenting the coding in more detail, we shall provide a short concrete example which should help the reader understand our basic approach. Let us take the beginning of the PFC passage : “Le maire de Beaulieu, Marc Blanc, est en revanche très inquiet.” If we assume that the liaison examples are pronounced as follows Le maire de Beaulieu, Marc Blanc, est [E A)] en revanche très [t“E zE)kjE] inquiet, the coding would be: (3) est10 en = monosyllabe (1) + no liaison (0) très11z inquiet = monosyllabe (1) + liaison enchaînée (1) with a [z] As can be noticed from this example, the liaison consonant [z] is expressed with the standard orthographic symbol. Although recent descriptions of French usually mention only the following liaison consonants [t, z, n, r, p], we allow for the possibility that other varieties might function differently. We therefore allow all graphical orthographic symbols with their value in the SAMPA system: = IPA standard [b c d f g h j k l m n p q r s t v w x z]. One area that we have devoted some attention to is the possibility that a case of liaison or non liaison might correspond to either a pause, a hesitation or the presence of a glottal stop. We lump all these phonetic features under the symbol h. The symbol h indicates that there is a non-smooth transition which can be the object of further fine-grained phonological and phonetic research. A presentation of all the features of our coding would require much more space than is available here. Instead of this, we illustrate our notation with the first paragraph of the PFC text. If the following pronunciations were to be observed (in broad phonetic transcription within square brackets) : "Le maire de Beaulieu - Marc Blanc – est [E tA)] en revanche très [t“E zE)kjE] inquiet. La cote du Premier Ministre ne cesse de baisser depuis les [lE zelEksjo)] élections. Comment [kçmA) A)], en plus, éviter les manifestations qui ont [o)t /y] eu tendance à se multiplier lors des visites [vizit /çfisjEl] officielles ?"
the PFC coding would be : "Le maire de Beaulieu - Marc Blanc – est11t en revanche très11z inquiet. La cote du Premier Ministre ne cesse de baisser depuis les11z élections. Comment20, en plus, éviter les manifestations qui ont12th eu tendance à se multiplier lors des visites20h officielles?"
The interpretations of the above codes are as follows: • est11t en = monosyllable (1) + liaison enchaînée (1) with [t] • très11z inquiet = monosyllable (1) + liaison enchaînée (1) with [z]
MAPPING FRENCH PRONUNCIATION
• • • •
77
les11z élections = monosyllable (1) + liaison enchaînée (1) with [z] Comment20, en = polysyllable (2) + absence of liaison (0) Ont12th eu = monosyllable (1) + liaison non enchaînée (2) with [t] followed by a pause, a hesitation or a period of glottal closure (h) visites20h officielles = polysyllable (2) + absence of liaison (0) + presence of a pause, a hesitation or a period of glottal closure (h).
All the codings can be extracted by various tools and analysis can begin with many comings and goings between data and hypotheses. It is important, however, to be clear about the notation one uses for transcribing and coding the data. Too many projects in sociolinguistics are regrettably based on coding systems whose principles are never described explicitly. Conclusions can never however be divorced from premises! 3.
Some results In the previous sections, the PFC approach has been presented succinctly and selectively. A number of initial studies have been made of varieties of French never or rarely described before and even more exceptionally within a framework allowing for systematic comparison of the results (see the work on Switzerland, Canada, Belgium, and other varieties of French presented in Delais and Durand (2003), Durand, Laks & Lyche (2003)). Part of my own work, in collaboration with other members of the project, has dealt with phonemic inventories, schwa (or mute ‘e’) and liaison from a comparative perspective in several varieties of French (Durand & Lyche, 2003, Durand & Tarrier 2003, Durand & Eychenne 2004, Durand, Eychenne & Aurnague (2004), Durand, Laks, Lyche 2005). One of the most fascinating changes in the pronunciation of French is without doubt the convergence of southern accents towards the ‘Parisian’ norm as far as schwas are concerned. Hierarchies of positions of deletion can be established on a quantitative basis: final position (post-tonic), word internal, initial syllable and even refined. While explanations can be given for this in terms of strength scales linked to word-structure, it can also be demonstrated from our surveys that, in the classical southern French system, word-initial syllables (e.g. the first syllable of a word like mener “lead”) do not contain schwas (as usually assumed) but stable vowels shown in our data to be indistinguishable phonetically and phonologically from front rounded vowels, e.g. meunier “miller” = meniez (2 person pl. imperfect of “mener”). On the other hand, in post-tonic final syllables (e.g. aime (3rd person sing indicative present of “aimer”) and word-internally, schwas (i.e. deletable segments) are part of classical southern systems making them prone to
78
JACQUES DURAND
deletion. It is important to realise that schwa in all varieties of French may not be a unitary phenomenon - an assumption too often based on spelling and on standard generative analyses rather than on facts. The presence of schwa-deletion strategies in southern French is not a new discovery. However, one cannot assess the scope of this phenomenon and establish whether it is a change in progress or a long established feature of southern systems without a close examination of cohorts of speakers. One of the surprising observations made in the completed surveys I have been involved in is that (in traditional generative terms) all the speakers present the same underlying systems but are solely differentiated either in terms of the processes involved or, more usually, in terms of frequency of application of some processes. This could not have been established solely by observing speakers and taking occasional notes (see Durand & Eychenne 2004, Durand, Eychenne, Aurnague 2004). Outside schwa, however, the segmental inventories of southern speakers from a range of varieties (Bordeaux, Marseille, Toulouse and smaller localities) can be shown to be relatively stable and immune from northern influences across genders, classes, ethnic groupings and generations, a last but potent reminder of the ‘langue d’oïl’ / ‘langue d’oc’ divide! Finally, as far as liaison is concerned some definite patterns are beginning to emerge in European varieties of French. In his ground-breaking work, Encrevé (1988) argued that ‘liaison non enchaînée’ (i.e. without forward resyllabification) had to be integrated into phonological theory. While there is no doubt that ‘liaison non enchaînée’ is present in the speech of politicians, radio and TV commentators, it is virtually absent from all recordings so far. This raises the question as to whether ‘liaison non enchaînée’ can be part of ‘core’ phonology (acquired without extensive experience of reading and writing), given that is unattested in the speech of children before they go to school (age 6 in France). From another perspective, increasing our observational base shows once again that the strong syntactic position (usually formulated in terms of various types of projection) which keeps reappearing in the theoretical literature is not justified. There is a link between syntax and liaison but it can be adequately formulated on the basis of a fairly shallow syntactic structure. Nor does the handling of styles adopted in some recent OT analyses seem warranted by the data. The ongoing work on liaison within the PFC project is allowing us to move forward in various respects. First of all, given that we have approximately an average of 2000 codings for ten speakers (i.e. for each survey point on average) and from two styles (reading aloud vs. conversation), we can go much further than traditional analyses. In a recent paper (Durand, Laks, Lyche 2005), we showed how even if one limited oneself to the reading aloud
MAPPING FRENCH PRONUNCIATION
79
of the PFC text (presented earlier), the results diverge from the ‘normative’ assumptions made in much traditional work. The PFC text presented earlier includes 35 liaison sites which are classified in Table 3 as categorical (CA), variable (VA) and non-occurring (N). The predictions are based on Delattre’s (1951) description. The table in (2) shows the results for Brécey (Normandy, 11 informants), Nyon (Switzerland, 12 informants) and Douzens (10 informants). The figure in the same column as the initial of the investigation point indicates the number of forward linked liaisons, while ‘U’ stands for unlinked liaison and ‘H’ for either the realisation of the liaison as a glottal stop or a hesitation / pause perceived by the coder. As one can see, even if the expected categorical liaisons are usually realized, some speakers (Brécey and Douzens) do not link the adjective grand with the following substantive although the prenominal position of this adjective is standard and is a texbook example of ‘liaison obligatoire’. If two speakers from Douzens omit the liaison after grand, the Brécey speaker links the adjective to the substantive with a [n] and not the expected [t]. Furthermore, the table shows the heterogeneous character of the notion ‘variable liaison’. Some can be considered systematic (est[t] en) while the majority are realized by very few speakers with one context, chemises en soie, ignored by all but one speaker. One should notice as well that the same liaison word functions differently in similar environments: compare for example est_en in 1. with s’est_en in 33. Finally we must point out the pronunciation of a few unexpected liaisons, clearly attesting that the reading exercise influences the speaker’s pronunciation (as in 15., 23., 34., 35.). The table shows regional differences, but the deviations are not important enough to be dwelled upon. We will however note that the liaison in 8. (pâtes italiennes) is much more common in Douzens than in both Brécey and Nyon. If one takes into account the southern French propensity to pronounce final schwas, an interesting question arises as to whether schwa realization creates the necessary context for liaison or whether the selection of liaison favours schwa retention. Further research is needed on this topic. In addition to the liaisons coded in (2), a list established on the basis of the graphical presence of a potential liaison consonant, we find a few liaisons of a clearly epenthetic nature: le premier ministre a [t] en effet (Brécey)..., ... qui mène [t] au village (Brécey and Nyon). In both cases, the [t] functions as a verb marker, indicating the morphological role that the liaison consonant can come to play - a point stressed in the work of Y.-C. Morin in particular.
JACQUES DURAND
80
LIAISONS 1. est_en 2 . grand_émoi 3. en_effet 4. chemises_en soie 5. jeux_olympiques 6. Berlin_en 7. son_usine 8. pâtes_italiennes 9. grand_honneur 10. circuits_habituels 11. toujours_autour 12. est_en revanche 13. très_inquiet 14. les_élections 15. comment_en plus 16. ont_eu 17. visites_officielles 18. les_opposants 19. un_autre côté 20. tout_est 21. on_en 22. en_a vu 23. provoquer_une 24. le coin_on 25. on_est 26. nous_avons 27. quelques_articles 28. des_activistes 29. préparent_une j. 30. fanatiques_auraient 31. plus_à quels 32. dans_une 33. s’est_en 34. vraiment_une étape 35. trouver_au
VA CA CA VA CA N CA VA CA VA VA VA CA CA N VA VA CA CA CA CA CA VA N CA CA CA CA VA N VA CA VA N VA
Br 11 10 11 10 11 2 11 4 1 9 11 11
U H Nyon U H Douzens H 12 10 11 1 8 12 10 1 1 12 10 12 2 12 2 11 1
11 11 11 11 1
3 12 12 12 12 1
12 2
4 4 10 10 10 10 10 1 10 10 8 10 1
2 2
1 1
3
10 10 10
4 12 12 12 12 12
1
10 6 9 3
5
1
1 11 4 1 2
1 11
12 12 12 2
2 5 11 11 9 11 11
1
5 2
1
1 1
1 10 2
1
Table 3. Liaisons in the PFC text: Brécey, Nyon and Douzens The liaison results in the text indicate that prenominal adjectives do not create an automatic liaison environment and that even in a formal register such as a reading exercise, only a few variable liaisons are realized. When one turns to spontaneous speech from the same investigation points, the results are even more striking as argued by Durand, Laks and Lyche (2005). The facts, according to these authors, do not support the classical assumption made in
MAPPING FRENCH PRONUNCIATION
81
generative phonology which treats liaison as a unitary phenomenon. They may be wrong but it is only in extending and refining our observational base that competing hypotheses can be tested. 4.
Conclusion This paper has presented the PFC project in a fair amount of detail. The success of a project of this type is based on the close collaboration between a great number of individuals. Not all of them can be cited here but it is hoped that, through the references appended to this paper and the PFC website http://www.projet-pfc.net/, the reader can gain a better perspective of the project and its contribution to the description of French. The strategy we advocate implies a return to the gathering and close examination of data. Modern formal linguistics has stressed that insufficient emphasis on hypotheses could lead to trivial results. Bertrand Russell made this point most cogently in his classical (1946 : 526–530) assessment of the philosopher Bacon: “He hoped that mere orderly arrangement of data would have made the right hypothesis obvious, but this is seldom the case. As a rule, the framing of hypothesis is the most difficult part of scientific work, and the part where great ability is indispensable. So far, no method has been found which would make it possible to invent hypotheses by rule. Usually some hypothesis is a necessary preliminary to the collection of facts, since the selection of facts demands some way of determining relevance. Without something of this kind, the mere multiplicity of facts is baffling.”
What has been argued here is that the data relevant for phonological theory do not lie out there waiting for the lucky analyst to discover them, even through bold hypotheses. The data have to be patiently constructed and gathered experimentally. Whatever the limitations of the strategy we advocate, we think it represents an important advance over the reiteration of data which is nobody’s data – the linguistic Frankenstein dubbed ‘Standard French’ (Morin 1987).
References Chomsky, Noam & Morris Halle. 1968. The Sound Pattern of English. Cambridge, Massachussetts: MIT Press. Delais, Elisabeth & Jacques Durand, eds. 2003. Corpus et variation en phonologie du français: méthodes et analyses. Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail.
82
JACQUES DURAND
Delattre, Pierre. 1951. Principes de phonétique française à l’usage des étudiants anglo-américains. Middlebury College. Durand, Jacques & Julien Eychenne. 2004. “Le schwa en français: pourquoi des corpus?” Usage des corpus en phonologie, ed. by Tobias Scheer 3.311–356. CNRS & Université de Nice - Sophia Antipolis. Durand, Jacques, Julien Eychenne & Michel Aurnague. 2004. “La phonologie du français contemporain au Pays Basque et son contexte sociolinguistique.” Dialectologia i recursos informàtics, ed. by Maria Pilar Perea, 155–198. Barcelona: PPU [Promociones y Publicaciones Universitarias]. Durand, Jacques & Chantal Lyche. 2003. “Le projet ‘Phonologie du Français Contemporain’ (PFC) et sa méthodologie.” Delais & Durand 2003. 212– 276. Durand, Jacques, Bernard Laks & Chantal Lyche. 2005. “French Liaison and Data.” Paper presented at the International Conference on Language Variation in Europe (ICLaVE), Amsterdam, June 2005. Durand, Jacques & Jean-Michel Tarrier. 2003. “Enquête phonologique en Languedoc (Douzens, Aude).” La tribune internationale des langues vivantes 33.117–127. Encrevé, Pierre. 1988. La liaison avec et sans enchaînement, Paris: Seuil. Espesser, Robert & Noël Nguyen. 2003. “Méthodes et outils pour l’analyse acoustique des système vocaliques.” Bulletin PFC 3.77–85. CNRS & Université de Toulouse Le Mirail: ERSS. Morin, Yves-Charles. 1987. “French Data and Phonological Theory.” Linguistics 25. 815–843. Russell, Bertrand. 1946. History of Western Philosophy. London: George Allen & Unwin. Simon, Anne-Catherine, Caelen-Haumont Geneviève & Claudine Pagliano, eds. 2006. Prosodie du français contemporain: l’autre versant de PFC. Bulletin PFC no 6. CNRS & Université de Toulouse Le Mirail: ERSS.
PHONOLOGICAL VARIABILITY IN THE LABORATORY WORD-NAMING IN BIDIALECTAL SPANISH SPEAKERS
CHIP GERFEN & WENDY RIZZO The Pennsylvania State University
0.
Introduction In the laboratory, bidialectal phonology is understudied, by contrast with extensive sociolinguistic work on dialectology and variation. We adopt a novel approach by employing an on-line word-naming task to investigate how knowledge of two dialects affects production in bidialectal speakers. Specifically, we examine phonological variation in word production in educated monolingual Spanish speakers whose first dialect is Andalusian Spanish (AS) and whose second dialect is Standard Peninsular Spanish (SPS). 1.
Background This section provides a brief overview of relevant background to the present study. We review three fundamental phonological differences between AS and SPS, discuss issues of orthographic depth, and describe social factors related to Andalusian Spanish. 1.1 Phonological differences between AS and SPS Andalusian Spanish has numerous properties that distinguish it from the so-called standard peninsular variety. At the same time, it would be an oversimplification to view Andalusian as a single, unified variety of Spanish, since AS itself has extensive social and geographical variation. (See Narbona, Cano, and Morillo 2003 for a recent overview.) Given the relative paucity of characteristics shared by all AS speakers we focus here on three phonological variables that satisfy two criteria. First, all three are geographically widespread and, among speakers, widely shared aspects of AS phonology, especially among the educated speakers who comprise our experimental population.
84
CHIP GERFEN & WENDY RIZZO
Second, all three sharply separate AS from SPS, thus allowing us to clearly distinguish between AS and SPS production in the word-naming task. Specifically, we focus on: 1) the aspiration of syllable-final (i.e., coda) obstruents, 2) the deletion of word-final liquids, and 3) the velarization of word-final /n/. The signature feature of AS is /s/-aspiration, in which /s/, the most common coda obstruent in Spanish, is lenited syllable-finally. Phonetically, lenited /s/ is aspirated ([h]) before a consonant or a pause (see, e.g., Penny 2002). A form such as /estos/ “these” is thus commonly realized as [ehtoh], exemplifying instances of both word-internal and word-final aspiration. Throughout Andalusia, the treatment of /s/ varies (see, e.g., Mondéjar 1979; Morris 2000; Gerfen 2002; Penny 2002). For example, in words such as esto “this”, /s/ may simply be aspirated ([ehto]), aspirated with gemination of the following consonant ([ehtto]), or deleted with gemination ([etto]) (see, e.g., Morris 2000). Additionally, Zamora Vicente (1970) (see also Gerfen 2002) notes variability in the phonetic implementation of /s/-aspiration ranging along a continuum between breathy voicing and completely voiceless aspiration. Word-final /s/-aspiration has attracted attention due to its potentially neutralizing morphological consequences, given that final /s/ marks both plurality and the singular of the second-person familiar in verbs. Functionally, aspiration (and in Eastern Andalusian, right-to-left laxing vowel harmony [cf. Navarro Tomás 1939; Zubizarreta 1979; Lieber 1987; Sanders 1994]) preserves morphological information that would be neutralized if /s/ were simply deleted. Similarly, word-internal aspiration can be seen as contrast preserving due to the potential for neutralization in pairs such as /pekar/ “to sin” and /peskar/ “to fish”. Although both word-internal and word-final /s/-aspiration can be viewed as manifestations of a single phonological process—the aspiration of /s/ in coda position—Alarcos Llorach (1958) reports that word-final aspiration occurred much earlier than word-internal aspiration in the development of AS. This raises an interesting question for our study. Namely, will the pattern of variability in production under the conditions of the naming task reflect diachrony by differing for final versus internal /s/-aspirating contexts, or will the two contexts pattern together synchronically as a single process? Likewise, it is important to note that aspiration is not limited to /s/ in AS; rather, all obstruents can be aspirated in coda position (see, e.g., Zamora Vicente 1970; Mondéjar 1979; Gerfen 2001; Narbona et al. 2003). While Spanish has forms with word-final obstruents other than /s/ (e.g., /madrid/ “Madrid”, realized as [madriθ] in SPS), the overwhelming majority of obstruent codas occur word-internally, as in AS /akto/ “act”, which is realized
PHONOLOGICAL VARIABILITY IN THE LABORATORY
85
as [ahto] or [ahtto]. As with word-internal versus word-final /s/-aspiration, an additional question arises regarding word-internal obstruent aspiration. Specifically, will speakers exhibit a pattern of variability in the aspiration of obstruents other than /s/ that is similar to those of /s/ in both word-internal and final positions? As seen from the above, AS is characterized by lenition in syllable-final contexts (Zamora Vicente 1970; Mondéjar 1979). Word-final liquids are also frequently lenited (see Narbona et al., 2003, for discussion of neutralization of word-internal liquid codas in AS). Typically, liquids are deleted word-finally, a process sometimes accompanied by a change in final vowel quality (Zamora Vicente 1970; Mondéjar 1979). Thus, forms such as hablar /ablar/ and metal /metal/ are pronounced [ablá] “to speak” and [metá] “metal”, respectively. Neither pattern is characteristic of SPS. The final variable that we consider in our study also surfaces word-finally: velarization of word-final /n/. The process is again characteristic of AS and absent from SPS phonology (Llorente 1962). In AS, final /n/ varies between deletion with concomitant nasalization of the preceding vowel, or velarization to [ŋ] (Zamora Vicente 1970). In SPS, /n/ is only velarized to [ŋ] in assimilating contexts in which the nasal is followed by a velar consonant; i.e., word-final /n/ is always alveolar (Navarro Tomás 1950). In summary, we identify six potentially distinct processes: 1) word-final /s/-aspiration, 2) word-internal /s/-aspiration, 3) obstruent coda aspiration, 4) final /l/-deletion, 5) final /r/-deletion, and 6) final /n/-velarization or deletion. The way in which each is realized throughout Andalusia varies, but in a broader sense relevant here, each distinguishes AS phonologically from SPS. 1.2 AS and Spanish Orthography Spanish orthography is described as “shallow,” given its relatively consistent grapheme-to-phoneme mapping, as in the word mano “hand”, whose four graphemes map directly to four phonemes (/mano/). Although there are well-known exceptions—for example, “b” and “v” both map to the phoneme /b/, and “h” maps to no phoneme—English, by contrast, has a deeper orthography due to the more complex and less systematic pattern of grapheme to phoneme mapping. Though English spelling does reflect phonology, it also reflects derivational family relationships; e.g., “heal” and “health” show their common meaning via orthography despite differences in pronunciation (Katz & Frost 1992). Likewise, English contains lexical-item specific silent letters (the “t” in “fasten”, the “b” in “subtle”) and numerous non-transparent spelling conventions, such as the “gh” sequence in “rough” and “though” (Lukatela & Turvey 1998). Of interest here is that for AS speakers Spanish orthography is
86
CHIP GERFEN & WENDY RIZZO
arguably deeper than is commonly assumed in discussions of Spanish, since the lenition processes discussed above yield silent graphemes (via the loss of segmental material) and/or inconsistent mappings. In short, while Spanish orthography remains relatively shallow for AS, AS speakers may be affected by the distinct mapping from graphemes to phonemes in the two dialects. Specifically, Spanish orthography prompts a pronunciation that differs from that of Andalusian norms. This may be relevant here, since the stimuli are presented orthographically in the word-naming task. 1.3 Social factors Any study of AS must be aware of the social variables associated with AS speech. Within Spain, SPS is the normative national dialect. It is the standard of national telecommunications and is reinforced in schools (Dalbor 1980). Though Spain has made much progress promoting regional languages (and regional dialects such as AS), within the Andalusian education system there persists a semi-conscious acquisition of both AS and SPS. AS speakers, especially educated speakers, generally learn SPS well enough to effectively control its use in what they consider to be appropriate situations. This is rooted in the general recognition of the lower prestige accorded to AS in the broader context of Spain. Some researchers have even reported that AS speakers have an inferiority complex fed by the treatment of AS in textbooks and in the media, where characters speaking AS are often portrayed as comical, lazy, or incompetent (see, e.g., González Bueno 1993; Narbona et al. 2003). As with all non-standard speech communities, however, the situation is more complex. While Andalusians are aware of the less prestigious status of AS outside of Andalusia, they also take pride in their dialect (Alvar 1969; González Bueno 1993). Recent years have seen explicit campaigns in the media in Andalusia to enhance the sense of identity and pride Andalusians feel regarding their language and to encourage its use. As Alvar (1988) notes, educated Andalusians tend to feel that their own language variety is less stigmatized. Additionally, within Andalusia, there is a rich array of variability that is clearly socially stratified. For example, seseo is considered standard while ceceo is associated with the less educated and rural populations (González Bueno 1993). In short, the notion of prestige in regards to AS cuts both ways. Speakers recognize the greater prestige of SPS nationally, but at the same time, within Andalusia, AS retains strong in-group prestige with social stratification of the different Andalusian dialects. Salvador (1964) exemplifies this, pointing out that he uses SPS when teaching outside of Andalusia, but immediately reverts to AS upon returning because he is embarrassed to use SPS there. With this in mind, we note that the participants in our study were all
PHONOLOGICAL VARIABILITY IN THE LABORATORY
87
students at the Universidad de Granada, one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in Spain. In casual speech with the experimenter and first author, all used AS exclusively. We assume that, like Salvador, the subjects are educated, that they manage both dialects, and that they are generally comfortable in their use of AS. 2. The Experiment: Word-Naming in Spanish 2.1 Experiment Background This study focuses on phonological variability in bidialectal Andalusian speakers in a word-naming task. Originally, the experiment was designed as a monolingual control study for an English-Spanish bilingual project on cognate effects (see for example Schwartz, Kroll & Diaz in press; Schwartz 2003). However, when running the subjects, the first author observed notable variability both within and across speakers in their use of both AS and SPS phonology. Consequently, we reanalyzed the data to investigate the nature of this variation. With this in mind, below we discuss the participants, stimuli and data. 2.2 Participants and Task Thirty-one self-identified monolingual Spanish psychology students at the Universidad de Granada were recruited to participate in the experiment. Language history questionnaires confirmed that participants had never studied in or traveled to an English-speaking country for a significant period of time and that no other dialects or languages were present in the home. Though most had taken compulsory English courses during adolescence, all were functionally monolingual. None had traveled to an English-speaking country for formal study, and none could answer a simple question posed by the first author as an English comprehension check. Of the original subjects recruited for the monolingual control study, four were excluded because they had lived outside of Andalusia, leaving 27 participants for analysis. All were exposed to SPS daily via mass media, but none used SPS when conversing with the experimenter in the formal university setting before or after the trials. The task was a word-naming task. Subjects sat in front of a computer where words were presented randomly from a word list in a single block. The task was run in E-Prime and activated by voice key, allowing for the precise recording of naming latencies. No instructions were given regarding how to pronounce the words presented; however, all of the general instructions were given in AS by the experimenter who is a near-native L2 Spanish speaker with a pronounced AS dialect. Subject responses were digitally recorded for
88
CHIP GERFEN & WENDY RIZZO
subsequent analysis on a Marantz PMD690 digital recorder, using a Shure SM10A unidirectional microphone. 2.3 Stimuli As noted above, the original purpose of the experiment was not to explore phonological variability in bidialectal speakers, but rather to collect control data for a bilingual study examining cognate effects. Consequently, many stimulus items in the experiment were Spanish-English cognates. The words were taken from a larger, previously normed set used in other studies (Schwartz, Kroll, & Diaz in press; Schwartz 2003). Of the 198 words presented, 72 were chosen as target items for analysis in our study. Target items were identified on the basis of a single criterion: they all contained at least one of the six phonological contexts described above as distinguishing AS from SPS. For example, the word /dolor/ “pain” contains a word-final /r/, which is lenited in AS but not in SPS. Since the experiment was not designed to test bidialectal production, the words are not equally distributed among the six phonological categories. This is shown in Figure 1, where we see, for example, that there were 33 items in the category of /r/-final words, but only five nasal-final forms.
Figure 1: Stimuli Distribution 2.4. Data coding Each of the 72 critical items was aurally assessed for each subject separately by two listeners (the authors) and assigned a value. If the word was pronounced following SPS norms, it was assigned a “0” and if it was determined to be pronounced in Andalusian, it was given a “1”. For example, if the word panal “honeycomb” was pronounced [paná], it received a “1”, whereas [panal] would receive a “0” for its adherence to SPS norms. Several
PHONOLOGICAL VARIABILITY IN THE LABORATORY
89
words involved more than one phonological rule and were thus assessed more than once. Thus, castor “beaver” contains both an internal, syllable-final /s/ and a word-final /r/. A pronunciation such as [kahtor] would receive a “1” for the internal /s/-aspiration and a “0” for the final /r/-deletion rule. For items ending in /n/, an alveolar pronunciation was considered SPS, while either velarization or deletion with nasalization of the preceding vowel were counted as AS productions. The raters were in 98 percent agreement. For the final two percent, forms were listened to together and an agreement was reached without excluding any words. 3.
Results After assessing all of the tokens, we posed a number of questions. First, though all of the phonological processes described above are characteristic of AS, do they all pattern similarly in the experimental context? That is, are they equally likely to be produced in AS? Since none of the variables was controlled in this task, does frequency drive the variability observed? Given the variability of responses, is there a relationship between the manner of production and reaction time? We address these questions below. 3.1 Phonological Processes and Andalusian Phonology To explore the first question, we performed a number of statistical analyses. Recall that we divided the aspiration, liquid deletion, and /n/velarization into six potentially distinct processes, or “rules.” Our first question involves whether phonological rule significantly affects the pattern of variation found between SPS and AS pronunciation in the task. To test this, we ran a one-way within-subject repeated measures ANOVA in SPSS. The effect of rule in the data was significant (df=5, F=37.793, p<0.001). Figure 2 provides the means comparisons. To confirm that the effect of rule was not limited to the stimuli used in the task, we ran an item analysis (df=5, F=33.367, p=0.000). The results matched those of the within-subject ANOVA, as seen in Figure 3. Although fewer in number, /n/-final words are most likely to be pronounced non-standardly (i.e., as velarized), while /l/- and /r/-final words are the most likely to be pronounced in accordance with SPS norms (i.e., not lenited). The remaining three types of “rules” (/s/-final, /s/-internal, and other c-internal aspiration) fall in the middle, with aspiration found in 40-50% of the tokens. Post-hoc pairwise comparisons show that the six rules pattern in the experiment as three (and not six distinct) phonological processes. As Table 1 shows, /s/-final aspiration, /s/-internal aspiration and other internal obstruents
CHIP GERFEN & WENDY RIZZO
90
aspiration are not significantly different from one another in their pattern of variability, but they are significantly different from the other rules.
Figure 2: Means and Pairwise Comparisons Figure 3: Item Analysis ANOVA Likewise, /r/-final deletion and /l/-final deletion do not significantly differ from each other, but they are different from the other rules. /n/-final velarization is distinct from all the other processes. This pattern is visible in the means comparison in Figures 2-3; the means cluster in three groups: obstruent aspiration in general; final liquid deletion; and final /n/-velarization. (Note: The pairwise comparisons from the item ANOVA above yield the same pattern of results as those in Table 1.)
/s/-final /s/-internal C-internal /r/-final /l/-final /n/-final
/s/-final -1.000 1.000 0.016* 0.010* 0.000*
/s/-internal --1.000 0.002* 0.004* 0.000*
C-internal ---0.000* 0.000* 0.000*
/r/-final ----1.000 0.000*
/l/-final -----0.000*
/n/-final -------
Table 1: Pairwise Comparisons Interestingly, although we identified six potentially distinct rules, the three that pattern together experimentally follow from the expectations of phonological theory: /s/-final, /s/-internal and other obstruent aspiration are all cases of the more general class of obstruent aspiration in coda position. Likewise, /l/ and /r/ form the natural class of liquids and pattern together as a single rule of finalliquid deletion. Finally, /n/-velarization patterns independently.
PHONOLOGICAL VARIABILITY IN THE LABORATORY
91
3.2 Word Frequency Effects Word frequency is known to facilitate naming latencies, but for our purposes, it is also important to investigate the effect of word frequency on dialect production. Our a priori prediction was that the more frequent the word, the more likely it would be produced as Andalusian. We reasoned that more frequent forms would lead to less reliance on the orthographic representation in the naming task. Since Spanish orthography reinforces SPS phonology, we expected that more reliance on orthography would prompt a tendency toward a more standard pronunciation. To test this, we ran a series of regressions correlating naming latency (or reaction time, RT) and the percent of Andalusian production. The results are listed in Table 2. Rule All Obstruent Liquid /n/ /s/-final /s/-internal Obs-internal /l/-final /r/-final /n/-final
df 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
F 0.061 3.686 0.030 0.849 0.273 1.718 1.061 1.350 1.633 0.849
p 0.806 0.066 0.864 0.425 0.637 0.226 0.327 0.265 0.211 0.425
Correlation -0.028 0.358 -0.025 0.470 0.289 0.420 0.310 0.297 -0.224 0.470
Table 2: Frequency Regressions As reflected in the table, the data were analyzed in three ways: 1) all of the data were analyzed in a single regression; 2) the data were separated into three phonological rules; and 3) the data were separated into the six individual processes. Only the regression for general obstruent aspiration was nearly significant (p=0.066), with a correlation of 0.358. This suggests that as the word frequency of the forms with obstruent aspiration contexts increased, subjects were more likely to respond in an AS manner. Nevertheless, a more controlled experiment must be designed to explore this possibility. One problem here is that relatively few tokens were employed. Another is the narrow range of word frequencies available for analysis. Most critical items represented relatively infrequent words. In order to test effectively for frequency effects, follow-up studies will employ a balance of target stimuli from high and low frequency forms. Nevertheless, the obstruent result here
CHIP GERFEN & WENDY RIZZO
92
suggests that a more finely grained study will prove informative regarding the relationship between frequency and speech style. Since the regressions were inconclusive, we also ran an ANCOVA to factor out word frequency as a variable. The ANCOVA yielded the same results as the within-subjects ANOVA (df=6, F=27.803, p=0.000). Figure 4 shows the results of the ANCOVA, which shows the same pattern as Figure 2. Table 3 gives the pairwise comparisons which also confirm the initial comparisons shown in Table 1.
Figure 4: Frequency ANCOVA
/s/-final /s/-internal C-internal /r/-final /l/-final /n/-final
/s/-final -1.000 1.000 0.036* 0.023* 0.000*
/s/-internal --1.000 0.000* 0.000* 0.000*
C-internal ---0.000* 0.000* 0.000*
/r/-final ----1.000 0.000*
/l/-final -----0.000*
/n/-final -------
Table 3: ANCOVA Pairwise Comparisons In sum, the ANCOVA and post-hoc pairwise comparisons indicate that word frequency did not affect pronunciation with respect to Andalusian versus standard production in this experiment. The statistical analyses do hint, however, that frequency may play a role in bidialectal production, an issue that will be pursued in future experiments. 3.3 Production and Reaction Time A final question involves whether there is a relationship between naming latencies and AS versus SPS pronunciations. To test this, we ran regressions
PHONOLOGICAL VARIABILITY IN THE LABORATORY
93
for two of the three phonological processes under scrutiny here. Two hypotheses seemed plausible. First, Andalusian speech might be slower than SPS production due to an effect of orthography. Specifically, the orthographic presentation of the stimuli may prompt SPS production, given the shallower relation between Spanish orthography and SPS phonology (especially for aspiration and liquid deletion). This scenario might lead speakers to expend additional cognitive resources in producing forms in accordance with AS phonological patterns. Conversely, speakers are arguably more familiar with and more automatized in their AS pronunciation, given that AS is their dominant dialect. By this logic, we might expect AS production to be faster. Due to the lack of variability for /n/-velarization, a regression analysis was not carried out. For the two remaining processes, the regressions were not significant. However, for the obstruent aspiration rule (df=1, F=2.235, p=0.147), the F-value suggests that subjects’ performance is not random in that there is a trend in which the higher the percentage of Andalusian production that a participant exhibits, the quicker his or her RT (beta= -0.286; see Figure 5). The regression for the liquid deletion rule yielded similar results. The regression was not significant (df=1, F=2.031, p=0.167), but the F-value again suggests a trend. As with obstruent aspiration, the correlation between RT and percentage of Andalusian responses is negative (beta= -0.274). The relationship can be seen in Figure 6: the more Andalusian their speech is, the quicker subjects are likely to respond.
