Part IV Interfaces www IELTS4U blogfa com This page intentionally left blank www IELTS4U blogfa com 7 The interface between morphology and phonology 7 1 Morphology and phonology 153 7 2 Interface prin[.]
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Interfaces
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Trang 3The interface between
morphology and phonology
7.1 Morphology and
7.2 Interface principles 156
7.3 Allomorphy and affix
7.4 Cyclicity and
7.5 The morphological use
Further reading 183
7.1 Morphology and phonology
The English adjective seléctive can be suffixed with either -ity or -ness, resulting in selectívity and seléctiveness respectively The acute accents on
these words indicate the location of main stress As you can see, the
attach-ment of the suffix -ity has the effect that the location of the main word stress shifts rightwards, to the last syllable of the stem selective, whereas the attachment of the suffix -ness does not affect the location of the main stress
on the stem This suggests that morphological structure may play a role in determining the phonological form of a complex word In this chapter we will zoom in on the issue how morphological structure plays a role in com-puting the phonological form of a word Inversely, phonological properties
of words may also play a role in selecting an affix with which it can
com-bine The English suffix -al, for example, can only be attached to verbs that end in a stressed syllable (arríve– arrival, recíte–recital, chátter–*chatter-al ).
These kinds of interaction between morphology and phonology show that there must be an interface between the morphological and the phonological
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Trang 4properties of words ‘Interface’ means that different kinds of information about linguistic constructs (in these examples words) can ‘see’ each other
In order to provide some more substance to the notion ‘interface’ in the domain of morphology, we will first consider what kinds of information on words the grammar needs to provide A word is a complex piece of informa-tion It links a particular sequence of sounds to a particular meaning, and also has formal properties such as a syntactic category label The
informa-tion contained in the English simplex word dog, for instance, can be
repre-sented as in Figure 7.1 The first piece of information in Figure 7.1 concerns
the phonological properties of this word: it is a phonological word (ω) that
consists of one syllable (σ) that in its turn consists of a sequence of three sounds This phonological word bears the same index as the syntactic information about this word (that it is a noun), and the semantic informa-tion that it expresses the predicate DOG Coindexainforma-tion is used here to specify the correspondence between the three kinds of information involved
in knowing a word We thus see that a word has a tripartite parallel
structure.
Let us now look at a complex word such as the English word baker, a noun derived from the verb bake through suffixation with -er The three
kinds of information (the phonological form, the morphological structure, and the meaning) concerning this word can be represented as in Figure 7.2
The phonological structure of baker is that of a phonological word
consist-ing of two syllables, (be:)σ and (kər)σ, and of five phonological segments Its
Fig 7.1 The representation of dog
Fig 7.2 The representation of baker
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Trang 5formal structure is that of a deverbal noun, as indicated by the tree that represents its formal morphological structure
The representation in Figure 7.2 may be generalized into a template for
nouns derived from verbs by means of the suffix -er This is achieved by
omitting the word-specific information This morphological template thus specifies that there is the following systematic relation between the three kinds of linguistic information involved (Figure 7.3) In Figure 7.3 the level
of the syllables has been omitted because the number of syllables of words
ending in -er is not fixed, but depends on the phonological make-up of the
base verb The syllabification of English words is predictable, and need not
be specified in morphological templates Hence it is a computable,
predict-able property of each individual deverbal noun in -er Instead of the
spe-cific predicate BAKE, the general label V is used to refer to the semantic properties of the base verb
The tripartite structure in Figure 7.3, an instance of a word-formation template, is meant to make clear that morphology is not a module of grammar on a par with the phonological or the syntactic module, which are modules that deal with one aspect of linguistic structure only Morphology
is word grammar, and similar to sentence grammar in its dealing with the relationships between three kinds of information It is only with respect to the domain of linguistic entities that morphology is different from sentence grammar: morphology has the word domain as its primary focus
This short introduction to the idea of tripartite parallel structure paves the way for grasping the notion ‘interface’ This notion refers to the ways in which properties of one kind of structure relate to those of another struc-ture An example of a relation between phonological and morphological
form is that the suffix -er is one of the so-called cohering suffixes of English.
This means that this suffix forms one domain of syllabification with the
stem to which it has been attached The word baker is syllabified in the same way as the word father in which the sequence -er is not a suffix The sound sequence -er forms one syllable with the preceding consonant in both words: ba.ker, fa.ther (remember that dots indicate syllable boundaries).
