Phonological Processes in Ekegusii Borrowing: A Constraint-based Approach

Phonological processes are at the heart of linguistic borrowing as it has varied phonological systems. It could be seen that the loan words entering the loan language from the source language can hardly be separated from the phonological process because they must be modified to suit the phonology of the loan language. This article analysed the phonological processes realized in Ekegusii borrowing from English using Optimality Theory’s constraint approach. Since this was a phonological study, descriptive linguistic fieldwork was used. The data used in this article was extracted from Mose’s doctoral study, whereby purposive sampling was used to obtain two hundred borrowed segments from the Ekegusii dictionary, then supplemented by introspection. Further, three adult native proficient Ekegusii speakers who were neither too young nor too old and had all their teeth were purposively sampled. The two hundred tokens were then subjected to the sampled speakers through interviews to realize the sound patterns in the Ekegusii borrowing process overtly. The findings revealed that Ekegusii phonological constraints defined the well-formedness of the loanwords by repairing the illicit structures. To fix, various phonological processes were realized. They included: epenthesis, deletion, devoicing/strengthening, voicing/ weakening, re-syllabification, substitution, monophthongization, and lenition. The article concludes that borrowing across languages (related or unrelated) reports similar if not the same phonological processes only that the processes attested in one language are a subset of the universally exhibited phonological processes.

The role of phonology in Vata adjectival agreement

In realizational theories of morphology, different opinions exist on the relationship between phonology and Vocabulary Insertion. On the one hand, there are separational theories like Distributed Morphology (Halle & Marantz 1993), which assume that Vocabulary Insertion does not interact with the phonological component of the grammar. These theories predict that the properties of a language's regular phonology never play a role when vocabulary items (VIs) are inserted. The opposite view is held by integrational theories as, for instance, proposed in Wolf (2008). These theories assume that the general phonology of a language can influence Vocabulary Insertion. Based on adjectival agreement in the language Vata, I propose an integrational model that assumes that Vocabulary Insertion applies in an Optimality-Theoretic (Prince & Smolensky 1993) phonology, where regular phonological constraints are active. I propose that the phonology consists of two levels: one level where VIs are inserted and one level for regular phonology.

Phonological evidence for morpho-syntactic structure in Athapaskan

Athapaskan verbal morphology appears to violate the Mirror Principle in multiple ways and, thus, the ordering of affixes in these languages has resisted a straightforward analysis. We adopt a new morphological tool of Iterative Root Prefixation, which allows for a more direct mapping from syntax to morphology in languages of this profile. Apparent violations of affix ordering that remain, namely the puzzling placement of the transitive and causative morphemes, are argued to be explained by overriding phonological constraints.

Harmonic Uniformity and Hungarian front/back harmony

In the paper we argue against the traditional assumption about the relationship between morphology and harmony in Hungarian according to which monomorphemic and polymorphemic (suffixed) forms behave in the same way harmonically within the domain of harmony. We show that the harmonic properties of the root are inherited by morphologically complex forms based on the root and this can override the phonological restrictions on harmony. We propose an Optimality Theory analysis of the interaction between the phonological constraints on harmony and the paradigm uniformity constraint Harmonic Uniformity.

Sanskritization in Pāli

This article continues the discussion on the nature of the early language of Buddhism and the language that the Buddha spoke, arguing that the received Pāli transmission evolved out of an earlier Middle Indic idiom, which is identified as a koine. Evidence for this koine can be found by examining correspondence sets within Pāli and its various varieties and by examining parallel, cognate correspondence sets between Pāli and other Prakrits which have survived. This article compares 30 correspondence sets transmitted in the Dhammapada recensions: the Gāndhārī Prakrit verses, the partially Sanskritized Pāli and Patna Dhammapada Prakrit verses, and the fully Sanskritized verses of the Udānavarga. By comparing cognate words, it demonstrates the existence of an underlying inter-language which in many cases can be shown to be the source of the phonological differences in the transmission. The paper includes a discussion on the two major factors of dialect change, evolution with variation over time, and the diffusionary, synchronic influence of dialect variation; it concludes that both are important, with dialect variation – and the phonological constraints of indigenous speakers who adopted MI as a second language – providing the pathways on which the natural evolutionary process was channeled.