Figure 5: Aspiration Regression
Figure 6: Liquid Deletion Regression
In summary, the statistical tests in this section begin to explore a number of issues related to bidialectalism that can be carefully scrutinized in a controlled, experimental context. They clearly indicate that the phonological rules under
94
CHIP GERFEN & WENDY RIZZO
consideration are differentially affected under the experimental task. Certain processes are highly likely to be produced as Andalusian (/n/-velarization); others are highly resistant (liquid deletion); and yet others are quite variable (obstruent aspiration). The effects of frequency remain open at this time; the regressions yielded varying results, while an ANCOVA indicated that frequency did not affect pronunciation in this task. Finally, for two of the three phonological processes, a suggestive trend emerges in that subjects appear to respond faster when utilizing AS, their dominant dialect. 4.
Conclusions Perhaps one of the most compelling results of this study lies in the very emergence of rich dialectal variability in the context of a controlled, on-line word-naming task, conducted in a laboratory setting. That speakers exhibit this kind of variability in their speech production under laboratory conditions suggests that research of this type is of sufficient ecological validity to allow for the profitable investigation of issues pertaining to sociolinguistic variation and multi-dialectalism as a complement to traditional data collection in more naturalistic contexts. Our results are interesting from a number of perspectives. First, we show that although we have examined six potentially distinct phenomena, the data allows for the categorization of the phenomena into three clear phonological processes, which pattern according to the expectations of phonological theory. One factor remaining to be explained involves why the three processes should exhibit significantly different patterns of variability. We suspect that the differences are best accounted for via sociolinguistic rather than phonological explanations. Of the three rule types, /n/-velarization is the least noticed by AS speakers. By contrast, final /l/- and /r/-deletion, though produced by educated speakers, are arguably associated with less formal AS speech registers. Finally, aspiration—the most variable process in our data—is also the most clearly associated variable to Andalusian linguistic identity both within and outside of Andalusia. Speakers are highly conscious of aspiration, and our data may reflect a mix of both comfort with and control over it in the context of a formal setting. We are currently designing tasks explicitly directed at testing for the cognitive cost of inhibitory control in the production of potentially aspirated forms. The laboratory setting also allows us to begin to test specific questions regarding the cognitive representations of bidialectal speakers. Although our frequency analysis did not yield significant results here, given the accidental design of the target items, our regression analysis suggests that a more precisely designed study will reveal differences in naming latencies, depending
PHONOLOGICAL VARIABILITY IN THE LABORATORY
95
on whether speakers produce forms with Andalusian or SPS phonology. Similarly, we can control the frequency distribution of our stimuli to further test the suggestive trends indicating that word frequency may be one predicting factor regarding which speech style is likely to be produced by bidialectal speakers. Finally, our study has implications for the often ignored issue in linguistics of phonology and its relationship to orthography. In this study, all stimuli were presented orthographically. How much does writing affect pronunciation? How much does learning to read affect production in a nonstandard dialect? To what degree are our current results attributable to the written presentation of the stimuli? To begin to examine these questions, we are currently conducting an experiment in which we examine the potential contribution of orthography to production, by comparing the phonological variability in picture-naming versus word-naming tasks. References Alarcos Llorach, Emilio. 1958. “Fonología y fonética (A propósito de las vocales andaluzas).” Archivum 8.193–205. Alvar, Manuel. 1969. Variedad y unidad del español. Madrid: Editorial Prensa Española. ——. 1988. “¿Existe el dialecto andaluz?” Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica 36:1.9–22. Dalbor, John B. 1980. Spanish pronunciation: Theory and Practice (2nd ed.). New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College Pub. Gerfen, Chip. 2001. “A Critical View of Licensing by Cue: The Case of Andalusian Spanish.” Segmental Phonology in Optimality Theory ed. by Linda Lombardi, 183–205. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ——. 2002. “Andalusian Codas.” Probus 14.247–277. González Bueno, Manuela. 1993. “Variaciones en el tratamiento de las sibilantes: Inconsistencia en el seseo sevillano: Un enfoque sociolingüístico.” Hispania 76: 2.392–398. Katz, Leonard & Ram Frost. 1992. “The Reading Process is Different for Different Orthographies: The Orthographic depth hypothesis.” Orthography, Phonology, Morphology, and Meaning ed. by Ram Frost & Leonard Katz. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science. Lieber, Rochelle. 1987. An Integrated Theory of Autosegmental Processes. Albany: SUNY. Lukatela, Georije & Michael T. Turvey. 1998. “Reading in two alphabets.” American Psychologist 53:9.1057–1072. Llorente, Antonio. 1962. “Fonética y fonología andaluzas.” Revista de Filología Española 45.227–240.
96
CHIP GERFEN & WENDY RIZZO
Mondéjar, José. 1979. “Diacronía y sincronía en las hablas andaluzas.” Lingüística Española Actual 1:2. 375–402. Morris, Richard E. 2000. “Constraint Interaction in Spanish /s/-aspiration: Three peninsular varieties.” Hispanic Linguistics at the Turn of the Millennium: Papers from the 3rd Hispanic Linguistics Symposium ed. by Héctor Campos, Elena Herburger, Alfonso Morales-Front & Thomas J. Walsh. Somerville, Mass.: Cascadilla. Narbona, Antonio, Rafael Cano, & Ramón Morillo. 2003. El español hablado en Andalucía. Sevilla: Fundación J. M. Lara. Navarro Tomás, Tomás. 1939. Desdoblamiento de fonemas vocálicos. Revista de filología hispánica, 1: 165–167. ——. 1950. Manual de pronunciación española (6th ed.). Madrid: C.S.I.C., Instituto “Miguel de Cervantes.” Penny, Ralph. 2002. A History of the Spanish Language (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Salvador, Gregorio. 1964. “La fonética andaluza y su propagación social y geográfica.” Presente y futuro de la lengua española: Actas de la asamblea de filología del I congreso de instituciones hispánicas 2.183– 188. Sanders, Benjamin. 1994. Andalusian vocalism and related processes. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Illinois. Schwartz, Ana I. 2003. The nature of cross-language lexical activation in sentence context: A psycholinguistic investigation. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, The Pennsylvania State University. Schwartz, Ana I., Judith F. Kroll, & Michelle Diaz. In press. “Reading words in Spanish and English: Mapping orthography to phonology in two languages.” Language and Cognitive Processes. Zamora Vicente, Alonso. 1970. Dialectología española (2nd ed.). Madrid: Editorial Gredos. Zubizarreta, María Luisa. 1979. “Vowel Harmony in Andalusian Spanish.” MIT Working Papers in Linguistics I, ed. by Ken Sapir, 1–11.
CONSTRAINT RE–RANKING IN THREE GRAMMARS SPIRANTIZATION AND CODA DEVOICING IN PENINSULAR SPANISH
CAROLINA GONZÁLEZ University of California, Los Angeles Introduction1 /b d g/ in Spanish are typically pronounced as voiced stops after pause and nasals (as in bota [»bo.ta] “boot”, ambos [»am.bos] “both”), but as approximants after vowels (as in la bota [la. »B4o.ta] “the boot”). After other segments the realization of /b d g/ might vary across dialects (see e.g. Amastae 1995). In coda position a wider range of pronunciations are possible, not only including approximants (as is expected after vowels), but also deleted outcomes and voiceless stops and fricatives. Examples are given in Table 1. 0.
Outcome Approximants
pared [pa.»reD4]
Deletion
[pa.»re]
Voiceless stops Voiceless fricatives
[pa.»ret] [pa.»reT]
Spanish dialect ‘Standard’ Castilian (Menéndez Pidal 1999, Navarro Tomás 1996) Most Latin–American dialects, Andalusian, Canary Islands (Canfield 1981) Panamanian (Alvarado de Ricord 1971) North–Central Peninsular (Hualde 1989)
Table 1: /b d g/ in coda in the word pared “wall” Devoicing of stops in coda is common across languages, as in Catalan and Dutch. However, devoicing to fricatives in coda is rarer. The spectrogram in Figure 1 shows a typical pronunciation of the word bondad “goodness” after a vowel in Northern Peninsular Spanish. The initial /b/ shows the low intensity formants typical of an approximant and the medial /d/ is pronounced as a brief 1
I am indebted to the participants of the UCLA Phonology Seminar, the audience at LSRL XXXV and the editor of this volume, Jean-Pierre Montreuil, for their comments and suggestions. All errors remain mine.
CAROLINA GONZÁLEZ
98
voiced stop, as shown by the voicing bar, the period of silence and the burst. In contrast, the final /d/ clearly shows the random noise and lack of voicing bar of a voiceless fricative.
B4
o
n
d
a
T
Figure 1: Bondad “goodness” in Northern Peninsular Spanish At least three different realizations of coda /b d g/ are attested in North– Central Peninsular dialects (González 2002, 2006): voiceless fricatives (Northern dialect), voiced fricatives (Central dialect I), and voiced stops (Central dialect II). No voiceless approximants surface in this position. This paper goes over these three patterns and proposes a phonological account for the three dialects couched in Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 1993). It explores whether the patterns of coda realization attested can be captured through three different grammars obtained through constraint re–ranking. As it will be shown, this approach has certain limitations. This paper is organized as follows. Section 1 reviews the phonetic facts of coda realization of /b d g/ in North–Central Peninsular Spanish. Section 2 offers a basic Optimality Theoretical analysis of spirantization for the three dialects, and section 3 extends it to coda realizations. Section 4 discusses previous studies and section 5 is the conclusion. 1.
Phonetic Facts The data on which this analysis is based originates from two acoustic studies. González (2002) investigates the realization of coda /b d g/ in Northern and Central Peninsular Spanish. This study concerned six
98
CONSTRAINT RE–RANKING IN THREE GRAMMARS
99
monolingual Spanish speakers of the Northern dialect (from the Bilbao area in the Basque Country) and three Spanish speakers of the Central dialect (from the Madrid area). The factors under investigation were word position, stress, preceding vowel and place of articulation. The stimuli consisted in nonce words such as Labga, Lidbán and Lámbug (nonce words were chosen since not many real words in Spanish end in /b/ or /g/). A total of 252 randomized tokens were recorded for each speaker. The context for the pronunciation of /b d g/ was in syllable–final, sentence medial position before /b/ or /g/. The second study (González 2006) tested the realization of coda /d/ in eight speakers of Northern Peninsular Spanish, also from the Bilbao area in the Basque Country. The factors studied were sentence position and lexical frequency. The stimuli consisted of thirty real words with word–final /d/, such as verdad “truth” and talmud “Talmud”. All of them were tested before words starting with /k/. A total of 480 randomized tokens were recorded for each speaker. Unless otherwise noted, this section discusses the results from the first experiment. The Northern dialect has many more realizations of coda /b d g/ as fricatives than the Central dialect, where most of the tokens are realized as stops (Table 2). Note the small percentage of approximant realizations in both dialects and the relatively large number of unclear tokens, which were impossible to analyze (mainly because of the effect of co–articulation). DIALECT Northern Central
APPROXIMANT 3% 4%
FRICATIVE 71% 27%
STOP 7% 41%
UNCLEAR 19% 28%
VOICED 22% 36%
Table 2: Coda /b d g/ in Northern vs. Central dialect Frication is pervasive for all speakers of the Northern dialect (Table 3). In spite of a lesser number of fricative tokens for speaker 6, the same pattern emerges (this speaker has a large number of unclear tokens). Note also that voiced tokens in general do not amount to more than a third of the total. For coda /d/ in real words the same pattern is observed (González 2006). The examination of within–speaker variation for the Central dialect evidences two different tendencies (Table 4). Speaker 7 has a large number of fricatives; most of these are voiced, as shown in the last column in Table 4. By contrast, speakers 8, 9 have a large number of voiceless stops. Even if only three speakers of this dialect were tested, their patterns are quite different among them and from the speakers from the Northern dialect (cf. Tables 3, 4).
99
CAROLINA GONZÁLEZ
100
SP. 1 SP. 2 SP. 3 SP. 4 SP. 5 SP. 6
APPROXIMANT 2% >1% 9% >1% 4% 4%
FRICATIVE 86% 75% 70% 73% 82% 38%
STOP 0% 12% 6% 5% 3% 16%
UNCLEAR 12% 14% 16% 21% 12% 41%
VOICED 26% 3% 33% 21% 14% 36%
Table 3: Within–speaker variation in the Northern dialect SP. 7 SP. 8 SP. 9
APPROXIMANT 10% 2% 0%
FRICATIVE 52% 19% 10%
STOP 18% 39% 66%
UNCLEAR 20% 39% 25%
VOICED 65% 23% 20%
Table 4: Within–speaker variation in the Central dialect The implications for a phonological analysis are three different grammars (1). These will be analyzed in sections 2 and 3 below. (1)
Three grammars (i) Grammar I: (ii) Grammar II: (iii) Grammar III:
Northern dialect Coda voiceless fricatives Central dialect I Coda voiced fricatives Central dialect II Coda voiceless stops
2.
Towards a Phonological Analysis This section proposes an analysis for two facts of Peninsular Spanish that need to be accounted for before coda realizations are examined. One is the phonemic contrast among /b d g/, /p t k/ and /f T x/ (as evidenced by the minimal triplet /bino/ “wine”, /pino/ “pine”, /fino/ “fine”). The second is that [b d g] and [B4 D4 F4] are in allophonic distribution, with [b d g] occurring after pause, stops and nasal consonants and [B4 D4 F4] elsewhere. In essence, this section follows the Optimality Theoretic analysis in González (2003, in press). It captures the phonological facts described above through the interaction of faithfulness constraints (which enforce identical input–output realizations) and phonetically grounded markedness constraints (which penalize articulatorily, acoustically or perceptually difficult segments). An important assumption in this paper is that phonetics and phonology are separate modules of the grammar (Keating 1985, 1990, Kingston and Beckman 1990, among others). Phonetics includes gradient and variable phenomena, and phonology categorical or close to categorical. The phonological representation is assumed to include some phonetic detail, including perceptual and
100
CONSTRAINT RE–RANKING IN THREE GRAMMARS
101
articulatory factors, but not rate or register of speech. Phonological constraints are considered to be phonetically grounded, since articulatory and perceptual factors often condition phonological phenomena (Archangeli and Pulleyblank 1994, Hayes 1999, Steriade 1997, among others). The constraint IDENT [voice] penalizes differing voice specifications in input and output. This constraint is necessary to account for the phonemic contrast between /b d g/ and /p t k/. The constraint IDENT [continuant] penalizes differing continuant specifications between input and output. This constraint is essential to capture the phonemic contrast between /p t k/ and /f T x/ and, if sufficiently low–ranked, permits the allophonic variation between [b d g] and [B4 D4 F4]. IDENT [voice] and IDENT [continuant] conflict with various markedness constraints, including *VOICELESS APPROXIMANT and *VOICED FRICATIVE. *VOICELESS APPROXIMANT is undominated since these segments appear to be unattested in Spanish. Voiced fricatives are rare but attested in Peninsular Spanish.2 Thus, *VOICED FRICATIVE is high-ranked but outranked by *VOICELESS APPROXIMANT. Two additional markedness constraints necessary for the analysis are *VOICED STOP and *APPROXIMANT. The latter penalizes voiced, non-liquid approximants and can be defined as *[+son, +cont, –lat, –rhotic]. The markedness constraints introduced so far are phonetically grounded. Voiceless approximants, voiced fricatives and voiced stops are cross–linguistically dispreferred and have conflicting aerodynamic requirements. Also, non–lateral approximants are scarce in phonemic inventories (Maddieson 1984). The ranking *APPROXIMANT>> IDENT [continuant]>> *VOICED STOP ensures that voiced stops surface utterance-initially, regardless of whether the input is an approximant or a voiced stop (for exemplification, see González 2003, in press). One additional constraint is needed to capture the fact that voiced stops are dispreferred in favor of voiced approximants after vowels, approximants and fricatives (2). (2)
[Anc]/*voiced stop: Voiced stops are prohibited after a non-close segment3
2
For example, the word mismo “same” may be pronounced as [mizmo] rather than [mismo]. This constraint collapses [Ao]/*vd stop, which prohibits voiced stops after open segments (i.e., vowels, approximants), and [Af]/*vd stop, which penalizes voiced stops after fricatives. It is possible that these constraints are part of a universally ranked family of constraints, perhaps along the line of [Ao]/*vd stop>>[Af]/*vd stop>>[A c]/*vd stop, where the last constraint penalizes voiced stops after closed segments (i.e., stops and possibly affricates). 3
101
102
CAROLINA GONZÁLEZ
This context–sensitive markedness constraint is based on Aperture Theory (Steriade 1993, 1994). It has a double articulatory motivation. First, voiced stops are aerodynamically more difficult to produce than voiceless stops. Second, stop closures are hard to achieve if surrounding segments are not closed (Kirchner 1998). 4 Figure 2 shows a ranking lattice for the constraints introduced so far. The ranking *VOICED FRICATIVE>>IDENT [voice] is assumed since there is no phonemic alternation between voiced and voiceless fricatives in the language. Furthermore, IDENT [voice]>> [Anc]/*voiced stop accounts for the fact that, after a lateral, /d/ is realized as voiced rather than a voiceless stop (e.g., the Spanish word caldo “broth” is pronounced as [kaldo], rather than [kalto]).5 * VOICELESS APPROXIMANT | *VOICED FRICATIVE | IDENT [voice] | [A nc]/*voiced stop | *APPROXIMANT | IDENT [continuant] | *VOICED STOP
Figure 2: Ranking lattice The analysis presented so far captures the phonemic contrast between /b d g/, /p t k/ and /f T x/ and the allophonic variation between [b d g] and [B4 D4 F4], as shown in (3–6).6 Section 3 extends this basic analysis to the various coda realizations found in the Northern and Central dialects.
4
If the constraint in (2) refers to stops in general the wrong results are obtained, since nothing prohibits voiceless stops after vowels or after other open segments in Spanish. 5 Step–by–step ranking arguments are provided in González (2003, in press). 6 Selecting voiced stop inputs rather than approximants in (3, 4) does not modify the result of the evaluation; this is not shown here for lack of space.
102
CONSTRAINT RE–RANKING IN THREE GRAMMARS
(3)
103
Allophonic voiced approximants (I): moda “fashion”
/moD4a/ a. moD4a b. moTa c. moT4a d. moDa e. moda f. mota
*VLESS APP
*VOI FRIC
IDENT [voi]
[Anc]/ *voi stop
*APP
IDENT [cont]
*VOI STOP
* *
*
IDENT [cont]
*VOI STOP
* *
*
IDENT [cont]
*VOI STOP
* *!
*
IDENT [cont] * *! * *
*VOI STOP
* *! *
*!
*
*! *! *!
(4) Allophonic voiced stops: monda “peel” /monD4a/ a. monD4a b. monTa c. monT4a d. monDa e. monda f. monta
(5)
*VOI FRIC
IDENT [voi]
[Anc]/ *voi stop
*APP *!
*! *
*!
*
*! *!
Phonemic voiceless fricatives: moza “young girl”
/moTa/ a. moD4a b. moTa c. moT4a d. moDa e. moda f. mota
(6)
*VLESS APP
*VLESS APP
*VOI FRIC
IDENT [voi] *!
[Anc]/ *voi stop
*APP *
*!
* *!
* *!
*
Phonemic voiceless stops: mota “speck”
/mota/ a. moD4a b. moTa c. moT4a d. moDa e. moda f. mota
*VLESS APP
*VOI FRIC
IDENT [voi] *!
[Anc]/ *voi stop
*APP *
*!
* *!
* *!
*
*
103
CAROLINA GONZÁLEZ
104
3. Coda realizations 3.1 Grammar I: Northern Dialect In the Northern dialect /b d g/ are realized as [f T x] syllable–finally. I propose that this realization is perceptually and aerodynamically motivated. Approximants and stops do not have good perceptual cues in codas; stop bursts and transitions are better perceived before vowels (Steriade 1997), while non– liquid approximants are not salient in coda position and they frequently delete or turn into other sounds. Additionally, fricatives will devoice in coda because of contradictory aerodynamic requirements for voicing and obstruents (Ohala 1983, 1997). This is captured quite straightforwardly with the context– sensitive markedness constraints in (7, 8). (7)
*APPROXIMANT] σ
Avoid non–liquid approximants in coda
(8)
*[–son, –cont]σ
Avoid stops in coda
Since approximants and voiced stops are rarely found in codas, it is be assumed that the constraints in (7, 8) are highly ranked along *VOICED FRICATIVE. This ensures that the candidate with a voiceless fricative in coda arises as winner in this dialect (9). (9)
Northern dialect: voiceless fricatives in coda
/red/ “net” a. reD4 b. reT c. reD d. red e. ret
*APP]σ
*[–son, –cont]σ
*VOI FRIC
IDENT [voi]
[Anc]/ *voi stop
*!
*APP *
* *! *! *!
IDENT [cont] * * *
* *
3.2 Grammar II: Central Dialect I In Central dialect I most coda realizations of /b d g/ are voiced fricatives. This is easily captured through the demotion of *VOICED FRICATIVE below IDENT [voice] with respect to the Northern dialect (cf. 9 with 10). This re– ranking does not upset the spirantization account in section 3 (11). The differences in the Northern and Central dialect I are captured through the minimal re–ranking of VOICED FRICATIVE and IDENT [voice]. While the Central dialect is faithful to voicing of /b d g/ in coda, the Northern dialect prefers to avoid marked voiced fricatives in this position.
104
CONSTRAINT RE–RANKING IN THREE GRAMMARS
(10)
Central dialect (I): voiced fricatives in coda
/ red / “net” a. reD4 b. reT c. reD d. red e. ret
(11)
105
*APP]σ
*[–son, –cont]σ
IDENT [voi]
*VOI FRIC
[Anc]/ *voi stop
*!
*APP *
*! * *! *!
IDENT [cont] * * *
* *
Central dialect (I): Approximants after vowels
/ redes / “nets” a. reD4es b. reTes c. reDes d. redes e. retes
*APP]σ
*[–son, –cont]σ
IDENT [voi]
*VOI FRIC
[Anc]/ *voi stop
*APP *
*! *!
IDENT [cont] * * *
*! *!
3.3 Grammar III: Central Dialect II For Central dialect II most coda realizations of /b d g/ are voiced stops. This presents a challenge to constraint re–ranking. One possibility is to demote *[–son, –cont]σ below IDENT [continuant]; this captures the preference for voiceless stops in coda in this dialect. At the same time, IDENT [voice] needs to be demoted below [Anc]/*voiced stop; otherwise, the wrong candidate is selected (12). (12)
Central dialect (II): voiceless stops in coda
/red/ “net” a. reD4 b. reT c. reD d. red e. ret
*APP]σ
*VOI FRIC
[Anc]/ *voi stop
IDENT [voi]
*!
*APP *
* *! *! *
IDENT [cont] * *! *
*[–son, –cont]σ
* *
It is not clear what the ranking [Anc]/*voiced stop>>IDENT [voice] captures in this dialect. Moreover, if the input is changed to an approximant, the proposed re–ranking wrongly chooses a voiceless fricative as the optimal candidate in coda (13).
105
CAROLINA GONZÁLEZ
106 (13)
Problem: Approximant input
/reD4/ “net” a. reD4 b. reT c. reD d. red e. ret
*APP]σ
*VOI FRIC
[Anc]/ *voi stop
IDENT [voi]
*APP
*!
IDENT [cont]
*[–son, –cont]σ
* *!
* *
* * *! *! *
If the connection among the three dialects wants to be maintained through constraint re–ranking, one solution is to consider stop coda devoicing as a derived environment effect, and use constraint conjunction (Łubowicz 2002) to rightly exclude voiceless fricatives in coda (14). The effect of this constraint is shown in (15, 16). (14)
IDENT [voice] & *FRICATIVE: No derived fricatives unfaithful to voice
(15)
Central dialect (II): Voiceless stops in codas (revised)
/ reD4 / “net” a. reD4 b. reT c. reD d. red e. ret
(16)
ID [voi] &*FRIC
*APP] σ
*VOI FRIC
[Anc]/ *voi stop
IDENT [voi]
*APP
*!
IDENT [cont]
*[–son, –cont]σ
* *
* *
*
*!
* *! *! *
Central dialect (II): Approximant input (revised)
/ red / “net” a. reD4 b. reT c. reD d. red e. ret
ID [voi] & *FRIC
*APP]σ
*VOI FRIC
[Anc]/ *voi stop
IDENT [voi]
*!
*APP *
*!
* *! *! *
IDENT [cont] * * *
*[–son, –cont]σ
* *
In conclusion, both constraint re–ranking and constraint conjunction are necessary to capture the attested patterns in Central dialect II.
106
CONSTRAINT RE–RANKING IN THREE GRAMMARS
107
3.4 Predictions Figure 3 shows the ranking lattices of the dialects considered in this paper. The ‘standard’ dialect is included for the sake of completeness, even if acoustic data has not been obtained for it. Each of these rankings accounts for attested realizations of /b d g/ in coda and predicts a specific coda realization of /p t k/ (Table 5). These predictions need to be tested with empirical data. Additionally, the possible influence of other factors (including voicing assimilation) should also be tested to arrive at a more precise characterization of spirantization and coda realization in Spanish dialects. ‘STANDARD’ DIALECT
NORTHERN DIALECT
*VLESS APPROXIMANT
*VLESS APPROXIMANT, *[APPR]σ , *[–son, –cont]σ
|
|
*VOICED FRICATIVE
*VOICED FRICATIVE
|
|
IDENT [voice]
IDENT [voice]
|
|
[A nc]/*voiced stop
[A nc]/*voiced stop
|
|
*APPROXIMANT
*APPROXIMANT
|
|
IDENT [continuant]
IDENT [continuant]
|
|
*VOICED STOP
*VOICED STOP
CENTRAL DIALECT (I)
CENTRAL DIALECT (II)
*VLESS APPROXIMANT, *[APPR]σ *[–son, –cont]σ
*VLESS APPROX, *[APPR]σ IDENT [voi] & *FRICATIVE
|
|
IDENT [voice]
*VOICED FRICATIVE
|
|
*VOICED FRICATIVE
[A nc]/*voiced stop
|
|
[A nc]/*voiced stop
IDENT [voice]
|
|
*APPROXIMANT
*APPROXIMANT
|
|
IDENT [continuant]
IDENT [continuant]
|
|
*VOICED STOP
*[–son, –cont]σ, *VOICED STOP
Figure 3: Ranking lattices
107
108
/b d g/ (attested) /p t k/ (predicted)
CAROLINA GONZÁLEZ
STANDARD
NORTHERN
CENTRAL (I)
CENTRAL (II)
[B4 D4 F4]
[f T x] [f T x]
[B D F] [f T x]
[p t k] [p t k]
[p t k]
Table 5: Stop realizations in coda 4.
Discussion Morris 2002 and Piñeros 2002 have proposed Optimality Theoretical analyses of spirantization and coda devoicing in North–Central Peninsular and Panamanian Spanish respectively. Morris 2002 considers a colloquial variety of North–Central Spanish (Dialect B in Martínez–Gil 1991), and accounts for spirantization, coda devoicing and voicing assimilation using a conjoined constraint approach. His account works for the phenomena analyzed with a minimum of constraints and is connected with the transitory nature of coda phenomena in this dialect. However, Morris does not consider spirantization in non–coda positions, and ignores that /b d g/ after vowels yield approximants, not fricatives (Martínez Celdrán 1984, Romero 1995). On the other hand, Piñeros (2002) provides an account of spirantization and optional coda devoicing to stops in Panamanian Spanish, together with a full–range, cross–dialectal analysis of variation in spirantization. Piñeros’ analysis involves positional faithfulness and effort–reduction constraints. His analysis accounts for coda devoicing and cross–linguistic variation of spirantization and also captures the phonetic grounding of both phenomena. However, Piñeros considers spirantization to be phonological only in coda, where it interacts with devoicing; otherwise it is considered a low–level process. Additionally, the input appears to determine the [+/–continuant] specification of some outputs in some cases. In contrast, the approach proposed here accounts for spirantization in Peninsular Spanish and for three different dialectal realizations of /b d g/ in coda position. This account is phonetically motivated in two ways: it is based on phonetic data, and it employs phonetically–grounded markedness constraints. The proposed analysis is based on the interaction of faithfulness and markedness constraints and captures not only the allophonic variation in spirantization and coda realizations, but also the phonemic inventory of fricatives and stops in Spanish. The minimal differences among the three dialects considered are captured through constraint re–ranking to the extent that it is possible, with the additional use of conjoined constraints in the case of Central dialect II. The data discussed in this paper relates to the quantitative sociolinguistic study on coda /b d g/ conducted by Antón (1998). Antón reports various
108
CONSTRAINT RE–RANKING IN THREE GRAMMARS
109
strategies for the pronunciation of coda obstruents in the Asturian dialect of Langredo.7 These include deletion (prevalent in the older generations), voiceless fricatives (which occur frequently in women, especially from the lower middle class) and voiced spirants (which are more common in the younger generation; it is not discussed whether these are approximants or fricatives). Remarkably, the same varied range of pronunciations occurs for /b d g/ in coda in various dialects and sociolects in North–Central Peninsular Spanish. 5.
Conclusion This paper has provided a comparative Optimality Theoretical analysis of three Peninsular dialects that share the same spirantization facts but that differ in the outcome of spirantization in coda position: voiceless fricatives in the Northern dialect, voiced fricatives in the Central dialect I, and voiceless stops in the Central dialect II. The analysis is based on acoustic data and shows the importance of phonetic data for phonological analyses. The analysis proposed here is based on the basic interaction between faithfulness and markedness constraints. Since the three dialects under consideration diverge minimally in the pronunciation of /b d g/ in coda position, the analysis explored minimal re–ranking to account for the data. While this worked for the Northern and Central dialect I, re–ranking alone fails to accurately account for the Central dialect II. In this case, both constraint reranking and constraint conjunction need to be invoked to account for the data and to maintain the connection to other two dialects. This suggests that coda devoicing and spirantization might coexist in the grammars of closely related dialects but they do not have to interact in the same way. This paper also explored the predictions of the rankings proposed for each dialect regarding the pronunciation of voiceless stops in coda position. Further research will elucidate whether the predictions hold and the rankings proposed correctly account for obstruent realization in the three dialects. Additionally, further phonetic studies will help to determine whether the Standard dialect is attested or whether it is a phonological abstraction, and whether other factors (including voicing assimilation) influence the pronunciation of obstruents in coda and need to be included in a phonological analysis of these dialects.
7
Asturias is located in Northern Spain.
109
110
CAROLINA GONZÁLEZ
References Alvarado de Ricord, Elsie. 1971. El español de Panamá, estudio fonético y fonológico. Panamá: Editorial Universitaria. Amastae, John. 1995. “Variable spirantization: constraint weighting in three dialects.” Hispanic Linguistics 6/7. 265–85. Antón, Marta M. 1998. “Del uso sociolingüístico de las oclusivas posnucleares en el español peninsular norteño.” Hispania 81. 949–958. Archangeli, Diana and Douglas Pulleyblank. 1994. Grounded Phonology. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Canfield, Lincoln D. 1981. The pronunciation of Spanish in the Americas. Chicago: University Press. González, Carolina. 2002. “Phonetic variation in voiced obstruents in North– Central Peninsular Spanish.” Journal of the International Phonetic Association 32.1. 17–31. ––––––. 2003. The Effect of Stress and Foot Structure on Consonantal Processes. Doctoral dissertation, University of Southern California. ––––––. 2006. “Efecto de la posición en la oración y la frecuencia léxica en /d/ final en español del País Vasco.” Selected Proceedings of the 8th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, ed. by Timothy L. Face & Carol A. Klee, 89–102. Somerville, Mass.: Cascadilla Proceeding Project. www.lingref.com, document#1257. ––––––. In press. “The phonetics and phonology of spirantization in North– Central Peninsular Spanish.” ASJU–International Journal of Basque linguistics and philology. Hayes, Bruce. 1999. “Phonetically driven phonology: The role of Optimality Theory and inductive grounding.” Functionalism and Formalism in Linguistics ed. by Michael Darnell, Frederick J. Newmeyer, Michael Noonan, Edith Moravcsik, & Kathleen Wheatley, vol I. General Papers, 243–85. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. [ROA 158, http://roa.rutgers.edu]. Hualde, José Ignacio. 1989. “Procesos consonánticos y estructuras geométricas en español.” Lingüística ALFAL 1. 7–44. Keating, Patricia. 1985. “Universal phonetics and the organization of grammars.” Phonetic linguistics: essays in honor of Peter Ladefoged ed. by Victoria Fromkin, 115–132. New York: Academic Press. ––––––. 1990. “Phonetic representations in a generative grammar.” Journal of Phonetics 18. 321–334. Kingston, John and Mary E. Beckman, eds. 1990. Papers in laboratory phonology I: between the grammar and physics of speech. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
110
CONSTRAINT RE–RANKING IN THREE GRAMMARS
111
Kirchner, Robert. 1998. An effort–based approach to consonant lenition. Doctoral dissertation, UCLA [ROA 276, http://roa.rutgers.edu]. Łubowicz, Anna. 2002. “Derived environment effects in Optimality Theory.” Lingua 112. 243–80 [ROA 239, http://roa.rutgers.edu]. Maddieson, Ian. 1984. Patterns of Sounds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Martínez Celdrán, Eugenio. 1984. “Cantidad e intensidad en los sonidos obstruyentes del castellano: hacia una caracterización acústica de los sonidos aproximantes.” Estudios de Fonética Experimental I, 71–129. Barcelona: Promociones Publicaciones Universitarias. Martínez–Gil, Fernando. 1991. “The Insert/delete Parameter, Redundancy Rules, and Neutralization Processes in Spanish.” Current Studies in Spanish Linguistics ed. by Héctor Campos & Fernando Martínez–Gil, 495– 571. Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press. Menéndez Pidal, Ramón. 1999 [1904]. Manual de gramática histórica española. Madrid: Espasa–Calpe. 23rd edition. Ohala, John. 1983. “The origin of sound patterns in vocal tract constraints.” The Production of Speech ed. by Peter F. MacNeilage, 189–216. New York: Springer–Verlag. ––––––. 1997. “The relation between phonetics and phonology.” The Handbook of Phonetic Sciences ed. by William J. Hardcastle & John Laver, 674–94. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell. Piñeros, Carlos Eduardo. 2002. "Markedness and Laziness in Spanish Obstruents". Lingua 112.379-413 [ROA 399, http://roa.rutgers.edu]. Prince, Alan and Paul Smolensky. 1993. Optimality theory: constraint interaction in generative grammar. Report no. RuCCS–TR–2. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Center for Cognitive Science [ROA 537, http://roa.rutgers.edu]. Romero, Joaquín. 1995. Gestural Organization in Spanish: An Experimental Study of Spirantization and Aspiration. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Connecticut. Steriade, Donca. 1993. “Closure, release, and nasal contours.” Phonetics and phonology 5: nasals, nasalization, and the velum, ed. by Marie Huffman & Rena Krakow, 401–70. San Diego: Academic Press. ––––––. 1994. “Complex onsets as single segments: the Mazateco pattern.” Perspectives in Phonology, ed. by Jennifer Cole & Charles Kisseberth, 203–91. Standford: CSLI Publications.