Fig 7.3 The template for deverbal -er
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Trang 6Thus, the morphological boundary between bak- and -er in baker is not
respected in phonology, in the sense that it does not coincide with a syllable boundary
There are also affixes that do influence the way that a complex word is
syllabified The English suffix -less, for example, is a non-cohering suffix.
This means that this suffix forms is own domain of syllabification The
adjective help-less, for instance, is syllabified as help.less, with a syllable
boundary coinciding with the internal morphological boundary Compare
the syllabification of this adjective to the syllabification of the word staples, which is sta.ples, with a syllable boundary before the consonant cluster /pl/.
The distinction between cohering affixes and non-cohering ones is therefore
a theoretical distinction that we need for a proper account of the interface between morphology and phonology
These introductory remarks should give you some idea of what is meant
by ‘interface’ In this and the next two chapters, these interface issues are dealt with in more detail
7.2 Interface principles
An important task of the phonological module of a grammar is computing the phonetic form of complex words Consider the examples in (1) of plural noun formation in Dutch The plural nouns are formed by adding the suffix
-en /ən/ to the stem of the noun; the singular form has no overt phonological
marking The basic procedure for computing the phonetic forms of these plural nouns consists of three steps The first step is attaching the string of segments of the plural suffix to the stem This is a morphological operation The next two steps are phonological operations Step 2 is the computation
of the prosodic structure of a word, in particular the way in which a word is syllabified In step 3, we scan the singular and plural forms as to the applic-ability of phonological rules or constraints A well-known phonological
(1) Phonetic form Phonetic form
hoed “hat” [hut] hoed-en [hudən] voet “foot” [vut] voet-en [vutən] poes “cat” [pus] poez-en [puzən] spies “spear” [spis] spies-en [spisən]
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Trang 7constraint of Dutch and German is that obstruents (stops and fricatives) are voiceless at the end of a syllable Therefore, the final obstruents in the
singular forms of these nouns must be voiceless In the plural nouns hoeden and poezen, on the other hand, the stem-final voiced obstruents appear at
the beginning of the second syllable, and hence they are not subject to devoicing The three steps are illustrated here for the singular and plural
forms of the word hoed “hat” (σ = syllable):
(2) step 1: morphology hud hud-ən
step 2: syllabification (hud) σ (hu) σ (dən) σ
step 3: syllable-final devoicing (hut)σ not applicable
In step 1 we make use of the underlying form of the word hoed, the abstract
phonological form from which the different surface forms of this word can
be derived At the end of the derivation we have computed the phonetic form of a word We thus see that Dutch noun stems may exhibit allomorphy, variation in their phonological shape The lexical morpheme /hud/ has two different shapes, [hut] and [hud] This variation is governed
by a phonological constraint of Dutch, and hence this allomorphy is the predictable effect of the phonological system of Dutch
The plural form hoeden [hudən] “hats” also serves to illustrate a general
point concerning the interface between phonology and morphology: the potential asymmetry between morphological and phonological structure
The word hoeden consists of five segments that are structured in two ways,
as shown in Figure 7.4 The representation of phonological structure in Figure 7.4 requires some explication The basic idea is that the sounds of a word are organized into higher units Sound segments combine into syllables (σ), syllables into feet (F), and feet into phonological words (ω) The foot in this word is a trochee, that is, a foot consisting of two syllables
Fig 7.4 The morphological and phonological structure of hoeden
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Trang 8of which the first is the head and carries stress (hoeden carries stress on its
first syllable) In this case, the phonological word happens to consist of only one foot This hierarchical organization of a word’s segments is also called
its prosodic structure, and instead of ‘phonological word’ the term prosodic
word may be used.