Revisiting the Acquisition of Onset Complexity: Affrication in Québec French

I investigate the acquisition of affrication in Québec French (QF), where affricates are in complementary distribution with coronal stops, being realized before high front vowels and glides. Previous research on other languages shows that affricates are acquired before branching onsets, which supports the idea that complexity at the level of the segment is acquired before complexity at the level of the syllable (Lleó & Prinz, 1997). In contrast, I hypothesize that affricates are acquired after branching onsets in QF, as learners are required to understand the constraints on their distribution. I examine longitudinal data from two QF-speaking children for whom the acquisition of branching onsets has been previously analyzed (Rose, 2000). Results show that affricates are indeed acquired after branching onsets, consistent with the hypothesis. Overapplication errors indicate that children make generalizations about the phonological constraints on affrication from an early age, which is expected for the acquisition of rules.

Binarity in Prosodic Morphology and Elsewhere

This paper explores the role of binarity in prosodic morphology by proposing that all representations are maximally binary branching, as stated in (1).(1) Binarity Hypothesis: All representations are maximally binary branching.Our evidence comes from examining patterns in which fission (Integrity violations) and fusion (Uniformity violations) of segments satisfies morphological and phonological constraints: multiple reduplication, haplology, coalescence, and breaking. Where there appears to be 1:3 or a 3:1 mapping between input and output segments, we propose that this must arise from two separate 1:2 or 2:1 mappings (perhaps at a stem and word level). We illustrate that a number of seemingly complex patterns of multiple reduplication in Salish, Wakashan and Uto-Aztecan languages follow naturally from the Binarity Hypothesis.

A Parallel Approach to Mobile Affixation in Huave

Huave exhibits "mobile affixation", whereby the placement of individual affixes varies depending on the phonological properties of affix and stem. Kim (2008, 2010) analyzed these facts within a cyclic cophonology approach through the interaction between alignment constraints (McCarthy & Prince, 1993) and the phonological constraints *CC and DEP. Using the same core components, this paper develops an alternative, fully parallel analysis.In this approach, morphemes are unordered in the phonological input, every morpheme is indexed to its own (crucially gradient) alignment constraint, and output ordering is determined entirely through simultaneous constraint interaction. Notably, this analysis captures a previously unnoticed generalization about the stability of left/right order between affixes in the language.The main contribution of this new analysis is that it provides a principled distinction between mobile and immobile affixes: the order of affixes, as determined by the relative ranking of their alignment constraints, correlates with their ability to trigger epenthesis, as determined by their ranking relative to DEP. This follows from a parallel approach with a single language-wide ranking, but not from a cyclic cophonology account. Furthermore, this distinction can be tied directly to morphosyntactic structure via Zukoff's (2020) "Mirror Alignment Principle" and considerations of Base-Derivative faithfulness (Benua, 1997).

Revisiting the Acquisition of Onset Complexity: Affrication in Québec French

I investigate the acquisition of affrication in Québec French (QF), where affricates are in complementary distribution with coronal stops, being realized before high front vowels and glides. Previous research on other languages shows that affricates are acquired before branching onsets, which supports the idea that complexity at the level of the segment is acquired before complexity at the level of the syllable (Lleó & Prinz, 1997). In contrast, I hypothesize that affricates are acquired after branching onsets in QF, as learners are required to understand the constraints on their distribution. I examine longitudinal data from two QF-speaking children for whom the acquisition of branching onsets has been previously analyzed (Rose, 2000). Results show that affricates are indeed acquired after branching onsets, consistent with the hypothesis. Overapplication errors indicate that children make generalizations about the phonological constraints on affrication from an early age, which is expected for the acquisition of rules.

Deriving Arabic verbal "templates" without templates

Much of the recent OT-based literature on Arabic root-and-pattern morphology has identified prosodic constraints as a main driver of the language’s verbal "templates". I argue instead that the system is governed by non-prosodic (morpho)phonological constraints (in the spirit of McCarthy 1993). Following much recent work, this approach views Arabic’s root-and-pattern system as garden-variety morpheme concatenation that is subject to unusual complications in the phonology and/or at the (morpho)syntax-phonology interface. This paper outlines an integrated analysis of the morphophonological properties of the Arabic verbal system without CV templates or prosodic constraints.