111
MID VOWELS AND SCHWA IN EASTERN CATALAN FIVE NON-BARCELONA DIALECTS
DYLAN HERRICK Mie University
0.
Introduction Standard Catalan allows seven stressed vowels ([i e E a ç o u]) and three unstressed vowels ([i ´ u]). For many urban speakers (especially in Barcelona), however, the contrast between the mid vowels (/e E/ and /ç o/) has disappeared, and the unstressed schwa has lowered to a vowel with an [å]-like quality (Recasens 1986, 1991). This paper provides acoustic data from four speakers of Barcelona Catalan confirming the loss of a height contrast between mid vowels (two speakers; nonsense word data) and the lowering of schwa (all four speakers; free speech data). It then examines the degree to which these features of Barcelona Catalan have transferred to neighboring and connected communities (as could be expected under the wave theory of language change; see e.g. Chambers and Trudgill 1998). Nonsense word data from fifteen young, educated, female speakers of five regional dialects of Eastern Catalan show that (for all speakers) a height contrast is maintained for the mid-vowels and that schwa has not lowered (for fourteen of fifteen speakers). Free speech data from a representative speaker of each variety also show that schwa maintains a central non-lowered location in the vowel space. In short, the changes observed in the stressed and unstressed vowel systems of Barcelona Catalan have not (yet) taken place in the five non-Barcelona dialects of Bages, Girona, Ciutadella, Palma, or Lloseta.1 1
I would like to thank all the speakers who participated in this project (along with all the people who helped put me in touch with the speakers in the first place). Special thanks also goes to David Stringer for discussions leading to some of the ideas in this paper. This research was supported in part by a research grant from the University of Girona and a COE grant from Mie University.
114
DYLAN HERRICK
Traditionally, Catalan has been divided into two main branches – Eastern Catalan (which allows schwa) and Western Catalan (which prohibits schwa). All the dialects discussed in this paper belong to the Eastern branch of Catalan, but they can be further sub classified into Central Catalan (Standard, Barcelona, Bages, and Girona) and Balearic Catalan (Ciutadella, Palma, and Lloseta). Table 1 provides a list of words illustrating each of the stressed vowels of Standard Catalan along with a morphologically related list of the diminutive forms of those words. Since the diminutive suffix (/-Et´/ in the feminine form; /-Et/ in the masculine) always bears stress, the addition of this suffix necessarily changes the location of stress compared to the base form. Contrasting the first syllable of the words in the “stressed” column with the first syllable of the words in the “unstressed” column allows us to observe the change in vowel quality between stressed and unstressed position. It also reveals the neutralization pattern in which rounded vowels surface as [u], the high unrounded vowel remains as [i], and – of interest to this paper – unrounded non-high vowels surface as schwa [´] in unstressed position. Stressed Unstressed (dim.) Gloss a. i »biƒ´ i bi»ƒEt´ “beam”/(dim.) b. e »pes´ “piece”/(dim.) ´ p´»sEt´ c. E »bEk´ “grant”/(dim.) ´ b´»kEt´ d. a »bak´ “cow”/(dim.) ´ b´»kEt´ e. ç »pçk´ “few”/(dim.) u pu»kEt´ f. o »bok´ “mouth”/(dim.) u bu»kEt´ g. u »buk “cavity”/(dim.) u bu»kEt Table 1: The stressed and corresponding unstressed vowels of Standard Catalan
Although the non-Barcelona dialects differ slightly from the pattern described in Table 1 (see section 3.2), what concerns us is that they all have schwa [´] in unstressed position as well as a height distinction between mid-vowels (though Girona Catalan only distinguishes the front mid vowels; see Herrick 2003 and references within). Barcelona / Urban Catalan, on the other hand, has been reported (in Recasens 1986, 1991) as possessing a lowered schwa (something like [å]) and lacking a height distinction between mid vowels. While some acoustic work exists for Standard Catalan (see Planas 2000 and the more extensive work of Recasens) almost none exists for the non-standard varieties (though see Herrick 2003 and a non-quantitative paper by Montoya 1998), and none of this work looks specifically at the question of the height of schwa or the distinction between mid-vowels. These facts remain (acoustically)
MID VOWELS AND SCHWA IN EASTERN CATALAN
115
unverified, and thus, this paper makes an empirical contribution not only to the question of the possible transfer of features from Barcelona Catalan to neighboring and well-connected communities, but also in terms of providing an acoustic characterization of both Barcelona Catalan as well as the five nonStandard varieties (in particular, Girona, Ciutadella, and Lloseta Catalan). 1. Changes in Barcelona Catalan 1.1 Pilot study To verify the loss of mid-vowels and the lowering of schwa, I collected acoustic data from two male and two female speakers (between 25-35 years old) of Barcelona Catalan. Though the recordings were made in the San Francisco Bay Area, all four speakers resided in Barcelona through the end of their teenage years. 1.2 Method I began by recording a three to five minute interview in which speakers were asked to introduce themselves, describe their family, and tell a story about their life. Speakers who failed to produce three minutes of speech were asked follow-up questions, and speakers who continued to speak were stopped after five minutes. These recordings formed the database for the analysis of free speech. The initial interview was followed by a nonsense verb conjugation task. Speakers were first shown the second person singular verb cantes ([»kant´s] “you sing”) and asked to conjugate it so that it fit in the two carrier sentences shown in (1). Sentence (1a) requires the third person singular form canta ([»kant´] “he sings”) while sentence (1b) requires the infinitival form cantar ([k´n»ta] “to sing”). Note, that by using morphologically related forms, this methodology reveals not only the quality of all the stressed vowels (in particular the mid vowels), but it allows us to examine the corresponding unstressed version of each vowel phoneme. Previous work has either not examined unstressed vowels (as in Morales 2000) or not examined the unstressed variants of each vowel phoneme (as in Recasens 1986, 1991). (1) Carrier phrases a. Ell sempre _______ a la nit. “He always ___ at night.” Ell [sEmpR´ ______ ´l´nit] b. La frase és sempre ______ a la nit. “The phrase is to always _ at night.” La frase és [sEmpR´ ______ ´l´nit] After the speakers completed this task successfully, they were asked to repeat the task (ten times for each word) with the following set of nonsense words:
116
DYLAN HERRICK
bibes, bébes, bèbes, babes, bòbes, bóbes, bubes. These nonsense words were chosen because, combined with the conjugation task, they allow us to shift the stress without changing the word length or immediate consonantal context ([»bVb´] when the target V is in stressed position; [bV»ba] when unstressed). To limit the effects of coarticulation, the target vowel has been flanked by bilabial consonants (leaving the tongue free for the vowel’s dorsal gesture) and the nonsense word is both preceded and followed by schwa (in the carrier phrase). The nonsense words test the distinction between the mid vowels (10 tokens for each of the four stressed mid vowels [e E o ç]) and the position of schwa relative to [a] (10 tokens for stressed [a] and 30 tokens for schwa since, when unstressed, the phonemes /e E a/ all surface as schwa). The mid vowels have been distinguished orthographically using a standard convention of Catalan orthography (‘é’ and ‘ó’ for the close mid vowels; ‘è’ and ‘ò’ for open mid). I interpreted the absence of questions about the spelling of the mid vowels as indicating that the speakers recognized the phonemic differences which were intended by the orthographic symbols (and follow up questions after the recordings confirmed this). The free speech task, though uncontrolled for word length, consonantal context, speech rate, or intonational position in a phrase, served three purposes. First, it gave each speaker a chance to get used to speaking with a headset microphone (and for me to set the recording levels appropriately). Second, it allowed me to verify the dialect background of each speaker (by playing the free speech samples to other speakers of the same dialect and asking for opinions about how typical their speech was – all speakers were judged to be typical). Third, though it proved impossible to collect a full sample of mid vowels, I was able to compare the relative height of [a] and schwa. I collected 44 tokens for [a] (ranging from 10 to 12 tokens per speaker) and 66 tokens for schwa (ranging from 11 to 20 per speaker). All recordings were made on a DAT recorder using a head-worn microphone. The files were transferred to a computer (digitized at 44.1kHz), low pass filtered (at 6000Hz), and analyzed using the Praat phonetics software package (version 4.0.16; Boersma and Weenink 2002). F1-F3 were measured at the midpoint of each vowel (as determined by eye; 25ms window, LPC analysis, 560 tokens), and converted from Hertz to ERB (the perceptual scale which most accurately models human perception; Moore and Glasberg 1996). 1.3 Results Figures 1 and 2 give the results for the nonsense word and free speech data as F1 x F2 vowel plots for each speaker. In each vowel plot, the stressed
MID VOWELS AND SCHWA IN EASTERN CATALAN
117
vowels are represented by solid squares and schwa is represented by a shaded triangle. Figure 1 shows that the height distinction between mid vowels has either disappeared or is disappearing for two of the four Barcelona speakers (P1 and P4). Although the number of tokens is rather small for a rigorous statistical analysis, an ANOVA with p < .05 shows no statistical difference between the height of the mid vowels for speakers P1 and P4. In addition, the fact that schwa appears below the lowest stressed mid vowel for speakers P1, P3, and P4 indicates, at the very least, that schwa is lowering for three of the four Barcelona speakers. The lowness of schwa is confirmed by the free speech data in Figure 2 where schwa appears in a position which is relatively close to stressed [a] for all four speakers. Stressed [i] and [u] have been included in these vowel plots to indicate the appropriate scale (for the overall vowel space and therefore the relative distance between schwa and [a]). It is interesting that the free speech data and the nonsense data are not in complete agreement. Perhaps the difference is due to nothing more than varied rates of speech, intonational patterns, or differing consonantal contexts. Perhaps it is due to a competence/performance distinction highlighted by the laboratory nature of nonsense words or pronunciations which are prompted by spelling. Regardless, when taken together with the nonsense data, it seems clear that at least for some speakers of Barcelona Catalan – schwa has either lowered or is in a process of lowering. The data from these tasks serve two purposes; first, they confirm Recasens’ (1986, 1991) observation that the height distinction between mid vowels is disappearing and that schwa is lowering in Barcelona Catalan, and second, they show that these two changes are not necessarily connected. While all four Barcelona speakers show signs of schwa lowering (see Figure 2), only two of the speakers appear to have lost the height distinction between mid vowels (see Figure 1). In short, this paper confirms the reported language changes for Barcelona Catalan. 2.
Mid-vowels and schwa in five dialects of non-Barcelona Catalan A primary purpose of this paper is to report on the status of mid vowels and schwa in the vowel systems of five distinct regional dialects of nonBarcelona Catalan: namely, those of Bages, Girona, Ciutadella, Palma, and Lloseta. The wave theory of language change holds that changes spread outward from the source to neighboring and well connected/traveled areas (Chambers and Trudgill 1998; Trudgill 1974, 1983a, 1983b). Assuming that wave theory is correct, then we expect the schwa lowering and the loss of mid
118
DYLAN HERRICK
vowels found in Barcelona (the largest city in the Catalan speaking region) to appear first in neighboring areas (such as Bages) and well connected areas (such as Palma). More rural (Girona) and less traveled to cites (Ciutadella, Lloseta) should be slower to acquire these features. A complete analysis requires us to complete a longitudinal study of which this paper can only be a single step. However, given that Recasens’ observation dates to at least 1986, the stage described here can be thought of as a snap-shot of Catalan some twenty years on. Those wishing to avoid language change tend to study non-mobile, older, rural, uneducated males (NORM; Chambers and Trudgill 1998). It makes sense, then, if you are looking for evidence of language change, to first examine the speech of a maximally opposed group: mobile, younger, urban, educated, females. This is the strategy taken up in this paper. 2.1 Method All non-Barcelona speakers in this study were younger (between 18 to 25 years old) educated (attending universities in Barcelona, Girona, or Palma) women. Palma and Ciutadella are relatively urban cities, but the remaining three regions should be thought of as rural (the Girona speakers came from smaller towns in the Girona region – not the city of Girona), so the study includes both rural and urban dialects. Furthermore, in order to find speakers who are representative of their dialects, only those who had resided continuously in their hometowns until at least eighteen years old were selected for recordings (though many were becoming mobile in the sense that they had moved to a city such as Barcelona or Palma in order to attend university). The methodology for the free speech sample and the nonsense word task was the same as the pilot study on Barcelona Catalan (see section 2.2) with two exceptions. First, the nonsense words included a voiceless bilabial stop: bipes, bépes, bèpes, bapes, bòpes, bópes, bupes. This change was made to aid the collection of measurements for vowel duration (not reported in this paper). Second, for the nonsense word data, each dialect region was represented by three speakers, and the vowel plots represent the combined data averages for the three speakers. (See Herrick 2003 for individual speaker data.) For the free speech data, however, the vowel plots represent data for only a single speaker per dialect.
MID VOWELS AND SCHWA IN EASTERN CATALAN
[i] [e]
119
[u]
schwa [o]
[E]
[ç]
[a]
P1 MALE
P2 MALE
P3 FEMALE
P4 FEMALE
Figure 1: Nonsense word data for Barcelona speakers illustrating the convergence of mid vowels (for speakers P1 and P4) and the lowering of schwa (especially for P3).
[i] schwa
[u]
[a] P1
P3
P2
P4
Figure 2: Free speech data illustrating the proximity between schwa and [a] for all four Barcelona speakers. Compare these vowel plots with those of Figure 8.
120
DYLAN HERRICK
2.2 Results: nonsense word data This subsection provides F1 x F2 vowel plots representing the three speaker averages for the nonsense word task (Figures 3-7). For all five dialects, the difference in height (F1) between mid vowels is similar to (or in some cases greater than) the difference in height between other height adjacent vowels (for example, /i~e/ and /E~a/). In addition, for each variety, schwa occupies a medial position intermediate in height between the front mid vowels [e] and [E]. The nonsense data, then, clearly indicate that the changes which are occurring in Barcelona Catalan have not (yet) occurred in the five dialects of Bages, Girona, Ciutadella, Palma, and Lloseta Catalan. The following subsections discuss the phonetic results and key phonological features of the five non-Barcelona dialects. 2.2.1 Bages Catalan Bages Catalan is representative of Standard Catalan (see Table 1). Geographically, Bages is closer to Barcelona than any of the other five dialect regions studied here, and interestingly, it also has the schwa which is closest in height to the low mid vowels – at least, according to the data shown in Figures 3-7 (though not for the free speech data shown in Figure 8). This difference may be attributed to a single speaker (who exhibited a particularly low schwa), but the other two speakers exhibited a schwa intermediate between [e] and [E]. 2.2.2 Girona Catalan The primary difference between Girona Catalan and Standard (or Bages) Catalan is that Girona Catalan has only a single back mid vowel as illustrated by the data in (2).2 The height of the mid back vowel reportedly varies by speaker and because of its indeterminate height has been represented by the non-IPA symbol ‘O’ (see Recasens 1986). The nonsense data (Figure 4) show that the front mid vowels are distinguished and that schwa occupies a position intermediate between [e] and [E] (schwa has not lowered). (2) Girona Catalan lacks /o ~ ç/ distinction Bages Catalan Girona Catalan a. [o] [»bot´] [»bOt´] b. [ç] [»pçt´] [»pOt´]
2
Gloss “shoe” “foot”
This is not the only variety of Catalan spoken in the Girona area. In some towns, speakers possess a standard seven vowel system instead of the six vowel system described above.
MID VOWELS AND SCHWA IN EASTERN CATALAN
[e] [o]
[E]
[ç]
Figure 3: Bages Catalan nonsense word data.
[e]
[O] [E]
Figure 4: Girona Catalan nonsense word data.
[e]
[o]
[E]
[ç]
Figure 5: Ciutadella Catalan nonsense word data.
121
DYLAN HERRICK
122
[e]
[o]
[E]
[ç]
Figure 6: Palma Catalan nonsense word data.
[e] [o]
[E] [ç] Figure 7: Lloseta Catalan nonsense word data.
2.2.3 Ciutadella Catalan There are two primary differences between Ciutadella and Standard Catalan. First, as shown in (3), Ciutadella Catalan (like Palma Catalan) allows schwa as a stressed vowel. Second, the low mid vowels are described as being even lower than in Standard Catalan (a general property of Balearic; Moll 1991; Mascaró 1990, 2002). Figure 5 supports this observation in addition to showing a clear distinction between the mid vowels and a central (nonlowered) schwa. (3) Stressed schwa in Ciutadella Catalan Ciutadella/Palma Gloss a. [´] [»p´R´] “pear” b. [´] [»b´k] “(I) drink”
MID VOWELS AND SCHWA IN EASTERN CATALAN
123
2.2.4 Palma Catalan Palma Catalan, like Ciutadella Catalan, allows stressed schwa. However, it differs from the previously mentioned varieties with respect to the unstressed vowel inventory – the rounded mid vowels (/o/ and /ç/) surface as [o] in unstressed position (giving Palma Catalan four unstressed vowels). This is illustrated by the data in (4). The acoustic data shown in Figure 6 illustrate that schwa is closer in height to [e] than [E] and that the height of the mid vowels is clearly distinguished. (4) Reduction to [o] in Palma Catalan (compare with the data in Table 1) Stressed Unstressed Gloss a. [o] [»bok´] [bo»kEt´] “mouth”/(dim.) b. [ç] [»pçk´] [po»kEt´] “few”/(dim.) 2.2.5 Lloseta Catalan Lloseta Catalan is almost identical to Palma Catalan except that it does not allow the stressed schwa which is characteristic of almost all other Balearic dialects. Again, the acoustic data, shown in Figure 7, show that Lloseta Catalan clearly distinguishes between the height of its mid vowels and has a relatively high schwa (closer to in height to [e] than [E]; the lowness of [ç] is also apparent). 2.3 Results: free speech data The free speech data provide strong support for the claim that schwa has not lowered in the five non-Barcelona dialects – especially when taken in combination with the nonsense data illustrated above. Each of the F1 x F2 vowel plots illustrated in Figure 8 represents the data for a single speaker. Comparing Figure 8 with Figure 2 highlights the relative lowering of schwa in Barcelona Catalan (Figure 2) and the lack of lowering for the non-Barcelona dialects (Figure 8). Stressed [i] and [u] have been included in the vowel plots to give an indication of the scale of each speaker’s vowel space (and thus, the relative proximity between schwa and [a]), but in some cases only a single token of stressed [u] could be found (10 total for all five speakers), and the number of tokens for [i] ranged from 6 to 9 (36 total) per speaker. As a result, the positions for these two vowels in the free speech data should be considered as rough approximations. The value for schwa, on the other hand, represents the average of 11 to 26 tokens per speaker (83 total), and the value for [a] represents the average of 10 to 14 tokens per speaker (59 total).
DYLAN HERRICK
124
[i]
[u] [´]
[a]
Bages
Ciutadella
Girona
Palma
Lloseta Figure 8: Vowel plots for a representative speaker of each of the five non-Barcelona dialects. Compare these vowel plots with those of Figure 3.
2.4 A note about women’s speech There are two potentially opposing concerns when studying the speech of women. The first is the so-called gender/prestige pattern (some researchers have observed that women tend to make use of higher prestige variants of language; Hudson 1996; Downes 1998; Eckert 1997); though, in our case, it is difficult to determine what “higher prestige” might be for younger, educated women. The second concern is that women often lead the way in terms of language change (however, it may be they only lead the way when the change
MID VOWELS AND SCHWA IN EASTERN CATALAN
125
is in the direction of a “high prestige” variant; Hudson 1996; Labov 1990). Given the concerns about women’s speech and language change, it may seem wise to limit the claim of this paper so that it reflects only women’s speech. Based on casual impressionistic observations, however, I suspect that such a step is overly cautious. The speech of the few younger men I recorded (though not representative of all regions) suggests that their data will pattern the same way as that of the women described here. 3.
Conclusions The data presented in this paper provide evidence for the following three points. First, for some speakers of Barcelona Catalan, the height distinction between mid vowels is disappearing and the height of schwa is lowering so that it more closely approximates [å] rather than a central mid vowel. Second, these changes appear to be independent since, of the speakers examined here, all four exhibited the lowering of schwa while only two exhibited the loss of a height contrast among the mid vowels. Third, though the wave theory of language change suggests that features of Barcelona Catalan will transfer to neighboring regions, only one of the fifteen speakers of non-Barcelona Catalan (representing five regional dialects) exhibited schwa lowering (and it was marginal), and all the non-Barcelona speakers maintained a height contrast among the mid vowels. In short, at the time of recordings (2003) mid vowels and schwa appear very much alive and well in non-Barcelona Catalan. References Boersma, Paul & David Weenink. 2002. Praat 4.0.16, http://www.praat.org. Chambers, Jack & Peter Trudgill. 1998. Dialectology, 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Downes, William. 1998. Language and Society, 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Eckert, Penelope. 1997. “The whole woman: sex and gender differences in variation.” Sociolinguistics: a reader and coursebook, ed. by Nikolas Coupland and Adam Jaworski, 212–228. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Herrick, Dylan. 2003. An acoustic analysis of phonological vowel reduction in six varieties of Catalan. Doctoral dissertation, University of California at Santa Cruz. Hudson, Richard A. 1996. Sociolinguistics, 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Labov, William. 1990. “The intersection of sex and social class in the course of linguistic change.” Language Variation and Change 2.205–254.
126
DYLAN HERRICK
Mascaró, Joan. 1990. “Les vocals tòniques a Mallorca i Menorca: un estudi acústic.” Revista de Menorca II.177–188. ——. 2002. “El sistema vocàlic. Reducció vocàlica.” Gramàtica del català contemporani, ed. by Joan Solà et al., 89–123. Barcelona: Editorial Empúries. Moll, Francesc de Borja. 1991. Gramàtica històrica catalana. València: Universitat de València. Montoya Abat, Brauli. 1998. “Mesures estadístiques acústiques del canvi fonològic en el vocalisme balear.” Revista de llengua i literatura 75–91. Moore, Brian & Brian Glasberg. 1996. “A revision of Zwicker's loudness model.” Acta Acustica 82.335–345. Planas Morales, Sílvia. 2000. Identificació de les vocals tòniques del catala. Doctoral dissertation, Universitat de Barcelona. Recasens, Daniel. 1986. Estudis de fonètica experimental del català oriental central. Barcelona: Abadia de Montserrat. ——. 1991. Fonètica descriptiva del català (assaig de caracterització pronúncia del vocalisme i consonantisme del català al segle XX). Institut d’estudis catalans, biblioteca filològica, XXI. Barcelona. Trudgill, Peter. 1974. “Linguistic change and diffusion: description and explanation in sociolinguistic dialect geography.” Language in Society 2.215–246. ——. 1983a. On dialect. Oxford: Blackwell. ——. 1983b. Sociolinguistics, 2nd ed. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Wheeler, Max, Alan Yates & Nicolau Dols. 1999. Catalan: a comprehensive grammar. London: Routledge.
THE NOMINAL STRESS SYSTEM OF ROMANIAN (RE)REVISITED
CRISTIAN ISCRULESCU University of Southern California
0.
Introduction The present paper is intended as a contribution to the study of word stress in Romanian in the framework provided by Optimality Theory (OT, Prince and Smolensky, 1993/2004). Traditional and structuralist accounts of Romanian stress note that it has a distinctive, phonemic function and state more or less explicitly that stress in Romanian is unpredictable or lexical. The main argument adduced by the proponents of the lexical analysis is the existence of numerous doublets or triplets with the same segment structure, distinguished solely by their stress pattern, like móbilә “furniture” - mobílә “mobile, feminine singular” - mobilә@ “he furnished”. A closer examination of the major stress paradigms of Romanian reveals a significant number of regularities that render untenable the strict lexical hypothesis. A series of regularities like the confinement of stress to the last three syllables of the uninflected word, and to the root/ stem in inflected forms as well as the existence of two stress sub-systems, nominal and verbal, point out in the same direction and indicate that Romanian stress is sensitive to principles of the grammar alongside with lexical specification. Similar facts have been described for Romance in general (Roca, 1999) or for sister languages. In the particular case of Romanian, Hayes (1995) cites Steriade (1984) claiming a moraic trochee system, but subsequent work by Chitoran (1996) shows that the system is quantity-insensitive. Furthermore, Chitoran (1996) confirms the split between the nominal and verbal systems, showing that the former is based of rhythmicity (syllabic trochees), whereas the latter is based on mere prominence. More recently, attempts have been made to give a unitary description of the two subsystems. Thus Franzén and Horne (1997), working in a lexical phonology framework, claim to have identified compelling similarities between nominal and verbal forms, but identify a separate stress pattern for numerals, which is a typologically odd result. Finally, Chitoran (2002) finds that both systems (nominal and verbal) are
128
CRISTIAN ISCRULESCU
based on prominence, an assumption that is, as we shall see, not supported for nominals, that are best described in terms of footing and syllabic trochees. In this paper I revisit the nominal stress system of Romanian and I argue that the system in question is rhythm-based, weight-insensitive (moraic trochees), bringing new evidence to bear on the analysis. Also, I argue that the prosodic behavior of nominals is best described in terms of phonological opacity whereby metrical structure is blurred in a considerable number of masculines and neuters in that vocalic affixes present in the input count for stress, although their presence in outputs is conditioned by phonological and morphological markedness. An account along the lines of Sympathy Theory (McCarthy 1999) is offered for the phenomenon. The analysis highlights the fact that nominal stress in Romanian is in fact highly regular, and lexical specification is necessary only for part of the items. At this point, no unification seems possible between the nominal and verbal stress systems of Romanian. 1.
Descriptive generalizations on Romanian stress. Data. Before we embark on the analysis of Romanian nominal stress, a few descriptive considerations are in place. With respect to its domain, primary stress in (uninflected) nominals is restricted to a three-syllable window at the right edge of the word (similar effects are noted in other Romance languages, Spanish in particular). In inflected forms, primary stress is confined to the stem and is never sponsored by inflectional material, thematic vowels or clitics.1 Following Chitoran (1996, 2002), two major primary stress patterns can be distinguished2. First, there is an ‘unmarked’, systematic pattern, where primary stress is assigned to the penultimate syllable in vowel-final forms and on the final syllable in consonant-final forms. Second, there is a ‘marked’, exceptional pattern, characterized by some kind of retraction, so vowel-final forms get antepenultimate stress and consonant final forms get penultimate stress. The two paradigms are illustrated in (1).
1
Note in passing that if the facts are straightforward for the nominal system, in verbs it is not always clear what the stress domain is, as stress can be either confined to the root (as in nominals), or can fall on a thematic vowel or even on certain endings. 2 Two minor stress paradigms are also attested, vowel-final forms with final stress and forms with preantepenult stress. Those forms, mostly loanwords, are listable and in all likelihood constitute lexical exceptions.
THE NOMINAL STRESS SYSTEM OF ROMANIAN
129
(1) A. The ‘unmarked’, predictable paradigm Vowel-final forms with penult stress a. CV(C).CV sá.re kár.te b. CV(C).CV.CV a.vé.re kәl.dá.re kә.má.rә
“salt” “book” “wealth” “bucket” “closet”
Consonant-final forms with final stress c. CV(C).CVC ba.lón “balloon” bal.kón “balcony” d. CV(C).CV(C).CVC ˆm.pә.rát “emperor” a.sa.sín “assassin” dZa.man.tán “suitcase”
(σ@ σ) σ (σ@ σ) σ)
σ(σ@) σσ(σ@)
B. The ‘marked’, lexically specified paradigm Consonant-final forms with penult stress a. CV(C).CVC bí.vol “buffalo” gál.ben “yellow” b. CV(C).CV(C).CVC kә.lú.gәr “monk” ar.tís.tik “artistic” Vowel-final forms with antepenultimate stress c. CV(C).CV.CV pé.pe.ne “watermelon” lés.pe.de “slab” ká.me.rә “room” d. CV.CVC.CV pá.ZiS.te “lawn” lí.niS.te “silence” drá.gos.te “love”
(σ@σ) σ(σ@σ)
(σ@σ)σ
The primary stress patterns in (1) are summarized in (2). As regards the issue of weight sensitivity, it should be noted that there are no vowel length oppositions in Romanian and all vocalic segments are medium long. Secondly, there is no systematic correlation between potentially heavy CVC(C) syllables and the position of stress. Finally, there seems to be no word minimum requirement, and substantive CV words are attested: zi “day”, Sa “saddle”, fi “to be”, sta “to stand” etc. This evidence suggests that the stress system of Romanian is not weight sensitive.
CRISTIAN ISCRULESCU
130
(2) Major primary stress patterns in Romanian nominals unmarked: a.vé.re, al.bás.tru, mún.te → (σ)σ@σ V-final words
m, f, n marked: drá.gos.te →σ@σσ
Stress pattern unmarked: ˆm.pә.rát → σσσ@ C-final words
Lexical stress m, n
marked: bí.vol→ σ@σ With respect to the issue of footing, primary stress assignment in hypocoristics shows that there is a head syllabic trochee foot at the right edge that constitutes the truncation template: (3)
Romanian hypocoristics (σ@σ) va.(sí.le) “Basil” → e.li.sa.(bé.ta) “Elizabeth” → a.nas.(tá.se) “Anastasius” → a.lek.(sán.dru) “Alexander” → te.o.(dó.ra) “Theodora” →
(sí.le) (vé.ta) (tá.se) (sán.du) (dó.ra)
We also note that secondary stress is assigned iteratively from left to right, with clash avoidance (4). Although the focus of this paper is primary stress, the secondary stress data support the view according to which nominal stress is based on footing and not on mere prominence. (4) Secondary stress assignment (pì.ra).(mí.dә) (lò.ko).mo.(tí.vә) (pà.ra).(lè.li).pi.(péd)
“pyramid” “locomotive” “parallelepiped”
Before we state the final generalizations on nominal stress, a word is in place regarding the underlying form of Romanian nouns and adjectives. In Romanian, nominals have been shown to be vowel-final underlyingly (Augerot 1974, Steriade 1984, Chitoran 1996, 2002, Iscrulescu 2003 etc.), according to the representation in (5):
THE NOMINAL STRESS SYSTEM OF ROMANIAN
131
(5) /[root]-vocalic ending/ However, the vocalic ending is not always parsed in outputs, especially in the case of the high vowel ending /u/ of masculines and feminines: (6) Romanian nominal endings (citation form) a. Feminines - ә: ká.s-ә “house” só.r-ә “sister” lí.te.r-ә “letter” - e: kár.t-e “book” vúl.p-e “fox” b. Masculines and neuters -e: frá.t-e “brother” mún.t-e “mountain” -u • not realized word-finally, after a single consonant: lúp “wolf” /lup-u/ bí.vol “buffalo” /bivol-u/ • realized as [u] or [w] al.bás.tr-u “blue” kú.pl-u “couple” ka.ró-w “square” As can be seen from (6), whenever the stem ends in a consonant cluster rising in sonority (unsyllabifiable in Romanian), the vowel ending /u/ in masculine and neuter nominals is realized in outputs, but deleted (presumably due to sonority) otherwise. The other vocalic endings /ә/ and /e/ are always parsed: (7) The status of underlying vocalic endings in nominals: a. /ә, e/ are faithfully realized in outputs ká.s-ә “house” /kas-ә/ frá.t-e “brother” /frat-e/ b. /u/ is deleted, unless necessary for syllabification póm “fruit-tree” /pom-u/ al.bás.tr-u “blue” /albastr-u/ *al.bástr (coda rising in sonority) The deletion of final /u/ disrupts the regularity of the stress pattern in that a canonical head foot syllabic trochee can no longer be formed on the last two
132
CRISTIAN ISCRULESCU
syllables of the nominal, and only a degenerate trochee is available causing phonological opacity in stress assignment. We are now in a position to formulate the following generalizations regarding primary stress, distinguishing between an ‘unmarked’ or regular stress pattern (8a. and b.) and a lexically specified, ‘marked’ paradigm (8c.): (8) Generalizations on primary stress in nominals: a. in vowel-final forms with penult stress, build a syllabic trochee on the last two syllables: /...CV/ → [...(σ@σ)] b. in consonant-final forms with final stress, build a degenerate syllabic trochee on the last syllable: /...C(u)/ → [...(σ@)] c. in the ‘marked’ paradigm, there is lexical specification in stress assignment. In what follows, I will propose optimality-theoretic analyses of the three stress patterns, starting with the transparent, vowel final forms with penultimate stress, and continuing with the opaque oxytones. Finally, forms with lexical stress are considered. 2. Analysis 2.1 Vowel-final forms The descriptive observation according to which primary stress in Romanian nominals is assigned by building a syllabic trochee at the right edge of the word in regular vowel final forms is captured by the OT constraints TROCH and ALIGN-HEAD-R, stated below: (9) a. TROCH b. ALIGN-HEAD-R
(‘Feet are left-headed’) (‘Align the right edge of the Prosodic Word with the right edge of the head of the Prosodic Word’)3 (McCarthy & Prince 1993)
In the case of vowel-final paroxytones like the feminine noun avére “wealth” and the masculine-neuter adjective albástru “blue”, the constraints in (9) yield
3
A specific version of ALIGN-HEAD-R, ALIGN-HEAD-R(S), ensures the right-alignment of the head foot with the right edge of the stem. The fact that the stress domain in nominals is the stem is expressed by undominated ALIGN-HEAD-R(S), which accounts for the descriptive generalization according to which inflectional material never carries stress.