A basic constraint on the relation between lexical words (that is, non-function words) and prosodic words is that a lexical word must consist of at least one prosodic word:
(3) Lexical word = minimally prosodic word
English and Dutch require a prosodic word to contain at least one full, that
is, non-reduced vowel Hence, they cannot have schwa [ə] as their only
vowel, unlike function words such as a and the Dutch function words such
as een [ən] “a” and er [ər] “there” violate a second constraint of Dutch,
namely that a prosodic word cannot begin with a schwa Hence, unlike these function words, lexical words of Dutch never begin with a schwa The asymmetry of phonological and morphological structure manifests itself quite clearly in Figure 7.4 with respect to the /d/: at the level of morphological structure it forms a unit with the preceding sounds, at the level of phonological structure it combines with the following sounds The interaction between morphology and phonology in this example is, so it seems, zero Phonology does not seem to care about the formal morpho-logical structure of this word However, as we will see below, there are many cases in which morphological structure does influence the phonological form of a word
The three steps in (2) illustrate the idea of phonological derivation: the computation of the phonetic forms of words in a number of steps, which is
a hallmark of classical generative phonology There is an alternative, non-derivational model that can be used to achieve the same result In that model, the phonology of a language is seen as a set of ranked constraints
In the case of hoeden, three constraints are relevant One is the constraint
which demands that obstruents are voiceless in syllable-final position Let
us refer to it as FinDevoicing A second constraint is called Faithfulness: the
phonetic realization of a word or morpheme should be identical to its underlying form, and not deviate from that underlying form That is, allomorphy should be avoided A third constraint that plays a role is that
syllables should begin with a consonant This is the No Empty Onset
con-straint As the phonetic form of the singular form hoed [hut] shows, in
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Trang 9Dutch the constraint FinDevoicing is ranked higher than Faithfulness since
we do get allomorphy The existence of allomorphy shows that constraints can be violated: faithfulness is violated in the singular form in order to satisfy the higher ranked constraint FinDevoicing The selection of the
optimal phonetic form of hoed and hoeden is shown in Figure 7.5 It is
represented in tables (called tableaux), and this variety of phonological
analysis is called Optimality Theory.
The left columns mention the possible phonetic forms for the underlying forms (given between slashes) These phonetic forms are called the candi-dates The left–right order of the constraints represents their ranking The leftmost is the highest ranked one The asterisks in the cells of the tableaux indicate that a constraint is violated by the candidate phonetic form If a constraint is no longer relevant for choosing the optimal candidate, the corresponding cell is shaded The pointed finger indicates the optimal
phonetic form In the case of hoed the second candidate is selected since the
first candidate violates a higher ranked constraint than the second one The exclamation mark indicates that a violation is fatal That is, this violation results in the fact that the form is ungrammatical, and will never surface
For hoeden the first candidate will be selected since it does not violate any of
the constraints, unlike the other candidates
The potential asymmetry between morphological and phonological
structure can be expressed by alignment constraints If the two types of
structure are to be isomorphic, the edges of stems have to be aligned with the edges of phonological constituents such as the syllable This is what the constraints Alignment Left and Alignment Right require: align the left and right morphological stem boundaries with phonological constituent
Fig 7.5 OT-tableaux for hoed and hoeden
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Trang 10boundaries The reason why Alignment Right is violated in the case of hoeden
has to do with an important universal phonological constraint mentioned above: syllables should, if possible, begin with a consonant, the No Empty Onset constraint This constraint refers to the notion ‘onset’ as a constitu-ent of the syllable Let me therefore introduce here the basic notions of
syllable structure The following structure of the syllable is usually assumed,
illustrated in Figure 7.6 for the English word stump.
The asymmetry between phonological and morphological structure
observed with respect to hoeden shows that the No Empty Onset constraint
is ranked higher than Alignment Right If Alignment Right ranked higher
than No Empty Onset, we would have to syllabify hoeden as hoed.en which
would result in the wrong phonetic form [hut.ən] Ranking of No Empty Onset above Alignment Right is therefore a partial specification of the interface between morphology and phonology in the grammar of Dutch
We might be tempted to jump to a rash conclusion on the basis of the facts discussed above: phonology cannot see the internal morphological structure of words, and deals with complex words in the same way as it deals with simplex words Hence we do not need detailed specifications of this interface This conclusion is incorrect, however A clear counterexam-ple is that in many languages the morphological structure of compounds plays an essential role in the computation of their phonetic forms, with respect to both syllabification and stress patterns Consider the following minimal pair of compounds of Dutch, with their syllabification:
(4) [[bal]N[kanker]N]N“testicle cancer” (bal)σ(kan)σ(ker)σ
[[balk] N [anker] N ] N “beam brace” (balk) σ (an) σ (ker) σ
The difference between these two compounds, which consist of the same sequence of segments, is audible through their different syllabification patterns This is only possible if the syllabification of compounds respects morphological structure In particular, the requirement that the left
Fig 7.6 The syllable structure of stump
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