Against phonologically-optimizing suppletive allomorphy (POSA) in Irish, Tiene, Katu, and Konni

Suppletive allomorphs may be conditioned based on their phonological environment. When the allomorphy distribution is phonologically natural, this has motivated theoretical models supporting phonologically-optimizing suppletive allomorphy (POSA), whereby the phonological grammar selects the suppletive allomorph whose output is least marked. This paper re-examines four cases argued to support POSA in Irish, Tiene, Katu, and Konni, and for each provides counter-arguments against this position. In contrast to POSA, I assert that the most straightforward analysis is to formalize the conditioning phonological environment via subcategorization frames, and that the burden of proof falls on proponents of POSA to show otherwise. Subcategorization correctly predicts that subcategorized phonological material is the only phonological material which suppletion can be sensitive to. [An appendix is provided which argues against POSA in another language, Udihe, and instead posits a single underlying form with gradient representations.]

Inheritance, contact, convergence

This article provides a comparative analysis of the suppletive allomorphy of two personal pronouns in the five African English-lexifier Creoles (AECs) Krio (Sierra Leone), Pichi (Equatorial Guinea), Ghanaian Pidgin English, Nigerian Pidgin, and Cameroon Pidgin. The alternation of the 3sg object forms =àm (a clitic) and ín (a non-clitic) is conditioned by a tonal obligatory contour principle (ocp), a vowel height ocp, animacy, and focus in different constellations across the five AECs. In addition, an epenthetic /r/ is recruited in four of the AECs to ensure that the ocp is not breached. The analyses suggest that pronominal suppletion in the AECs has been fashioned by processes of change and differentiation typical of geographically extensive language families, such as migration from linguistic homelands, acquisition by non-founder populations, interlectal cross-diffusion, as well as contact and convergence with adstrate, substrate, and superstrate languages.

In defence of underlying representations: Latin rhotacism, French liaison, Romanian palatalization

The surface realization of a linguistic expression can often be predicted from the form of paradigmatically related items that are not contained within it: in Latin, the nominative singular of a noun can often be inferred from the genitive; in French, the final consonant of a prenominal masculine adjective in liaison can typically be predicted from the feminine; in Romanian, the plural form of a noun determines whether its stem will exhibit palatalization before the derivational suffix /-ist/. Such instances of phonological paradigmatic dependence without containment have been claimed to challenge cyclic models of the morphosyntax-phonology interface. In this article, however, they are shown to be established indirectly through the acquisition of underlying representations. This approach correctly predicts that phonological paradigmatic dependencies are never systematically extended to new items if they involve suppletive allomorphy rather than regular alternation, whilst those surface phonological properties of derivatives that are under strict phonotactic control evade paradigmatic dependence on the inflectional forms of their bases. Theories relying on surface-to-surface computation fail to recover these empirical predictions because they are inherently nonmodular, positing generalizations that promiscuously mix phonological, morphosyntactic, and lexical information. Underlying representations, therefore, remain indispensable as a means of establishing a necessary modular demarcation between regular phonology and suppletive allomorphy.

Quantified exponence constraints and the typology of exponence

Both phonologically conditioned suppletive allomorphy (PCSA) and multiple exponence (ME) involve one-to-many mapping between morphosyntactic information and phonological representations. Though they are usually viewed as separate phenomena, the plural marking of Lower Jubba Maay exhibits properties of both PCSA and ME, indicating that they are inherently related. This paper argues that PCSA, ME, and other types of exponence can be analyzed in a unified way given two GEN functions and two novel exponence constraints, i.e. Max-∀LE(F) and Max-∃LE(F), which are used to quantify the number of exponents that are realized in the surface. The proposed mechanism can predict the full range of typology.

Allomorph Selection in Vedic Sanskrit Perfects of the Forms CieːCiCj

A pattern of radical allomorphy in a category of reduplicated formations in Vedic Sanskrit is argued to occur predictably on the basis of poorly-cued repetition effects combined with bigram phonotactics. This pattern of allomorphy is further argued to be a kind of phonologically conditioned suppletive allomorphy, in which markedness constraints adjudicate the selection of competing URs, rather than a case of typical phonologically driven allomorphy.

Phonology

This chapter gives a brief overview of current approaches within the generative tradition to modelling the morphology–phonology interface, with particular attention to the interaction of phonology with inflectional morphology. Critical questions include whether morphological and phonological derivations are interleaved, as in cyclic or stratal models, whether the phonological grammar can reference relations among output forms within the same paradigm, and whether the notion of inflectional paradigm has any status as such in phonological theory. A key issue is the extent to which patterns of morphological exponence can be sensitive to the phonological well-formedness of the eventual output form, as when allomorph selection is viewed as (phonological) output optimization. Empirical topics surveyed include construction-specific phonology, cyclicity effects, paradigm levelling, paradigm anti-homophony effects, phonologically motivated paradigm gaps, and phonologically conditioned suppletive allomorphy.

Suppletive (?) tonal alternations in Munken

The Munken dialect of Mungbam (ISO mij; Benue-Congo, Cameroon) employs tone lexically and gramatically, contrasting four level tones as well as contours. Noun stems undergo tonal alternations conditioned by the tone of a following possessive pronoun. For some of these alternations it is not obvious that they represent a phonetically natural allophonic process. Furthermore, similar alternations are not observed outside of the possessive construction. If the alternation is suppletive, then Munken would represent a case of phonologically conditioned suppletive allomorphy (PCSA). Tonally conditioned PCSA is only rarely reported, and until now not for any African language.

Explaining phonological conditions on affixation: Evidence from suppletive allomorphy and affix ordering

This paper examines two domains in which phonology may exert an influence on morphology: suppletive allomorph selection and affix ordering. Cross-linguistic facts about both phenomena are examined and ultimately argued to provide evidence for a phonology-morphology interface in which morphology precedes phonology at each level of the grammar in a cyclic-type approach, and phonological conditions on affixation occur when an affix subcategorizes for a particular phonological unit. This is contrasted with an Optimality Theoretic (OT) approach to the phonology-morphology interface in which phonological effects in morphology are modeled by ranking phonological constraints over morphological ones (i.e. ‘P ≫ M’) within a single component of the grammar. It is argued that the former approach makes better predictions for the two phenomena in question as well as for other areas previously discussed in the literature (e.g. infix placement) and that phonological and morphological constraints should not be interranked in an OT grammar.