THE NOMINAL STRESS SYSTEM OF ROMANIAN
133
the actual outputs, but no ranking can be established, as appears in Tableau (10): (10) Tableau for avére “wealth” and albástru “blue” /avere/ a. a.(vé.re) b. (a.vé).re c. a.(ve.ré) d. (á.ve).re /albastru/ a. al.(bás.tru) b. (al.bás).tru c. al.(bas.trú) d. (ál.bas).tru
TROCH
ALIGN-HEAD-R
*(!) *!
*(!)
TROCH *(!) *!
*! ALIGN-HEAD-R *(!) *!
A complication arises in the ‘marked’ pattern represented by vowel-final outputs with preparoxytone stress like drágoste “love”, where the constraints in (9) fail to yield the actual output, irrespective of their ranking (indicates the illicit winner): (11) Tentative tableau for drágoste “love” /dragoste/ a. (drá.gos).te b. dra.(gós.te) c. (dra.gós).te d. dra.(gos.té)
TROCH
ALIGN-HEAD-R *! *!
*!
Stress patterns like the one in (11) are in all likelihood the result of lexical stress specification that can be seen in a number of items, most of which are Slavic loans (Petrucci 1999). It is therefore sensible to consider a constraint that militates for the preservation of lexically specified stress patterns: IDENT-STRESS (‘If α is stressed, then f(α) must be stressed’) (Pater (2000) The activity of IDENT-STRESS translates into identity of stress position in input and output. The relative ranking of the constraints discussed thus far is given by Tableaux (12) and (13):
CRISTIAN ISCRULESCU
134
(12) Tableau for drágoste “love” /drágoste/ a. (drá.gos).te b. dra.(gós.te) c. (dra.gós).te d. dra.(gos.té)
TROCH
IDENTSTRESS
ALIGN-HEAD-R σ
*(!) *(!)
*! *(!) *(!)
σ
(13) Tableau for avére “wealth” /avere/ a. a.(vé.re) b. (a.vé).re c. a.(ve.ré) d. (á.ve).re
TROCH
*! *!
IDENTSTRESS N/A N/A N/A N/A
ALIGN-HEAD-R
σ σ!
As appears from Tableau (12), undominated IDENT-STRESS is crucial in determining the winning candidate, and all other candidates violate it. As for the vowel final paroxytone in (13), IDENT-STRESS is not relevant, but now we have a ranking argument for TROCH and ALIGN-HEAD-R. Interestingly, the analysis offered for Romanian vowel-final forms obviates the need for extrametricality in Romance stress assignment (contra Roca 1999), as the extrametricality constraint NONFINALITY would be ranked too low to show significant activity. 2.2 Consonant-final forms Recall that consonant-final nominals are underlyingly vowel-final, as shown in (20) for the masculine noun ˆmpәrát “emperor”, which emerges as such as a result of high vowel deletion: (14)
/ˆmpәrat-u/ → [ˆmpәrát]
“emperor”
This means that an account of these forms has to take into account the conflict between a faithfulness constraint such as MAX-IO that militates in favor of preservation of underlying material and a markedness constraint like *PK/u, that penalizes the presence of high vowel syllable nuclei in outputs:
THE NOMINAL STRESS SYSTEM OF ROMANIAN
(15)
135
Conflict between preservation of input segments (MAX-IO) and deletion of high vowels (*PK/u) a. MAX-IO ‘input segments have output correspondents’ b. *PK/u ‘no high vowel syllable peaks’ (Prince & Smolensky 1993/2004, Iscrulescu 2003)4
As a first pass, note that adding the constraints in (15) to the ones already shown to be active in Romanian fails to yield the actual stress pattern of consonant-final forms with final stress (symbolizes a candidate that ties with the actual winner): (16) Tentative tableau for ˆmpәrát “emperor” /ˆmpәratu/ a. ˆm.pә.(rát) b. ˆm.(pә.rát) c. ˆm.(pә@.rat) d. (ˆ@m.pә).rat e. ˆm.pә.(rá.tu)
TROCH
ALIGNHEAD-R
*PK/u
MAX-IO * * * *
*! *! *!
From Tableau (16) it appears that there is a tie between candidates (16a.), which is the attested output, and candidate (16c.) in that both violate only lowranked MAX-IO. On closer scrutiny, the failure of the OT analysis is due to the fact that consonant final oxytones display counterbleeding opacity in stress assignment. Consider the serial derivations in (17) for the consonant final noun ˆmpәrát “emperor” and the vowel final adjective albástru “blue”, respectively: (17) Counterbleeding opacity in stress assignment UR 1. Syllabification 2. Footing, stress assignment 3. u-deletion SR 4
/ˆmpәratu/ ˆm.pә.ra.tu ˆm.pә.(rá.tu) ˆm.pә.(rát) ˆm.pә.(rát)
/albastru/ al.bas.tru al.(bás.tru) -5 al.(bás.tru)
High vowels are not deleted if they are part of the root. This means that MAX-IOROOT is topranked in Romanian (at least as high as to dominate PK/u). 5 For the sake of simplicity, we assume that u-deletion does not apply whenever it could lead to syllable codas with increasing sonority.
136
CRISTIAN ISCRULESCU
Assuming an input not specified for stress, as in the unmarked case, Process 1 (Syllabification) parses the sequence of segments into syllables, after which Process 2 (Footing and stress assignment) builds a disyllabic trochee at the right edge of the word. Finally, Process 3 (u-deletion) applies whenever allowed by syllable structure, and the syllabic trochee is rendered monosyllabic. If Process 3 applied before Process 2, the result would be the unattested output *ˆm.(pә@.rat). Note that the rule of u-deletion must be ordered after footing and stress assignment, to prevent the realization of illicit syllable structure as in *albástr. The way things are, the picture is reminiscent of counterbleeding or non-surface apparent opacity (McCarthy, 1999), defined in (24) after Koontz-Garboden (2000): (18) Non surface-apparent opacity “Some generalization G appears to play an active role in shaping the surface form F, but the conditions that lead to G’s applicability are not apparent from F. Serialism explains this by saying that the conditions on G are relevant only at the stage of the derivation when G applies. Generalizations in force at later stages may obliterate the conditions that made G applicable (e.g., by destroying the triggering environment for a rule).”
In the particular case of primary stress assignment in Romanian nominals, the generalization G in (18) is the presence of a canonical syllabic trochee at the right edge of the prosodic word, as in the vowel-final forms of the unmarked, vowel-final pattern. The deletion of the final high vowel /u/ obscures this generalization rendering it non-surface apparent (in serial terms, u-deletion applied after syllabification and footing obscures G, and what surfaces is a subminimal trochee CVC. Informally, the formation of a noncanonical disyllabic trochee is preferable to the retention of final /u/ unless the phonotactics of the language demands it (the albástru case). In the following section of the paper I will offer an analysis of Romanian counterbleeding opacity using Sympathy Theory (McCarthy 1999). 2.3 An analysis in Sympathy Theory Counterbleeding (or non-surface apparent) opacity is a notable challenge to OT, but can be addressed within this framework by adopting an approach such as Sympathy Theory (McCarthy, 1999). In particular, the approach has been used in the analysis of stress systems which exhibit non-surface apparent opacity, as the one of Batticaloa Creole Portuguese (Koontz-Garboden, 2000). In what follows, I will implement a Sympathy account of Romanian consonantal masculines/neuters.
THE NOMINAL STRESS SYSTEM OF ROMANIAN
137
In Sympathy Theory, a member of the set of output candidates (the sympathetic form) is assigned a special status, and the evaluation metric explicitly takes into account faithfulness to this candidate. The sympathetic candidate is special in that, although suboptimal, satisfies a designated constraint known as the selector, and fares best on the remaining constraints. Heuristically, the sympathetic candidate () can be found among the intermediate representations in the serial derivation (17), more precisely, it is the metrified form with final -u, ˆm.pә.(rá.tu). The selector constraint can be conveniently assumed to be MAX-IO (henceforth MAX-IO). (19) Determining the sympathy candidate /ˆmpәratu/ a. ˆm.pә.(rát) b. ˆm.(pә.rát) c. ˆm.(pә@.rat) d. (ˆ@m.pә).rat e. (ˆm.pә@).rat f. ˆm.pә.(rá.tu) g. ˆm.pә.(ra.tú) h. (ˆ@m.pә).ra.tu
TROCH
ALIGNHEAD-R
*PK/u
MAX-IO
*! * *
* * * * *
*!
*!
*! *
*! *!*
The way in which the sympathy candidate is selected in shown in Tableau (19): candidates (19a. - e.) are ruled out by failure to satisfy the selector constraint, MAX-IO, and fare worse on the remaining constraints than (f.), the sympathy candidate. As the second step of the Sympathy algorithm, a constraint is needed to ensure faithfulness to the sympathy candidate. Such a constraint is IDENTSTRESS: (20)
IDENT-STRESS (‘Correspondent segments carry stress in the output and the sympathetic candidates’)
The Sympathy schema for the consonant-final oxytone ˆm.pә.rát “emperor” is given in (21):
CRISTIAN ISCRULESCU
138
(21) The Sympathy Schema for ˆm.pә.rát (“emperor”) /ˆmpәratu/ I-O Faith [ˆm.pә.(rá.tu)] (optimal according to MAX-IO)
[ˆm.pә.(rát)] (actual output)
-O-Faith
IDENT-STRESS is undominated; no strict domination can be established between it and TROCH: (22)
IDENT-STRESS, TROCH » ALIGN-HEAD-R, * PK/u » MAX-IO Tableau (23) shows how the actual output is selected:
(23) Final tableau for ˆmpәrát “emperor” /ˆmpәratu/ a. ˆm.pә.(rát) b. ˆm.(pә.rát) c. ˆm.(pә@.rat) d. (ˆ@m.pә).rat e. ˆm.pә.(rá.tu) f. ˆm.pә.(ra.tú)
IDENTSTRESS
TROCH
ALIGNHEAD-R
*PK/u
*! *! *! *(!)
σ *(!)
MAXIO * * * *
*! *
The same procedure can be applied in the case of all masculine oxytones that end in a consonant, all of which are members of the unmarked paradigm. Note that a hypothetical input with stress marked on the vocalic ending (/ˆmpәratú/) would be handled in a similar fashion, yielding the optimal output [ˆm.pә.rát], but only if TROCH dominates IDENT-STRESS. The domination of IDENT-STRESS by TROCH enables us to account for consonant final paroxytones like bívol “buffalo”, where stress is lexically marked:
THE NOMINAL STRESS SYSTEM OF ROMANIAN
139
(24) Tableau for bívol “buffalo” /bívol-u/
TROCH
a. (bí.vol) b. (bi.vól) c. bi.(vól) d. e.
*!
bi.(vó.lu) bí.vo).lu
IDENTSTRESS
ALIGNHEAD-R
* PK/u
MAX-IO * * *
* *! *! *(!)
* *(!)
To conclude the analysis, the constraint lattice for Romanian nominal stress is given in (25): (25)
TROCH
IDENT-STRESS
IDENT-STRESS ALIGN-HEAD-R, *PK/u ()MAX-IO 3.
Conclusion In this paper I examined the nominal stress system of Romanian, which was found to be foot-based, weight-insentitive (syllabic trochees). The system is more regular than previously thought, and in forms stress is predictable for items. In vowel-final nominals with penultimate stress a head syllabic trochee is built on the last two syllables of the prosodic word, and a subminimal syllabic trochee is formed at the right edge of consonant-final oxytones. The latter paradigm is analyzed as an effect of phonological opacity that emerges from deletion of the underlying high vowel ending and a Sympathy Theory account is offered. Lexically specified stress has been shown to exist in a number of items, notably in vowel-final forms with antepenult stress and consonant-final with penult stress. The question remains open as to the possibility to unify the nominal and verbal systems in Romanian. Although no analysis is offered for verbs, at this point no unification seems possible, due to the fact that previous unified analyses rely on prominence in nominal stress assignment, with no footing, which position is hardly tenable in light of our results.
140
CRISTIAN ISCRULESCU
References Augerot, James E. 1974. Romanian phonology: a generative phonological sketch of the core vocabulary of standard Romanian. Idaho Research Foundation, Inc., University of Idaho. Chitoran, Ioana. 1996. “Prominence vs. Rhythm: The Predictability of Stress in Romanian.” Grammatical Theory and Romance languages: Selected papers from the 25th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL XXV) Seattle, 2–4March 1995, ed. by Karen Zagona, 47–58. Amsterdam, & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Chitoran, Ioana. 2002. The Phonology of Romanian: A Constraint-Based Approach. Berlin-New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Franzén, Vivian & Merle Horne. 1997. “Word Stress in Romanian.” Lund University Working Papers, 46.75–92. Hayes, Bruce. 1995. Metrical Stress Theory - Principles and Case Studies. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Iscrulescu, Cristian. 2003. “Morphological faithfulness and phonological markedness: The case of Romanian nominals.” USC Working Papers in Linguistics 1.13– 27. Koontz-Garboden, Andrew J. 2000. “Opacity in Batticaloa Creole Portuguese stress assignment: motivation for candidate-to-candidate faithfulness.” Ms., Indiana University, Bloomington. [ROA-395 http:roa.rutgers.edu] McCarthy, John J. 1999. “Sympathy and phonological opacity.” Phonology 16.331–399. Pater, Joe. 2000. “Non-uniformity in English Secondary Stress: the role of ranked and lexically specific constraints.” Phonology 17.237–274. Prince, Alan, Smolensky, Paul. 1993/2004. Optimality Theory: Constraint interaction in generative grammar. London: Blackwell [Originally published as Technical Report CU-CS-696–93, Department of Computer Science, University of Colorado at Boulder, and Technical Report TR-2, Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, April 1993] Roca, Iggy M. 1999. “Stress in the Romance Languages.” Word Prosodic Systems in the Languages of Europe, ed. by Harry van der Hulst, 659–811. Berlin-New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Steriade, Donca. 1984. “Glides and Vowels in Romanian.” Berkeley Linguistics Society 10.47–64.
PROTO-ROMANCE STRESS SHIFT REVISITED HAIKE JACOBS Department of Romance languages and cultures Radboud University Nijmegen
0.
Introduction The notoriously problematic Late Latin stress shift from antepenultimate to penultimate syllable in words with a short penultimate vowel followed by a consonant-liquid cluster, such as, for example, integrum “total”, colubram “serpent”, palpebram “eye lid”, cathedram “chair” has received considerable attention throughout the history of Romance linguistics (cf. among others, Lindsay (1894), de Groot (1921), Niedermann (1931), Pope (1934), Richter (1934), Ward (1951), Fouché (1958), Bourciez (1974), Pulgram (1975), Steriade (1988), Jacobs (1989), Lahiri, Riad & Jacobs (1999), and more recently Bullock (2001) and Ségéral & Scheer (2005)). No completely satisfactory account, however, has yet been provided. This paper is organized as follows. In section 1, we will briefly recapitulate the stress shift facts of Late Latin and the more traditional accounts. Section 2 reviews Bullock (2001). Bullock offers an OT-based account and assumes double prosody: an additional mora, projected to the syllable, but not realized by the vowel allows a light syllable to count as heavy before consonant-liquid clusters. Syncope in cases such as manípulus > maníplus leads to a light (ma.ní.plus) penultimate syllable being stressed, unless it is assumed that the mora of the deleted vowel is preserved and associated with the penultimate syllable (the syllable is then heavy, but because the vowel is not long, weight is covert). This double prosody is by prosodic analogy carried over to other light syllables preceding stop-liquid clusters, triggering the stress shift. The stress rules of the language therefore remain the same for Classical Latin as well as for Late Latin (Bullock 2001: 187). We will show that the use of doubly prosody is not well-motivated in consonantalization, not useful in prefix to stems stress shifts and that syncope, even with double prosody, makes the Classical Latin stress algorithm opaque. Section 3 takes opacity as the key-factor in the relationship between syncope
142
HAIKE JACOBS
and stress shift and presents a formal OT-account of that relationship in which the link between the two is straightforwardly expressed, thereby obviating the need for double prosody in accounting for the stress shift. 1. Stress shift in Late Latin and traditional accounts 1.1 The facts In Late Latin a stress shift occurred in three contexts, examples of which are given in (1)–(3), where stress is indicated by boldface and where the further evolution into one of the modern Romance languages, French, has been provided. (1) Short penultimate vowel followed by a consonant- liquid cluster Latin Late Latin Old French French Gloss
(1’)
integrum colubram tonitrum palpebram cathedram pullitram feretrum
integru colubra tonitru palpebra cathedra pullitra feretru
entir couleuvre tonoire palpre chaiere poltre fiertre
entier couleuvre tonnerre paupière chaire poutre --
(2) Consonantalization of high vowels in hiatus Latin Late Latin Old French French
(2’)
mu-li-e-rem fi-li-o-lus ci-co-ne-a cas-ta-ne-a
mul[j]erem fil[j]olus cicon[j]a castan[j]a
(3) Prefix to stem in verbs Latin Late Latin demorat renegat
demorat renegat
moillier filuel ce(g)oine chastaigne
-filleul cigogne châtaigne
“entire” “snake” “thunder” “eyelid” “chair” “beam” “shrine”
Gloss “wife” “godson” “stork” “chestnut”
Old French French
Gloss
demeure reneie
“(s)he lives” “(s)he denies”
demeure renie
The data in (1’) show that syncope and diphthongization in some cases took place prior to the shift from antepenultimate to penultimate syllable in words with a short penultimate vowel followed by a consonant-liquid cluster. The Old French reflexes of Classical Latin pullitram and feretrum require an antepenultimate stressed syllable. Whereas the shifts in (2) and (3) receive a more natural account, being clearly determined by (morpho)phonological factors, the shift in (1) is less straightforward.
PROTO-ROMANCE STRESS SHIFT REVISITED
143
1.2 Traditional accounts In the more traditional accounts, three different types of explanation are offered. A change in the number of syllables, a change in the syllabic affiliation of the cluster and a change in the stress rule. De Groot (1921), Niedermann (1931) and Richter (1934), for example, propose an account based on a change in the number of syllables. They assume an epenthetic vowel which triggered the shift and which was subsequently deleted again. Fouché (1958) and Bourciez (1974) are examples of the second type of explanation: a change in the syllabic affiliation of the cluster. The first consonant is assumed to become geminated thereby closing the preceding syllable. Both accounts are problematic. The postulation of an epenthetic vowel, obviously, cannot be motivated independently from the shift. Moreover, the appearance of a vocalic fragment in consonant-liquid clusters as in, for instance, Modern Spanish typically does not interact with the stress pattern, and is best seen as an instance of non-overlapping articulatory gestures. The second solution, gemination of the consonant in the consonant-liquid cluster, is at odds with the available romance evidence (such as, for instance, the diphthongization in the French reflexes entier, couleuvre, paupière and chaire (Bullock 2001:177–178)) which shows that the penultimate syllable remained an open syllable. The third explanation, a change in the stress rule, is advocated by, among others, Ward (1951), Pope (1934), Pulgram (1975), Steriade (1988), Jacobs (1989) and Lahiri e.a. (1999). Although differing in details, the stress shift is basically described as a result of a changing stress rule (the leading idea being that the loss of vocalic quantity distinctions and syncope led to the breakdown of the Classical Latin stress rule). For instance, Pulgram (1975) classifies it under a general “trend towards paroxytony”, Steriade (1988: 399), in line with Pope (1934), sees it as the result of a reinterpretation of the Latin stress rule: “Stress the penult if it is followed by a consonant cluster” and according to Jacobs (1989: 25/26) it is the “joint effects of these two phenomena [(syncope, loss of vowel quantity) that] brought about a new accent system.”1 In the next section, we will concentrate on Bullock (2001). 1
Ségéral & Scheer (2005), dissatisfied with this account, as it “simply records the observation, something that leaves the audience without any kind of prediction on either some property of the theory or the behavior of Gallo-Romance,” provide a government phonology-based approach which assumes ambiguous status of consonant-liquid clusters (they can be analyzed as coda-onset sequences, as onset clusters or as a mono-segmental (affricate-like) onset). This means that they should be coda-onset at the moment of the stress shift, to become onset cluster again at the moment of diphthongization, or that they are both coda-onset and onset cluster simultaneously which seems to render the analysis subject to the same criticism as the vowel epenthesis account.
144
HAIKE JACOBS
2. The stress shift as a case of prosodic analogy 2.1 Bullock’s Double prosody Bullock (2001) analyses the problematic stress shift as analogical influence exerted by syncope and the consonantalization of high vowels in hiatus. She formalizes the notion of double prosody, well-known from Classical poetry, that short vowels before consonant-liquid clusters may be treated as heavy for metrical purposes. In her view, the stress rule did not change, but the short vowels before consonant-liquid clusters constitute a case of double prosody: they receive an additional mora, which was not overtly realized, that is not pronounced, by analogy of a similar mora in cases of syncope and consonantalization of unstressed hiatus vowels. The three relations in (4) are recognized between vowels and moras and used as OTconstraints in her analysis. (4) µ V A
µ V B
µ V C
A is a vowel that projects a mora, but is not pronounced B is a vowel that is pronounced, but does not project a mora C is a vowel that projects a mora and is pronounced
Syncope, as in for instance, ma(nípu)lus > ma(ní)plus “bundle”, deletes the vowel, but leaves intact its prosodic weight (its mora) which becomes structurally interpreted as covert weight in the penultimate syllable. This is illustrated in (5). For clarity’s sake, we have indicated output vowels that are not pronounced by placing them between angled brackets. Candidate (c), the fully faithful output candidate is ruled out, as it violates the constraint responsible for syncope: *ŬL. Candidate (a) without the penultimate vowel and without its mora, is ruled out as it violates the constraint MAX, according to which every input segment must have a correspondent in the output. Candidate (b) has a correspondent in the output, but does not project a mora and is ruled out by violating the constraint PROJECT µ, which does require vowels to project a mora. Candidate (e), finally, is ruled out, given that the mora of the penultimate syllable is overtly realized as length on the preceding vowel, violating thereby the constraint WT-IDENT which prohibits lengthening or shortening of vowels and consonants. Candidate (d), thus comes out as optimal, the input vowel is deleted in audible output structure, but leaves intact its prosodic weight. Double prosody is claimed to arise also by desyllabification or consonantalization of unstressed hiatus vowels, as illustrated in Tableau 6.
145
PROTO-ROMANCE STRESS SHIFT REVISITED
(5) Double prosody by syncope /manipulus/ µ a) mani p lus µ µ b) mani pu lus µ µ c) mani pu lus µ µ d)mani p[u] lus µ µ e) mani: p[u] lus
*ŬL
MAX
PROJECT µ
WT-IDENT
PRONOUCE µ
*!
*!
*!
*
*!
(6) Double prosody by desyllabification /mulierem/ µ a) mul [e] rem µ µ b) mul [i e] rem µ µ c) mul [i e] rem µ µ d)mul [j e] rem µ µ e) mul [j e:] rem
*HIATUS
MAX
PROJECT µ
WT-IDENT
PRONOUCE µ
*!
*!
*!
*
*!
Candidate (c), the Classical Latin form, violates the high-ranked constraint against *HIATUS. Candidate (a) is ruled out because input /i/ has no correspondent in the output. Input /i/ has an output correspondent in candidate (b), but fails to project a mora. In candidate (e), input /i/ does project a mora,
146
HAIKE JACOBS
which mora is realized as length on the following vowel, resulting in a long diphthong thereby violating WT-IDENT. Candidate (d) thus comes out as optimal; the input vowel is deleted in audible output structure, but leaves intact its prosodic weight. Bullock (2001: 188) assumes that due to double prosody in syncope and desyllabification, that is, “the covertly heavy penultimate in the maniplus and mulierem classes of words in Latin resulted in a new structural harmony constraint that preferred syllables before CL clusters to be interpreted as heavy rather than as light.” This harmony constraint is given in the harmonic ranking in (7) and formalizes that a heavy syllable is more harmonic than a light syllable before a consonant-liquid cluster. (7) Structural harmony σH CL » σL CL
where *σL CL is undominated in Late Latin
High-ranked *σL CL will “compel a penultimate syllable to be scanned as overtly heavy even in the absence of any input source weight (ibid. 188)” and will trigger the problematic shift, as, slightly simplifying Bullock (2001), illustrated in (8), where a light vowel that is prosodically heavy, although not long or lengthened, is indicated as L+. (8) Problematic Stress shift /integru/ a) (inte)gru b) in(te:)gru c) in(tegru) d) in(teL+)gru e) in(te)gru
*σL CL *!
WTIDENT
FT-BINARITY
NONFINALITY
PRONOUCE µ
*! *! * *!
Candidate (a), the optimal Classical Latin candidate, is ruled out for Late Latin by violating (now high-ranked) *σL CL. Candidate (b), with a lengthened penultimate vowel, violates WT-IDENT, candidate (c) is ruled out by NONFINALITY, according to which a foot may not be in final position2, and (e) violates FT-BINARITY, according to which a foot should be binary (either two mora or two syllables), leaving (d) as the optimal output. To summarize, the 2
Cf. Jacobs (2002) for motivation of this interpretation of NONFINALITY, necessary to exclude quaternary stress and to capture previous rule-based foot-extrametricality.
147
PROTO-ROMANCE STRESS SHIFT REVISITED
Late Latin stress computation is claimed to have remained the same as that of Pre-Classical and Classical Latin and, in parallel to the outputs of syncope and desyllabification, a light penultimate may be treated as heavy even in the absence of an input source for covert weight, triggering the problematic stress shift. 2.2. Criticizing double prosody Servius (4th century) on “peragro” in a line of Virgil: “‘per’ habet accentum … muta enim et liquida quotiens ponuntur metrum juvant, non accentum” (cf. Lindsay, 1894: 164). [“per” is stressed… given that the consonant-liquid so often postulated help the verse not the stress. HJ]
2.2.1. Always double prosody by syncope? The left-behind or stranded mora is not required for stress purposes in cases where the antepenultimate syllable is heavy (closed syllable or containing a long vowel). Compare for instance, per[i:]culum “danger” by syncope becoming per[i:]clu, with man[i]pulum or sol[i]culum “little sun” becoming man[i]plu and sol[i]clu respectively. Modern French soleil and peril show that the two vowels (originally a length distinction) have been kept apart in the further evolution of the language. If no additional mora is assumed to arise by syncope in perīculum cases, the doubly prosody approach becomes suspect to the same extent as the traditional epenthesis account. If, on the other hand, an empty mora does arise, it becomes unclear what syncope is all about. It can no longer be seen as driven by exhaustive parsing (Mester 1992) nor can it be seen as foot-based (Jacobs 2004) given that prosodic structure remains completely unaltered. 2.2.2. No double prosody/mora projection in desyllabification Desyllabification was not restricted to non-low front vowels in hiatus. It also applied to back [u] in hiatus, leading to [w], as in vidua [widua] > [widwa]. The glide subsequently strengthened to [v] as in Old French veve, vedve and Modern French veuve “widow”. If the glide was preceded by a single consonant, the result in French was again [v], if more consonants preceded, it was deleted, as illustrated by the forms in (9). (9) Deletion versus retention of the glide in desyllabification Classical Latin februarium ianuarium
Late Latin [febrwarju] [janwarju]
French février janvier
Gloss “february” “january”
*[brw] [nw]
148
HAIKE JACOBS
The forms in (9) clearly show that the glide therefore formed part of the onset and not a diphthong with the vowel. Similarly, in French, the glide arising from desyllabification of front vowels in hiatus was strengthened to [tS/dZ] after labials, as in sapiam > [sapja] > [saptSa] > sache “to know 1st sg. subj.” or caveam [kaBja] > [kabdZa] > cage “cage”.3 In conclusion, glides resulting from consonantalization were onsets and did not project a mora, a floating mora could be assumed as an alternative, but would require a far more elaborate account (when does syncope leave behind a mora and when not, when is it overtly and covertly realized). 2.2.3. No double prosody in prefix to stem stress shift The concept of double prosody is not helpful when dealing with the cases of stress shift from prefix to stem in verbal forms, some examples of which are reproduced in (10). (10)
Prefix to stem in verbs Classical Latin demorat recontat renegat
Late Latin demorat recontat renegat
Romance demeure Fr. recuenta Sp. reneie O.Fr./ reniega Sp
Gloss “(s)he lives, stays” “(s)he counts again” “(s)he denies again”
The diphthongization results show that the vowel remained short and that the stress shifted, which means that the stress rules of Classical Latin cannot have remained the same for Late Latin4. 2.2.4. Syncope, even with double prosody, does lead to opacity of stress Syncope was operative form Early Classical Latin, through Classical Latin and into Late Latin. Jacobs (2004) provides an OT-analysis of syncope and argues that, whether syncope is formulated as a ‘foot-based’ or a ‘not-footbased’ constraint, it leads to surface opacity, even with the assumption of double prosody. We briefly recapitulate the analysis, in which it is shown that 3
One could alternatively assume a floating mora, left behind by the vowel before it turns into part of an onset, with the concomitant assumption that the floating mora is not associated (covert weight) in this case nor in the syncope cases. Floating moras, however, are associated (producing overt weight) in cases of compensatory lengthening (cf. Appendix Probi “mensa non mesa” etc.). Mora association then needs to be blocked in some cases, but not in others, which could be done by assuming that only left-ward association is allowed, which is blocked by an intervening consonant and which would allow only coda consonants to produce overt weight. 4 In rule-based accounts, the stress rules would start to become lexicalized, divided into lexical and post-lexical parts or cyclic and non-cyclic parts.
149
PROTO-ROMANCE STRESS SHIFT REVISITED
with a foot-based constraint for syncope *V IN FOOT (avoid a vowel in the weak position of a foot) all cases of syncope, but one can be dealt with. The problematic case, pre-tonic syncope in words such as ārĭdorem becoming ārdorem “fire” is illustrated in (11). Tableau 11 focuses on the metrical parsing of the pre-main stress part of the word. Stress (both main and secondary) is indicated by boldface. Vowel deletion is indicated by braces. (11) A problematic case of Latin vowel deletion /HLσ/ ārĭdorem a. (H)L (dorem) b. (HL) (dorem) c. (H)(dorem) d. H (dorem) e. HL (dorem)
*V IN FOOT
MAX-V
CLASH
WSP
W/L
Parse-σ *
*! *! *!
* *
σ
*
*!
σσ
**
The relative ranking of the constraints CLASH (avoid two consecutive stressed syllables), W/L (the left-edge of a Prosodic word should be aligned with the left-edge of a foot, that is the word should start with a foot) and PARSE-σ (a syllable must be parsed into a foot) is motivated by the fact that, in Latin, a single remaining syllable before the main stressed syllable is not stressed, regardless of whether it is light, as in, for instance, pedéster “on foot” or heavy, as in, for example, mercédem “salary, profit”. This means that CLASH has to dominate WSP (constraint responsible for stressing heavy syllables) and both have to dominate W/L (left word-edge starts with a foot) and PARSE-σ. The problem in (11) is that, rather than producing vowel deletion, not parsing the second syllable in a foot is a far better solution. Candidate (a) has only one single violation: it only violates PARSE-σ. In Jacobs (2004), a number of possible accounts are discussed. Ranking the constraints responsible for syncope, *V IN FOOT and MAX-V below PARSE-σ is not helpful, because then the output candidates with a deleted vowel (11c) and (11d) will still be ruled out by violating, respectively CLASH and W/L. Ranking PARSE-σ above the constraints *V IN FOOT and MAX-V is excluded as well, because it leads to problems in accounting for normal main stress (instead of pedéster ill-formed *pédester is produced). Changing the syncope constraint in a constraint not based on a foot *V AFTER STRESS (avoid a vowel after a stressed vowel) is not working either, as illustrated in (12).
150
HAIKE JACOBS
(12) Latin vowel deletion with a non-foot-based constraint /HLσ/ ārĭdorem a. (H)L dorem b. (HL) dorem
*V AFTER STRESS *!
MAX-V
WSP
W/L
Parse-σ *
*!
c. (H)dorem
*!
d. H dorem
*!
e. HL (dorem)
CLASH
* *
σ
*
*
σσ
**
Jacobs (2004) concludes that it is impossible to handle all syncope cases with one and the same constraint hierarchy and that syncope leads to opacity. The opacity arises due to the conflict between, derivationally speaking, on the one hand, stress assigning structure-building rules and, on the other hand, the syncope rule which is structure-dependent and structure-changing. Or, to put it more precisely, the actual output of syncope renders the prosodic generalizations of the language opaque. So, in conclusion, syncope leads to opacity even with assuming double prosody for the ma(nípu)lus > ma(ní)plus cases. The Late Latin stress computation based cannot have remained the same as that of PreClassical and Classical Latin. In this section, we have critically reviewed Bullock’s (2001) double prosody. We have argued that double prosody leads to questioning the very nature of syncope, is not obvious in desyllabification (alternatively assuming floating moras leads to a more elaborate account), is not helpful in dealing with the stress shift from prefix to stem, and, still does not prevent syncope from rendering the stress system opaque. We do think, however, that Bullock’s (2001) intuition, that there is a relation between syncope and the problematic stress shift, is certainly right. However, we think that opacity is the key factor in the stress shift and syncope. This relationship, as we will argue in the next section, is far more direct and less abstract than via intermediate double prosody.
3.
Stress shift triggered by opacity The surface opacity that was brought about by syncope characterizes the other stress shift cases as well. Desyllabification in mulierem > mul[j]erem “wife” or filiolus > fil[j]olus “son”, resulted also in words with stress on a light penultimate syllable. It holds also true for the shift of stress from prefix to stem in verbal derivatives, as in demorat > demorat “(s)he lives, stays” or renegat > renegat “(s)he denies again”, where, again, opaquely, a light penult is stressed.
151
PROTO-ROMANCE STRESS SHIFT REVISITED
Especially troublesome in this respect is the opacity from syncope. Already in the Classical period forms such as maniplum, soliclum occur and syncope applied sometimes before the stress shift did occur, as in, for instance, the forms in (1’), pullitram > poltre (OFr.) > poutre “beam” and feretrum > fiertre (OFr.) “shrine”. Confronted with opacity, the language learning child might opt for a variety of strategies: one would be to conclude that words showing a light stressed penult are incompatible with a ranking in which NONFIN(ALITY) dominates WORD/RIGHT (W/R word should end with a foot). A minimal reversal of the ranking would be sufficient to account for the problematic shift, as illustrated in (13) and (14). (13) Classical constraint ranking /integru/ (in)tegru in(te)gru (inte)gru in(tegru)
NONFIN
W/R σ σ! σ σ
FT-BIN *!
*!
WSP
W/L
*
σ
*
σ
PARSE-σ ** ** * *
(14) Late Latin constraint ranking /integru/ (in)tegru in(te)gru (inte)gru in(tegru)
W/R σ! σ
NONFIN
σ! σ!
FT-BIN *
*
WSP
W/L
PARSE-σ **
*
σ
** *
*
σ
*
Free ranking of the constraints NONFIN(ALITY) and WORD/RIGHT (W/R) leads one to expect stress doublets, which, as a matter of fact did exist, as shown by Old French palpre/paupre from palpetra and paupière from palpetra or Old French entre from integru and entire from integru. The ranking of (14) can be seen as a first step towards the later Early Old French stress system, which can be characterized as a quantity-insensitive trochaic stress system without any antepenultimate stress at all. The same ranking (14) will account for penult stress in later borrowings, such as Old French fabrique “construction”, facile “easy” (from Latin facilis, fabrica) (cf. Pope 1934).5 5
The language learning child could also have opted, depending on whether or not syncope was affecting or already had affected most of the original proparoxytonic words, for another
152
HAIKE JACOBS
Although we do believe that the scenario in (13)-(14) is generally correct for the evolution of French, an intermediate stage between (13) and (14) must have been in order. That is, confronted with light stressed penultimate syllables that arose through syncope in the maniplum and soliclum cases, the language learning child (if it is assumed that constraints are deducible from the language material the child is confronted with) might simply have assumed that light penultimate syllables before consonant-liquid clusters apparently have to be stressed, and, hence, the existence of a constraint according to which a light syllable before a consonant-liquid cluster must be stressed: *UNSTRESSED σ CL. This constraint, if properly ranked, will see to it that only in words of this very specific prosodic structure a stress shift will occur, but not in others. In this way, we express the relationship between opacity in syncope and the stress shift in the integrum cases more directly and less abstractly than via intermediate double prosody. No stress shift could occur in for instance anima leading to anima, not because there were no compelling reasons to analyze the light penult here as covertly heavy, but simply because of the constraint ranking. This is illustrated in (15) and (16). (15) A Late Latin constraint ranking that accounts for the problematic shift /integru/
NONFIN
W/R σ σ! σ σ
(in)tegru in(te)gru (inte)gru in(tegru)
*UNSTRESSED σ CL
FTBIN
WSP
W/L
PARSE-σ
* *
*
σ
*
σ
** ** * *
*!
*!
(16) The ranking does not affect other antepenultimate stressed words /anima/ (a)nima a(ni)ma (ani)ma a(nima)
NONFIN
W/ R σ σ! σ σ
*!
*UNSTRESSED σ CL
FTBIN *!
WSP
W/L
σ σ
PARSE-σ ** ** * *
strategy: maintain the Classical quantity-sensitive stress system intact by overtly lengthening the stressed light penult or by geminating the consonant of the consonant-liquid cluster in the maniplum and soliclum cases, which seems to have been the case for Italian, where most consonant-liquid clusters show gemination.
PROTO-ROMANCE STRESS SHIFT REVISITED
153
4.
Conclusion In this paper, we have readdressed the notoriously problematic cases of stress shifts in words with a light penultimate syllable before consonant-liquid clusters. We have briefly reviewed the more traditional accounts and concentrated on Bullock’s (2001) double prosody approach. We have argued that the stress system for Classical Latin and Later Latin could not have remained intact, and that the Late Latin cases of stress shift all lead to surface opacity. The concept of double prosody has been critically discussed. Double prosody leads to questioning the very nature of syncope itself, is not obvious in the cases of desyllabification where it leads to a far more elaborate account, is not helpful in dealing with the stress shift from prefix to stem, and, still does not prevent syncope from rendering the stress system opaque. We then argued, sharing Bullock’s (2001) intuition of a relation between syncope and stress shift, for a more direct and less abstract link between the two, obviating the need for double prosody in accounting for the stress shifts. References Bourciez, Edouard. 1974. Phonétique française. Etude historique. Paris: Klincksieck. Bullock, Barbara. 2001. “Double Prosody and stress shift in Proto-Romance”, Probus 13.173–192. Fouché, Pierre. 1958. Phonétique historique du français. Paris: Klincksieck. Groot, Albert W. de. 1921. Anaptyxe im Lateinischen. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht. Jacobs, Haike. 1989. Nonlinear Studies in the Historical Phonology of French. Ph.d. Dissertation, University of Nijmegen. ——. 2002. “Why preantepenultimate stress in Latin requires an OT-account.” Development in Prosodic Systems, ed. by Paula Fikkert & Haike Jacobs, 395–418. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. ——. 2004. “Rhythmic Vowel Deletion in OT: Syncope in Latin.” Probus 16.63–89. Keil, Heinrich. 1857–1880. Grammatici latini. Vol. 1–7. Leipzig: Teubner. Lahiri, Aditi, Tomas Riad & Haike Jacobs. 1999. “Diachrony.” Word Prosodic Systems in the Languages of Europe, ed. by Harry van der Hulst, 335–422. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Lindsay, Wallace Martin. 1894 [1963]. The Latin Language. New York/London: Hafner. 2nd edition. Mester, Ralf Armin. 1994. “The Quantitative Trochee in Latin.” Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 12.1–61.
154
HAIKE JACOBS
Niedermann, Max. 1931. Précis de phonétique historique du latin. Paris: Klincksieck. Pope, Mildred K. 1934. From Latin to Modern French. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Pulgram, Ernst. 1975. Latin-Romance Phonology: Prosodics and Metrics. Munich: Wilhelm Fink. Richter, Elise. 1934. “Chronologische Phonetik des Französischen bis zum Ende des 8. Jahrhunderts.” Zeitschrift für Romanische Philologie, Heft 82. Halle: Max Niemeyer. Scheer, Tobias and Philippe Ségéral. 2005. “What lenition and fortition tell us about Gallo-Romance muta cum liquida.” Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2003, ed. by Twan Geerts, Ivo van Ginneken & Haike Jacobs, 235–267. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Steriade, Donca. 1988. “Gemination and the Proto-Romance syllable shift.” Advances in Romance Linguistics, ed. by David Birdsong & Jean-Pierre Montreuil, 371–410. Dordrecht: Foris. Ward, Ralph L. 1951. “Stop plus liquid and the position of the Latin accent”, Language 27.477–484.
FINAL -M IN YUCATAN SPANISH A RAPID AND ANONYMOUS SURVEY
JIM MICHNOWICZ The Pennsylvania State University
0.
Introduction Various researchers have reported that the variable (n) has several phonetic realizations in absolute final position in the dialect of Spanish spoken in the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico. Thus, the word pan ‘bread’ may be pronounced with the Standard Spanish alveolar [pan], the velar [paN] or the labial [pam]. In addition, the final nasal may be deleted, with subsequent nasalization of the preceding vowel, [pA)]. All of these variants, with the exception of –m, are widely attested in the Spanish-speaking world. The labial variant –m, while not unknown outside of the Yucatan, appears only sporadically in other areas (Lope Blanch 1987, Alvar 1969). In Yucatan Spanish (YS), however, previous research has found –m to be widespread and systematic in nature. This research differs, however, with respect to the frequency with which –m surfaces in YS. Lope Blanch (1987:52), using data collected a decade earlier for the Linguistic Atlas of Mexico (Lope Blanch 1990), reports that –m represents 25% of final nasals in questionnaire data, and 12% in free conversations. García Fajardo (1984:76) found that all speakers in Valladolid, Yucatan produced between 5%-40% of –m in free conversations, but that for two thirds of informants –m represented less than 20% of all nasals in absolute final position. Finally, Yager (1989) shows –m occurring 41% of the time in free conversations, with more use by women (50%) than men (32%) (p. 90). Additionally, Yager (1989:91–93) found that –m was increasing in use in apparent time across generations. It is likely that many of the different frequencies reported stem from methodological differences in counting final nasals (Yager, 1989:91). What is clear from the literature is that the existence of –m in YS is a fairly robust phenomenon unusual outside of this dialect, and as such deserves further study. The present study hopes to provide another piece of the puzzle regarding –m in YS. In §1, I will report on a Rapid and Anonymous Survey carried out
156
JIM MICHNOWICZ
in Merida, Yucatan as part of a larger study in progress. In §2, I will address possible explanations for the existence of –m in this dialect. Finally, in §3 I will present conclusions and areas for continuing study. 1. Avenida Colón: A Rapid and Anonymous Survey 1.1. Methodology One of the problems faced by researchers in variationist sociolinguistics is the Observer’s Paradox, stated as the problem of wanting to observe how speakers talk when they are not being observed (Labov 1984:30). Sociolinguistic interviews, in spite of numerous techniques designed to reduce this bias, still suffer from this difficulty in capturing a speaker’s vernacular, their most casual form of speech acquired during childhood and reserved for intimate social situations (Milroy & Gordon 2003:49–50). One way around the problem of the Observer’s Paradox is to collect speech samples in such a way that the speaker does not realize they are under observation. The Rapid and Anonymous Survey was designed for just such a purpose. Rapid and Anonymous (R&A) surveys were first pioneered by Labov’s (1966) groundbreaking study of New York City department stores. In that well-known study, Labov sought to better understand the role of social prestige in the use of the variable (r) in New York City by analyzing the speech of employees from three different department stores, each with a different level of social prestige. After choosing an item that could be found on the fourth floor of a particular store, Labov asked employees where X item could be found. They replied “fourth floor”. Labov then asked them to repeat it, pretending that he did not hear what they had said. The first utterance of “fourth floor” was taken to be a normal pronunciation of the words; the second utterance, careful speech. Based on the employee’s pronunciation of (r) in the words “fourth floor”, Labov was able to determine that employees at the highest prestige store produced more cases of [r] than those at the lower prestige stores. In this way the hypothesis that [r]producing correlated with higher prestige was confirmed. Importantly, the Observer’s Paradox is no longer a factor, given that the speakers did not know that they were part of a linguistic experiment. They were simply carrying out the duties of their job, answering a question that no doubt occurred frequently during daily interactions with customers (Labov 1966:47–48). In other words, the employees had no reason to modify their speech due to the presence of an interviewer, and therefore their language use is more likely to represent something closer to their everyday speech. Labov (1966) demonstrated that Rapid and Anonymous surveys are useful for capturing the social stratification of a linguistic variable. The three
FINAL -M IN YUCATAN SPANISH
157
department stores allowed for a tightly controlled experiment, in which each store catered to customers of different classes. Rapid and Anonymous Surveys can also be of use when the social variables cannot be as wellcontrolled. Several studies demonstrate that, while their results are suggestive, R&A surveys undertaken in public areas, such as on city streets, are useful in giving a quick overview of a variable as part of a larger study. One example of this use of R&A surveys is Labov (1984:50). Researchers collected data on the variable (str) in Philadelphia English by asking directions to a local street, with the name X Street. Researchers asked speakers how to get to X Avenue, after which most subjects would respond “X Street?” providing their pronunciation of the desired variable. A similar study was undertaken in Paris to study the variable palatalization of final /k/, in which researchers asked speakers for directions to “la rue Taba” in a location near to “la rue Tabac” (Labov 1984:50). While these studies do not provide the depth of Labov’s (1966) NYC study, they do serve as springboards for future research on a given variable. The advantages of R&A surveys of this sort are the near elimination of the Observer’s Paradox and the ability to collect a large quantity of data quickly. Disadvantages include the paucity of background information on speakers (often just gender is known for sure) and the lack of recorded materials for further analysis. As Labov (1966:56) points out, however, these studies are easily replicable, since anyone with a few hours to spare can repeat an R&A survey. For the purposes of the present study, which forms part of a larger ongoing project, the benefits afforded outweigh the disadvantages. We will now turn our attention to the present study, an R&A survey of –m in YS. In order to better understand the frequency of –m in YS, the researcher walked the length of Avenida Colón in Merida, Yucatan, over several days. The researcher stopped people and asked them the name of the street. Pretending not to understand, he would then ask them to repeat it. The first pronunciation, given quickly and in passing, is taken to represent normal speech. The second, when the researcher appeared confused, represents careful or emphatic speech. During both repetitions the researcher paid close attention to the pronunciation of the street name, ‘Colón’. Once out of sight of the person, always within 10–20 seconds, the researcher noted the pronunciation of each utterance, along with the gender of the speaker. With the exception of balance for gender (25 men, 25 women), every person walking along Avenida Colón on the given days stood an equal chance of being asked, with the following exceptions: the researcher attempted to only ask individuals walking alone, to avoid possible confusion from multiple answers. On the few occasions when the name of the street was asked of someone in a group (2–3 times), the researcher was careful to single out the
158
JIM MICHNOWICZ
speaker closest to him and pay special attention to what they responded. Thus only one person’s answers were recorded in these cases. Additionally, the researcher did not ask the question to people standing on street corners underneath the street sign ‘Avenida Colón’, in order to avoid any possible priming effect based on orthography. Interestingly, however, on one occasion the researcher did not notice the street sign on a particular corner. When asked the name of the street, the speaker looked at the street sign and clearly read Colón as [kolom]. This suggests that –m is the default final nasal for this particular speaker, even when faced with written evidence priming –n. An attempt to record the age of each speaker was quickly abandoned, given the difficulty in accurately determining someone’s age based on a very short interaction. Thus, no attempt was made to balance for age, although the data do include repetitions from all adult age groups, e.g. college students waiting outside a university, middle aged workers, and senior aged adults. As previously mentioned, a further limitation is that nothing is known about the speakers’ backgrounds, social class, or education level. These limitations are countered, however, by the fact that subject selection was essentially random in nature, and thus not open to many of the biases found in more traditional methods of participant selection. Additionally, Avenida Colón provides a particularly interesting cross-section of Merida. It includes a hospital, a factory, a university, homes, businesses, several hotels, as well as fruit stands, street vendors, parks with families and maintenance personnel, numerous bus stops, shops, and is crossed by several major streets. In this way the people walking along this street on any given day represent a good sample of the population of Merida from all areas of the city, classes, and occupations. In sum, the data consist of 100 tokens of final nasals in the word Colón, 50 of those tokens representing normal speech, and 50 emphatic speech. Half of these tokens represent male speakers, the other half female. 1.2. Results The R&A survey of Avenida Colón demonstrated that –m is by far the preferred final nasal variant for these speakers in Merida. As seen in Figure 1, –m constituted almost two thirds of all final nasals in Colón. In these data, –m was produced in 74 of the 100 tokens of Colón. In comparison, 16 of the tokens were the ‘Standard Spanish’ –n, and 10 were either velar or a coarticulation of –n and –m, listed here as ‘other’. The chart in Figure 1 suggests that –m is extremely widespread in YS, at least for this particular phonetic context. Now we can examine the data more closely, with a breakdown by gender and normal vs. emphatic pronunciations. First, a variable rules (VARBRUL) analysis was run with GoldVarb 2001 for
FINAL -M IN YUCATAN SPANISH
159
Windows. This analysis allows us to determine the factors that most highly correlate with the production of –m.
Figure 1: Total Final Nasals, both repetitions and genders A factor weight of < .5 is considered a positive correlation between that factor and the production of the variable in question. Input probability = 0.754 Gender Male = 0.632 Female = 0.368 Pronunciation Normal = 0.527 Emphatic = 0.473 Chi-square per cell = 0.0321 Table 1: VARBRUL results: –m. As we can see, the factor weights of both male speakers and normal pronunciation show a positive correlation with the production of –m. Likewise, female speakers and emphatic pronunciation disfavor –m. These trends are confirmed when we examine the frequency data for each gender and the two pronunciations of Colón.
160
JIM MICHNOWICZ
Figure 2: Percentage of nasal variant by gender and pronunciation First, we will examine the choice of final nasal for men and women in the normal pronunciation. Men produced more –m (84%) than did women (68%). Correspondingly, women used more –n, –N or coarticulations (32% combined for women vs. 16% for men). This is exactly what we would expect from the VARBRUL analysis in Table 1. A t-test for independent samples showed that this difference in gender is not significant for normal speech (p = > .05). The results for the emphatic pronunciation, however, evidence significant results for women speakers. Men produced the same amount (84%) in the emphatic pronunciation as in the normal pronunciation. As expected, differences for men in normal and emphatic speech were not significant (p = > .05). Women, however, produced less –m when speaking emphatically (60%) than for the normal pronunciation (68%) and their use of the ‘standard’ –n increased from 20% to 32% for the emphatic pronunciation. For women, a t-test for paired samples confirmed that the final nasal choice in normal and emphatic speech differs significantly (p = < .05). Additionally, a t-test for independent samples confirmed that the difference between men and women for the emphatic pronunciation is significant (p = < .05). 1.3. Discussion We turn now to the discussion of the data seen above. First, we notice that –m occurred less often during emphatic than during normal pronunciation. Although more research is needed to know for sure, these initial data suggest that –m is somewhat stigmatized for YS women. The ‘standard’ –n surfaces more often when speakers are being careful, after the
FINAL -M IN YUCATAN SPANISH
161
researcher asked them to repeat the name of the street. Comments made to the researcher during sociolinguistic interviews underway as part of ongoing research confirm the stigma of –m for some speakers. One female speaker, after producing numerous tokens of –m during an interview, asked the researcher what he was studying. When he mentioned the variant –m, the speaker reacted negatively, saying that she was glad that she did not speak that way. This all suggests that for –m in this context, women are the more conservative speakers in YS. Whether this trend will hold for conversation data from the dialect remains to be seen, and will be addressed in future research. Interestingly, men showed no change in frequency for –m between normal and emphatic pronunciations, and their use of ‘standard’ –n actually dropped in emphatic speech. This result is more difficult to interpret. It suggests that –m has lost its stigma for male speakers, since their use of this variant does not change when they are speaking carefully. This contradicts the findings of Yager (1989), which found that women produce more –m than men. This discrepancy suggests that either methodological differences are to blame, or that men have surpassed women in their use of –m as that variant loses its stigma. There are other possibilities, however. It is possible that male speakers, responding to a male researcher, are simply not as careful as women when answering questions from strangers. Additional data from ongoing research involving interview data should clarify this result. Another point of interest is the much greater frequency of –m reported in this study versus that found in previous work. As mentioned above, the overall frequency for –m in the present study was 74%. Compare that number to 41% in Yager (1989), between 12% and 20% in Lope Blanch (1987), and from 5% to 40% in García Fajardo (1984). This difference could be due to several factors. First, the data from Yager (1989) and García Fajardo (1984) are based on free conversation during sociolinguistic interviews. Since –m occurs most frequently in absolute final position, one would expect higher frequencies in a word-naming task, where every final nasal occurs before a long pause. This R&A survey was essentially a word-naming task, where speakers had only to name the street; their answers always ended with Colón. So rather than compare the present results to conversation data from previous studies1, it is more realistic to compare these results with those of Lope
1
Initial calculations based on sociolinguistic interviews recorded for a related study suggest that –m is relatively frequent, and is likely increasing in frequency. Further ongoing analysis is needed to confirm this prediction. The frequency of –m in conversation data is not likely to reach the threshold of 74% reported for the present study, but this figure is useful for understanding the use of variable (n) in this context.
162
JIM MICHNOWICZ
Blanch’s (1987) linguistic questionnaire, for which he reported a –m frequency of 12%. The discrepancy between the two studies could be due to one or a combination of several factors. In the conversation data collected for a related study, a cursory evaluation shows that there is a tendency to labialize final nasals in place names or proper nouns, for example Yucatán, Chichén (Itzá), Celestún, Cancún. Importantly, the majority of place names ending in a nasal in the Yucatan are of Mayan origin, stressed on the final syllable. The labial –m also appears frequently in monosyllabic words, such as bien ‘well’ and pan ‘bread’, also stressed. It is possible that a stressed syllable before a pause may condition the labial variant, along with reasons of salience that we will discuss below. The fact that Colón is both stressed finally and before a relatively long pause may be partially responsible for the dramatic increase in frequency since Lope Blanch (1987). Another, more interesting possibility is that –m may be increasing in use as it is adopted as a sign of yucateco identity among native speakers of the dialect. The Yucatan has always been to some extent separated, physically, politically, and linguistically, from the rest of Mexico. In recent years, however, the sense of yucateco identity has grown, in large part as a reaction to increased numbers of immigrants from other areas of Mexico, in particular Mexico City. Many of the speakers interviewed during ongoing research reported that this immigration has led to an increase in crime, heavier traffic, more drug abuse, as well as to a loss of traditional Yucatan customs. This negative view of immigration has reinforced a sense of Yucatan identity, as reflected in surge of Orgullosamente yucateco (proudly Yucatecan) bumper stickers, Yucatan state flags, t-shirts with traditional Yucatecan sayings, and an increased interest in the Mayan language and culture.2 Additionally, attitude surveys administered as part of ongoing research show that all speakers who answered questions regarding identity either consider themselves as much yucateco as mexicano, or more yucateco. No one identified more with Mexican than Yucatecan identity. Thus, as yucateco identity is reinforced through increased immigration from outside the dialect region, speakers of YS embody their language with a sort of covert prestige, reaffirming their sense of Yucatecan-ness through the increased use of traditional non-standard YS variants.
2
This increase in local pride was observed over the last 10 years during visits by the researcher, and confirmed by Yucatecan informants.
FINAL -M IN YUCATAN SPANISH
163
We will now turn our attention briefly to why this pattern of final nasals may have arisen at all in YS, and specifically why does the labial variant –m seem to be highly favored in absolute final position. 2.
The origin of –m The question arises of why YS seems to prefer a labial –m in absolute final position, to the detriment of the ‘Standard Spanish’ –n, and the very common –N. This question becomes important when seen in the light of theories of universal markedness, which predict that coronal is the unmarked point of articulation crosslinguistically.3 One possibility is that labial –m is in some way ‘better’ than either the coronal or the dorsal variants. Previous studies have shown that the coda position, and coda nasals in particular, lack perceptual salience. Winters (2000:14) demonstrates that labials are significantly more salient than coronals or dorsals based on audio-visual stimuli.4 Likewise, Jun (1995:126) argues that non-coronals are easier to perceive based on longer transitions. It may simply be easier to perceive a labial than it is a coronal, based on both the cues surrounding the consonant and the articulatory gestures required (i.e. the closing of the lips, which may be especially salient in absolute final position). Factors of increased salience of what is emerging as a linguistic marker of identity likely reinforce the frequent use of –m. The fact that salient –m surfaces often in stressed final syllables may be another way of focusing attention on this marker of Yucatecan identity. Another possible explanation for –m in YS is the diachronic influence of the Yucatec Mayan language, in contact with YS to varying degrees over the last several centuries. The Mayan language is widely spoken throughout the Yucatan peninsula, although less and less in urban areas. The 2000 Mexican census shows that 34% of the population is bilingual in Spanish and Mayan statewide. An additional 3% speaks only Mayan (Instituto Nacional 2000). Various researchers have proposed arguments for or against Mayan influence on YS –m. Alvar (1969:169) notes that final –m is exceedingly rare in Spanish, and although its existence is reported in other parts of the Spanishspeaking world, outside of the Yucatan –m arises only sporadically (Lope Blanch, 1987). A more convincing argument in favor of direct Mayan influence on the final nasals in YS is the fact that in at least one Mayan
3
For example, see Prince & Smolensky (1993, 2002 Rutgers Optimality Archive version) p. 197 for more on coronal as unmarked POA in Optimality Theory. 4 Labials were also more salient for audio only stimuli, but the difference was not significant (Winters, 2000, 14)
164
JIM MICHNOWICZ
language, Lacandon Mayan spoken in the Mexican state of Chiapas, borrowings from Spanish evidence labialization of final [n] (Alvar 1969:188). Additionally, observations made by the present researcher, later confirmed by a native Mayan-speaking informant, suggest that Yucatec Mayan displays the same pattern of final nasal variation as YS. Yucatec Mayan speakers do not distinguish between –m and –n in absolute final position. For example, the word teen ‘I’ may be pronounced as [te:n] or as [te:m] before a pause. When the addition of a suffix causes resyllabification of (n) to onset position, only the coronal is possible. Compare teene’ “Iemphatic” [te:ne’] and [*te:me’]. With few exceptions, this pattern also occurs in YS: camión “bus” [kamjon], [kamjom], but camiones “buses” [kamjones], [*kamjomes]. While it is impossible to say for sure if Mayan has directly influenced the existence of –m in YS, the rarity of –m outside of the Yucatan, as well as phonological parallels in Mayan languages suggest some influence during the centuries of contact between the two languages. To complicate the matter, Yager (1989:89) found no significant correlation between bilingualism in Mayan and the production of –m in YS. This suggests that –m has spread throughout a majority of speakers of YS, so that even if contact with Mayan in some way directly influenced the dialect in the past, the present situation is more complicated. 3.
Conclusion While further research is needed and underway, the present study suggests that –m in YS is more widespread than previously reported. While it is doubtful that the frequency of –m in conversation analysis will reach the levels reported here, the overwhelming preference for the labial variant in this Rapid and Anonymous survey suggests that it is increasing in use. This increased use of a typical Yucatecan dialect marker correlates with increasing local pride in all things Yucatan, including speech. The results of a variable rules analysis show that for the variable final (n) in Colón, women are the more conservative speakers, producing less innovative –m than men in this context, although this is still their preferred final nasal. The results of the R&A survey, and of data collected for a related study show that –m is still stigmatized by women speakers. The high frequencies of –m for all speakers, however, suggest that this variant is gaining acceptance across classes and genders, again likely due to a renewed sense of yucateco identity. Regarding the origins of –m in YS, it is most likely due to some combination of enhanced salience of labials over coronals and influence from a contact language, Yucatec Mayan, which displays the same pattern of final nasal neutralization.
FINAL -M IN YUCATAN SPANISH
165
REFERENCES Alvar, Manuel. 1969. “Nuevas notas sobre el español de Yucatán.” Iberoromania 1.159–189. García Fajardo, Josefina. 1984). Fonética del español de Valladolid, Yucatán. Mexico City, Mexico: Universidad Autónoma de México. GoldVarb 2001 (Version 1.0.2.13) [Computer software]. Retrieved from http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/lang/webstuff/goldvarb Instituto nacional de estadística, geografía. 2000. Población de 5 años o más por municipio, sexo, y grupos quinquenales de edad, y su distribución según condición de habla indígena y habla española. Mexico City, Mexico: Instituto nacional de estadística, geografía, e informática. Jun, Jongho. 1995. Perceptual and Articulatory Factors in Place Assimilation: An Optimality Theoretic Approach. Ph. D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles. Labov, William. 1966. The Social Stratification of English in New York City. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics. ——. 1984. “Field Methods of the Project on Linguistic Change and Variation.” Language in Use: Readings in Sociolinguistics, ed. by John Baugh & Joel Sherzer. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Lope Blanch, Juan M. 1987. Estudios sobre el español de Yucatán [Studies on the Spanish of Yucatan]. Mexico City, Mexico: Universidad Autónoma de México. —— ed. 1990. Atlas lingüístico de México [cartographic material]. Mexico City, Mexico: Colegio de México. Milroy, Lesley & Matthew Gordon. 2003. Sociolinguistics: Method and Interpretation. Oxford: Blackwell. Prince, Allen & Paul Smolensky. 1993. Optimality Theory: Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar. (Rutgers Optimality Archive 537– 0802 2002 version). Winters, Steve. 2000. “Turning Phonology Inside Out, or Testing the Relative Salience of Visual Cues for Place of Articulation.” Ohio State University Working Papers in Linguistics, ed. by Amanda MillerOckhuizen, Robert Levine, Anthony J. Gonsalves, 53:168–199. Yager, Kent. 1989. “La –m bilabial en posición final absoluta en el español hablado en Mérida, Yucatán (México).” Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica, 37:1.83–94.
STRESSED ENCLITICS?*
FRANCISCO ORDÓÑEZ & LORI REPETTI SUNY, Stony Brook
0.
Introduction Clitics are, by definition, unstressed elements (for example, Halpern 1998). It is therefore surprising to find languages which consistently stress what otherwise looks like a clitic. In this paper we will explore the rather exceptional behavior of some Romance languages that allow stressed enclitics. We have identified a number of basic Romance patterns in which the presence of enclitic pronouns may affect the stress assignment of the verb. We schematically exemplify some of these patterns in (1) for the verb narra meaning “tell” and the first person singular dative clitic mi (patterns are consistent with all first and second person dative enclitics) and the third person singular accusative feminine clitic la (patterns seem consistent with all third person accusative enclitics). We also include a partial list of the languages in which the pattern is attested.1 Other patterns, such as those involving asyllabic clitics, will not be discussed here. 1.
Previous Analyses Phonological analyses of these patterns are abundant in the literature (Kenstowicz 1991, Bafile 1991–92, Loporcaro 2000, Peperkamp 1997, Monachesi 1996) and make reference to different incorporation sites within the *
Previous versions of this paper have been presented at the Workshop on Romance Clitics (SUNY, Stony Brook, May 11, 2005), XV Colloquium on Generative Grammar (Barcelona, Spain, April 4–6, 2005), and LSRL 35 (Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages), University of Texas, Austin, February 24–27, 2005. 1 Data for Aragonese and Menorcan and Majorcan Catalan come from field research; data on Gascon come from field research and Séguy (1954); Sardinian data come from Jones (1993); data on minor Romance varieties spoken in southern Italy come from Bafile (1991–1992), Bichelli (1974), Gioscio (1985), Iannace (1983), Lüdke (1979); and data on minor Romance varieties spoken in northern Italy come from Rohlfs (1966).
168
FRANCISCO ORDÓÑEZ AND LORI REPETTI
prosodic hierarchy or post-lexical re-assignment of stress. These approaches have focused on Stress Stability (pattern I) as compared to Generalized Penultimate Stress Shift (pattern II) and Two-Clitic Penultimate Stress Shift (pattern III). (1) Stress assignment patterns in Romance
imper.
DAT
enclitic
I: Stress Stability
nárra
nárra-mi
nárra-la
nárra-mi-la
II: Generalized Penultimate Stress Shift (some Lucanian varieties)
nárra
narrá-mi
narrá-la
narra-mí-la
III: Two-Clitic Penultimate Stress Shift (some S. Ital. varieties, such as the one spoken in Naples)
nárra
nárra-mi
nárra-la
narra-mí-la
IV: Mixed Penultimate Stress Shift (some S. Ital. varieties, such as the one of Calvello)
nárra
nárra-mi
nárra-la
narra-mí-la
narrá-mi
narrá-la
V: Final Stress Shift (some varieties of Sardinian, Gascon)
nárra
narra-mí
narra-lá
ACC
enclitic
two enclitics
(Ital, Span, Cat)
narra-mi-lá
Within a derivational model, Kenstowicz (1991) and Bafile (1991–92) argue that the Neapolitan data (pattern III) can be accounted for by assuming that stress assignment takes place in two stages: first the host is metrified, followed by the metrification of the host plus enclitics, but the precompiled metrical structure of the host is maintained. Stress is shifted only if it violates a certain metrical structure. Loporcaro (2000) similarly argues that the difference between languages exhibiting Stress Stability (pattern I) and those exhibiting Penultimate Stress Shift (patterns II and III), and specifically Italian vs Lucanian and Neapolitan, is to be found in the setting of a parameter determining whether or not stress can be reassigned post-lexically. Languages having the former pattern do not allow reassignment of stress, while languages with the latter patterns do. While Loporcaro (2000) argues that in all Romance varieties clitics adjoin to the Prosodic Word, Peperkamp (1997), following Selkirk (1995), claims that the patterns exhibited in Italian (Stress Stability), Lucanian (Generalized Penultimate Stress Shift), and Neapolitan (Two-Clitic Penultimate Stress Shift) are due to different ways in which a clitic is incorporated into prosodic structure. Peperkamp (1997) claims that clitics may be incorporated into the
STRESSED ENCLITICS?
169
Phonological Phrase (PhPh) (as in Italian) or the Prosodic Word (PrWd) (as in Lucanian), or they may be adjoined recursively to the Prosodic Word (as in Neapolitan). (2) Peperkamp (1997) PhPh-incorporation
PrWd-incorporation PrWd-adjunction
(Italian: Stress Stability: pattern I) (Lucanian: pattern II)
PhPh | PrWd | verb clitic
PhPh | PrWd | verb clitic
(Neapolitan: pattern III)
PhPh | PrWd | PrWd | verb clitic
Another approach is suggested by Monachesi (1996). (3) Monachesi (1996) one enclitic PrWd | PrWd | verb clitic
two enclitics PrWd /\ PrWd PrWd | /\ verb cl cl
In her discussion of Italian and Neapolitan cliticization (pattern I and pattern III), Monachesi (1996) posits different prosodic structures for single clitics vs clitic clusters: one clitic adjoins to the host to form a single PrWd, while two clitics form a unit (PrWd) separate from the host resulting in a compound structure. There are a number of problems with each of these analyses when the full range of data is taken into consideration. Certain varieties spoken in southern Italy (Calvello, San Leucio del Sannio) allow either stress stability or stress shift with one enclitic, but they
FRANCISCO ORDÓÑEZ AND LORI REPETTI
170
require Penultimate Stress Shift with two enclitics (pattern IV). Why would variation be tolerated with one enclitic but not with two? Furthermore, the mixed behavior of pattern IV sometimes seems to be determined by the character of the clitic. For example, in some Lucanian dialects the ACC clitic triggers stress shift, but the DAT clitic does not. Why would the ACC clitic but not the DAT clitic affect stress assignment? (4) [nárra-mi] vs [narrá-la] Further complications with all of these analyses arise when we consider those languages in which the final clitic consistently attracts stress (pattern V), but final stress is otherwise not productive (some varieties of Sardinian, Gascon, and Viozene Piedmontese). Why would the prosodic hierarchy force final stress only in these cases? Finally, the order in which the clitics appear affects whether stress is shifted to the penultimate or final clitic in a cluster. The few Romance languages that allow the ACC - DAT order of clitics and that shift stress with enclitics (S. Gascon, Majorcan, Aragonese), have consistent final stress with two enclitics. Why would the order of clitics play a role in stress assignment? (5)
ACC - DAT
a. b. c.
order of clitics ~ Final Stress Shift porto-la-mú (Gascon) give-it(ACC)-me(DAT) du-la-m´@ (Majorcan Catalan) give-it(ACC)-me(DAT) da-la-mé (Cheso Aragonese) give-it(ACC)-me(DAT)
There is a clear asymmetry in the stress patterns of languages that exhibit the more common DAT - ACC order and those with the rare ACC - DAT order. The former allows Generalized, Two-Clitic, and Mixed Penultimate Stress Shift and Final Stress Shift, while the latter requires Final Stress Shift. This asymmetry suggests that the order of clitics plays a role in stress assignment, a fact that is inconsistent with the phonological analyses suggested above. 2.
“Weak Pronoun” Analysis We suggest that the term ‘clitic’ has been used to refer to two groups of pronouns that are morphologically distinct, and this has lead to much of the confusion regarding the unexpected behavior of so-called “clitics.” We propose that the data can be better understood if we divide postverbal pronouns
STRESSED ENCLITICS?
171
into two morphological categories: true clitics and weak pronouns (Cardinaletti & Starke 1999). Thus, not all pronouns have the same morphological status. As explained by Cardinaletti & Starke (1999) there is a tripartition among pronouns, illustrated in (7) with data from Italian. (6) Cardinaletti & Starke (1999) strong pronoun: Telefono a loro. weak pronoun: Telefono loro. clitic pronoun: Gli telefono.
“I telephone them.” “ “
We outline below four characteristics of weak pronouns identified by Cardinaletti & Starke (1999) that we believe apply to some of the postverbal pronouns illustrated above and that allow us to account for the attested patterns as well as the gaps in the data. 2.1. Weak pronouns can be stressed (Cardinaletti & Starke 1999: 172) We claim that preverbally we find true clitics and postverbally we find either clitic or weak pronouns. And it is only the postverbal weak pronouns that affect stress. For example, preverbally, the Lucanian mas. sg. acc. pronoun is a true clitic, /u/, and it is never stressed (although it can be realized as long in clusters). (7) preverbal pronoun Lucanian: clitic: /u/nun u fát∫´ “he does not do it” lu# fátsts´ vedé “I show him it” With certain verbs, /u/ can be found in enclitic position as well. Crucially, enclitic /u/ (a true clitic) does not trigger stress shift, while another mas. sg. acc. pronoun does: enclitic /v@ll´/ (a weak pronoun).2 (8) postverbal pronoun Lucanian: clitic: /u/ fá-mmu# weak: /v@ll´/ da-mmíll´
2
“do (you:sg)-for me-it” “give (you:sg)-to me-it”
/v@/ represents a stressed vowel whose quality may vary. We do not take a position on the actual lexical representation of this pronoun, which may be /ll´/ (with stress of the heavy penult) or /ll/ (with epenthesis of final schwa and penultimate stress).
172
FRANCISCO ORDÓÑEZ AND LORI REPETTI
Another Lucanian dialect spoken in Calvello has Mixed Penultimate Stress Shift (pattern IV). Again, we claim the form of the pronoun found in the stress shifted case is weak /v@ll´/, while the form found in the non stress shifted case is a true clitic /l´/. (9) postverbal pronoun Calvello: clitic: /l´/ vínn´-l´ weak: /v@ll´/ v´nní-ll´
“sell (you:sg) it” “sell (you:sg) it”
It is important to note that the geminate /ll/ of the weak pronoun in (8) and (9) is not due to raddoppiamento sintattico since these varieties do not have a phonological rule of raddoppiamento following stressed vowels. Stress Stability languages (pattern I) use clitic pronouns only, while languages with consistent stress shift under enclisis (patterns II and V) have generalized the weak pronoun option postverbally. Languages exhibiting patterns III and IV use either weak or clitic pronouns postverbally. 2.2. Weak pronouns are morphologically more complex than clitic pronouns (Cardinaletti & Starke 1999: 178) In those languages which stress enclitic pronouns, the proclitic form of some pronouns may differ from the enclitic form. And, crucially, it is always the postverbal form which is “fuller” than the proclitic one. This observation is consistent with our analysis: weak pronouns are morphologically more complex than clitic pronouns. For example, in some Lucanian dialects, the mas. sg. acc. pronoun is clitic /u/ preverbally and weak /v@ll´/ postverbally. (See also (7), (8), and (9) above.) (10) preverbal clitic vs postverbal weak pronouns Lucanian: clitic: /u/ u-píggj´ "it-s/he takes" weak: /v@ll´/ piggjá-ll´
"take (2sg)-it"
Furthermore, when there are two realizations of the same postverbal pronoun, the pronoun present in the stress shifting context is “fuller” than the pronoun present in the stress stability context. We claim that the former is a weak pronoun and the latter a true clitic pronoun. (See (8) and (9) above.) This approach also has historical support. Rohlfs (1968:167) claims that those enclitic pronouns which trigger stress shift are closer to the “full Latin form” than the proclitic forms that do not affect stress.
STRESSED ENCLITICS?
173
2.3. Weak pronouns are syntactically lower than clitic pronouns (Cardinaletti & Starke 1999: 196) Under our perspective languages are divided in three groups: (i) languages that use only clitic pronouns (pattern I); (ii) those that consistently use postverbal weak pronouns (patterns II and V); (iii) languages that use either weak or clitic pronouns postverbally (patterns III and IV). This third type of language presents interesting question with respect to the assumptions on the final landing site of clitics and weak pronouns. Here we will follow the basic assumptions of Cardinaletti & Starke (1999) and assume that clitics land in a higher head projection than weak pronouns. For instance Cardinaletti (1991) has shown that the Italian DAT clitic gli lands in a higher tense head while the weak pronoun counterpart loro lands in a lower Spec Agr position. (11)
a. Gli
ho dato il libro. I-have given the book. b. Ho dato loro il libro. I-have given DAT the book DAT
A similar proposal has been given for French under the assumption that there is an il clitic and an il weak pronoun. Cardinaletti & Repetti (ms) claim that interrogative clitic il is also higher than its weak pronoun counterpart. (12)
a. [AgrS P Ilk a [VP tk bu ]] (French declarative) he has drunk b. [YP ak –t-il [ AgrSP t t [VP tk bu ]]] (French interrogative) has-he drunk
The idea that XP counterparts (weak pronouns under our proposal) of X0 (clitics) are found lower in the structure is also implied in the two step movement approach of clitics defended by Belletti (1999). According to her analysis clitics move first as XP, being able to trigger past participle agreement, and then only the head part moves further to adjoin to tense or any higher inflectional projection. Thus, this analysis implies that the XP counterpart of the head, the one responsible for past participle agreement, is in a lower Spec position.
174
FRANCISCO ORDÓÑEZ AND LORI REPETTI
AgrSP
(13)
X0
AgrS0
AgrOP
Spec XP
VP
XP This first claim about the different landing site for clitics and weak pronominals (maximal projections) has interesting consequences when taken in conjunction with assumptions on how the verb-clitic order is determined in the syntax. Here we will adopt the proposal by Kayne (1991) and (1994) and assume that right adjunction of clitics is not permitted in the syntax. This restriction allows us to obtain the order verb-clitic in infinitives or imperatives by movement of the verb to a higher projection beyond the position in which the clitic has landed. Rivero (1994) has argued convincingly that verbs move higher in imperative sentences than in declarative one. The landing site of the verb in imperatives is in the Comp area. Similarly, Kayne (1991) shows that infinitives in languages like Italian and Spanish have moved further to the left than their finite counterparts. In these proposals verbs either adjoin to the clitic or skip the clitic position.3
3
See Terzi (1999) which shows that clitics might skip some head positions depending on whether the clitic adjoins to a head with features the verb needs to check.
STRESSED ENCLITICS?
175
(14) Verb-Clitic
Verb Imperative
X0 clitic Spec Y0
V
Enclisis should be obtained in a parallel fashion with the verb moving further to the left with a weak pronoun. The difference is that the higher X0 projection is rendered irrelevant since there is no clitic. (15) Verb-Weak
Verb Imperative Spec weak
Y0
VP
However, in a mixed language, namely a language that has both weak and clitic pronominals, the base order in which the clitic and the weak pronoun appear should be the one in which the clitic is higher than the weak pronominal.
176
FRANCISCO ORDÓÑEZ AND LORI REPETTI
(16) Verb-Clitic-Weak
Verb Imperative
X0 clitic
Spec Weak
VP
To yield this order the verb moves head to head resulting in the final verbclitic-weak order. This is exactly what we find in Generalized Penultimate Stress Shift (pattern 2), which under our proposal involves a clitic and a weak pronominal element. The order is precisely clitic followed by weak pronoun. Thus, sequences like those in (17) are instances of adjunction of a second person clitic /tv/ with a weak pronominal /v@ll´/ (18). (17)
v´nn´-tíll´ “sell-you it”
(18)
tíll´ < clitic /tv/ + weak /v@ll´/
(S.Italian varieties)
This analysis predicts that head to head movement yields the final output verbclitic-weak. This is consistent with the fact that the sequence verb-clitic-weak is encountered in Standard French in imperatives as in (19). Under our perspective, this sequence represents a case in which the weak pronominal moi follows the clitic le, reversing the DAT -ACC order otherwise obtained in purely clitic sequences like le me.4 (19)
donne-le-moi give-it-to me
4
Many dialects of French also permit the opposite order donne-moi-le as well. These dialects show variability between the order in (19) le-moi and the order moi-le. This additional case can be explained if the verb is capable of pied piping the weak pronoun in its way to the Comp area. The interesting prediction of our proposal is that we should not find a language which consistently has the order moi-le without permitting the opposite. This prediction is satisfied.
STRESSED ENCLITICS?
177
In addition to predicting the correct output with a clitic preceding a weak pronoun, our theory should also explain the asymmetry between one pronominal vs two pronominal sequences in pattern III. In this pattern, sequences of one pronominal only admit the clitic possibility. Such an asymmetry can be explained if we appeal to an independent principle proposed by Cardinaletti & Repetti (ms) that deals precisely with cases in which a clitic position is required in Donceto (a Northern Italian Dialect) in interrogatives in preference to its weak pronominal counterpart. According to Cardinaletti & Repetti, the clitic j´ in the C0 area is made available, and it should be chosen in preference to its weak pronominal counterpart pro. (20)
[ YP be:vi-j´k [ AGRSP tk ti [ VP tk ti ]]? ‘drink-I’ drink-I
(21)
*[ YP be:vi [ AGRSP prok drink pro
ti [ VP tk ti ]]? ‘drink-I’
Thus, Pattern III requires that the clitic head X0 be realized and check with at least one clitic. With two pronominals however, one pronominal is sufficient to satisfy such a requirement leaving open the possibility of having the other pronominal in a lower Spec position as in (17). Observe that this economy principle would be very much in the same spirit of the principle of minimal compliance by Richards (2001). Once the X0 gets one clitic, other pronominals can remain in situ in a lower Spec. 2.4 Weak pronouns land in a Spec position As we mentioned at the beginning, languages that have the ACC - DAT order (with non-3rd persons) are very few compared to the more common DAT ACC order. These languages (Gascon, Majorcan, Cheso Aragonese) all exhibit Final Stress Shift (pattern V) and obligatorily stress their pronominals in imperatives. When two pronominals are combined, stress is shifted to the final pronoun. Why should this be so? Under this proposal the generalization that underlies these languages is that they all have generalized the weak pronoun option in enclisis. On the opposite end of the spectrum, most languages with the DAT - ACC order correspond to languages with true clitics. The difference in morphological status of the pronouns (heads vs XP) might give us an interesting clue as to why the order of the pronouns is the mirror image of each other.
178
FRANCISCO ORDÓÑEZ AND LORI REPETTI
Weak pronouns, contrary to clitics, land in a Spec position (Cardinaletti & Starke 1999) while clitics are heads and land in a head position. For the case of double object construction, we will adopt the proposal by Collins and Thrainsson (1996) and claim that the basic structure is the one in which the dative arguments sits above the accusative one. VP
(22)
VP
DAT ACC From this basic order, two opposite surface orders are obtained: ACC -DAT with two weak pronouns and DAT- ACC with two clitics. Under this proposal this is realized by XP movement proceeding in the opposite direction of X0 movement. Either movement might nest or cross to yield the two mirror image orders. (23)
YP XP Spec ACC
Weak
Spec DAT
Weak
VP DAT
Weak
ACC
Weak
STRESSED ENCLITICS?
179
We will follow Richards (2001) and assume that movement of two XP’s nest because they necessarily have to go in search of two different Spec positions to check their different features. At the opposite end of the spectrum two clitics yield crossing paths. Under our view, crossing paths correspond to the configuration in which both clitics end up checking the same inflectional head X0. (see also Anagnostopoulou 2003.) Richards (2001) proposes a principle of ‘tucking in’ that leads precisely to the crossing paths configurations with two heads. By his principle of attract closest, the DAT moves first to the X0 head. This first movement is followed by movement of the ACC, which tucks into the DAT yielding the desired order DAT - ACC. (24) Clitics
0
DAT ACC
0
X0
VP
DAT
ACC
Therefore, various well established assumptions about landing sites of XP’s vs X0’s and the fact that XP might target two different agreement projections, while two X0’s target one head, leads to the opposite ordering configurations DAT - ACC with clitics and ACC - DAT with weak pronouns. This proposal also leads to the conclusion that clitics must cluster and cannot be scattered in different inflectional projections, contrary to XP weak pronouns which seem to necessarily appear in different projections in the tree. Finally, this proposal captures the correlation between DAT - ACC languages and obligatory stress shift. Further research on historical data, especially Old French, Old Italian and Old Catalan that had the unusual ACC - DAT order, might shed further light on
180
FRANCISCO ORDÓÑEZ AND LORI REPETTI
our proposal if we assume that the loss of ACC - DAT order correlates with the loss of weak pronouns in favor of their clitic counterparts. 3.
Conclusions In this paper we have argued that once we consider the full range of possible patterns, the prosodic hierarchy is insufficient to account for all the cases in which there is consistent stress shift, as well as the mixed cases that depend on the character of the clitic. We have assumed that the pronouns that affect stress are weak pronouns, not true clitics. The evidence is found in asymmetries between preverbal vs postverbal pronouns and between postverbal pronouns that affect stress vs postverbal pronouns that do not affect stress. Further evidence comes from the fact that in many of the dialects studied, the stress-shifting pronominal element (i.e., the weak pronoun) has a richer morphological structure than its non-stress-shifting counterpart (i. e., the clitic pronoun). Finally, the obligatory stressing of postverbal pronouns in languages with ACC - DAT order can be linked to the fact that they are necessarily weak pronouns given that these pronouns must move to a distinct agreement projection which involves crossing paths. References Anagnostopoulou, Elena. 2003. The Syntax of Ditransitives: Evidence from Clitics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Bafile, Laura. 1993. Fonologia Prosodica e Teoria Metrica PhD dissertation, University of Florence. Belletti, Adriana. 1999. “Italian/Romance Clitics: Structure and Derivation.” Clitics in the Languages of Europe ed. by Henk van Riemsdijk, 543–79. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Bichelli, Pirro. 1974. Grammatica del dialetto Napoletano. Bari: Pégaso. Cardinaletti, Anna. 1991. “On Pronoun Movement: The Italian Dative Loro.” Probus 3.127–153. —— & Lori Repetti. (ms) “Clitics in Northern Italian Dialects: Phonology, Syntax and Microvariation.” Cardinaletti, Anna & Michal Starke. 1999. “The Typology of Structural Deficiency: A Case Study of the Three Classes of Pronouns.” Clitics in the Languages of Europe ed. by Henk van Riemsdijk, 145–233. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Collins, Chris & Hoskuldur Thrainsson. 1996. “VP-Internal Structure and Object Shift in Icelandic.” Linguistic Inquiry 27.391–444. Gioscio, Joseph. 1985. Il dialetto lucano di Calvello. Stuttgart: Steiner.
STRESSED ENCLITICS?
181
Halpern, Aaron L. 1998. “Clitics.” Handbook of Morphology ed. by A. Spencer & A. Zwicky, 101–122. Oxford: Blackwell. Iannace, Gaetano. 1983. Interferenza linguistica ai confini fra stato e regno: Il dialetto di San Leucio del Sannio. Ravenna: Longo. Jones, Michael. 1993. Sardinian Syntax. London: Routledge. Kayne, Richard. 1991. “Romance Clitics, Verb Movement and PRO.” Linguistic Inquiry 22.647–686. —— 1994. The Antisymmetry of Syntax. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Kenstowicz, Michael. 1996. “Base-Identity and Uniform Exponence: Alternative to Cyclicity.” Current Trends in Phonology: Models and Methods (vol. 1) ed. by J. Durand & B. Laks, 363–393. Manchester: ESRI. Loporcaro, Michele. 2000. “Stress Stability Under Cliticization and the Prosodic Status of Romance Clitics.” Phonological Theory and the Dialects of Italy ed. by L. Repetti, 137–168. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Lüdke, Helmut. 1979. Lucania. Pisa: Pacini. Monachesi, Paola. 1996. “On the Representation of Italian Clitics.” Interfaces in Phonology ed. by U. Kleinhenz, 83–101. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Peperkamp, Sharon. 1997. Prosodic Words. The Hague: HAG. Richards, Norvin. 2001. Movement in Language. New York: Oxford University Press. Rivero, María Luisa. 1994. “The structure of IP and V-movement in the Languages of the Balkans.” Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 12.373–422. Rohlfs, Gerhard. 1968. Grammatica storica della lingua italiana e dei suoi dialetti: Morfologia, 2. Torino: Einaudi. Séguy, Jean. 1954. Atlas linguistique et ethnographique de la Gascogne. Toulouse: Institut d'études méridionales de la faculté des lettres. Selkirk, Elisabeth. 1995. “The Prosodic Structure of Function Words.” Papers in Optimality Theory (UMOP 18) ed. by Jill N. Beckman, Laura Walsh Dickey & Suzanne Urbanczyk, 439–469. Amherst, Mass.: GLSA. Terzi, Arhonto. 1999. “Clitic Combinations, Their Hosts and Their Ordering.” Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 17.85–121.
HOW TO DO THINGS WITHOUT JUNK THE REFUNCTIONALIZATION OF A PRONOMINAL SUBSYSTEM BETWEEN LATIN AND ROMANCE
JOHN CHARLES SMITH University of Oxford (St Catherine’s College) Comme dans un beau style qui superpose des formes différentes et que fortifie une tradition cachée [...] il s’était dégagé, comme une forme organisée et vivante, du long chaos et de l’enveloppement nébuleux des modes détrônées. Marcel Proust, À l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs
0. Introduction Lass’s co-option for linguistics (Lass 1990) of the notion of exaptation, originally proposed by the evolutionary biologists Gould & Vrba (1982), is well known.1 Rather than disappear or survive as ‘junk’, a form or an opposition which has lost its original value may assume a new linguistic function. Subsequently, Vincent (1992, 1995) has situated exaptation in a fourway typology of language change, along with analogy, abduction, and grammaticalization. For Vincent, the four types of change can be defined in terms of a binary opposition ‘old’ vs. ‘new’ applied to both linguistic form and linguistic function; in this analysis, exaptation is the use of an old form to encode a new function. This paper discusses the development of the accusative and dative forms of the Latin first- and second-person singular pronouns in the 1
My greatest debt is to Marion Glastonbury, who first drew my attention to the notion of skeuomorphy and encouraged me to investigate its applicability to language change. I am also grateful to J. N. Adams, Sherry Ash, David Bain, Rachel Baker, Laurie Bauer, Kate Burridge, Michela Cennamo, the late Robert Coleman, William Croft, Anna Morpurgo Davies, Ana Deumert, Mark Donohue, K.-D. Fischer, Luciano Giannelli, Maria Teresa Greco, Camiel Hamans, the late H. D. Jocelyn, Dieter Kastovsky, Roger Lass, Martin Maiden, Sharon Millar, Gillian Ramchand, Joel Rini, Suzanne Romaine, Rosanna Sornicola, Alberto Varvaro, Theo Vennemann, Nigel Vincent, Werner Winter, Laura Wright, and Roger Wright for discussing all or some of these issues with me. In pursuing biological analogies, I have benefited from the generous assistance of Richard Dawkins and David Raubenheimer. Errors and shortcomings are, of course, my own.
184
JOHN CHARLES SMITH
light of Lass’s claims. (The two sets of pronouns evolve in the same way, mutatis mutandis, and so the examples are here limited to the first-person forms.)2 In several Romance languages, the opposition between the two Latin case forms has lost its original value and been refunctionalized, in what appears to be a fairly straightforward case of exaptation; however, I want to examine in more detail the idea that this opposition is at any stage ‘junk’. 1. The evolution of morphological oppositions If we look at Lass’s initial, general, discussion of what may happen to a morphological opposition (Lass 1990:81–82), we find that each of the developments he envisages can be exemplified from the fate of the first- and second-person singular pronouns of Latin in one or more Romance languages. 1.1. No change Lass begins: “Say a language has a grammatical distinction of some sort, coded by means of morphology’. Latin has a distinction between an accusative first-person singular pronoun ME and a dative first-person singular pronoun MIHI, early and often attested in a reduced form MI (Väänänen 1981:§74).3 Implicit in Lass’s premiss is that one option is for no change to take place; and this is what we find in Romanian, where both the formal and functional oppositions of Latin are maintained, at least with regard to pronouns which are complements of verbs (Poghirc 1969:239). (There are several phonotactic variants of the Romanian pronouns; the distinctions between them are irrelevant for present purposes, and I give only the most transparent forms below.) Let us refer to this type of language as a ‘Type A’ language.
2
The arguments in this paper might be extended to the third-person reflexive pronouns (undifferentiated for number), which parallel the first- and second-person singular forms morphologically. However, the semantic development of the third-person reflexive pronouns in Romance diverges significantly from that of the first- and second-person pronouns (for some recent discussion of the values of the atonic forms, see Lyons 1995; for the use of the French disjunctive form soi, see Grevisse 1993:§640; for the vexed question of Italian si, see Brunet 1994). I therefore prefer to omit the third-person reflexives from consideration. 3 MIHI > MI, with loss of intervocalic [h], is an unproblematic development (Väänänen 1981:§§74,101). The corresponding second-person singular dative, TI, cannot be derived by normal phonetic change from the Classical Latin dative TIBI, but was presumably created on the analogy of the first-person form (ibid.:§280). TIBI survives as tibe in some Old Spanish texts, and as teve in some southern Italian dialects, and, in some of these varieties, gives rise to an analogical first-person form (Old Spanish mibe; southern Italian meve) — see Menéndez Pidal (1956:§66) and Alvar & Pottier (1983:118–119) for Spanish, and Rohlfs (1968:§442) for Italian. The existence of these various forms in no way affects the arguments put forward in this paper.
HOW TO DO THINGS WITHOUT JUNK
185
TYPE A Latin accusative dative
Romanian ME MIHI > MI
> >
ma( accusative conjunctive mi dative conjunctive
(Another example of a ‘Type A’ language is Old Sardinian, which distinguishes between an accusative conjunctive form me (<ME) and a dative conjunctive form mi (<MI(HI)) — see Wagner (1960–64:II,57), s.v. mè.) 1.2. Loss of one member of the opposition Lass continues: “Then say this distinction is jettisoned, PRIOR TO the loss of the morphological material that codes it. This morphology is now, functionally speaking, junk; and there are three things that can in principle be done with it: [...] (i) it can be dumped entirely”. This is what has happened in standard French and many French dialects, from which the Latin first- and second-person singular dative pronouns have disappeared without trace. There is no longer a distinction between an accusative and a dative form in these persons; the exponents of the two functions have syncretized. Of the two pronominal forms, only the accusative survives, developing in two ways, according to whether or not it bears stress — the atonic form becomes the conjunctive pronoun me; whilst the tonic form becomes the disjunctive pronoun moi (Pope 1934:§828). This is a new distinction encoded in a new way. Let us call languages where one of the Latin case-forms is lost ‘Type B’ languages, and the subset of this group which dispense with the dative ‘Type B1’ languages. TYPE B1 Latin accusative dative
French ME MIHI > MI
>
me conjunctive acc. & dat. and moi disjunctive —
Interestingly, there appear to be no ‘Type B’ languages in which it is the accusative and not the dative which has disappeared. Clearly, the nonexistence of such languages is not axiomatic, and has to be explained; I shall return to this point below. For the moment, I shall designate them ‘Type B2’ languages, and distinguish them from ‘Type B1’ languages, such as French, which are attested. TYPE B2 (UNATTESTED) Latin accusative dative
ME MIHI > MI
>
?? — [survives in some function]
186
JOHN CHARLES SMITH
1.3. Loss of functional opposition The second possible fate of the so-called ‘junk’ morphology, according to Lass, is that “(ii) it can be kept as marginal garbage or nonfunctional/nonexpressive residue (suppletion, irregularity)”. We find an example of this development in Old Occitan. Like French, this language has jettisoned the functional distinction between accusative and dative in the firstand second-person singular pronouns; however, the derivative of either Latin case-form can serve as either the conjunctive or the disjunctive pronoun — the two forms are, so far as we can tell, in free variation in both functions. (As always, we should be wary of stating that two forms are in free variation; for present purposes, I merely note that this is what authorities on mediæval Occitan claim (Elsner 1886:14–15; Anglade 1921:245 (by implication); Jensen 1986:278). Detailed analysis of texts might reveal stylistic or sociolinguistic differences.) Let us call this type of language a ‘Type C’ language. TYPE C Latin accusative dative
ME MIHI > MI
> >
Old Occitan me disjunctive and conjunctive acc. & dat. mi disjunctive and conjunctive acc. & dat.
1.4. Exaptation Finally, says Lass, “(iii) it [i.e., the ‘junk’] can be kept, but instead of being relegated as in (ii), it can be used for something else, perhaps just as systematic. [...] Option (iii) is linguistic exaptation.” There are some good apparent examples of this process involving the oblique forms of the first- and second-person singular pronouns in Romance. Spanish (Lloyd 1987:278; Penny 1991:119–120), Portuguese (Mattoso Camara 1972:82–84), Galician (García de Diego 1909:108–109), northern dialects of French (i.e., the dialects of Picardy, Wallonia, and Lorraine (Gossen 1951:101)), and most dialects of Italian (Rohlfs 1968:§§442,454) exhibit a conjunctive form derived from the Latin accusative, and a disjunctive form derived from the Latin dative. This looks like a clear-cut case of exaptation — the original distinction (accusative vs. dative) has been discarded, but the morphological opposition has not withered away; rather it has been pressed into service to encode something else. Languages which refunctionalize the Latin distinction, I shall refer to as ‘Type D’ languages; languages which do so in the particular way just described, I shall call ‘Type D1’ languages.
HOW TO DO THINGS WITHOUT JUNK
187
TYPE D1 Latin accusative dative
Spanish, N. French dialects, most Italian dialects ME MIHI > MI
> >
me conjunctive accusative & dative mi disjunctive
If the morphology really has become ‘junk’, then, logically, we might expect to find languages which are mirror-images of the ones just discussed; that is, languages in which the dative yields the conjunctive form and the accusative the disjunctive form. A widely-held opinion amongst Romance linguists is that Tuscan and its derivative, standard Italian, follow such a pattern; for instance, Melander (1928:146–150), Moignet (1965:55), Bourciez (1967:§221c), and Tagliavini (1972:257) all make this claim. If we call the ‘Spanish’ type of language, in which the conjunctive derives from the accusative and the disjunctive from the dative a ‘Type D1’ language, the standard Italian type, in which the reverse apparently happens, can be labelled a ‘Type D2’ language. TYPE D2 (ALLEGED) Latin accusative dative
Tuscan, Standard Italian ME MIHI > MI
> >
me disjunctive mi conjunctive accusative & dative
So far, the data seem to bear out Lass’s analysis. We have four basic language types, one of which maintains the original Latin opposition in both form and function, the others of which reflect each of the various possible developments outlined by Lass, including exaptation.4 The fact that the ‘junk’ morphology can apparently be refunctionalized in random ways (compare the difference between languages of types D1 and D2) would argue strongly that the formal
4
Languages can shift from one type to another. Mediæval Occitan was a ‘Type C’ language; but in most varieties of modern Occitan, the dative derivative has disappeared and the original Latin accusative survives only as the conjunctive pronoun, whilst the Latin nominative, in addition to providing an emphatic subject pronoun, has now been drafted in as the disjunctive form — in terms of the accusative/dative opposition under discussion, Occitan has become a ‘Type B1’ language, although in some dialects we still find vestiges of ‘Type C’ free variation (Ronjat 1937:47–51). Some varieties of Spanish which were originally of type D1 have extended the Latin nominative in a similar way to Occitan, and are now likewise of type B1 (Penny 1991:120). The same development has affected the second-person singular pronoun of Catalan, but not the first-person forms (except in some Roussillonnais and Valencian dialects), so that Catalan, originally a ‘Type D1’ language, early on shifted to mixed type: D1 in the first person and B1 in the second (Badía Margarit 1951:§122). My main interest in this paper is, of course, the evolution from Latin into Romance, not these subsequent shifts.
188
JOHN CHARLES SMITH
opposition had, in Late Latin or Early Romance, become precisely that — junk.5 2. The problem of systematic asymmetry However, we are still left with the need to explain the absence of ‘Type B2’ languages (that is, languages in which the accusative form has disappeared without trace, but the dative has gone on to great things). More problematic for the notion of exaptation is a related issue. I want to claim that, despite much received wisdom, there are, in fact, no languages of type D2, either. If this is true, it means that the languages which employ the opposition between original Latin accusative and dative forms to encode a distinction between conjunctive and disjunctive pronouns all do so in the same way — the development is systematic and not random. We should therefore try to find some motivation (or better, some rationale) for it; but, of course, if we can do so, then we cannot be dealing with true ‘junk’. Let me first deal with the evolution of the first- and second-person singular pronouns in Tuscan and Standard Italian. There is an alternative to the widespread analysis referred to above. D’Ovidio (1885:68), Lausberg (1956:§255), Rohlfs (1968:§454), Tekavc&ic@ (1972:§§119,764), and Elcock (1960:78n16), amongst others, note that [i] is the normal Tuscan development of Late Latin pretonic [e] (just as [´] is the normal outcome of this vowel in pretonic position in French). Some uncontroversial examples of these developments in standard Italian and French are given below. Late Latin
Tuscan/Italian
French
[me'nakja] [de 'nçkte]
[mi'nattSa] [di 'nçtte]
[m´'nas] [d´ 'nÁi]
“threat” “by night”
As the second of these examples shows, ‘pretonic’ is defined with reference to the clitic group (in the sense of Nespor & Vogel 1986:145–163). But, of course, me, when proclitic to a verb (a possible position of the atonic pronoun complement of a verb during the Late Latin and Early Romance period — see Ramsden 1963:119–120), will constitute a pretonic syllable; consequently, the accusative form of the pronoun in this position will develop to mi, just as it develops to [m´] in French.
5
Compare Elcock (1975:91): ‘this medieval allotment of function must have followed upon a long period of confusion in Vulgar Latin, since Spanish and Italian appeared with exactly opposite solutions’. 6 This note is omitted from the 1975 edition revised by John N. Green.
HOW TO DO THINGS WITHOUT JUNK
Late Latin [me 'trçpat]
Tuscan/Italian [mi 'trçva]
French [m´ 'tRuv]
189
“finds me”
We still have to explain enclitic mi (here, [me] would be the expected development, and is in fact found in some Tuscan texts of the Renaissance, especially in rhyming contexts; see Rohlfs 1968:§454n1); but, given that enclisis of pronouns gave way to proclisis in Tuscan in most circumstances (Rohlfs 1968:§469; see also the discussion and references in Ramsden 1963:112–133), it is not unreasonable to suppose that the enclitic form mi is an analogical extension of the commoner proclitic form (D’Ovidio 1885:70 and Rohlfs 1968:§454 both countenance this possibility). There is strong circumstantial evidence to support the derivation of Tuscan mi from ME. Other Italian dialects seem to belong to either type B1 (languages which have abandoned the Latin dative form) or type D1 (the ‘Spanish’ type, in which the Latin accusative has yielded the conjunctive form and the Latin dative the disjunctive form) (see Rohlfs 1968:§§442,454). Of course, there is no a priori reason why Tuscan should conform to the pattern found elsewhere in Italy; but, even in Tuscan, the conjunctive pronoun assumes the form me when it is the first element of a clitic cluster — thus me lo; me la; me ne, etc. This form cannot be derived from Latin MI(HI); it is normally assumed to be the outcome of ME with secondary stress (Rohlfs 1968:§466), although Melander (1929:188) claims that it is a borrowing from one or more neighbouring dialects. The secondary stress argument receives some support from a parallel development: Latin DE “down from”, “about”, and subsequently “of”, which normally develops to Italian di, yields de when it is compounded with a following definite article — thus della, dello, degli, etc. “of the”. Camilli (1944–45:90n3), drawing attention to this parallel, refers to the contrast between the ‘deboli’ (weak) forms mi and di and the ‘semiforti’ (semi-strong) forms me and de.7 It seems desirable, other things being equal, to postulate a common origin for the clitic forms mi and me. For all the above reasons, it is 7
Me does not surface as the first element of all clitic clusters; thus, the rare combination of first- and second-person singular pronouns is always mi ti, never *me ti. This points to a third hypothesis concerning the origin of conjunctive me in standard Italian. It seems to occur only in conjunction with pronouns which derive from a Latin form beginning with [I] (subsequently [e]) — thus me la < ME ILLA(M), and me ne < ME INDE; just as della is arguably derived from DE ILLA(M) and dello from DE ILLV(M). In other words, rather than representing the simple juxtaposition of two Italian pronouns, the cluster itself may have evolved continuously from Latin; the final vowel of the first- (or second-) person pronoun may have been elided before the initial [I] of the second element of the cluster, and this latter vowel may be the source of the [e]. If this is the origin of proclitic me, then the data from clitic clusters will be irrelevant to the claim that this form derives from Latin ME, but will not invalidate it.
190
JOHN CHARLES SMITH
plausible to argue that Tuscan, and therefore Standard Italian, are ‘Type B1’ languages, like French. Sardinian also provides some problematic data. As we have seen, Old Sardinian, like modern Romanian, was a ‘Type A’ language, maintaining the Latin opposition between accusative me and dative mi. However, in modern Sardinian, the distinction of case has disappeared, and mi is now the sole form of the conjunctive pronoun. Blasco Ferrer (1984:96) draws the superficially attractive conclusion that the dative has been generalized at the expense of the accusative; according to this analysis, Sardinian would be a ‘Type B2’ language. The true position is, in fact, more complicated. Although [e] > [i] is not a widespread change in Sardinian, Wagner (1941:§59) notes that pretonic [e] can develop to [i] or [j] before a vowel, and that mi is thus a common development of the accusative pronoun in this position (Wagner 1960– 64:II,57, s.v. mè). We therefore have the situation in Old Sardinian that me can only be the exponent of the accusative (in preconsonantal position), whilst mi can be the exponent of the dative or (in prevocalic position) the accusative. In these circumstances, the generalization of mi to become the sole first-person oblique clitic clearly has an element of analogy; it is misleading to regard the form which is generalized simply as a dative pronoun. Wagner (1951:328) further suggests that the generalization of the form mi may be due to Italian influence. In this instance, then, where analogy and language contact appear to have played a significant role in the change, it does not seem wholly reasonable to speak of Sardinian as a ‘Type B2’ or ‘Type D2’ language — we are not dealing here simply with a refunctionalization of the Latin distinction. In any case, the developments just described are subsequent to the initial developments in Late Latin/Early Romance which are the focus of this paper. 3. Is the opposition ‘junk’? The next question we have to ask is: Can the ME/MI(HI) opposition really be regarded as ‘junk’? It is true that in Late Latin we find both an increase in the use of the dative case and a tendency for the accusative and dative forms of pronouns to encroach on each other’s traditional territory. Bonnet (1890:536), discussing nouns and pronouns as complements of verbs in the sixth-century Latin of Gregory of Tours, observes that the dative had been gaining ground since Cicero; whilst varying degrees of apparent interchangeability between the accusative and dative cases of pronouns are noted by Pei (1932:224,167), Norberg (1943:171–172), and Wanner (1987:87). But it should be stressed that the increase in the use of the dative case of both nouns and pronouns and the overlapping use of the accusative and dative of pronouns, where it is attested, is limited to the complements of verbs. The development appears to have been driven by a semantic or thematic analogy involving verbs whose patient could also be construed as a beneficiary, and hence be encoded in the dative (for
HOW TO DO THINGS WITHOUT JUNK
191
discussion and examples, see Löftstedt 1942:200–08). There is no evidence that the dative expanded its role to the point where it could serve as the complement of a preposition.8 So the data do not justify the claim that the ME/MI(HI) opposition really is ‘junk’ at any stage of Latin. But there is also an important a posteriori consideration: if there is no longer any contrast between the two items (other than the obvious phonological one), then we are a priori unable to explain the two lacunæ noted above, to wit: (i) why should it always be the original dative form that vanishes? In other words, why are there no languages of type B2? (ii) why, when the distinction is ‘refunctionalized’, should the original accusative systematically yield the conjunctive form and the original dative the disjunctive form? In other words, why are there no languages of type D2? There is a particular problem here, as intimated earlier. The characteristic use of the disjunctive form is as the complement of a preposition; but the dative is unattested in such a function in Latin. There is thus no precedent for the subsequent Romance development (described by Penny 1991:120 as “an early innovation of obscure motivation”) — the disjunctive pronoun (a sort of prepositional case) is created ex novo, and its combination of form and function cannot be traced back to Latin in any concrete sense. 4. Skeuomorphy I suggest that the original morphological opposition between the accusative and dative pronouns in the forms under discussion may be evacuated of all or almost all its concrete functional content (by ‘concrete functional content’ I essentially mean exponence), but that it never actually becomes junk. In this sense, I concur with the following view of Henning Andersen (as expressed — although not necessarily condoned — by Nigel Vincent); but only, for the moment, in respect of the present data. The notion of linguistic junk is not coherent because languages are sign systems and no part of a sign system is without function, even if we as analysts have not worked out what the function in question is. [...] Furthermore, since the scientific endeavor is never complete, one can never be sure that there is not a generalization still lurking out there waiting to be captured which will encompass just the piece of linguistic form that has heretofore been written off as junk. (Vincent 1995:435, discussing Andersen’s (unpublished) objections to the notion of exaptation)
8
Michela Cennamo has drawn my attention to three occurrences of INTER TIBI ET FISCO in the seventh-century texts published by Pirson (1913) - page 1, line 16 (text 1); page 2, line 39 (text 4) and page 3, line 5 (text 5). In each case, the expression appears to be formulaic. This is the only example I have come across of the use of the dative case of either the first- or secondperson singular pronoun as the complement of a preposition in Latin of any period. It may be the first attestation of the Romance exaptation discussed in this paper.
192
JOHN CHARLES SMITH
I claim that, in the present instance, the opposition between the two pronominal forms has not been completely obliterated, but has rather been reduced to that between a ‘core’ term on the one hand, and a ‘non-core’ term on the other. To describe the state in which an opposition has been evacuated of all or almost all its concrete functional content (i.e., its exponence), but in which a residual, arguably more abstract, dichotomy remains — that is, an identity which, however diminished, is not yet junk — I shall follow Lass in borrowing a concept from a different discipline (hoping to avoid the pitfall pointed out by Lass 1990:79, that “Such borrowings often turn from theoretical claims into sloppy metaphors”!). In this case, the discipline is art history, and the concept is that of ‘skeuomorphy’. To my knowledge, the term ‘skeuomorph’ is a coinage of March (1889:166) — compare the OED, second edition (1989), s.v. skeuomorph (vol. 15, p. 594). However, perhaps the best discussion of the notion of skeuomorphy is found in the work of the architectural historian Philip Steadman (1979:103–123). Amongst other examples, Steadman discusses the fact, originally noted by Lang (1887), that that potters in the Cypriot village of Lithrodonto will add two blobs of clay to a newly finished jug, and, when asked to explain why they do this, can state only that it is part of the traditional design — “We’ve always done it this way”. It turns out that similar vessels dating from about 500 B.C. excavated by archæologists in the same area are modelled in the form of female figures. The jugs are no longer modelled in female form, but a comparison of the classical version and the modern one shows quite clearly that it is the breasts of the original figure that have been retained as the two blobs of clay — they no longer represent anything concrete, but now have a more abstract function: that of being part of the traditional design. The concept of skeuomorphy is subsequently seized upon and elaborated by Humphrey (1992:185–186). Design features that were once of practical importance but have later become mainly if not wholly decorative — and no longer subject to selection on utilitarian grounds — are given the name ‘skeuomorphs’ (from the Greek ‘utensil’ “form”). Examples are widely found in clothing (e.g. the buttons on the cuffs of men’s coats), in engineering (e.g. the running boards on early motor cars), and on a grander scale, in architecture. In classical Greek temples (and their descendants right up to the present day) many of the decorative features of the stone buildings hark back to the structural features of the wooden buildings that preceded them: the dog-tooth Doric frieze, for example, comes originally from the pattern made by the exposed ends of timber roof-supporting beams, and the earliest stone temples even had stone reproductions of the wooden pins. Craftsmen tend to copy pre-existing models. And the reasons for copying are several. Partly it is that copying is easy: the selection or planning that went into the development of the earlier version is now inherent in the structure, and the copy can be made without having to work through this again. Partly it is that copying is safe: the earlier version did the job required of it, and the copy can be trusted to do the job at least as well. And partly it is that copying creates objects that are in tune with what people expect: the earlier version has set the standard for what the design ‘ought to’ look like, and
HOW TO DO THINGS WITHOUT JUNK
193
the copy ends up looking comfortably familiar. This latter factor is likely to have been especially powerful when, as must often have happened, the old and the new versions have co-existed in the same environment and there has been a need to avoid a clash of styles (a stone temple, say, being built next-door to a wooden one).
Humphrey goes on to suggest that the notion of skeuomorphy can be applied to biological systems. Mutatis mutandis, it may also be richly relevant to linguistic change. In the account given by Humphrey and quoted above, a feature which starts off as functional loses its functionality and becomes decorative — that is, in some sense, cultural. I would want to argue strongly that it still has a content (in the appropriate parts of Cyprus, after all, pots without bumps would initially be regarded as a solecism), but that this content is a highly abstract one. ‘Decorative’ is not a term usually associated with serious studies of language,9 and I don’t mean it to be taken literally here; but the analogy will work, I think — even when evacuated of its concrete functional value or exponence, a morphological opposition can encode something more abstract. 5. The notion of ‘core’ value I suggest that the notion of ‘core’ value is associated with one or more of at least the following: qualitative unmarkedness; quantitative unmarkedness (higher frequency); default status. Often, these criteria will yield identical results; but not always.10 For this reason, I prefer not to use ‘unmarked’ as a cover term, leaving open the possibility that a particular criterion may dominate in particular circumstances. Qualitative unmarkedness is defined by a number of well-known criteria, summarized by Battistella (1990:26) as ‘optimality, breadth of distribution, syncretization, indeterminateness, simplicity, and prototypicality’. Optimality refers to the fact that “When certain segments or certain feature values imply others in language after language, those values are taken to be unmarked” (ibid.:26). As far as distribution is concerned, “Unmarked terms are distinguished from their marked counterparts by having a greater freedom of occurrence and a greater ability to combine with other linguistic elements” (ibid.:26) — the characteristic referred to by Croft (1990:77) as ‘versatility’. The unmarked term is also the one that occurs in positions of absolute neutralization. Syncretization means that “Unmarked categories tend to be more differentiated than marked ones” (Battistella 1990:27). By the criterion of simplicity “unmarked elements are less elaborate in form than their
9
Except, as J. N. Adams and Sharon Millar point out to me, in studies of formal rhetoric. For possible mismatches between default status and unmarkedness, for example, see Marcus et al. (1995). 10
194
JOHN CHARLES SMITH
[marked] counterparts”, and by that of prototypicality, they are “experientially more basic” (ibid.:27). Higher frequency is generally assumed to be a quantitative indicator of unmarkedness (see especially the discussion in Greenberg 1966:64). Bybee (1985:117f.) further suggests that items which occur more frequently in texts or discourse have greater ‘lexical strength’ — that is, they are more firmly entrenched in the mental representation of the lexicon. A default form is the one which occurs when there are no obvious criteria for selecting a particular item. So, returning to the oblique forms of the first- and second-person singular pronouns in Latin, I shall maintain that the ‘core’ form is the original accusative, and that the ‘core’ function is that of conjunctive pronoun. Uncontroversially, if one of the terms disappears, it will tend to be the ‘noncore’ term. Winter (1971:61), for instance, in a discussion of the evolution of case systems, claims: “If, in the course of its development through time, a system suffers a loss of forms, the more prominent form is likely to survive”. (He recognizes both quantitative prominence, straightforwardly definable in terms of frequency, and qualitative prominence, which is more difficult to define, but which corresponds to the commonly held views of qualitative unmarkedness referred to above.) Hence, no languages of type B2. If the opposition is refunctionalized, the ‘core’ term will assume a ‘core’ function, whilst the ‘non-core’ term will assume a ‘non-core’ function. Hence, no languages of type D2. 5.1. The ‘core’ form: accusative and dative case in Latin How might such a claim be justified by the data? First of all, can we reasonably maintain that the Latin accusative is the ‘core’ term and the dative the ‘non-core’ term in opposition to it? There is substantial evidence for this hypothesis. Vincent (1994) argues convincingly for the view that the accusative was a default case in Latin; in contexts where case can neither be assigned structurally nor supplied by perseveration or ‘echoing’ of an NP in a previous sentence, it is always the accusative that surfaces (compare isolated exclamations, such as O me miserum! — see Blake 1994:9). Adams (2003:62– 63n146,227,477) discusses the so-called ‘accusative of apposition’ and suggests that this, too, may represent the use of the accusative as a default form. Winter (1971:55), arguing that “the relative frequency of a form has some significance in determining its chances for survival or even adoption outside its original range of usage”, presents figures showing that the accusative was also the most frequent case in Latin: 35.8% of 18,889 Latin noun forms taken from Plautus, Cæsar, Sallust, Virgil, and Petronius (a corpus encompassing prose, poetry, and drama written between the third century B.C. and the first century A.D.) are in this case. In contrast, the dative accounts for
HOW TO DO THINGS WITHOUT JUNK
195
only 4.2% of Winter’s sample, in penultimate place, ahead only of the vocative (2.2%).11 The ratio of accusative to dative is 8.52:1. The Latin frequency dictionary of Delatte et al. (1981:220–222) confirms that the accusative is the most frequently occurring case in both prose (51,438 substantives out of 161,652, or 31.8% of occurrences) and poetry (21,598 substantives out of 68,600, or 31.5% of occurrences) and that (setting aside the rare locative case, which is absent from Winter’s corpus) the dative is also the second least frequent case (9,527 tokens, or 5.89% of the total, in prose; 3,751, or 5.47% of the total, in poetry), ahead of the vocative. These figures yield a ratio of accusative to dative of 5.40:1 in prose and 5.76:1 in poetry. The function of the accusative is also less marked than that of the dative. The evidence presented by Pinkster (1990:40–48), on the basis of an examination of the first 73 chapters of Cicero’s De Oratore (first century B.C.), does not enable any qualitative statement to be made concerning the dative; he can conclude only that this case “occurs relatively infrequently” (ibid.:43). The accusative, on the other hand, has a well-defined function: it “is pre-eminently the case for the marking of constituents which form part of the nuclear predication” (loc. cit.). But the Latin form ME is also the exponent of the ablative case of the firstperson singular pronoun. According to the figures presented by Winter (1969:55), the ablative is the second most frequently occurring case of Latin, after the accusative, accounting for 24.7% of his sample of 18,889 noun forms (see above). Delatte et al. (1981:220–222) likewise find that the ablative is the second most frequent case in prose texts (38,931 substantives out of 161,652, or 24.1% of occurrences); although in poetry, this case is pushed into third position (14,854 substantives out of 68,600, or 21.7% of occurrences) by the nominative. As for the function of the ablative, for Pinkster (1990:43) it is “pre-eminently the case for the marking of satellites, i.e., constituents in the periphery”. Seen in this light, the ME/MI(HI) contrast is an opposition between, on the one hand, a ‘core’ form which syncretizes the two most commonly occurring cases (or, at least, the two most commonly occurring oblique cases) and is the unmarked form for encoding both internal arguments/complements (Pinkster’s “constituents which form part of the nuclear predication”) and nonarguments/adjuncts (Pinkster’s ‘satellites, i.e., constituents in the periphery’), and, on the other hand, a much less common case form with an exponence about which it is difficult to make any qualitative generalization, and which may therefore be regarded as marked.
11
If we were able to analyse a corpus of spoken Latin (which for obvious reasons we cannot), we might even find that the vocative had pushed the dative into last position.
196
JOHN CHARLES SMITH
The frequency of the pronominal forms themselves confirms this view. Figures derived from Delatte et al. (1981:260,277,278,283,288,291,497) yield a ME to MI(HI) ratio of 1.15:1 and a TE to TIBI ratio of 1.29:1.12 5.2. The ‘core’ function: conjunctive and disjunctive pronouns in Romance Turning now to the distinction between conjunctive and disjunctive pronouns, we may note that the function of the conjunctive pronoun is to be the complement of a verb, whilst the (original) function of a disjunctive pronoun is to be the complement of a preposition (Moignet 1965:56 usefully defines the contrast as being between a “prédicatif” pronoun and its “non prédicatif” counterpart). Assuming the (un)markedness or ‘coreness’ of a subcategorized complement-type to be related to that of the item that subcategorizes it, we can start by making some cross-linguistic observations about the two syntactic categories involved. Verb is arguably a universal category (Croft 1990:46), Preposition (or Adposition) is not. On the basis of this evidence, Verb would seem to qualify as the ‘core’ or ‘unmarked’ of the two categories. Likewise, in many theories of syntax, Verb (or an equivalent feature) is a categorial primitive; no theory makes a similar claim about Prepositions. As regards the specifics of Latin, we find that Verbs exhibit the characteristics of an unmarked category (see above) relative to Prepositions. Verbs are more frequent than Prepositions in terms of both types and tokens — there are many more members of the category Verb, and they occur more frequently in texts. Of the total of 794,662 Latin word tokens (582,411 in prose; 212,251 in poetry) examined by Delatte et al. (1981:220–222), 182,070, or 22.91% of the total corpus, are verbs (134,229 (23.05%) in prose; 47,841 (22.54%) in poetry), and only 42,696, or 5.37%, are prepositions (35,722 (6.13%) in prose; 6,974 12
Relevant case-forms occurring with the emphatic enclitic -MET, the interrogative enclitic NE, and the co-ordinating enclitic -QVE have all been counted towards the overall totals. However, the reduplicated forms MEME and TETE have not been taken into consideration, as it is not clear whether they actually constitute occurrences of ME and TE, or are separate lexical items. Neither have the comitatives MECVM and TECVM been included, since it is not certain that these forms were analysable at this stage of Latin (their evolution into Italian meco, teco (Rohlfs 1969:§443), and, albeit with an analogical change of vowel, Spanish (con)migo, (con)tigo (Penny 1991:120–121; Rini 1992:34–83), and Portuguese (co)migo, (con)tigo (Williams 1962:145–146), certainly implies that at some stage they became unanalysable), and the exact status of their pronominal element is therefore unclear. As all the forms mentioned are relatively infrequent, their inclusion or omission does not have a significant effect on the figures. Delatte et al. (1981) do not distinguish between the different functions of a given form. It is therefore impossible to distinguish between the dative pronoun MI and the homographic masculine singular vocative case of the possessive MEVS. However, in view of the small figures involved and the comparative rarity of the vocative case (see above), all occurrences of MI have, for the sake of argument, been treated as dative pronouns.
HOW TO DO THINGS WITHOUT JUNK
197
(3.29%) in poetry). Related to type frequency is the fact that Verbs constitute an open class, whilst the class of Prepositions is a (virtually) closed one. Verbs are also more ‘versatile’ than Prepositions (in the sense of Croft 1990:77); they may be inflectionally marked for person, number, tense, aspect, mood, and voice, whilst Prepositions carry no inflectional marking at all. Moreover, viewed as a class, Verbs may occur in a large number of syntactic environments (transitive sentences, intransitive sentences, passive sentences, etc.), and may take practically any phrasal category (including zero) as their complement; the distribution of Prepositions, on the other hand, is much more restricted. On the basis of these data, ‘complement of verb’ qualifies as a ‘core’ value in Latin with respect to ‘complement of preposition’. The view that the conjunctive pronoun is the ‘core’ form relative to the disjunctive pronoun is also supported by frequency data from Romance. For Spanish, we have relevant information from Juilland & Chang-Rodriguez (1964:364,380), whose figures yield a conjunctive to disjunctive ratio of 6.59:1 in the first person singular and 24.8:1 in the second person singular, and, more recently, Alameda & Cuetos (1995:352,356,462,465) (first person singular 9.19:1; second person singular 8.86:1). In Italian, too, the conjunctive form is more frequent than its disjunctive counterpart, in this case by a ratio of between about two and four to one, as shown by Bortolini et al. (1972:393,684) (the ratio of conjunctive to disjunctive is 3.29:1 in the first-person singular and 3.13:1 in the second person singular), Juilland & Traversa (1973: 212,217,366,370) (2.33:1 and 3.93:1) and De Mauro et al. (1993:280,387) (2.78:1 and 1.95:1). In French, the disjunctive pronoun has expanded into a variety of new functions (notably that of emphatic subject-, object-, or topicmarker), and, in the persons under discussion, is identical to the form assumed by a conjunctive pronoun when it bears stress (compare Dis-moi, Réveille-toi); although frequency dictionaries do not distinguish this conjunctive use from the disjunctive form. The figures found in word-counts of French may therefore overestimate the frequency of the disjunctive pronouns. However, this potential inflation is not a practical problem, for the forms me and te are in any case more frequent than the forms moi and toi. From Juilland et al. (1970:218,225,350,355), we derive a conjunctive to disjunctive ratio of 2.52:1 in the first person singular and 2.31:1 in the second person singular, whilst the frequency dictionary of Imbs (1971:1259, 1306,1339,2026,2044,2068) yields figures of 2.86:1 and 2.80:1, respectively. On the basis of both qualitative and quantitative evidence, then, it seems plausible to maintain that ‘accusative’ and ‘conjunctive pronoun’ are ‘core’ values in Latin and Romance with respect to ‘dative’ and ‘disjunctive pronoun’.
198
JOHN CHARLES SMITH
6. Exaptation and continuity in language change I am not claiming that linguistic ‘junk’ cannot exist. Much more detailed work on many more languages is required before we can even begin to entertain this possibility (referred to by Lass (1990:100n13) as the ‘semiotic fallacy’). What I am saying is that the notion of ‘junk’ does not seem an especially appropriate or enlightening one to use when discussing the development which is the principal concern of this paper — the evolution of the oblique forms of the first- (and second-) person singular pronouns from Latin to Romance. Whilst the distinction between the accusative and the dative of these items does disappear in most varieties of Romance, the formal opposition which used to express it seems to retain a vestige of abstract content — it becomes, in the terminology introduced above, skeuomorphy, not junk — and, where one of the items is discarded or the opposition assumes a new function, it is this vestigial content which seems to determine what developments take place. Moreover, this principle seems to apply to other examples of refunctionalization in unrelated languages; it is not an idiosyncratic property of the Romance data.13 In a critique of Lass’s views, Heath (1998:755–756) suggests that “applying the notion of exaptation to language is questionable, since long-term retention of morphemes which have lost their original function (the “junk” phase) exacts a cost” (presumably in the form of excessive redundancy). Similarly, in the scheme of things which I have tried to sketch, ‘junk’ would not be essential to exaptation, and could even be incompatible with it. (If linguistic ‘junk’ really does exist, then I suggest that it is probably confined to the category of ‘marginal garbage’, under which Lass (1990:82) ranges suppletion, irregularity, and similar phenomena — but, even here, there may be retention of ‘meaning’, in some sense; see, for instance, Maiden 1992 and Carstairs-McCarthy 1994). Even after a morphological opposition has ceased to encode a particular functional opposition, it can still retain a more abstract value which can guide its refunctionalization; and it might well be the case that it cannot be refunctionalized unless this residual opposition is present. There are interesting parallels between morphosyntax and phonology in this respect, especially in the light of recent advances in our understanding of splits and mergers in sound systems (for a survey, see Labov 1994:293–418). ‘Junk’, in the Lassian sense, understood as the functional merger of originally separate morphosyntactic items which retain a separate formal identity, presents analogies with phonemic merger. The observation by Garde (1961:38–39) that “les innovations peuvent créer des homonymies, mais ne peuvent pas en 13
For attempts to apply the hypothesis outlined in this paper to other instances of morphological refunctionalization, see Donohue & Smith (1998), Smith (2005a; 2005b).
HOW TO DO THINGS WITHOUT JUNK
199
détruire. Si deux mots ont été rendus identiques par un changement phonétique quelconque, ils ne peuvent plus jamais devenir différents par voie phonétique” leads Labov (1994:311) to formulate what he dubs ‘Garde’s Principle’, whereby “Mergers are irreversible by linguistic means”. Skeuomorphy, on the other hand, shows similarities with the ‘near-mergers’ reported by Labov (1994:349–370), in which speakers systematically maintain an instrumentally detectable difference between two sounds without being able to perceive that they are making any distinction at all. In these cases, it is possible for awareness of a distinction to be re-established by ‘retreating’ from the ‘nearmerger’. Clearly, in the cases of skeuomorphy under discussion in this paper, speakers would be able to perceive a phonetic distinction between the two members of an opposition; but, during an intermediate stage, when the original opposition had waned but the new opposition had not yet been established, they might claim that there was no difference in their meaning or function, that they were in ‘free variation’. In this view, ‘junk’ would amount to or be a consequence of complete defunctionalization, and skeuomorphy might be regarded as ‘near-defunctionalization’. Just as in sound change true mergers cannot be reversed, but near-mergers can give rise to a renewal or revival of a distinction which speakers perceive, so, I would claim, ‘junk’ cannot be refunctionalized, whilst skeuomorphic oppositions can. According to Lass’s more recent statement on the matter (Lass 1997:320), “In a typical case, the material exapted is at the point of exaptation doing something else (which it may continue to do); but it is still capable of being remanufactured or restructured, and still exapted, in a sense, as part of a different kind of coexisting structure”. This statement raises two issues. First of all, Lass has revised his earlier notion, and now makes no distinction between instances in which the original function of the exapted material disappears and those in which it is retained alongside the new function — in other words, “Exaptation does not presuppose [...] “emptiness” of the exaptatum” (ibid.:318). But, conceptually, the distinction between loss of original function and retention of original function is significant. Moreover, Lass’s new account loses one of the attractions of his original proposal — it pinpointed a class of morphosyntactic changes in which a particular relationship between form and function obtained (see Vincent 1995). As pointed out in the Introduction, ‘exaptation’ has become established in the literature in this more restricted sense, and that is how I have used the term up to now. If we are to accept the superordinate definition of exaptation, then we shall need words for the two types of change it covers: in the spirit of Gould & Vrba (whose paper was motivated by the ambiguity of the term ‘adaptation’), we might reserve the term ‘refunctionalization’ for the process whereby a form loses its original function and takes on a new function, and coin the term ‘adfunctionalization’ for the process in which a form assumes a new function
200
JOHN CHARLES SMITH
alongside or in addition to its original function. Gould & Vrba’s original definition of exaptation referred to (biological) adfunctionalization. Lass borrowed the term and applied it to linguistic change in the sense of ‘refunctionalization’, but now uses it to refer to both refunctionalization and adfunctionalization. The second issue concerns the expression ‘the point of exaptation’, which implies that the process is a discrete or sudden one. But the continuity of adfunctionalization is not in doubt (see, for instance, the discussion of grammaticalization in Heine, Claudi & Hünnemeyer 1991:258–261 and Hopper & Traugott 1993:207); and in this paper I have sought to show that the refunctionalization of morphological oppositions is also a gradual and continuous process, and involves a transitional stage of skeuomorphy, or ‘nearmerger’, resulting in a ‘core-to-core’ mapping from the old function to the new one. Couched in similar terms to Lass’s, the claim I am making in respect of the examples analysed above might run: “linguistic exaptation presupposes non-emptiness of the exaptatum”. I suggest that there is a close biological analogue of refunctionalization, in the form of the pupation of certain insect orders (such as Lepidoptera): the components of the coherent larval system (the caterpillar), which has the well-defined function of eating and growing, turn into those of the quite distinct but equally coherent imaginal system (the butterfly or moth), which has the well-defined function of reproducing, by passing through a relatively incoherent stage (the chrysalis), whose sole function is to make the transition from the first state to the second — for some recent discussion, see Truman & Riddiford (1999). However, despite the huge apparent differences between them, the larva and the imago are ‘the same’ in the sense that they share identical DNA. Moreover, although the chrysalis phase sees the total resorption of old tissues and the construction of new ones, parts of the nervous system remain intact, resulting in some maintenance of identity of the individual organism. It has been shown, for instance, that learning (specifically the association of an odour and an electric shock) which takes place in larval Drosophilidæ is retained into the adult stage, despite the major reorganization which occurs during pupation (see Tully et al. 1994). Thus, however distinct the two states which are mediated by the chrysalis phase, there is a fundamental continuity between them; and it would be quite erroneous to regard the pupa as in any sense unstructured or ‘junk’. 7. Conclusion The implicit claim in Lass (1990) was that linguistic exaptation necessarily involved ‘junk’; he subsequently suggested (Lass 1997:318–324) that it sometimes involved ‘junk’, but did not always have to. My own hypothesis is that it never involves ‘junk’. This proposal is offered as a contribution to the debate launched by Heath (1998:756), who states:
HOW TO DO THINGS WITHOUT JUNK
201
Lass’s metaphorical assemblage [...] is ambivalent on the crucial matter of whether (non-contact-induced) grammatical evolution is basically continuous (the inherited formal and categorial system is regularly patched up with new material) or basically discontinuous (old structures periodically collapse, and entirely new ones are created out of the rubble). This must be the central issue of historical grammar, and of all historical scholarship, and our terminology and tropes should force us to confront it.
I believe that the evidence presented in this paper argues for the essentially continuous nature of much morphosyntactic evolution, and that the ‘trope’ of skeuomorphy draws attention to this fact in the way Heath deems desirable, bolstering his view that “in the absence of unusual contact situations [...], the ‘old’ grammatical patterns (categories and forms) are always decisive in shaping the way ‘new’ patterns fit into the system” (ibid:730) and that “we need frameworks that give due weight to the restorative and conservative nature of much grammatical change” (ibid:757). References Adams, James N. 2003. Bilingualism and the Latin Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Alameda, José Ramón & Fernando Cuetos. 1995. Diccionario de frecuencias de las unidades lingüísticas del castellano. Oviedo: Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Oviedo. Alvar, Manuel & Bernard Pottier. 1983. Morfología histórica del español. Madrid: Gredos. Anglade, Joseph. 1921. Grammaire de l’ancien provençal ou ancienne langue d’oc: phonétique et morphologie. Paris: Klincksieck. Badía Margarit, Antonio. 1951. Gramática histórica catalana. Barcelona: Noguer. Battistella, Edwin L. 1990. Markedness: the evaluative superstructure of language. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Blake, Barry J. 1994. Case. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Blasco Ferrer, Eduardo. 1984. Storia linguistica della Sardegna. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Bonnet, Max. 1890. Le Latin de Grégoire de Tours. Paris: Hachette. Bortolini, Umberta, Carlo Tagliavini & Antonio Zampolli. 1972. Lessico di frequenza della lingua italiana contemporanea. Milano: Garzanti. Bourciez, Édouard. 1967. Éléments de linguistique romane. Paris: Klincksieck (cinquième édition). Brunet, Jacqueline. 1994. Grammaire critique de l’italien. Volume 12: Un si ou deux. Saint-Denis: Presses universitaires de Vincennes.
202
JOHN CHARLES SMITH
Bybee, Joan L. 1985. Morphology: a study of the relation between meaning and form. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: Benjamins. Camilli, Amerindo. 1944–1945. “Articoli, pronomi, preposizioni articolate.” Lingua nostra 6.89–90. Carstairs-McCarthy, Andrew. 1994. “Inflection classes, gender, and the Principle of Contrast.” Language 70.737–788. Croft, William. 1990. Typology and Universals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Delatte, Louis, Etienne Evrard, Suzanne Govaerts & Joseph Denooz. 1981. Dictionnaire fréquentiel et index inverse de la langue latine. Liège: L.A.S.L.A. De Mauro, Tullio, Federico Mancini, Massimo Vedovelli & Miriam Voghera. 1993. Lessico di frequenza dell’italiano parlato. Milano: Etaslibri. Donohue, Mark & John Charles Smith. 1998. “What’s happened to us? Some developments in the Malay pronoun system.” Oceanic Linguistics 37.65– 84. D’Ovidio, Francesco. 1885. “Ricerche sui pronomi personali e possessivi neolatini.” Archivio glottologico italiano 9.25–101. Elcock, W. D. 1960. The Romance Languages. London: Faber & Faber. ——. 1975. The Romance Languages (revised with a new introduction by John N. Green). London: Faber & Faber. Elsner, Alfred von. 1886. Über Form und Verwendung des Personalpronomens im Altprovenzalischen. Kiel: Fiencke. García de Diego, Vicente. 1909. Elementos de gramática histórica gallega (fonética – morfología). Burgos: Rodríguez. Garde, Paul. 1961. “Réflexions sur les différences phonétiques entre les langues slaves.” Word 17.34–62. Gossen, Charles Théodore. 1951. Petite Grammaire de l’ancien picard. Paris: Klincksieck. Gould, Stephen Jay & Elisabeth S. Vrba. 1982. “Exaptation — a missing term in the science of form.” Paleobiology 8.4–15. Greenberg, Joseph H. 1966. “Language universals”. Current Trends in Linguistics: Vol. III, Theoretical Foundations, ed. by Thomas A. Sebeok , 61–112. The Hague & Paris: Mouton. Grevisse, Maurice. 1993. Le Bon Usage: grammaire française. Refondue par A. Goosse. Paris & Louvain-la-Neuve: Duculot (treizième édition revue). Heath, Jeffrey. 1998. “Hermit crabs: formal renewal of morphology by phonologically mediated affix substitution.” Language 74.728–759. Heine, Bernd, Ulrike Claudi & Friederike Hunnemeyer. 1991. Grammaticalization: a Conceptual Framework. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
HOW TO DO THINGS WITHOUT JUNK
203
Hopper, Paul J. & Elizabeth Closs Traugott. 1993. Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Humphrey, Nicholas. 1992. A History of the Mind. London: Chatto & Windus. Imbs, Paul (dir.). 1971. Dictionnaire des fréquences: vocabulaire littéraire des XIXe et XXe siècles. Paris: C.N.R.S./Klincksieck. Jensen, Frede. 1986. The Syntax of Medieval Occitan. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Juilland, Alphonse & Eugenio Chang-Rodriguez. 1964. Frequency Dictionary of Spanish Words. The Hague, etc.: Mouton. Juilland, Alphonse, Dorothy Brodin & Catherine Davidovitch. 1970. Frequency Dictionary of French Words. The Hague & Paris: Mouton. Juilland, Alphonse & Vincenzo Traversa. 1973. Frequency Dictionary of Italian Words. The Hague & Paris: Mouton. Labov, William. 1994. Principles of Linguistic Change. Volume 1: Internal Factors. Oxford: Blackwell (Language in Society 20). Lang, R. Hamilton. 1887. “On archaic survivals in Cyprus.” Journal of the Anthropological Institute 16.186–188. Lass, Roger. 1990. “How to do things with junk: exaptation in language evolution.” Journal of Linguistics 26.79–102. ——. 1997. Historical Linguistics and Language Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lausberg, Heinrich. 1956. Romanische Sprachwissenschaft. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Lloyd, Paul M. 1987. From Latin to Spanish: Vol. I, Historical Phonology and Morphology of the Spanish Language. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society. Löfstedt, Einar. 1942. Syntactica: Studien und Beiträge zur historischen Syntax des Lateins. Erster Teil: Über einige Grundfragen der lateinischen Nominalsyntax. Lund, etc.: Gleerup, etc. (Zweite, erweiterte Auflage). Lyons, Christopher. 1995. “Voice, aspect, and arbitrary arguments.” Linguistic Theory and the Romance Languages, ed. by John Charles Smith & Martin Maiden, 77–114. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Maiden, Martin. 1992. “Irregularity as a determinant of morphological change.” Journal of Linguistics 28.285–312. March, H. Colley. 1889. “The meaning of ornament, or its archæology and its psychology.” Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society 7.160–192. Marcus, Gary, Ursula Brinkmann, Harald Clahsen, Richard Wiese & Steven Pinker. 1995. “German inflection: the exception that proves the rule.” Cognitive Psychology 29.189–256. Mattoso Camara, Joaquim. 1972. The Portuguese Language. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press.
204
JOHN CHARLES SMITH
Melander, Johan. 1928. Étude sur l’ancienne abréviation des pronoms personnels régimes dans les langues romanes. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell. ——. 1929. “L’origine de l’italien me ne, me lo, te la, etc.” Studia neophilologica 2.169–203. Menéndez Pidal, Ramón. 1956. Orígines del español: estado lingüístico de la península ibérica hasta el siglo XI. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (cuarta edición). Moignet, Gérard. 1965. Le Pronom personnel français: essai de psychosystématique historique. Paris: Klincksieck. Nespor, Marina & Irene Vogel, Irene. 1986. Prosodic Phonology. (= Studies in Generative Grammar, 28). Dordrecht & Riverton: Foris. Norberg, Dag. 1943. Syntaktische Forschungen auf dem Gebiete des Spätlateins und des frühen Mittellateins. Uppsala: Lundquist; Leipzig: Harassowitz. OED = The Oxford English Dictionary. Second edition, prepared by J. A. Simpson & E. S. C. Weiner. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989. Pei, Mario. 1932. The Language of the Eighth-Century Texts in Northern France. New York: Carranza. Penny, Ralph. 1991. A History of the Spanish Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pinkster, Harm. 1990. Latin Syntax and Semantics. London: Routledge. Pirson, J. 1913. Merowingische und Karolingische Formulare. Heidelberg: Winters (Sammlung vulgärlateinischer Texte 5) Poghirc, Cicerone. 1969. “Pronumele personale ,si reflexive.” Istoria limbii române: volumul II. Bucure,sti: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, 239–243. Pope, Mildred K. 1934. From Latin to Modern French with Especial Consideration of Anglo-Norman. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Ramsden, Herbert. 1963. Weak Pronoun Position in the Early Romance Languages. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Rini, Joel. 1992. Motives for Linguistic Change in the Formation of the Spanish Object Pronouns. Newark, Del.: Juan de la Cuesta. Rohlfs, Gerhard. 1968. Grammatica storica della lingua italiana e dei suoi dialetti. Vol. 2: Morfologia. Torino: Einaudi. Ronjat, Jules. 1937. Grammaire istorique [sic] des parlers provençaux modernes: Tome III. Montpellier: Société des langues romanes. Smith, John Charles. 2005a. “Some refunctionalizations of the nominativeaccusative opposition between Latin and Gallo-Romance.” A Companion in Linguistics: a Festschrift for Anders Ahlqvist on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday ed. by Bernadette Smelik, Rijcklof Hofman, Camiel Hamans & David Cram, 269–285. Nijmegen: De Keltische Draak.
HOW TO DO THINGS WITHOUT JUNK
205
——. 2005b. “The refunctionalization of first-person plural inflection in Tiwi.” Unpublished paper given to the Thirty-Eighth Annual Conference of the Societas Linguistica Europæa, Universitat de València, Valencia, Spain, September 2005/ MS, St Catherine’s College, Oxford. Steadman, Philip. 1979. The Evolution of Designs: biological analogy in architecture and the applied arts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tagliavini, Carlo. 1972. Le origini delle lingue neolatine: introduzione alla filologia romanza. Bologna: Pàtron (sesta edizione). Tekavc&ic@, Pavao. 1972. Grammatica storica dell’italiano. Bologna: Il Mulino. Truman, James W. & Lynn M. Riddiford. 1999. “The origins of insect metamorphosis.” Nature 401.447–452. Tully, T., V. Cambiazo & L. Kruse. 1994. “Memory through metamorphosis in normal and mutant Drosophila.” Journal of Neuroscience 14.68–74. Väänänen, Veikko. 1981. Introduction au latin vulgaire. Paris: Klincksieck (troisième édition). Vincent, Nigel. 1992. “Abduction and exaptation.” Unpublished paper delivered at the Fourth Krems International Morphology Meeting. ——. 1994. “On the default case in Latin.” MS, University of Manchester. ——. 1995. “Exaptation and grammaticalization.” Historical Linguistics 1993 ed. by Henning Andersen, 433–445. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 433–445. Wagner, Max Leopold. 1941. Historische Lautlehre des Sardischen. Halle (Saale): Niemeyer. ——. 1951. La lingua sarda: storia, spirito e forma. Bern: Francke. ——. 1960–1964. Dizionario etimologico sardo. Heidelberg: Winter. Wanner, Dieter. 1987. The Evolution of Romance Clitic Pronouns: from Latin to Old Romance. Berlin, etc.: Mouton de Gruyter. Williams, Edwin B. 1962. From Latin to Portuguese: historical phonology and morphology of the Portuguese language. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press (second edition). Winter, Werner. 1971. “Formal frequency and linguistic change: some preliminary comments.” Folia Linguistica 5.55–61.
SUBJECT INDEX
A. Ablative case 195 Accusative case 167, 178, 183-204 Acoustic analysis: 24 Acoustic correlates of syllable weight: 2-3 Anticipatory coarticulation: 1-14, 160 Approximants 97-112 Apocope 51 Aspiration 73, 83-96 Attrition 15-30 B. Bilingual 1, 5, 15-30, 87-88 C. Catalan Majorcan 177 Roussillonnais 187 Valencian 31-48, 187 Clitics Enclitic 167-182, 189 Proclitic 172, 189 Order of clitics 170 Clitic clusters 170 Cluster analysis 34, 36 Coda devoicing 97-112 Coding 65-82 Constraint conjunction 97-112 Constraint re-ranking 97-112 Compensatory lengthening 4, 11 Congruency 27 Conjunctive pronouns 183-206 Consonantalization 141-154 Consonant clusters 1-2, 49-64, 141154 Contact 15-30, 163-164, 190, 201
Contrast 15-30, 84, 97-112, 113, 125 Convergence 15-30 Core value 183-206 Corpus 31-48, 65-82, 194-196 Correspondence Theory 49, 51 Crossing paths 179-180 D. Dative case 183-204 Deletion 19, 38, 49-64, 77, 97, 109, 132, 136 Dendrogram 36, 38, 40 Dialect 31-48, 72, 83-96, 97-112, 113-126, 155, 164, 167-182, 183-206 Dialect grouping 31, 32, 34 Dialectometry 34, 44 Diphthongization 141-154 Dominance 26 Double objects 167-182 Double prosody 141-154 E. Emergence of the Unmarked 49-64 Epenthesis 38-39, 49-64, 147 Epenthetic liaison 74 Exaptation 183-206 Experimental 72, 83-96 F. F2 transitions 3, 9 , 11 Faithfulness 49-64, 127-140 Frequency distribution 85 Fricatives 26, 97-112 Final nasals 155-166 Frenchville 15-30 Frequency 155-166, 194-196
208
SUBJECT INDEX
G. Geminate structure 1-14, 143, 172 GARS 72 Geographical dialectology 31-48 Gestural duration (vs. magnitude) 11 H. Heavy onsets 1 Hypocoristics 130 I. Identity (formal) 133, 198 Identity (social) 86, 94, 155-166 Index of similarity 35 Imperative 174, 176-177, 179-180 Infinitive 174 Isogloss 31, 40-41 Italian 1, 167-182, 188-190 Lucanian 168, 171-173
Merger 15-30, 201 Multivariate analysis 34 Moraic model 2 N. Naming latencies 83-96 O. Observer’s paradox 156 Occitan 186 Gascon 168, 170, 177 Opacity 127-140, 141-154 Optimality Theory 49-64, 65, 72, 127-140, 141-154 Orthography 72-74, 83-96, 116, 158 Output-to-output 49-64
L. Labial 118, 148, 155-166 Laboratory 83-96 Latin 11, 141-154, 183-206 Lenition 84-85 Liaison 65-82 Liaison (non) enchaînée 74 Linguopalatal contact 3, 11-12 Linguistic distance 31-48 Liquid deletion 83-96 Lorrain 186 Loss of mid vowels 117
P. Palatal sonorants 1-14 Peninsular Spanish 97-112 Andalusian 83-96 Aragonese 177 Phonetically-grounded constraints 100-101, 108 Phonetic transcription 65-82 Picard 186 Plural(ization) 49-64 Portuguese 1, 136, 186 PRAAT 6, 8, 21, 72-74, 116 Preservation 15-30, 134-135 Prestige 86, 125, 156, 162 Prosodic analogy 141, 144 Pupation 200
M. Maintenance 15-30, 200 Markedness 52, 55, 100, 104, 108, 129, 136 unmarkedness 183-206 Mayan 155-166
R. Rapid anonymous survey 155-166 Reaction time 89, 91 Refunctionalization 183-206 RMS 7, 8 Romanian 127-140, 184, 190
SUBJECT INDEX
S. Sardinian 167, 168, 185, 190 Schwa 15, 17-18, 65-82, 113-126 Schwa lowering 117 Similarity matrix 37, 39-40 Skeuomorphy 183-206 Sound change 199 Spirantization 97-112 Statistical analysis 37, 117-118 Stops 6, 56, 75, 97-112 Stress 11, 58, 60, 62, 67, 74, 99, 113-126, 127-140, 141-154, 167-182, 185, 189, 197 Opacity of Latin stress 141-154 Stress window 1-11 Stress, primary 127-140 Stress, secondary 130, 189 Syllabic trochee 127-140 Sympathy Theory 127-140 Syncope 141-154
T. Tucking in 179 Tuscan 186-189 V. VALIBEL 72 VARBRUL 159-160 Variationist 156 Vowel intensity 7 Velarization 83-96, 155-166 W. Walloon 186 Wave theory 113, 117-118, 125 Weak pronouns 167-182 Women's speech 125 Word-naming 87 Word frequency 91-92, 94-95 Y. Yucatan 155-166
209
CURRENT ISSUES IN LINGUISTIC THEORY
E. F. K. Koerner, Editor
Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Typologie und Universalienforschung, Berlin [email protected] Current Issues in Linguistic Theory (CILT) is a theory-oriented series which welcomes contributions from scholars who have significant proposals to make towards the advancement of our understanding of language, its structure, functioning and development. CILT has been established in order to provide a forum for the presentation and discussion of linguistic opinions of scholars who do not necessarily accept the prevailing mode of thought in linguistic science. It offers an outlet for meaningful contributions to the current linguistic debate, and furnishes the diversity of opinion which a healthy discipline must have. A complete list of titles in this series can be found on the publishers’ website, www.benjamins.com 279 Nedergaard Thomsen, Ole (ed.): Competing Models of Linguistic Change. Evolution and beyond. x, 348 pp. Expected November 2006 278 Doetjes, Jenny and Paz González (eds.): Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2004. Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’, Leiden, 9–11 December 2004. ix, 320 pp. Expected November 2006 277 Helasvuo, Marja-Liisa and Lyle Campbell (eds.): Grammar from the Human Perspective. Case, space and person in Finnish. viii, 280 pp. Expected November 2006 276 Montreuil, Jean-Pierre Y. (ed.): New Perspectives on Romance Linguistics. Vol. II: Phonetics, Phonology and Dialectology. Selected papers from the 35th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Austin, Texas, February 2005. 2006. ix, 209 pp. 275 Nishida, Chiyo and Jean-Pierre Y. Montreuil (eds.): New Perspectives on Romance Linguistics. Vol. I: Morphology, Syntax, Semantics, and Pragmatics. Selected papers from the 35th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Austin, Texas, February 2005. xiii, 282 pp. Expected August 2006 274 Gess, Randall S. and Deborah Arteaga (eds.): Historical Romance Linguistics. Retrospective and perspectives. 2006. viii, 393 pp. 273 Filppula, Markku, Juhani Klemola, Marjatta Palander and Esa Penttilä (eds.): Dialects Across Borders. Selected papers from the 11th International Conference on Methods in Dialectology (Methods XI), Joensuu, August 2002. 2005. xii, 291 pp. 272 Gess, Randall S. and Edward J. Rubin (eds.): Theoretical and Experimental Approaches to Romance Linguistics. Selected papers from the 34th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Salt Lake City, March 2004. 2005. viii, 367 pp. 271 Branner, David Prager (ed.): The Chinese Rime Tables. Linguistic philosophy and historicalcomparative phonology. 2006. viii, 358 pp. 270 Geerts, Twan, Ivo van Ginneken and Haike Jacobs (eds.): Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2003. Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’ 2003, Nijmegen, 20–22 November. 2005. viii, 369 pp. 269 Hargus, Sharon and Keren Rice (eds.): Athabaskan Prosody. 2005. xii, 432 pp. 268 Cravens, Thomas D. (ed.): Variation and Reconstruction. 2006. viii, 223 pp. 267 Alhawary, Mohammad T. and Elabbas Benmamoun (eds.): Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XVII–XVIII. Papers from the seventeenth and eighteenth annual symposia on Arabic linguistics. Volume XVII–XVIII: Alexandria, 2003 and Norman, Oklahoma 2004. 2005. xvi, 315 pp. 266 Boudelaa, Sami (ed.): Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XVI. Papers from the sixteenth annual symposium on Arabic linguistics, Cambridge, March 2002. 2006. xii, 181 pp. 265 Cornips, Leonie and Karen P. Corrigan (eds.): Syntax and Variation. Reconciling the Biological and the Social. 2005. vi, 312 pp. 264 Dressler, Wolfgang U., Dieter Kastovsky, Oskar E. Pfeiffer and Franz Rainer (eds.): Morphology and its demarcations. Selected papers from the 11th Morphology meeting, Vienna, February 2004. With the assistance of Francesco Gardani and Markus A. Pöchtrager. 2005. xiv, 320 pp. 263 Branco, António, Tony McEnery and Ruslan Mitkov (eds.): Anaphora Processing. Linguistic, cognitive and computational modelling. 2005. x, 449 pp. 262 Vajda, Edward J. (ed.): Languages and Prehistory of Central Siberia. 2004. x, 275 pp. 261 Kay, Christian J. and Jeremy J. Smith (eds.): Categorization in the History of English. 2004. viii, 268 pp. 260 Nicolov, Nicolas, Kalina Bontcheva, Galia Angelova and Ruslan Mitkov (eds.): Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing III. Selected papers from RANLP 2003. 2004. xii, 402 pp. 259 Carr, Philip, Jacques Durand and Colin J. Ewen (eds.): Headhood, Elements, Specification and Contrastivity. Phonological papers in honour of John Anderson. 2005. xxviii, 405 pp.
258 Auger, Julie, J. Clancy Clements and Barbara Vance (eds.): Contemporary Approaches to Romance Linguistics. Selected Papers from the 33rd Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Bloomington, Indiana, April 2003. With the assistance of Rachel T. Anderson. 2004. viii, 404 pp. 257 Fortescue, Michael, Eva Skafte Jensen, Jens Erik Mogensen and Lene Schøsler (eds.): Historical Linguistics 2003. Selected papers from the 16th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Copenhagen, 11–15 August 2003. 2005. x, 312 pp. 256 Bok-Bennema, Reineke, Bart Hollebrandse, Brigitte Kampers-Manhe and Petra Sleeman (eds.): Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2002. Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’, Groningen, 28–30 November 2002. 2004. viii, 273 pp. 255 Meulen, Alice ter and Werner Abraham (eds.): The Composition of Meaning. From lexeme to discourse. 2004. vi, 232 pp. 254 Baldi, Philip and Pietro U. Dini (eds.): Studies in Baltic and Indo-European Linguistics. In honor of William R. Schmalstieg. 2004. xlvi, 302 pp. 253 Caffarel, Alice, J.R. Martin and Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen (eds.): Language Typology. A functional perspective. 2004. xiv, 702 pp. 252 Kay, Christian J., Carole Hough and Irené Wotherspoon (eds.): New Perspectives on English Historical Linguistics. Selected papers from 12 ICEHL, Glasgow, 21–26 August 2002. Volume II: Lexis and Transmission. 2004. xii, 273 pp. 251 Kay, Christian J., Simon Horobin and Jeremy J. Smith (eds.): New Perspectives on English Historical Linguistics. Selected papers from 12 ICEHL, Glasgow, 21–26 August 2002. Volume I: Syntax and Morphology. 2004. x, 264 pp. 250 Jensen, John T.: Principles of Generative Phonology. An introduction. 2004. xii, 324 pp. 249 Bowern, Claire and Harold Koch (eds.): Australian Languages. Classification and the comparative method. 2004. xii, 377 pp. (incl. CD-Rom). 248 Weigand, Edda (ed.): Emotion in Dialogic Interaction. Advances in the complex. 2004. xii, 284 pp. 247 Parkinson, Dilworth B. and Samira Farwaneh (eds.): Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XV. Papers from the Fifteenth Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics, Salt Lake City 2001. 2003. x, 214 pp. 246 Holisky, Dee Ann and Kevin Tuite (eds.): Current Trends in Caucasian, East European and Inner Asian Linguistics. Papers in honor of Howard I. Aronson. 2003. xxviii, 426 pp. 245 Quer, Josep, Jan Schroten, Mauro Scorretti, Petra Sleeman and Els Verheugd (eds.): Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2001. Selected papers from 'Going Romance', Amsterdam, 6–8 December 2001. 2003. viii, 355 pp. 244 Pérez-Leroux, Ana Teresa and Yves Roberge (eds.): Romance Linguistics. Theory and Acquisition. Selected papers from the 32nd Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Toronto, April 2002. 2003. viii, 388 pp. 243 Cuyckens, Hubert, Thomas Berg, René Dirven and Klaus-Uwe Panther (eds.): Motivation in Language. Studies in honor of Günter Radden. 2003. xxvi, 403 pp. 242 Seuren, Pieter A.M. and Gerard Kempen (eds.): Verb Constructions in German and Dutch. 2003. vi, 316 pp. 241 Lecarme, Jacqueline (ed.): Research in Afroasiatic Grammar II. Selected papers from the Fifth Conference on Afroasiatic Languages, Paris, 2000. 2003. viii, 550 pp. 240 Janse, Mark and Sijmen Tol (eds.): Language Death and Language Maintenance. Theoretical, practical and descriptive approaches. With the assistance of Vincent Hendriks. 2003. xviii, 244 pp. 239 Andersen, Henning (ed.): Language Contacts in Prehistory. Studies in Stratigraphy. Papers from the Workshop on Linguistic Stratigraphy and Prehistory at the Fifteenth International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Melbourne, 17 August 2001. 2003. viii, 292 pp. 238 Núñez-Cedeño, Rafael, Luis López and Richard Cameron (eds.): A Romance Perspective on Language Knowledge and Use. Selected papers from the 31st Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Chicago, 19–22 April 2001. 2003. xvi, 386 pp. 237 Blake, Barry J. and Kate Burridge (eds.): Historical Linguistics 2001. Selected papers from the 15th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Melbourne, 13–17 August 2001. Editorial Assistant: Jo Taylor. 2003. x, 444 pp. 236 Simon-Vandenbergen, Anne-Marie, Miriam Taverniers and Louise J. Ravelli (eds.): Grammatical Metaphor. Views from systemic functional linguistics. 2003. vi, 453 pp. 235 Linn, Andrew R. and Nicola McLelland (eds.): Standardization. Studies from the Germanic languages. 2002. xii, 258 pp. 234 Weijer, Jeroen van de, Vincent J. van Heuven and Harry van der Hulst (eds.): The Phonological Spectrum. Volume II: Suprasegmental structure. 2003. x, 264 pp.
233 Weijer, Jeroen van de, Vincent J. van Heuven and Harry van der Hulst (eds.): The Phonological Spectrum. Volume I: Segmental structure. 2003. x, 308 pp. 232 Beyssade, Claire, Reineke Bok-Bennema, Frank Drijkoningen and Paola Monachesi (eds.): Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2000. Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’ 2000, Utrecht, 30 November–2 December. 2002. viii, 354 pp. 231 Cravens, Thomas D.: Comparative Historical Dialectology. Italo-Romance clues to Ibero-Romance sound change. 2002. xii, 163 pp. 230 Parkinson, Dilworth B. and Elabbas Benmamoun (eds.): Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics. Papers from the Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics. Volume XIII-XIV: Stanford, 1999 and Berkeley, California 2000. 2002. xiv, 250 pp. 229 Nevin, Bruce E. and Stephen B. Johnson (eds.): The Legacy of Zellig Harris. Language and information into the 21st century. Volume 2: Mathematics and computability of language. 2002. xx, 312 pp. 228 Nevin, Bruce E. (ed.): The Legacy of Zellig Harris. Language and information into the 21st century. Volume 1: Philosophy of science, syntax and semantics. 2002. xxxvi, 323 pp. 227 Fava, Elisabetta (ed.): Clinical Linguistics. Theory and applications in speech pathology and therapy. 2002. xxiv, 353 pp. 226 Levin, Saul: Semitic and Indo-European. Volume II: Comparative morphology, syntax and phonetics. 2002. xviii, 592 pp. 225 Shahin, Kimary N.: Postvelar Harmony. 2003. viii, 344 pp. 224 Fanego, Teresa, Belén Méndez-Naya and Elena Seoane (eds.): Sounds, Words, Texts and Change. Selected papers from 11 ICEHL, Santiago de Compostela, 7–11 September 2000. Volume 2. 2002. x, 310 pp. 223 Fanego, Teresa, Javier Pérez-Guerra and María José López-Couso (eds.): English Historical Syntax and Morphology. Selected papers from 11 ICEHL, Santiago de Compostela, 7–11 September 2000. Volume 1. 2002. x, 306 pp. 222 Herschensohn, Julia, Enrique Mallén and Karen Zagona (eds.): Features and Interfaces in Romance. Essays in honor of Heles Contreras. 2001. xiv, 302 pp. 221 D’hulst, Yves, Johan Rooryck and Jan Schroten (eds.): Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 1999. Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’ 1999, Leiden, 9–11 December 1999. 2001. viii, 406 pp. 220 Satterfield, Teresa, Christina M. Tortora and Diana Cresti (eds.): Current Issues in Romance Languages. Selected papers from the 29th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Ann Arbor, 8–11 April 1999. 2002. viii, 412 pp. 219 Andersen, Henning (ed.): Actualization. Linguistic Change in Progress. Papers from a workshop held at the 14th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Vancouver, B.C., 14 August 1999. 2001. vii, 250 pp. 218 Bendjaballah, Sabrina, Wolfgang U. Dressler, Oskar E. Pfeiffer and Maria D. Voeikova (eds.): Morphology 2000. Selected papers from the 9th Morphology Meeting, Vienna, 24–28 February 2000. 2002. viii, 317 pp. 217 Wiltshire, Caroline R. and Joaquim Camps (eds.): Romance Phonology and Variation. Selected papers from the 30th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages, Gainesville, Florida, February 2000. 2002. xii, 238 pp. 216 Camps, Joaquim and Caroline R. Wiltshire (eds.): Romance Syntax, Semantics and L2 Acquisition. Selected papers from the 30th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages, Gainesville, Florida, February 2000. 2001. xii, 246 pp. 215 Brinton, Laurel J. (ed.): Historical Linguistics 1999. Selected papers from the 14th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Vancouver, 9–13 August 1999. 2001. xii, 398 pp. 214 Weigand, Edda and Marcelo Dascal (eds.): Negotiation and Power in Dialogic Interaction. 2001. viii, 303 pp. 213 Sornicola, Rosanna, Erich Poppe and Ariel Shisha-Halevy (eds.): Stability, Variation and Change of Word-Order Patterns over Time. With the assistance of Paola Como. 2000. xxxii, 323 pp. 212 Repetti, Lori (ed.): Phonological Theory and the Dialects of Italy. 2000. x, 301 pp. 211 Elšík, Viktor and Yaron Matras (eds.): Grammatical Relations in Romani. The Noun Phrase. with a Foreword by Frans Plank (Universität Konstanz). 2000. x, 244 pp. 210 Dworkin, Steven N. and Dieter Wanner (eds.): New Approaches to Old Problems. Issues in Romance historical linguistics. 2000. xiv, 235 pp. 209 King, Ruth: The Lexical Basis of Grammatical Borrowing. A Prince Edward Island French case study. 2000. xvi, 241 pp. 208 Robinson, Orrin W.: Whose German? The ach/ich alternation and related phenomena in ‘standard’ and ‘colloquial’. 2001. xii, 178 pp.
207 Sanz, Montserrat: Events and Predication. A new approach to syntactic processing in English and Spanish. 2000. xiv, 219 pp. 206 Fawcett, Robin P.: A Theory of Syntax for Systemic Functional Linguistics. 2000. xxiv, 360 pp. 205 Dirven, René, Roslyn M. Frank and Cornelia Ilie (eds.): Language and Ideology. Volume 2: descriptive cognitive approaches. 2001. vi, 264 pp. 204 Dirven, René, Bruce Hawkins and Esra Sandikcioglu (eds.): Language and Ideology. Volume 1: theoretical cognitive approaches. 2001. vi, 301 pp. 203 Norrick, Neal R.: Conversational Narrative. Storytelling in everyday talk. 2000. xiv, 233 pp. 202 Lecarme, Jacqueline, Jean Lowenstamm and Ur Shlonsky (eds.): Research in Afroasiatic Grammar. Papers from the Third conference on Afroasiatic Languages, Sophia Antipolis, 1996. 2000. vi, 386 pp. 201 Dressler, Wolfgang U., Oskar E. Pfeiffer, Markus A. Pöchtrager and John R. Rennison (eds.): Morphological Analysis in Comparison. 2000. x, 261 pp. 200 Anttila, Raimo: Greek and Indo-European Etymology in Action. Proto-Indo-European *aǵ-. 2000. xii, 314 pp. 199 Pütz, Martin and Marjolijn H. Verspoor (eds.): Explorations in Linguistic Relativity. 2000. xvi, 369 pp. 198 Niemeier, Susanne and René Dirven (eds.): Evidence for Linguistic Relativity. 2000. xxii, 240 pp. 197 Coopmans, Peter, Martin Everaert and Jane Grimshaw (eds.): Lexical Specification and Insertion. 2000. xviii, 476 pp. 196 Hannahs, S.J. and Mike Davenport (eds.): Issues in Phonological Structure. Papers from an International Workshop. 1999. xii, 268 pp. 195 Herring, Susan C., Pieter van Reenen and Lene Schøsler (eds.): Textual Parameters in Older Languages. 2001. x, 448 pp. 194 Coleman, Julie and Christian J. Kay (eds.): Lexicology, Semantics and Lexicography. Selected papers from the Fourth G. L. Brook Symposium, Manchester, August 1998. 2000. xiv, 257 pp. 193 Klausenburger, Jurgen: Grammaticalization. Studies in Latin and Romance morphosyntax. 2000. xiv, 184 pp. 192 Alexandrova, Galina M. and Olga Arnaudova (eds.): The Minimalist Parameter. Selected papers from the Open Linguistics Forum, Ottawa, 21–23 March 1997. 2001. x, 360 pp. 191 Sihler, Andrew L.: Language History. An introduction. 2000. xvi, 298 pp. 190 Benmamoun, Elabbas (ed.): Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics. Papers from the Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics. Volume XII: Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, 1998. 1999. viii, 204 pp. 189 Nicolov, Nicolas and Ruslan Mitkov (eds.): Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing II. Selected papers from RANLP ’97. 2000. xi, 422 pp. 188 Simmons, Richard VanNess: Chinese Dialect Classification. A comparative approach to Harngjou, Old Jintarn, and Common Northern Wu. 1999. xviii, 317 pp. 187 Franco, Jon, Alazne Landa and Juan Martín (eds.): Grammatical Analyses in Basque and Romance Linguistics. Papers in honor of Mario Saltarelli. 1999. viii, 306 pp. 186 Mišeska Tomić, Olga and Milorad Radovanović (eds.): History and Perspectives of Language Study. Papers in honor of Ranko Bugarski. 2000. xxii, 314 pp. 185 Authier, Jean-Marc, Barbara E. Bullock and Lisa A. Reed (eds.): Formal Perspectives on Romance Linguistics. Selected papers from the 28th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL XXVIII), University Park, 16–19 April 1998. 1999. xii, 334 pp. 184 Sagart, Laurent: The Roots of Old Chinese. 1999. xii, 272 pp. 183 Contini-Morava, Ellen and Yishai Tobin (eds.): Between Grammar and Lexicon. 2000. xxxii, 365 pp. 182 Kenesei, István (ed.): Crossing Boundaries. Advances in the theory of Central and Eastern European languages. 1999. viii, 302 pp. 181 Mohammad, Mohammad A.: Word Order, Agreement and Pronominalization in Standard and Palestinian Arabic. 2000. xvi, 197 pp. 180 Mereu, Lunella (ed.): Boundaries of Morphology and Syntax. 1999. viii, 314 pp. 179 Rini, Joel: Exploring the Role of Morphology in the Evolution of Spanish. 1999. xvi, 187 pp. 178 Foolen, Ad and Frederike van der Leek (eds.): Constructions in Cognitive Linguistics. Selected papers from the Fifth International Cognitive Linguistics Conference, Amsterdam, 1997. 2000. xvi, 338 pp. 177 Cuyckens, Hubert and Britta E. Zawada (eds.): Polysemy in Cognitive Linguistics. Selected papers from the International Cognitive Linguistics Conference, Amsterdam, 1997. 2001. xxviii, 296 pp.
176 Van Hoek, Karen, Andrej A. Kibrik and Leo Noordman (eds.): Discourse Studies in Cognitive Linguistics. Selected papers from the 5th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference, Amsterdam, July 1997. 1999. vi, 187 pp. 175 Gibbs, Jr., Raymond W. and Gerard J. Steen (eds.): Metaphor in Cognitive Linguistics. Selected papers from the 5th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference, Amsterdam, 1997. 1999. viii, 226 pp. 174 Hall, T. Alan and Ursula Kleinhenz (eds.): Studies on the Phonological Word. 1999. viii, 298 pp. 173 Treviño, Esthela and José Lema (eds.): Semantic Issues in Romance Syntax. 1999. viii, 309 pp. 172 Dimitrova-Vulchanova, Mila and Lars Hellan (eds.): Topics in South Slavic Syntax and Semantics. 1999. xxviii, 263 pp. 171 Weigand, Edda (ed.): Contrastive Lexical Semantics. 1998. x, 270 pp. 170 Lamb, Sydney M.: Pathways of the Brain. The neurocognitive basis of language. 1999. xii, 418 pp. 169 Ghadessy, Mohsen (ed.): Text and Context in Functional Linguistics. 1999. xviii, 340 pp. 168 Ratcliffe, Robert R.: The “Broken” Plural Problem in Arabic and Comparative Semitic. Allomorphy and analogy in non-concatenative morphology. 1998. xii, 261 pp. 167 Benmamoun, Elabbas, Mushira Eid and Niloofar Haeri (eds.): Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics. Papers from the Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics. Volume XI: Atlanta, Georgia, 1997. 1998. viii, 231 pp. 166 Lemmens, Maarten: Lexical Perspectives on Transitivity and Ergativity. Causative constructions in English. 1998. xii, 268 pp. 165 Bubeník, Vít: A Historical Syntax of Late Middle Indo-Aryan (Apabhraṃśa). 1998. xxiv, 265 pp. 164 Schmid, Monika S., Jennifer R. Austin and Dieter Stein (eds.): Historical Linguistics 1997. Selected papers from the 13th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Düsseldorf, 10–17 August 1997. 1998. x, 409 pp. 163 Lockwood, David G., Peter H. Fries and James E. Copeland (eds.): Functional Approaches to Language, Culture and Cognition. Papers in honor of Sydney M. Lamb. 2000. xxxiv, 656 pp. 162 Hogg, Richard M. and Linda van Bergen (eds.): Historical Linguistics 1995. Volume 2: Germanic linguistics.. Selected papers from the 12th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Manchester, August 1995. 1998. x, 365 pp. 161 Smith, John Charles and Delia Bentley (eds.): Historical Linguistics 1995. Volume 1: General issues and non-Germanic Languages.. Selected papers from the 12th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Manchester, August 1995. 2000. xii, 438 pp. 160 Schwegler, Armin, Bernard Tranel and Myriam Uribe-Etxebarria (eds.): Romance Linguistics: Theoretical Perspectives. Selected papers from the 27th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL XXVII), Irvine, 20–22 February, 1997. 1998. vi, 349 pp. + index. 159 Joseph, Brian D., Geoffrey C. Horrocks and Irene Philippaki-Warburton (eds.): Themes in Greek Linguistics II. 1998. x, 335 pp. 158 Sánchez-Macarro, Antonia and Ronald Carter (eds.): Linguistic Choice across Genres. Variation in spoken and written English. 1998. viii, 338 pp. 157 Lema, José and Esthela Treviño (eds.): Theoretical Analyses on Romance Languages. Selected papers from the 26th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL XXVI), Mexico City, 28–30 March, 1996. 1998. viii, 380 pp. 156 Matras, Yaron, Peter Bakker and Hristo Kyuchukov (eds.): The Typology and Dialectology of Romani. 1997. xxxii, 223 pp. 155 Forget, Danielle, Paul Hirschbühler, France Martineau and María Luisa Rivero (eds.): Negation and Polarity. Syntax and semantics. Selected papers from the colloquium Negation: Syntax and Semantics. Ottawa, 11–13 May 1995. 1997. viii, 367 pp. 154 Simon-Vandenbergen, Anne-Marie, Kristin Davidse and Dirk Noël (eds.): Reconnecting Language. Morphology and Syntax in Functional Perspectives. 1997. xiii, 339 pp. 153 Eid, Mushira and Robert R. Ratcliffe (eds.): Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics. Papers from the Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics. Volume X: Salt Lake City, 1996. 1997. vii, 296 pp. 152 Hiraga, Masako K., Christopher Sinha and Sherman Wilcox (eds.): Cultural, Psychological and Typological Issues in Cognitive Linguistics. Selected papers of the bi-annual ICLA meeting in Albuquerque, July 1995. 1999. viii, 338 pp. 151 Liebert, Wolf-Andreas, Gisela Redeker and Linda Waugh (eds.): Discourse and Perspective in Cognitive Linguistics. 1997. xiv, 270 pp. 150 Verspoor, Marjolijn H., Kee Dong Lee and Eve Sweetser (eds.): Lexical and Syntactical Constructions and the Construction of Meaning. Proceedings of the Bi-annual ICLA meeting in Albuquerque, July 1995. 1997. xii, 454 pp. 149 Hall, T. Alan: The Phonology of Coronals. 1997. x, 176 pp.